Tom wrote: ↑Sun Sep 06, 2020 5:43 pm
Dr. Midgley opining on the priesthood and temple ban:
As is now known there were Blacks who joined the Church of Jesus Christ early on. In New Zealand, beginning on Christmas Day in 1882, Maori began to join the Church because they had their own matakite (seers) who prepared them for our missionaries and their message, which fits snugly with the most authentic of ancient Maori lore. And soon the Church of Jesus Christ in New Zealand was primarily Maori. Sixty eight years later, the community of Saints in New Zealand was essentially Maori, and it was difficult to get Pakeha (Europeans) to join what they saw as a Maori Church. Now, of course, the Church is like the United Nations in New Zealand.
I have thought about this for many years. When I was in San Francisco in 1950 waiting to board the SS Sanom, and travel to New Zealand, I had for our five conversations with Blacks while six missionaries were waiting to board that freighter to spend a month traveling to New Zealand. But the other missionaries were not at all happy with my having a conversation with Blacks. I troubled me, but I did not cease doing so, or get into an argument with those five other missionaries. What I discovered then is that out our message resonates with Blacks everywhere. But if we had made any real effort to take our message to Blacks early on, we would have become a Black Church, and then Europeans would have refused to join a Black Church. I have come to realize that the Lord has his own way of doing things.
This is one of the most bizarre explanations I’ve seen.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 5060314667
Quite stunning and yet, somehow, also not that surprising. It makes a certain amount of sense that Midgley would admire and pray to a God who is deliberately racist towards Black people in an effort to gain new converts from the ranks of racist white people. And Midgley marvels at the apparent "cleverness" of this!
Sheesh. He ought to understand why something like this--"I discovered then is that out our message resonates with Blacks everywhere"--is problematic. What makes him think that he's got any business speaking on behalf of anyone else? Just think of how incensed he gets when, e.g., Gina Colvin or Rodney Meldrum weighs in on what "Mormons everywhere" think? And yet I think they've got far more of an "insider" status than Midgley does.
In any case, it's interesting to note that, at the same time that this is being posted to "SeN," Dr. Peterson is busy trying to get a host of people banned just for downvoting comments.
ETA: I noticed that Midgley downvoted one of Glen Danielson's comments concerning the priesthood ban.
"[I]f, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14