Coming to Grips With Brigham and Race - Russell Stevenson

[_ZelphtheGreat]

It is a messy narrative, and a painfully human one. A prophet can only be a prophet when the people want prophecy and expansiveness. Prophethood is not the unlimited capacity to compel a people to the Lord’s will, no matter the circumstances. The Lord allows his children to wander in the wilderness when they refuse to accept the greater truths he has prepared for them.

As another poster once observed, and I've forgotten who it was, this explanation is made difficult by contrasting it with polygamy.

God threatened Joseph Smith's life by sending an angel with a drawn sword. Brigham Young said of polygamy, that it “was the first time in my life that I had desired the grave." Many today call polygamy an Abrahamic test. They emphasize the "reluctance" of the participants. (of the males anyway) Lucy Walker the foster daughter and wife of Joseph Smith also reported at one point that she wished she could die.
None of this stopped God.

Sorry Russell this explanation just doesn't work.

Abraham failed the test. After it he only spoke with Angels, never again with God.

[_grindael]

Council Meeting, December 15, 1897

A letter from Elder Francis M. Lyman was read, dated at Vanceburg, Kentucky, 5th Instant, enclosing a letter from Elder S.P. Oldham, who asked Brother Lyman the following questions, and Brother Lyman forwarded it to be answered by the First Presidency:

"Can a man (white) be permitted to receive the priesthood, who has a wife who is either black or is tainted with negro blood?"

President [George Q.] Cannon said he had understood President [John] Taylor to say that a man who had the priesthood who would marry a woman of the accursed seed, that if the law of the Lord were administered upon him, he would be killed, and his offspring, for the reason that the Lord had determined that the seed of Cain should not receive the priesthood in the flesh; and that this was the penalty put upon Cain, because if he had received the priesthood the seed of the murderer would get ahead of the seed of Abel who was murdered. The point, President Cannon said, which President Taylor sought to make was that if a white man who had received the priesthood should have children by a negro woman, he could go back and act for his dead ancestors on his wife's side, and he therefore thought it would be improper for a man, as for instance the case referred to, to receive the priesthood for the reasons assigned as being those given by President Taylor.

While there was no formal action taken, this seemed to be the mind of the Council, President [Lorenzo] Snow adding that the way might be opened for the man referred to in the case under consideration to get a divorce from his present wife and marry a white woman, and he would then be entitled to the priesthood.

(George Albert Smith Papers, Manuscripts Division, Marriott Library, University of Utah)

[_grindael]

You mention other First Presidency statements (e.g. the 1949 statement). I discuss it at length in my book, and I find the provenance of those statements to be less-than-impressive.

You don't need to read his book to understand what he means, he made these comments on the FAIRBLOG in 2013,

The statement in question has an interesting provenance. Theologically, it doesn’t break a lot of new ground. It relies on the premortal and Cain explanations, both of which had been well-established by 1949. It was not “a Proclamation to the World.” At most, it was a letter kept on file for individual correspondents. In published form, it can only be found in John Stewart’s volume, Mormonism and the Negro (which is an adamant defense of the priesthood ban).

1) It leaves out a substantial portion of the text but what is there is valid. As mentioned in an earlier comment, you can access the entirety of the text in Stewart’s volume.

2) It does represent the views of the First Presidency at the time. That’s not really up for dispute. And in contradistinction to the latest statement, it affirms many of the old rationales for the priesthood ban. But a letter from the First Presidency does not represent a definitive stance any more than the latest statement does. I have an extremely high standard for what is considered hard-and-fast doctrine–as do Church leaders. The doctrines claimed re: the priesthood ban were always in flux–Brigham Young believing one thing and later church leaders believing another. So the fact that the First Presidency authored the text doesn’t trouble me–it’s simply an indication of a faith community that had become entrenched in racial thought.

3) To be clear, I said “at most” it was a letter and that its provenance is not clear. I have corresponded with Lester Bush on the topic, and several decades ago, he found the document in the archives. He says that excerpts of the statement found its way into several letters the First Presidency sent to inquirers. The salient point here is that it’s not been published in the usual place for First Presidency Statements–Clark’s Messages of the First Presidency.

4) Re: the 1969 statement, it was published in the Deseret News and was a successor to a statement released in General Conference in 1963. It was largely in response to the hostility of the press over the previous two years. If we trace the Joseph Smith attribution to its source, it dated to comments made by Zebedee Coltrin and George Q. Cannon, both of whom said that Joseph Smith either denied blacks the priesthood or, in Coltrin’s case, claimed that Joseph Smith gave the priesthood to Elijah Ables and then stripped it from him on revelation. Thomas Shreeve claims that Elijah admitted this to him in the early 1840s, but the Shreeve account doesn’t hold water in the face of contemporary documentation from 1843 and 1845, all of which confirms that Elijah still held the priesthood even after moving from Nauvoo. http://blog.fairmormon.org/2013/12/18/m ... riesthood/

I'll let his comments speak for themselves.

[_russellwades]

I've fleshed out the paper trail of the '49 document a little more since I made those comments. It's a fascinating document, really--so enigmatic yet so present in all the discussions on the topic.

[_kamenraider]

Russell, you say that "at most" the '49 document is just a letter, however in Stewart's book is a document from 1951 that is pretty much the same as the 1949 one but includes the title of "Statement of the First Presidency". Is James R. Clark to be considered an arbiter of which First Presidency statements we should take seriously? Clark's last volume, volume 6, only goes up to February 1951, whereas the statement I mentioned above is from August 1951.

[_russellwades]

Good question. According to Bush's research (and I have a copy of the statement exactly as he recorded it from the archives), that is an incorrect date. Bush's version is dated August 17, 1949 whereas the Stewart/Berrett version is dated August 17, 1951. I've spoken with Lester about this, and I have chosen to accept his dating.

[_Bazooka]

But a letter from the First Presidency does not represent a definitive stance...

I doubt the First Presidency would agree.

[Guest]

The Nelson letters are here,

https://archive.org/stream/LowryNelson1 ... 0/mode/1up

The First Presidency writes him and says that the Priesthood Ban is doctrine, never questioned by any of the prophets from the time of Joseph Smith to the present.

[_Buckeye]

I've fleshed out the paper trail of the '49 document a little more since I made those comments. It's a fascinating document, really--so enigmatic yet so present in all the discussions on the topic.

Russel, first, thank you for your research and dedication to this issue. It's much appreciated by myself and others who struggle with the issue. I'm also grateful for you sticking with this thread and answering so many questions.

For what its worth, I also used to believe that the 1949/51 Statement was much less prominent at the time it issued than it is today. But then I ran across a collection of pre-1978 apologetic treatises - "Mormonism and the Negro" by John Stewart and "The Church and the Negroid People, Historical information concerning the doctrine of the Church toward the Negroid people," by William Berrett (both can be found here: http://sainesburyproject.com/mormonstuf ... 0Negro.pdf) which prominently cite to the 1949/51 Statement, as well as the 1947 FP correspondence with Lowry Nelson. The fact that these treatises cite to the Statement and the Lowry correspondence strongly suggests to me that they were important sources for the doctrinal justifications relied on for the ban pre-1978. The Statement and correspondence were not just minor documents re-discovered in the internet-age and blown out of proportion. They were key authorities cited in their own day.

Also, though I don't have a source, I recall learning at some point that the FP Statement issued twice - in 1949 and again 1951 - and that is why there are seemingly conflicting dates. I seem to recall that the first issuance may have been limited (perhaps only to Ernest Wilkinson) and the second issuance more general. Regardless, you will see that that Berrett treatise I reference above cites to the Statement as issuing in 1951.

[_russellwades]

The Stewart/Berrett piece is important not only for that; it had international ramifications for the Church as well. I would recommend looking at the archive.org version of the work: https://archive.org/details/MormonismAndTheNegro.

But to the point about the statements, their mere inclusion does not necessarily indicate prominence; Berrett could have rather effortless requested a statement from the First Presidency's office and received it in short order. As Bush (and I) believe, it could easily have been a letter along the lines of what Lowry Nelson received--which was a private letter. I have never suggested that they were discovered in the age of the Internet--in fact, Bush was really the first to bring the '49 document to light as an an archival document. That was over 40 years ago. And it certainly did not rise to the stature of the 1969 statement (which was certainly circulated as an official document and fairly widely published). Lowry Nelson's correspondence, by Nelson's own admission, was disseminated in the way it was through his own efforts.