Race, God, and the LDS Church

  • Thread starter Thread starter Marc_Anthony
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Marc_Anthony said:
But the Book of Mormon was given to you by a Prophet, who claimed to be inspired by God while writing it (Smith of course). But if we don’t know when Mormon Prophets are actually receiving teachings from God or just THINKING that they are, then how can we be sure that the entirety of the BoM is inerrant?
Click to expand...
I suggest reading the BoM. If God speaks to you through the BoM, then you can know that the BoM is something special. Whether it is “inerrant” would depend upon whether one understands it correctly or not.
 
Ahimsa said:
So, whose position on the priesthood makes more sense to you: Smith’s or Young’s?
Click to expand...
Irrelevant. I’m not concerned with which position “makes more sense”. Both Brigham Young and Joseph Smith are regarded by Mormons as former Presidents of their church, and were “prophets, seers, and revelators”. Both had the authority to ordain men to the priesthood, and similarly, both had the authority to revoke that priesthood from men. So, it was certainly in the power of Smith to ordain, and Young had the power to revoke priesthood, and vice versa.

No one knows when exactly the priesthood ban started. What we do know is that there is a statement by the First Presidency under George Smith, in 1949, that states that the priesthood ban was a “commandment of the Lord”. Whether Smith ordained a black man or not does not change that teaching. All that shows is that the priesthood ban was not in effect at that time.
 
twopekinguys said:
That is the problem. If you ask 10 different mormons when their “prophet” is infallible, you will get 20 different answers.

Early on in this thread, you will see where ParkerD talked about their “prophet” offering their opinion in relation to blacks and the priesthood. However, their scripture shows that it is doctrinal.

Trying to figure out when a mormon “prophet” is speaking for God is like nailing jello to the wall.

Here is an example of when the vast majority of reasonable, thinking individuals would think that Brigham Young was speaking what God told him. (bolding mine)

If one drop of negro blood meant death on the spot, what do you think it meant for someone with 100% negro blood?

Can you say “Doctrinal Racism”?

"Brigham Young is generally credited with having been responsible for revoking the priesthood and temple blessings from black members of the LDS Church, who had been treated equally in this respect under Joseph Smith’s presidency.[13]

During the Mormon flight from Illinois towards Utah in 1847, Brigham Young received a letter informing him of an inter-racial marriage by the son of a prominent black member, Walker Lewis. The letter was written by William Ivers Appleby, a Mormon elder, who desired to know if interracial marriage was an acceptable practice. Appleby sent the letter to Young at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, but Young was actually in Utah, and therefore did not receive Appleby’s missive until December 1, 1847, when he returned to Winter Quarters. Quite coincidentally, Appleby himself arrived in Winter Quarters on December 2. Young read Appleby’s letter and then had him personally report to Young and the eight apostles who were then in Nebraska.[14] In 1863, Young reported that he said, “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? **If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so” **(Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 110)."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Young

Again, do some research.
Click to expand...
And, yet, Brigham Young’s “always be so” was negated in 1978.
 
Marc_Anthony said:
Once again: This creates two possibilites. Either God was wrong or the Prophet was wrong. Obviously nobody here believes God was wrong. So the PRophet was wrong. But why do we believe the Prophet in 1978 and not the original Prophetic teaching? How do we know the new teaching was right? You said yourself that Prophets could be wrong.
Click to expand...
Personally, I am not interested in following a prophet who may or may not be right about a given issue, or whose prophetic pronouncements may be dismissed as mere personal opinion in years to come. Why should I gamble my salvation on a man whose prophetic declarations are likely to be dismissed as opinion even before I die?

When Brigham Young was alive, all of the faithful LDS believed that everything he declared was scripture (because he said it was). Adam-God, blood atonement, death-on-the-spot for race-mixers, all was from from the lips of God Himself. And anyone who disobeyed the prophet’s directives was likely to disappear into the Utah desert, never to be heard from again.

Then a mere 100 years later, it was all just Brigham’s personal opinion. Not to worry, it is all fluffy bunnies and pretty flowers now. Adam-God? Blood atonement? Racial bigotry? Why, we’ve never heard of any of that, have we???
 
PaulDupre said:
Personally, I am not interested in following a prophet who may or may not be right about a given issue, or whose prophetic pronouncements may be dismissed as mere personal opinion in years to come. Why should I gamble my salvation on a man whose prophetic declarations are likely to be dismissed as opinion even before I die?

When Brigham Young was alive, all of the faithful LDS believed that everything he declared was scripture (because he said it was). Adam-God, blood atonement, death-on-the-spot for race-mixers, all was from from the lips of God Himself. And anyone who disobeyed the prophet’s directives was likely to disappear into the Utah desert, never to be heard from again.

Then a mere 100 years later, it was all just Brigham’s personal opinion. Not to worry, it is all fluffy bunnies and pretty flowers now. Adam-God? Blood atonement? Racial bigotry? Why, we’ve never heard of any of that, have we???
Click to expand...
I don’t know that we teach that.
 
PaulDupre said:
Really? Then why did the Mormons segregate and hate the negroes? Why were negroes denied the priesthood? Why did Mormon “prophets” preach vile and hateful things against black people?

It just goes to further show how the Book of Mormon is an anti-Mormon book.
Click to expand...
You speak as if Mormons are some type of super-human group that is all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful. Mormons are people just like you, with faults and gifts. The Mormon doctrines, post-Joseph Smith, were a mirror of many Southern attitudes towards blacks. If Southerners could see the error of their ways, then so can Mormons.
 
Marc_Anthony said:
Once again: This creates two possibilites. Either God was wrong or the Prophet was wrong. Obviously nobody here believes God was wrong. So the PRophet was wrong. But why do we believe the Prophet in 1978 and not the original Prophetic teaching? How do we know the new teaching was right? You said yourself that Prophets could be wrong.
Click to expand...
There are many possibilities. One of which is that God reveals at different ages what humanity is ready to receive.
 
Ahimsa said:
I suggest reading the BoM. If God speaks to you through the BoM, then you can know that the BoM is something special. Whether it is “inerrant” would depend upon whether one understands it correctly or not.
Click to expand...
That would prove nothing. God SUPPOSEDLY speaks to a lot of people through books I do not consider holy. Plus there are many ex-Mormons here who HAVE read the BoM and apparently found it lacking.
 
Ahimsa said:
You speak as if Mormons are some type of super-human group that is all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful. Mormons are people just like you, with faults and gifts. The Mormon doctrines, post-Joseph Smith, were a mirror of many Southern attitudes towards blacks. If Southerners could see the error of their ways, then so can Mormons.
Click to expand...
The First Presidency taught that the ban was due to a commandment of the Lord. Were they right or wrong?
 
Ahimsa said:
There are many possibilities. One of which is that God reveals at different ages what humanity is ready to receive.
Click to expand...
So at one time he reveals that black people are inferior and at another time he reveals that they’re not?

Going with this theory-You said that Prophets can be wrong. So how on Earth am I supposed to differentiate between a true and false teaching? What if the new teaching was false and the original teaching was true? I wouldn’t know.
 
Marc_Anthony said:
So at one time he reveals that black people are inferior and at another time he reveals that they’re not?

Going with this theory-You said that Prophets can be wrong. So how on Earth am I supposed to differentiate between a true and false teaching? What if the new teaching was false and the original teaching was true? I wouldn’t know.
Click to expand...
The world wasn’t ready for racial equality until 1978.
 
CatholicGuyNY said:
The First Presidency taught that the ban was due to a commandment of the Lord. Were they right or wrong?
Click to expand...
1 Samuel 15 said that God commanded the Israelites to kill women and children. Was this claim of a commandment from God right or wrong?
 
Ahimsa said:
1 Samuel 15 said that God commanded the Israelites to kill women and children. Was this claim of a commandment from God right or wrong?
Click to expand...
Deflection. The First Presidency stated that the ban was due to a commandment of the Lord. Were they right or wrong?
 
Marc_Anthony said:
So at one time he reveals that black people are inferior and at another time he reveals that they’re not?
Click to expand...
In Matthew 19, Jesus said that Moses allowed divorce only because of the hardness of the hearts of the people; but that it was not this way in the beginning.

When the Methodists and the Baptists first evangelized the southern states of the U.S., they were anti-slavery, but gradually they accepted slavery, because otherwise they would have lost converts in the South.

Now, one can say that the Methodists and Baptists should have kept their anti-slavery stance, but I think one can also understand that some people might see conversion to Christianity (even if connected to slavery and ideas of African-inferiority) better than no conversion to Christianity (and, thus, lost of one’s eternal salvation).

Given the racial attitudes of most whites in the 19th century, would the Mormon church have survived if it allowed blacks to be priests over whites, and allowed intermarriage in its churches? If not, then would the whole ‘priesthood-ban’ be something like Mosaic divorce laws, not all of which are true in the beginning, but perhaps necessary given the racial attitudes of whites in America?

Don’t forget: the reason black denominations began in the first place in the U.S. (starting in the 1790s), was because white Christians did not want to see black as equals. There weren’t too many inter-racial churches in the 1800s, in which blacks and whites held equal authority and power.
Going with this theory-You said that Prophets can be wrong. So how on Earth am I supposed to differentiate between a true and false teaching? What if the new teaching was false and the original teaching was true? I wouldn’t know.
Click to expand...
I’m sure a Jew would ask the same thing regarding Christianity.😃
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top