Blacks weren't allowed to pray in church

[_RayAgostini]

Don't worry, they're quite clear. Nothing to trip up on there.

Nope. Nothing at all.

Sleep well, and may your dreams be "Darth-free". You might wake up enlightened.

[_Drifting]

Ldsfaqs,

From your posts is this a correct summary of what you believe on these things?

1. The reason the 15 Apostles are 14 white American men and 1 white German man is because they are the ones God feels are the most righteous people on the earth today?

2. The reason for the severe problems in your marriage (for what its worth, I am sorry those things happened to you) is because you didn't follow Gods advice to Mormons to only marry people from the same race generally?

[_sock puppet]

Some positive....

Not only those positive list items, but Jane Manning James was able to be*** sealed to Joseph Smith as his servant.






*** Jane Manning James had requested to be sealed to Walker Lewis as a wife, but was allowed the servant sealing instead. However, there is nothing in the sealing that says she cannot enjoy equal connubial bliss with her master as any of the Celestial Sister-Wives.

.

So if JMJ has to put out for Walker Lewis, describe what about her sealing as a servant is less than that of the non-servant sealed, Celestial Sister-Wives?

[_Willy Law]

Some here have asked me for "evidence" of my claims of Mormonism not being as racist as anti-Mormons claims, of positive quotes by Brigham Young and others about Blacks, and whatever else I've said that is being challenged....
Thus, you all can cry all you want, that simply because I don't show you anything, that that must mean I'm lying etc.,

I would stop short of saying you lied. I used to do the same thing as a believer. I remember swearing to a friend that South and Central America are littered with Mayan ruins proving the Book of Mormon was true. I like to think I was not lying, I just trusted the wrong people.

Edited to add: None of this changes my opinion that the church, by it's own definition, is lying to all of us and is well aware of it's own deception.

[_canpakes]

When I left the Church and became anti-mormon, I didn't remain one for very long. Because unlike you, I actually realized that if I continued to be dogmatic about what I didn't believe, then I would close off my mind. I realized that if I belittled the very things in this world that LIFT mankind better than anything else, that I would be in fact serving evil, whatever that evil was, I would be serving it.

This is a forced and false dichotomy. There do not exist only two courses of action in the scenario simply because you do not choose to make the acknowledgment of/distinctions between others. It is possible to acknowledge that the actions of the brethren may have been dictated by the times and therefore contained a racist element without having to bend to the blame that 'God told them to do so'; stating as much does not condemn the brethren as opposed to merely recognize that men are not perfect, and make mistakes... and that this was one of them.

See, I didn't put my faith in my own intellect, I put my faith in the process, and if there was a God, in him. I believed his promise, that he would show all, and he did, and did it much quicker than I expected. As an atheist/agnostic, you/we think there is so much out there, that we can't really know anything. But it's a lie, God's promise is the actual truth. If we buckle down and do our part, the truth does come.

You may think that you are putting your faith in the process, but you are not injecting yourself into that same process, which removes your personal relationship to your own Heavenly Father. Rather, for you, 'the process' is reduced to repeating the explanations that other people (GAs) have crafted to avoid responsibility for the actions of men, by blaming the decision on their Heavenly Father.

God has his purposes, just as he had his purposes of denying ALL Tribes (races), save one, from the Priesthood in ancient times. God had his purposes when he told Christ to ignore the Gentiles, and take the Gospel to the Jews. Christ wasn't a racist, you would you claim he was. Not only that, but Christ nor anywhere in the Bible is Slavery even condemned. In fact, Christ and others told folks how to treat their slaves. Clearly, God works with man, not the other way around. Thus, God working with man in our day to deny the African the priesthood is nothing new.

In comparing the actions and statements of past Church authorities against what should be common-sense attributes of God, the point is that the currently-held opinion within the Church appears (to those outside of it and some within who examine the issue) to be keen on elevating Man above God for the purposes of preserving a sense of inerrancy for Church leadership that cannot exist, choosing instead to move the responsibility for those past decisions to what they then choose to portray as a capricious God of indefinable standards.

[_MsJack]

• “Black Pete” was baptizing as early as 1830 or 1831.
• Joseph T Ball – was baptized in the summer of 1832 by either Brigham Young or his brother Joseph Young who served a mission to Boston. Ball later went on mission with Wilford Woodruff, in New England, New Jersey. In 1837, Wilford Woodruff records in his journal that Ball was an Elder. Ball was the Boston Branch president from October 1844 to March 1845 – the largest LDS congregation outside of the Nauvoo area. He was ordained a High Priest by William Smith (the first African American HP) and was sent to Nauvoo by Parley P. Pratt in the spring of 1845 to work on the temple.
• Elijah Abel – became the third known black convert to the LDS church, being baptized in 1832. He received the priesthood in 1836, and served 3 missions to Ohio, NY, and Canada. He helped build the Kirtland, Nauvoo, and Salt Lake Temples, received his washing and anointing in the Kirtland Temple
• Walker Lewis – joined the LDS church in the summer of 1843. He was probably baptized by Parley P Pratt in the fall of 1843. He was ordained and Elder by William Smith, Joseph’s younger brother. Lewis has a very interesting history. He was the son of slaves, and sued for his own freedom. His case is cited as the case which liberated slaves in 1783 in Massachusetts. Winning the court case resulted is his family being able to purchase property. He voted, was educated, and became upper class of black Massachusetts society. In 1826 he helped found Massachusetts General Colored Association which was the first civil rights abolitionist group in the world.
• In June 1844 Joseph Smith was killed. At this time, Joseph was running for president, and advocated abolishing slavery by 1850. Such a stance was quite unpopular in slave state Missouri. It is important to remember that Joseph prophesied in 1832 about the Civil War. Slavery and race relations were hot topics during this time period, and Joseph’s abolitionist views were probably just as responsible for his assassination, as his religious views.
  Enoch Abel, Elijah’s son received the priesthood, and was ordained an elder on Nov 27, 1900.
  Elijah Abel, Enoch Abel’s son, received the priesthood, and was ordained a priest in 1934. In 1935, he was ordained an Elder.
• So it’s not all bad news. I have to wonder if Al Sharpton was aware that the first Civil Rights organization was founded by a black Mormon. Would he have made that quip about Mitt Romney?

Do you blog at Mormon Matters under the handle "MormonHeretic"? Do you remember meeting me at Sunstone in 2010 after my presentation?

If the answer to those questions is "no," then please be advised that plagiarism is not cool.

Furthermore, if you really know so much more about this issue than the rest of us, you shouldn't need to be looking to Google for salvation.

[_MsJack]

I'm leeuniverse.......

That explains a lot.

[_just me]

When Jesus came he opened up the gospel to the Jew AND the Gentile.

The Gentile is EVERYONE who is not Jewish. To deny one race within the Gentiles the full rights to the gospel is racist and clearly not in line with what the New Testament did.

[_Shulem]

I'm leeuniverse.......

That explains a lot.

Yep, he's a little worm and constantly capitalizes words in order to hurt our eyes. FAIR kicked him off the board for that very reason because the moderator's eyes were hurting and they got tired of listening to him whine like a baby.

So, I wonder if lee-boy can tell us if the little black man in Facsimile No. 3 is really a slave according to the scribe who created the original document. Is he a slave, lee-boy? What's his real name? Tell me the TRUTH!

Paul O

[_Jersey Girl]

ldsfaqs

For those who don't know who I am yet, I'm leeuniverse....... That's who I originally was in apologetics years ago, and who I still am outside of apologetics. My story hasn't changed. In fact, you can still read it over at ZLMB and one other place.

Well hello, leeuniverse.

LSD
:-)