Elder Stapley Letter To Gov. George Romney

[_Chap]

Ham gave rise to the Cannanites. This is the Negro race, who had the priesthood witheld from them until President Kimball approached the Lord and asked that they be granted the right to bear it.

I find this funny. Thousands of years with no priesthood until Spencer Kimball from Utah asked the Lord to let them have it. I'm surprised Kimball wasn't struck dead for trying to steady the ark, or something else didn't happen to him. Typically bad things happen when we approach the lord with new suggestions on how to run things.

Like when Paul asked to teach, and give the priesthood to, the Gentiles?

Where does Paul say 'I want to give the priesthood to Gentiles'? or is it just that you interpret what he says as implying that in LDS terms he wanted to do that?

For that matter, where does Paul say explicitly that he is himself a priest?

[_Gazelam]

Where does Paul say 'I want to give the priesthood to Gentiles'? or is it just that you interpret what he says as implying that in LDS terms he wanted to do that?

Well if God told him that the Gentiles were now clean and that he was to go baptise them, then hes going to be giving them the priesthood right along with that. What would be the good of setting up churchs and spreading the gospel if you can't leave them leaders to run things?

For that matter, where does Paul say explicitly that he is himself a priest?

Romans 1:1

[Guest]

Where does Paul say 'I want to give the priesthood to Gentiles'? or is it just that you interpret what he says as implying that in LDS terms he wanted to do that?

Well if God told him that the Gentiles were now clean and that he was to go baptise them, then he's going to be giving them the priesthood right along with that. What would be the good of setting up churchs and spreading the gospel if you can't leave them leaders to run things?

For that matter, where does Paul say explicitly that he is himself a priest?

Romans 1:1

I am amazed by your assumption that you are entitled to go from the fact that he intends to baptise them and leave them to run their own affairs to the conclusion that he wants them to become priests. That assumption is based entirely on your own LDS presupposition that 'leader' = 'priest'. When Paul wants to talk about priests, he uses the Greek word hiereus, the normal way of referring in Greek to the Levitical priesthood (kohanim) that served in the Jerusalem temple.

There is nothing in Romans 1:1 about priests, though Paul does say he is an apostle.

But I should help you out here - were you thinking of this?

Romans 15: 16

εις το ειναι με λειτουργον χριστου ιησου εις τα εθνη ιερουργουντα το ευαγγελιον του θεου ινα γενηται η προσφορα των εθνων ευπροσδεκτος ηγιασμενη εν πνευματι αγιω

for my being a servant of Jesus Christ to the nations, acting as priest in the good news of God, that the offering up of the nations may become acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. (Young)

Here he says he is a 'servant' (leitourgos) who is 'acting as priest' (hierourgounta) in that he is 'offering up the nations' - this is clearly a metaphor, not a literal statement. It would be simply astounding if a first-century Jew. not of the priestly clans, was to say that he was in any normal sense a priest (hiereus), and Paul does not do so. Nor does he say that he has made anybody else into a priest.

[_Blixa]

Thanks for adding that Rollo.I like the inside stuff like that.

But don't you think, Gaz, that the interview Rollo cited contradicts the version of things in the McConkie book? In particular:

WALTERS: On this revelation, of the priesthood to the Negro, I've heard all kinds of stories: I've heard that Joseph Smith appeared; and then I heard another story that Spencer Kimball had, had a concern about this for some time, and simply shared it with the apostles, and they decided that this was the right time to move in that direction. Are any of those stories true, or are they all?

RICHARDS: Well, the last one is pretty true, and I might tell you what provoked it in a way. Down in Brazil, there is so much Negro blood in the population there that it's hard to get leaders that don't have Negro blood in them. We just built a temple down there. It's going to be dedicated in October. All those people with Negro blood in them have been raising the money to build that temple. If we don't change, then they can't even use it.

which pretty much makes this change sound more like a managerial decision based on finance and demographics than the ineffable unfolding of a Deity's magisterial Plan (of course "The Plan of Salvation" always struck me as rhetoric more suited to blueprints than spiritual mystery. But then, attention to the public relations dimension of rhetoric is apparently only a recent concern in the church: witness the usage in 1978 of terms like "colored people" and "Negro blood," above).

[_Pokatator]

I can't think of anything that riles me up or disgusts me more than racism. I can't see how a little bit of skin pigment should change anything with man's relationship with God.

Back in 1962, I was a stupid little 10 year old white Mormon boy from Pocatello, Idaho. A little railroad town with very few blacks. I was in the fourth grade when this "civil" rights issue came to the surface. My grade school was the only grade school in town to have any blacks attending. At that time I had a teacher that I now look back on as being very insightful. We had discussions about civil rights and current events that were happening. Sadly, I did not think for myself at that age and I quite vocally enspoused the racist beliefs of my step-father and grandfather and many other of my local Mormon leaders. It was what I was being taught, it was what I was suppost to believe.

After I had opened my big mouth a few times, finally a girl asked me if I felt that way about Butch, Kenny, Terry, and George? To my infinite dismay, I said, "Who?" She said, "Don't you realize that you're talking about them, they're black?" You know what, I really never realized until then that they were black and that this civil rights issue was about them. To me they were just my friends and I never saw them as black and me as white.

Pretty stupid, right? From that point on I began to think for myself. I came to realize that my step-father could be wrong. That my grandfather could be wrong. That my church leaders could be wrong. Then I learned enough to know that they were wrong.

This is revealing and an embarassment to me. But it illustrates how this type of stuff gets passed on to generation to generation. I thank God for giving me a 10 year old mind to be able to think for myself and be able to break that evil pattern. That same mind is what has helped me to break from the church altogether.

Also, I want to thank Rollo for providing the quote:

WALTERS: On this revelation, of the priesthood to the Negro, I've heard all kinds of stories: I've heard that Joseph Smith appeared; and then I heard another story that Spencer Kimball had, had a concern about this for some time, and simply shared it with the apostles, and they decided that this was the right time to move in that direction. Are any of those stories true, or are they all?

RICHARDS: Well, the last one is pretty true, and I might tell you what provoked it in a way. Down in Brazil, there is so much Negro blood in the population there that it's hard to get leaders that don't have Negro blood in them. We just built a temple down there. It's going to be dedicated in October. All those people with Negro blood in them have been raising the money to build that temple. If we don't change, then they can't even use it.

I had never heard of this Brazilian angle until recently and again in this quote.

I grew up in a little town that was racist but the numbers of blacks were so low that it was never an issue that came to the surface. The two disgusting jokes that I remember from that era was both racist. The first was "How come Alabama got all the N...... and Utah got all the Mormons?" Alabama got first choice. The second was, "Did you hear about the first N....... to make the team at BYU? "Yeah, they made him a javelin catcher". Both disgusting but that was the mentally of my hometown at that time. It was primarily a railroad town at that time, kind of bi-polar, devout Mormon or totally non-Mormon, but both camps were racist in my view. When the ban was lifted I had numerous close relatives and many in our church that I believe was near apostacy over this.

When I was growing up I was under a different impression as to why the ban was lifted than the Brazil angle. The buzz in our town was that BYU was not going to be allowed in the major atheletic conferences and thus not be allowed on national TV with the ban in place. Thus the time for new revelation.

Has anyone else heard that angle?

[Ahoody]

Has anyone else heard that angle?

I have known about it for about five years or so. (EDITED: Oops, I thought you meant the Brazilian angle, sorry)

Before that I hadn't had much contact with "the church" or interest in Mormon history, so I only knew the 1978 revelation as given and the criticism of the time (which was mostly that they held off doing the right thing until civil rights agitation died down so it wouldn't be so obvious they were bowing to pressure).

[_silentkid]

The buzz in our town was that BYU was not going to be allowed in the major atheletic conferences and thus not be allowed on national TV with the ban in place. Thus the time for new revelation.

Has anyone else heard that angle?

This is what my parents told me. I think the ban was lifted due to multiple sources of pressure on the church.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

When I was growing up I was under a different impression as to why the ban was lifted than the Brazil angle. The buzz in our town was that BYU was not going to be allowed in the major atheletic conferences and thus not be allowed on national TV with the ban in place. Thus the time for new revelation.

I'm not sure about 1978, but the BYU sports problem was a big issue in the 60's, which almost led to the ban being lifted in 1969. On April 13, 1968, eight African-American athletes from UTEP refused to participate in a track meet at BYU because of the priesthood ban. (D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, p. 857). On October 20, 1969, while BYU’s basketball team played the University of Wyoming in Laramie, fourteen African-American players on Wyoming’s team were suspended from the team for wearing black armbands to protest the priesthood ban; the game continued, but BYU players were pelted by spectators. (Quinn, Extensions, p. 859). On February 5, 1970, BYU’s basketball team played Colorado State University in Fort Collins; the game was disrupted at halftime when 150 CSU student demonstrators scuffled with campus police and 20 Fort Collins policemen, with a Molotov cocktail being thrown on the court; when the game resumed, BYU players were pelted with raw eggs. (Quinn, Extensions, p. 859).

In late 1969 rumors were swirling in the press that the Church was about to lift the priesthood ban. It began on November 12, 1969, when Stanford University decided to refuse to play BYU in athletic competitions because of the priesthood ban. Hugh B. Brown quickly went to work and lobbied Stanford to drop this decision, telling Stanford’s president that he expected the priesthood ban to end soon; consequently, Stanford decided to delay the boycott. Brown then lobbied the Quorum of the 12 to end the ban, and apparently was very nearly successful, until Harold B. Lee caught wind of it and quickly put the kibosh on the proposal. David O. McKay by this time was completely incapacitated (and would die in a month or so), and Lee was second in line to become LDS president (behind the very elderly Joseph Fielding Smith); accordingly, Lee was becoming increasingly powerful. Lee persuaded the others in the 12 to rescind the proposal to end the ban. (Quinn, Extensions, pp. 13-15).

[_moksha]

Hugh B. Brown quickly went to work and lobbied Stanford to drop this decision, telling Stanford’s president that he expected the priesthood ban to end soon; consequently, Stanford decided to delay the boycott. Brown then lobbied the Quorum of the 12 to end the ban, and apparently was very nearly successful, until Harold B. Lee caught wind of it and quickly put the kibosh on the proposal. David O. McKay by this time was completely incapacitated (and would die in a month or so), and Lee was second in line to become LDS president (behind the very elderly Joseph Fielding Smith); accordingly, Lee was becoming increasingly powerful. Lee persuaded the others in the 12 to rescind the proposal to end the ban. (Quinn, Extensions, pp. 13-15).

So even then there were forces at work to do the right thing and forces at work opposing it. Is this rife with symbolic tie-ins or what?

[_Sethbag]

So, was Harold B. Lee inspired by Jesus Christ to lobby the other members of the Quorum of the Twelve not to rescind the ban? If not, and that was just his opinion as a fallible human, is there any good reason why the Discernment powers of the other members through the Holy Spirit and the priesthood they hold as special witnesses of Jesus Christ couldn't recognize this and support rescinding the ban anyway? Or did Jesus Christ simply not think "the time was right" for the ban to be rescinded for another, oh, nine years?

Does anyone else see the hand and workings of human beings here, and not the working of any kind of God?