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Myth #1: Blacks couldn’t have the priesthood because they had the curse or mark of Cain

This belief was commonly held by many Protestant denominations in early American history.

While the scriptures do talk about a mark being put on Cain, there is no scriptural explanation of what that mark may be or how it relates to the priesthood.

One member of my high priest quorum suggested the mark is likely to be male pattern baldness.

There is a scripture in the Book of Moses talking about the children of Canaan being black (Moses 7:8), but there is no given connection between Cain and Canaan. Just because a name sounds similar, doesn’t make it the same.

Even in the Book of Abraham, the priesthood restrictions were not put on “blacks”, but on the lineage of the Egyptian Pharaoh. This was at the time of Abraham, long before Jesus Christ. If you were alive at that time, it is likely you would have been restricted from that priesthood as well.

Myth #2: Blacks were neutral or less valiant in the pre-existence
This terrible teaching was repudiated by none other than Brigham Young himself. Unfortunately, it continued to be perpetuated by many members throughout our history, and even ended up in books authored by Joseph Fielding Smith.

In an interview, apostle Jeffery R. Holland said the following: “One clear-cut position is that the folklore must never be perpetuated. … I have to concede to my earlier colleagues. … They, I’m sure, in their own way, were doing the best they knew to give shape to [the policy], to give context for it, to give even history to it. All I can say is however well intended the explanations were, I think almost all of them were inadequate and/or wrong.” (Source: http://www.pbs.org/Mormons/interviews/holland.html#1)

For those who are troubled by the fact that explanations given historically are now being repudiated, we have to look at the words of Bruce R. McConkie, who was originally a proponent of those theories. He said, “Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world.

President David O. McKay, the man who presided over these developments, was widely acclaimed at his death as a man of unusual compassion who had truly loved all his fellowmen.210 With regard to the priesthood policy, it was frequently said that he had been greatly saddened that he never felt able to remove the racial restriction. Curiously a somewhat different claim had been made by Sterling McMurrin in 1968. He reported that President McKay told him in 1954 that the Church had “no doctrine of any kind pertaining to the Negro,” and that the priesthood restriction was “a practice, not a doctrine, and the practice will some day be changed.”211 Though there was never an official statement of McKay’s views as president of the Church, many have doubted that he expressed the latter sentiment exactly in the form McMurrin presented it.212 Just a few years prior to his alleged comments to McMurrin, McKay had endorsed the First Presidency statement of 1949 to the effect that the priesthood restriction was “not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of a direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church … to the effect that Negroes … are not entitled to [p.94] the Priesthood at the present time.”213

Some of the confusion over President McKay’s opinion may be attributable to word choice. A clearcut distinction between “practice,” “policy,” “doctrine,” and “belief” has not always been maintained in the history of this subject. Normally a “doctrine” is a fundamental belief, tenet, or teaching, generally considered within the Church to be inspired or revealed. A “policy” is a specific program or “practice” implemented within the framework of the doctrine. Some policies or practices are so loosely tied to their doctrinal base that they may be changed administratively; other policies or practices are so closely tied to a doctrine as to require a revision of the doctrine before they can be changed. The First Presidency statement in 1949 was emphasizing that there was more to giving the Negroes the priesthood than an administrative decision to change the practice or policy. The McMurrin quotation cited above may reflect a rejection by President McKay of the previous “doctrinal” bases for the priesthood restriction, without at the same time questioning the appropriateness of the practice.

If one reads “no known doctrinal basis” in place of McMurrin’s reported “no doctrine,” then the sentiment is very similar to the view previously expressed by McKay in 1947.214 Responding to the question of “why the Negroid race cannot hold the priesthood,” he had written that he could find no answer in “abstract reasoning,” that he knew of “no scriptural basis … other than one verse in the book of Abraham (1:26),” and that “I believe … that the real reason dates back to our preexistent life.” There is no hint of a “Negro doctrine” here, but McKay had made it even clearer when he explained that the “answer to your question (and it is the only one that has ever given me satisfaction) has its foundation in faith … in a God of Justice … [and] in the existence of an eternal plan of salvation.” In so many words, he had expressed his dissatisfaction with an explanation limited to a curse on Cain or quotations from the Book of Abraham. Yet he did not reject a Church policy extending back well over a hundred years, and which was believed to have originated with the first prophet of the Restoration. Rather he chose to place his trust in God’s justice, and (as he later elaborates) his belief that earthly limitations are somehow related to the preexistence.

In dissociating the priesthood restriction from its historical associations, McKay anticipated the current belief that there is no known explanation for the priesthood policy. President McKay was too ill to sign his endorsement to the First Presidency statement of 1969; however, it is surely no mere coincidence that after eighteen years under his leadership the Church would state that the Negro was not yet to receive the priesthood “for reasons which we believe are known to God, but which He has not made fully known to man.”215 Unlike the First [p.95] Presidency statement of twenty years before, there was now no reference to a “doctrine,” but rather the practical observation that “Joseph Smith and all succeeding presidents of the Church have taught….”

As relieved as the educated Mormon may be at not having to stand squarely behind the curse on Cain or a non sequitur from the Pearl of Great Price, nor ultimately to defend a specific role for blacks in the preexistence (e.g., “indifferent,” “not valiant”), there is little comfort to be taken in the realization that the entire history of this subject has been effectively declared irrelevant. For if the priesthood restriction now stands independently of the rationales that justified its original existence, the demonstration that these rationales may have been in error becomes an academic exercise.

There have been no official statements on the Negro since President McKay’s death. Though Joseph Fielding Smith had previously left little doubt as to his views on the subject, he did not reiterate them as president of the Church. He did continue the progressive policies of his predecessor and authorized still another innovation—the formation of the black Genesis Group.216

During the few months that Harold B. Lee has led the Church, he has been quoted in the national press as explaining the priesthood restriction in terms of the preexistence.217 In spite of the precedent established while President McKay led the Church for scrutinizing such remarks from all angles, it does not seem indicated to speculate on future possibilities based on this type of “evidence.”

A few final remarks should be made regarding a relatively new variant on the preexistence theme. For over a century those who dealt with the preexistence hypothesis derived the idea that Negroes had performed inadequately in the preexistence from either the assumed inferiority of the race or the policy of priesthood denial. Recently, however, one finds that a critical transposition has been made which transforms the earlier belief that Negroes were substandard performers in the preexistence because they had been denied the priesthood into the claim that Negroes are denied the priesthood because of their status in the preexistence. Thus, one who questions the priesthood policy must now, by extension, involve himself in the speculative maze of premortal life. This development has probably been encouraged by an error in context found in the last First Presidency statement, which reads:

Our living prophet, President David O. Mckay, has said, “The seeming discrimination by the Church toward the Negro is not something which originated with man; but goes back into the beginning with God …

“Revelation assures us that this plan antedates man’s [p.96] mortal existence extending back to man’s preexistent state.” …218

Beyond the fact that McKay was a Counselor when he made these observations, two false impressions are conveyed. The initial quotation was not a “pronouncement” but rather was the conclusion of his reasoning that if the Lord originated the priesthood restriction, and if the Lord is a “God of Justice,” then there must be an explanation that “goes back into the beginning with God.” The paragraph which preceded the second quotation is also relevant:

Now if we have faith in the justice of God, we are forced to the conclusion that this denial was not a deprivation of merited right. It may have been entirely in keeping with the eternal plan of salvation for all of the children of God.

Revelation assures us that this plan …219

President McKay had not said that a revelation assured us that the Negro was denied the priesthood as part of the plan of salvation. We have assured ourselves that this is the case.

VI

Mormon attitudes towards blacks have thus followed an unexpectedly complex evolutionary pattern. When first apparent, these beliefs were sustained by the widely accepted connection of the Negro with Ham and Cain, the acknowledged intellectual and social inferiority of the Negro, his black skin, and the strength of Brigham Young’s testimony and/or opinion. With the unanticipated termination of the curse of slavery on Canaan, the death of Brigham Young, increased evidence of Negro capability, and the decline of general support for the traditional genealogy of the blacks, justification of Church policy shifted to the Pearl of Great Price and an interpretation derived from earlier beliefs, and the belief that the policy could be traced through all the presidents of the Church to the Prophet Joseph Smith. By the middle of the twentieth century, little evidence remained for the old concepts of racial inferiority; skin color had also lost its relevance, and the Pearl of Great Price alone was no longer considered a sufficient explanation. Supplementing and eventually surpassing these concepts was the idea that the blacks had somehow performed inadequately in the preexistence. Most recently all of these explanations have been superseded by the belief that, after all, there is no specific explanation for the priesthood policy. Significantly this progression has not weakened the belief that the policy is justified, for there remains the not inconsiderable evidence of over a century of decisions which have consistently denied the priesthood to blacks.

No one, I believe, who has talked with leaders of the contemporary [p.97] Church can doubt that there is genuine concern over the “Negro doctrine.” Nor can there be any question that they are completely committed to the belief that the policy of priesthood denial is divinely instituted and subject only to revelatory change. The not infrequent assumption of critics of Church policy that the demonstration of a convincing historical explanation for modern Church teachings would result in the abandonment of the Negro doctrine is both naïve and reflective of a major misunderstanding of the claims of an inspired religion. Yet among the parameters of revelation, careful study has been identified as a conducive, if not necessary, preliminary step (D&C 9:7-8). A thorough study of the history of the Negro doctrine still has not been made. In particular, three fundamental questions have yet to be resolved:

First, do we really have any evidence that Joseph Smith initiated a policy of priesthood denial to Negroes?

Second, to what extent did nineteenth-century perspectives on race influence Brigham Young’s teachings on the Negro and, through him, the teachings of the modern Church?

Third, is there any historical basis from ancient texts for interpreting the Pearl of Great Price as directly relevant to the black-priesthood question, or are these interpretations dependent upon more recent (e.g., nineteenth-century) assumptions?

For the faithful Mormon a fourth question, less amenable to research, also poses itself: Have our modern prophets received an unequivocal verification of the divine origin of the priesthood policy, regardless of its history?

The lack of a tangible answer to the fourth question emphasizes even more the need for greater insight into the first three. We have the tools and would seem to have the historical resource material available to provide valid answers to these questions. Perhaps it’s time we began.

Focus in on the last part of the statement, "I think" they are wrong. Sounds like personal opinion to me. Suddenly the opinion of an LDS authority during some random interview Trump's an official release produced by the First Presidency?

This has the potential to open up a whole can of apostate worms. People can now dismiss whatever doctrine they no longer like, using this as a precedent:

Kevin Graham wrote:This opinion piece written almost thirty years ago by a non-authority should be accepted over the official statements by LDS authorities.... why exactly?

bcspace wrote:

This has the potential to open up a whole can of apostate worms. People can now dismiss whatever doctrine they no longer like, using this as a precedent:

Have no fear. Official publication remains the identifier of official LDS doctrine. Notice that MDD detractors of the Church's position on doctrine have now assented to it by portraying the Newsroom statements as official doctrine.

RayAgostini wrote:

Kevin Graham wrote:This opinion piece written almost thirty years ago by a non-authority should be accepted over the official statements by LDS authorities.... why exactly?

Age makes no difference to Bush's core analyses.

bcspace wrote:

This has the potential to open up a whole can of apostate worms. People can now dismiss whatever doctrine they no longer like, using this as a precedent:

Have no fear. Official publication remains the identifier of official LDS doctrine. Notice that MDD detractors of the Church's position on doctrine have now assented to it by portraying the Newsroom statements as official doctrine.

Kevin Graham wrote:
Dude, you have to admit you're on the fringe here. Obviously most Mormons online disagree with you. Try making these arguments at MAD and see what happens.