Coggins7 wrote:Nowhere does any GA I know of claim that race was the basis for determining the lineage, and I did not make such a claim. If you had read my post a little more thoroughly you would have seen that I do not subscribe to the concept of race as a valid intellectual category. Human beings are all of one type or species, and are differentiated by a plethora of variations involving minor anatomical and physiological modifications. There are no human "races" distinct from one another in the manner that the doctrine of racism assumes.
The entire concept of the Priesthood ban was based on the idea of lineage. But then, lineage looms large throughout LDS doctrine regarding exactly everybody, so this is no surprise at all.
What Brigham Young and others taught was that black people were of a specific lineage which was denied the higher Priesthood. He didn't say that race determined the lineage but that this particular race was a part of that lineage.
But, again, as this was never official church doctrine, the point is moot. Yes, it was taught in authoritative tones-in the same authoritative tones some GAs have denounced evolutionary theory, but the Church does not function on the teachings of one, or even a body of GAs. That isn't how official, settled doctrine is understood to be received and accepted by the general membership.
Don't worry Coggins7, I wasn't representing what you wrote so much as commenting on it.
I guess the important thing for you is that you believe this. From where I sit it looks rather self-contradictory. I mean, how is it, do you suppose, that all black people are lumped into a single lineage that was denied the priesthood? So, all it took was for you to look black, or be known to have a black ancestor, and *pow* you were denied the priesthood. The whole concept is implicitly racist. I am surprised you don't see that.
It is funny how something that was never Church doctrine was still able to bar black people from the priesthood and the temple for over a century. If only people had taken the King Follett Discourse as seriously as the concept of "lineage" (coughs); the Church might have something more than a warmed over Protestant theology today!