I read some information about this on another site. I was aware of the issues in Brazil, which caused the Church to review the ban on the priesthood for black males. What I did'New Testament know was that the Church was about to lose it's tax empt status because of discrimination. It's interesting that the so-called ban on polygamous marriage came at the time Utah had sought but was being denied statehood. Here, when likely given an estimate of the tax that would be paid, the revelation came. But I read that Kimball described it as inspiration, but the members call it a revelation. It seems that the church sometimes moves down certain roads, not because they want to, but because protestant political power is rallied. I also read that some universities were not going to attend events where BYU participated. I wonder what happened in the LDS chapels in South Africa when Kimball received his inspiration/revelation. I read that the ban was almost rescinded in 1969 but certain apostles got the issue shelved.
All very interesting, except for the fact that Brigham Young made clear a century and a half ago that the "Priesthood ban" had to do with lineage, not race. The racial connotations that crept into the doctrinal explanations for the "ban", whatever their origin, were only that-doctrinal explanations. And, to be clear, I am not saying the 19th century leaders and members did not impose racial connotations on the actual basis of the ban. The ban itself, however, had to do with a lineage which was denied the right to hold the Priesthood for much of the history of human civilization. The Canaanites (Phoenicians), and Egyptians, as well as other black Africans, partook of this lineage.
As the ban itself was unofficial (no records exist of any actual official action regarding the ban, nor is there any official proclamation or declaration on the subject) in the first instance, becoming an official policy only over time (and we know some black males were indeed ordained to the Priesthood in Joseph Smith's life time), consequent GAs were left to speculate as best they could upon the actual reasons for the restriction. Now, of course, given the eras we are speaking of, some racial sentiment was likely a part of the explanatory frameworks that arose. At the same time, as Gaz has pointed out in so many words,
most human beings who have ever lived on this earth have never had the opportunity to hold the Priesthood. This includes the vast numbers who lived in periods of history or in nations in which it was not available, as well as those who rejected it in vast numbers when it was.
White Caucasians, according to LDS doctrine, held the Priesthood in limited numbers from the late 1st century through perhaps the end of the second at the most. After this, it was precisely the Caucasian gentiles to whom the Gospel had been taken after being rejected by the House of Israel that gave it up and turned to Hellenistic philosophy and modified pagan ritual in its place.
After this, Mormon doctrine teaches that the white "race" (and please be advised that I don't even subscribe to this concept as a serious anthropological category, so don't belabor the point) was utterly without the right to hold the Priesthood for some 1,800 years, until The Restoration. In other words, there was a Priesthood ban upon all Caucasion peoples for almost 2,000 years.
How long were the Han Chinese without the Priesthood throughout their history? I don't know. Clearly, the Old Testament makes plain that many of the peoples around the ancient Hebrews had no Priesthood, as they had no Gospel knowledge. Did the inhabitants of Akkad, and Sumer, and Babylon hold the Priesthood?
Further, blacks received the Priesthood in 1978, many years after the most turbulent years of the civil rights movement were long past and the heaviest pressure on the Church to change the policy had also long subsided. This is almost 1980. If the Church were going to succumb to pressure to conform to external cultural changes, it most probably would have been during the long hot summers of 1967, '68, and '69, or at least in the political volatile early seventies, not a decade beyond.
Now, a few more observations. Congress shall make no law respecting the freedom of religion. If a church doesn't want to admit blacks, woman, midgets, bald veterinarians, or any other class of human being to its ranks, in a free society it is their business and their business only. I don't particularly like institutions that do not admit blacks for no other reasons than they are black (and this
was not the case with the Church. It was understood to be a doctrinal matter that only the Lord could alter, not human beings. Proof of this remains the ordination of many Samoans and Tongans throughout Church history, a number of which have skin as dark as many black people, but whom nonetheless never had any Priesthood restrictions--as was also the case with Amerindians, Latin Americans, and others. It was clearly not skin color or race, per se, that was understood to be at the root of the ban, but lineage. In the same sense, lineage delineates the blessings and limitations ascribed to each of the tribes of Israel in the Old Testament), but it they are private institutions supported by the contributions of members who are their of there own free will, then government has not the slightest business telling them who they may associate with.
Excuse me but the libertarian in me as at a boiling point. The U.S. government threatening to revoke the Church's tax exempt status because of the Priesthood ban was tantamount, because this was a doctrinal matter, to the government imposing a doctrinal change upon a religious body by force. Whether they like it or not isn't the point: it was none of their business. If the Church was a state sponsored church, then yes, but its a private institution supported by its members, not a public school.
Apostles cannot shelve ideas. This is the Lord's church and he is in control of it. You either accept that or you do not. If you do not, than to you the Church and its policies can be understood in purely sociological terms, and your analysis will
appear, in that light, more plausible to you.