Coming to Grips With Brigham and Race - Russell Stevenson

[_Bazooka]

Whatever the depth of Brigham Young’s commitment to black inclusion in March 1847, it was more than overwhelmed by the collective action of the Pratt, Hyde, and others to ensure that blackness was rooted out of Zion.

How does it help the church if (a) other prominent apostles were just as racist (or moreso) than Brigham Young, or (b) the president of the church was unable to resist the influence of racist apostles lower in seniority? If Brigham Young was incapable of following the will of God because his fellow prophets, seers, and revelators talked him into being racist, why should the members give so much deference to the 15 today? Can't the current 15 be equally as misguided as the 15 of the past?
.

Even if what Russell says is correct, about the effect of Pratt, Hyde and others in 1847, it is quite clear by the Salt Lake years that BY ruled, especially when it came to Pratt's attempts to promulgate doctrine on his own.

Let's give Russell a modern equivalent of his theory about Brigham.

"Whatever the depth of Thomas S. Monson's commitment to female ordination in 2014, it was more than overwhelmed by the collective action of Packer, Bednar, Oaks and others to ensure that feminism was rooted out of Zion."

[_Sethbag]

In the Saints’ push to survive in the racially-tumultuous waters of nineteenth-century America, they adopted the very prejudices their gospel vision was designed to protect against.

If this is the case, what makes the church any better than any other church? If the priesthood authority the church has cannot protect it against adopting these types of prejudices, what good is it?

It's worse than this. Russell seems to try to depict America as completely overrun with racism, but in fact there were people of faith who were preaching equality of man and basing their views on Christianity way back then. The idea that black people were not in fact inferior to whites was out there. You'd think God could get his one true and living church, with whom he was well pleased (speaking collectively of course...) on board with that.

If God could take a bunch of dyed-in-the-wool monogamists and turn them into flaming polygamists in one generation, he certainly could have softened the hearts of his saints and taught them compassion and the recognition of the equality of the races in God's eyes.

But of course polygamy gives men orgasms, and recognizing black people as equally human as white people doesn't. So I guess there's no real mystery here. Just as it appears, there's no God in Heaven looking down and fiddling with the lines of communication to reveal to his children what they need to hear. It's just a bunch of men proclaiming that they have God's imprimatur to tell the rest of us what to do, and then gratifying their own desires, while demonizing those they don't like.

But owning a deep-seated flaw in our past is a very different thing from trying to burn the Church to the ground.

The problem isn't that Russell won't own the flaws of the past. It's that recognizing the flaws of the past often leads people to the next logical conclusion, which is that the claims that God was directly leading the leaders of the past were in fact mistaken. And that's a bridge too far for Russell. Indeed, most of his fellow members see that bridge coming off in the distance and turn right around and won't even approach it, out of sheer terror where it might lead.

[_russellwades]

Hi Sethbag:

"...which is that the claims that God was directly leading the leaders of the past were in fact mistaken. And that's a bridge too far for Russell. "

Unfortunately, assumptions are proving fatal for your argument--and if you feel otherwise, I would ask you to find a place in my text where I in any way excuse the racial paradigms of church leaders. If you can find a text where I suggest that the leaders were right to succumb to their racial impulses, then I'll happily clarify.

Likewise, if you can find a text where I suggest that the United States is "completely overrun with racism," then I'll clarify that as well. But as I specifically note, there were Mormons (e.g. Rees E. Price) who were fervently opposed to slavery and rabid abolitionists. That goes without even mentioning people such as William Lloyd Garrison (who was a close associate of Price), Angelina Grimke, et al. Leave it out, and you'll end up being flatly wrong about what I said.

[_Sethbag]

Hi Sethbag:

"...which is that the claims that God was directly leading the leaders of the past were in fact mistaken. And that's a bridge too far for Russell. "

Unfortunately, you are mistaken about my views but assume that you are not--and if you feel otherwise, I would ask you to find a place in my text where I in any way excuse the racism of the past. If you can find a text where I suggest that the leaders were right to succumb to their racial impulses, then I'll happily clarify.

Russell, you misread me. I am saying that the claim that God was directly leading the leaders of the past is a mistaken claim.

I'm not saying that you excuse racism. I acknowledge that you reject it. I don't think that you said that past leaders were right to "succumb" to their racial impulses. I believe that you think they were wrong to do so. I commend you on this. What I'm saying is that you are unwilling to consider seriously the conclusion that many of us on this side of the aisle believe is the next logical step.

What I'm saying is that the LDS church claims and teaches, every day, that its leaders from Joseph Smith on down speak and act for God; that they are God's representatives on Earth, and that they speak his mind, his will, and that what they say to the world represents what God wants the world to hear. The obvious racism of the leaders' statements and actions in the past put the lie to this notion, though. The only really viable alternative is that God himself is in fact racist, and actually wanted Brigham Young and the others to say all that BS about the blacks.

And this is the reason why for many, many years after the 1978 un-banning of blacks from the priesthood the church leaders would not concede that the original ban had been a mistake. It's the reason why they would say things like "we don't understand all the whys and the wherefores of this policy, but it's changed now, so don't think about it too much". They never apologized, they never acknowledged racism. They knew that if they did so overtly then it was "Amen" to their credibility as prophets, seers, and revelators. Only recently, with the publishing of this anonymously written essay in the backwaters of their web page, has anything even remotely like "the leaders of the past were wrong, and this was never God's policy" appeared. And the FP/Q12 are too chicken-shit to put their names on this. They put it out there in such a way that it can still be disclaimed as "not official".

Look, I'm of the school of thought that what the church leaders say should be taken seriously. I was a diehard believer back in the day because I took the leaders seriously, and I took them at their word when they said they spoke for God. The day my faith finally died was the day I acknowledged, to myself, that these were just guys making their own decisions, and that there was no God up there pulling the strings. My faith died because my faith had been built up over years and years of church indoctrination until I took for granted that God was in fact up there pulling the strings.

And if God wasn't in fact up there pulling the strings, then what is the point of the church? We went around telling anyone who would listen that God A) has a church, B) leads his church directly through prophets, C) this church is the LDS church. Your position seriously undermines the claims of B).

According to this view it's easy to understand why it took the church until 1978 to unban the blacks. The church leaders of the time believed that their predecessors had received this policy from God, and were waiting for God to change it. The thing is, there's no God up there telling them anything, so it couldn't change until enough men in the FP/Q12 had the gonads to bring it up for consideration themselves, and, barring God giving them all this stupor of thought making them forget the idea, deem the idea approved of God and drive on.

So they finally, decades after the rest of the country had already more or less accepted racial equality (other than the KKK members and the like from the deep south), got off their butts and un-banned the blacks. Hooray for God's one and only true church! They finally reversed 130+ years of institutional racism and got on board with the rest of society! Go team!

Isn't it marvelous?

[_russellwades]

Ah, when you said that they were mistaken, the unwritten subtext was that they were mistaken about their prophetic claims (a point addressed in the essay), not merely about race.

All entirely fair comments. While I hope my work will inform people's faith journeys, I don't intend for it to define them. It should not--a discussion as vast as the place of prophets in Mormonism covers a variety of terrains. So I appreciate and respect your faith journey/journey from religion on its own terms and don't expect it to mirror my own or anybody else's.

You might enjoy reading the portion of my book in which I discuss (albeit briefly) the composition of the Dec. 2013 statement.

Best wishes,

Russell

[_Bazooka]

Come on Russell, cough up the freebie signed copies!

[_Sethbag]

Russell, I congratulate you on all the efforts you've put into thinking about these things and coming to conclusions which satisfy you.

I would like to point out that what you may or may not take as hostility on the part of some of us toward your ideas, or apologetics in general, comes from a particular point of view, under which it's the leaders of the LDS Church who are making the claims that they speak for God and have his imprimatur, therefor it's the words of those the LDS proclaim to be prophets, seers, and revelators, who are supposedly authorized by God to tell us all what we should do, that matter in questions of whether LDS claims are likely to be true. Not the words of self-appointed apologists.

You might be a great guy for all I know. But you're just one guy, with an opinion, just like I'm one guy with an opinion. If I'm evaluating the LDS Church's claims to be God's true church, your opinions simply don't matter, at all. If Thomas S. Monson can't get it right, the fact that some guy on the Internet named Russell Stevenson thinks he can explain the way it really is is simply not credible. In this view, you amount to an ark-steadier.

When LDS leaders stand up and tell me (from Joseph Smith on down) that I should render obedience to what they say and command, I have to rely on the words and deeds of these leaders, and make a judgment as to whether I find it likely or not that God would choose this way of letting me know what I need to believe and do. If these words and deeds are such that I find it improbable that a just and loving God would choose to interact with me this way, then nothing you can say really fixes that.

Brigham's actions make it impossible for me to believe that God would have chosen this way to lead us. You can help us understand the mind of the man, but what you say doesn't really change the underlying problem of prophetic credibility.

Seth

Ah, when you said that they were mistaken, the unwritten subtext was that they were mistaken about their prophetic claims (a point addressed in the essay), not merely about race.

All entirely fair comments. While I hope my work will inform people's faith journeys, I don't intend for it to define them. It should not--a discussion as vast as the place of prophets in Mormonism covers a variety of terrains. So I appreciate and respect your faith journey/journey from religion on its own terms and don't expect it to mirror my own or anybody else's.

You might enjoy reading the portion of my book in which I discuss (albeit briefly) the composition of the Dec. 2013 statement.

Best wishes,

Russell

[_Sanctorian]

Russell,

It's easy to look back at past leaders and say "they simply got it wrong". It takes courage to look at current leaders and say "they are getting it wrong" and to do something about it. Are you going to live your entire life explaining away actions of past leaders while ignoring the actions of your current leaders? That's what we are talking about here. If the past leaders can and did make mistakes that were passed as "God's will", what makes you think today's leaders are not currently making mistakes and passing it onto the membership as "God's will"?

This is where apologetics fails the test. You can either accept A) God speaks to prophets and isn't that wonderful even though God forgot to tell prophets for 130 years that they were being racist and their racism is impacting black families all over the world and could impact their eternal salvation or B) God does not speak to prophets which is why a racist policy was in place by racist men of their times and it wasn't until society forced a change that these racist policies changed. Apologists want to push A when the simple answer is B.

[Guest]

http://en.fairmormon.org/Mormonism_and_ ... Statements

That folks, is the First Presidency of 1949 pinning the blame on God.

So who is right?
The First Presidencies of 1949 and 1969..... or the anonymous writer of a recent Gospel Topics essay?

If one believes the recent essay is more authoritative than past First Presidencies, then one can but conclude that todays First Presidency statements are equally less authoritative than what some anonymous essay writer might say after they're dead.

That First Presidencies stated the ban was of God is something that Stevenson can not get around by blaming the ban on character flaws of Brigham Young.

"As Apostle Neil L. Andersen has said, true doctrine is found in statements approved by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles:..." - Russell Stevenson, 2014

The only, somewhat, tenable position, is that the Priesthood ban is like divorce; God permitted Moses to allow divorce because the hardness of the hearts of the people, likewise God permitted the ban because the people were hardhearted racists.

Frankly, I think the attempts to explain the ban beyond "it was of God, and we do not know why", make the situation all the more hard to swallow. Character flaws, racism, etc, are inadequate intellectual exercises to explain what the LDS Church has claimed is of God and according to His will and knowledge.

[_Tobin]

http://en.fairmormon.org/Mormonism_and_ ... Statements

That folks, is the First Presidency of 1949 pinning the blame on God.

So who is right?
The First Presidencies of 1949 and 1969..... or the anonymous writer of a recent Gospel Topics essay?

If one believes the recent essay is more authoritative than past First Presidencies, then one can but conclude that todays First Presidency statements are equally less authoritative than what some anonymous essay writer might say after they're dead.

That First Presidencies stated the ban was of God is something that Stevenson can not get around by blaming the ban on character flaws of Brigham Young. The only, somewhat, tenable position, is that the Priesthood ban is like divorce; God permitted Moses to allow divorce because the hardness of the hearts of the people.

Not at all. Brigham Young was a man and not God. He made mistakes. As are the statements from the First Presidency that it was of God. They were mistaken as well.