Popular BYU Randy Bott Takes Heat for Comments

[_MsJack]

Hello again makelan,

My studies are going well now, as I hope are yours. I apologize for my absence this weekend. We've been busy adopting an adult cat into the family as our first pet.

Yes. I don't think, in the context of Bott's case, there's an appreciable difference between official, formal, and specific repudiation of past comments and repeated informal repudiation of the same on the part of church leadership

I disagree that there has even been "repeated informal repudiation of the same on the part of church leadership" on the matter. More like sporadic, quite-occasional repudiation in very unofficial venues. Certainly not enough for me to feel comfortable writing "the church has repudiated these doctrines for 30 years" as you apparently are.

That's an awful lot of evidentiary weight to hang on one adverb.

I disagree, and I think your own citation of David O. McKay (via Sterling McMurrin) demonstrates my point rather than refuting it:

There is not now, and there never has been a doctrine in this church that the negroes are under a divine curse. There is no doctrine in the church of any kind pertaining to the negro. We believe that we have a scriptural precedent for withholding the priesthood from the negro. It is a practice, not a doctrine, and the practice someday will be changed. And that's all there is to it.

Sterling M. McMurrin affidavit, March 6, 1979

And what "scriptural precedent" would that be?

In essence, McKay's 1947 position on the basis of the policy remained intact through the rest of his life, perhaps softening in one respect: He may have rejected his earlier speculation about a link to the pre-existence. This was suggested in a 1961 news conference in England where, when asked by a reporter about the policy, he replied that it rested solely on the Book of Abraham. "That is the only reason," he said. "It is founded on that."

(Gregory A. Prince, "David O. McKay and Blacks: Building the Foundation for the 1978 Revelation," in Dialogue, 35.1: 146)

David O. McKay apparently continued to believe that the words found in the Book of Abraham constituted part of the reason that blacks were denied the priesthood, making it unlikely that the 1969 statement by the First Presidency which you cited was meant to remove the Book of Abraham as a reason for the ban. And it was citing those very passages from the Book of Abraham and applying them to blacks when talking to reporters (just as McKay did) which partially led to Bott's current troubles.

I think the larger context does not support understanding McConkie's comments to be limited to the duration of the ban to the exclusion of assertions regarding the origins of the ban. It should be noted that the revision made to McConkie's Mormon Doctrine immediately after the 1978 revelation removes all references to reasons why the ban was implemented. He still has comments about blacks being descendants of Cain and so forth, but the connection of any curse with the priesthood ban are entirely absent.

According to Armand Mauss, McConkie continued to publish pre-1978 rationalizations for the priesthood ban in his other writings even after his 1978 speech:

This statement by Elder McConkie in August of 1978 is an apt characterization of the doctrine and apologetic commentary so pervasive in the Church prior to the revelation on the priesthood earlier that year. That is, it was based on limited understanding. Yet, it is not clear how wide an application Elder McConkie intended for his references to “limited understanding;” for ironically, the doctrinal folklore that many of us thought had been discredited, or at least made moot, through the 1978 revelation continued to appear in Elder McConkie’s own books written well after 1978, and continues to be taught by well-meaning teachers and leaders in the Church to this very day.

The footnote reads:

Bruce R. McConkie, “New Revelation on Priesthood,” Priesthood (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1981), 128, where McConkie reaffirms the notion that blacks descended from Cain and Ham. Even recent printings of his 1966 edition of Mormon Doctrine (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft) retain racist ideas under headings such as “Caste System” and “Pre-existence.” See also his The Mortal Messiah (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1979), 1:23; his The Millennial Messiah (SLC: Deseret Book Company, 1982), 182-183 (plus all of Chapter 16); and his A New Witness for the Articles of Faith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1985), 510-512 (plus Chapter 4), in all of which he ties the unequal conditions of various mortal lineages to decisions made in the pre-existence.

(From his 2003 FAIR Conference presentation, available online here.)

I haven't hunted down all of these books by McConkie to insure that Mauss is correct. But if he is, then that makes it difficult to read McConkie's 1978 speech as intending to repeal all past rationalizations for the priesthood ban. If that was the intention of his 1978 speech, then he later reneged on it.

As an expert in Mormon doctrine, [Randy Bott] should certainly be aware of these things.

He may have been aware of them. He may have simply disagreed with them.

Incidentally, I only just this weekend picked up Charles R. Harrell's This is My Doctrine. His interpretation on the data (including McConkie's 1978 speech) is near identical to my own:

Despite the fact that McConkie later repudiated authoritative pronouncements extending the priesthood ban until after the millennium, he made no effort to renounce the doctrine that blacks were less valiant in the preexistence or that their skin color still preserved the mark of the curse. Armand Mauss notes,

[citation from the talk that I linked to above]

The Church's apparent unwillingness to disavow the doctrinal basis for denying blacks the priesthood has been a thorn in the side of many black members. As African Mormon David Jackson expressed, "What [the 1978 revelation] doesn't say is we're no longer of the lineage of Cain, that we no longer did these things in the preexistence. It does not say that we are not cursed with black skin." As a result of the lingering doctrinal legacy, a tendency persists among many Latter-day Saints to view the 1978 revelation on the priesthood much as they view the Manifesto: It is a change in practice only but doesn't overturn the underlying doctrine. Just as many Latter-day Saints still believe polygamy to be an eternal principle, the belief still seems to linger that blacks were less valiant spirits in the preexistence.

(Charles R. Harrell, "This is My Doctrine": The Development of Mormon Theology [Greg Kofford Books, 2011], 390-91.)

You are, of course, welcome to disagree with us, but I contend that folks like Harrell and myself are being more than responsible with the historical data on this subject in saying that the church has not repudiated these teachings, but has instead left enough room for them to linger. Without repudiation, I refuse to fault Bott for teaching something more engaging than "we just don't know."

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EDIT: While most of the books by McConkie that Mauss cites would take an ILL request in order for me to verify them, this is from my copy of Mormon Doctrine. It was given to me by LDS missionaries when I was taking the discussions in 1998-1999 (Bookcraft, 18th printing, 1998):

However, in a broad general sense, caste systems have their root and origin in the gospel itself, and when they operate according to the divine decree, the resultant restrictions and segregation are right and proper and have the approval of the Lord. To illustrate, Cain, Ham, and the whole negro race have been cursed with a black skin, the mark of Cain, so they can be identified as a caste apart, a people with whom the other descendants of Adam should not intermarry. (Gen. 4; Moses 5.)

My edition of the book, however, contains no racist material under "Pre-existence."