Historically the Mormon Church has
taken a very racist attitude towards the black people. This began to be
somewhat modified when a revelation that black men are now eligible for
the Priesthood was announced to the church June 9, 1978 by President Spencer W.
Kimball. In spite of lifting the ban on black participation in the priesthood,
the Mormon church has done nothing, according to the public record, to retract
or to atone for the many slanderous statements against blacks.
Early on Joseph Smith, founder of
Mormonism, went on record as saying, “Had I anything to do with the
Negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species” (History of the Church, v. 7, pp. 217-218).
Admittedly this statement was made during a time of enormous racial
injustice in the United States including slavery. But bear in mind that Joseph
Smith claimed that as a prophet he had a special connection with God and
spoke for God to his followers.
The Journal of Discourses,
which contains many of the sermons of the early Church Presidents, records, “You
see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable,
and low in their habits, wild and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings
of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind . . . Cain slew his
brother . . . and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and the
black skin . . . another curse is pronounced upon the same race—that they
should be the servant of servants and they will be until that curse is removed
. . . 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. It will always be
so. (c. 7, pp. 290-291)"
Racism has been a
terrible blight on Christianity. Tragically it has been widely practiced but
there are no grounds for racial prejudice or discrimination in the Bible or in
true Christianity. This is but another example of how far the Mormon Church
strays from historical, biblical Christianity.
This and many other topics are explored in my new book Mormonism and the Bible.
This and many other topics are explored in my new book Mormonism and the Bible.
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