Popular BYU Randy Bott Takes Heat for Comments

[_maklelan]

I think it does. If it was a mistake, it is a mistake on a grand scale. It does not lend support to God leading the church if he is allowing such mistakes to go on for so long. The problem is though, that the church teaches it was God who commanded it, which is probably worse, making him out to be the racist.

How big can a mistake be, and how long can it go on, before it becomes an issue that God would not simply allow to run its course? Please be specific.

LOL Nice try, but lets try to be honest in this discussion. You know full well I said true church, not religion.

What do you mean by "church"? Do you mean sect, denomination, congregation, religion, or what?

We both know there is a difference. Most other Christian church's do not claim to be the one true church, so making mistakes is not nearly as bad as it would be for the LDS.

Now it's "most other Christian church's [sic]."

Have you really deluded yourself to believe this?

That the church has more pressing matters than whether or not their treatment of decades old ideologies is satisfactory for critics of the church? Yes, I really believe that that is true, and I hardly consider it a delusion.

I think most can see that this would be extremely important for God, if he really was in charge.

So you can make determinations about exactly how God should and would respond to certain situations?

It does not do well that it took till 1978. If it was so unimportant one has to wonder why the church made so much noise about the 1978 revelation. :)

Who said it was unimportant?

[_SteelHead]

God is interested enough in Joseph's sex life to send an angel with a flaming sword, but won't do the same to correct a policy that denied a whole race the blessings of the priesthood? Not that I claim to know the mind of god, but that is beyond inconsistent.

[_Drifting]

Because there's no explanation. In my opinion, it was just an ad hoc policy decision Brigham Young made that became conventionalized and ultimately became a de facto doctrine. "We don't know" expresses faith in Brigham Young's divine guidance, but acknowledges that there are no reasons apparent. As I've already stated, I don't buy it.

Do you wonder why all those Prophets in between Brigham Young and SWK ignored the promptings from God telling them the ban was against His gospel?

[_just me]

God is interested enough in Joseph's sex life to send an angel with a flaming sword, but won't do the same to correct a policy that denied a whole race the blessings of the priesthood? Not that I claim to know the mind of god, but that is beyond inconsistent.

His thought are not your thoughts, his way is not your way.

Duh!

Joseph's sex life is way more important than offering an explanation for why thousands upon thousands were denied access to the blessings of the temple.

[_Buffalo]

Other sects don't claim to be the one true sect.

So we're talking about "sects" now instead of religions? And you claim that there are no other sects out there that claim to be the only true versions of their broader denominations?

Very few. Certainly none in the mainstream. Generally it's just cults that make those sort of claims.

[_maklelan]

God is interested enough in Joseph's sex life to send an angel with a flaming sword, but won't do the same to correct a policy that denied a whole race the blessings of the priesthood? Not that I claim to know the mind of god, but that is beyond inconsistent.

The Old Testament v. the New Testament is beyond inconsistent as well. Let's at least be consistent ourselves with our criticisms.

[_maklelan]

Very few. Certainly none in the mainstream. Generally it's just cults that make those sort of claims.

Now we're talking.

[_SteelHead]

I am consistent, I have called god schizophrenic multiple times becuase of said inconsistencies.

[_Jason Bourne]

Jack, I disagree with one of the comments from your blog post. You state, "those pre-1978 rationales for the priesthood ban were never recanted by the church, and Randy Bott is hardly out of line for continuing to believe in things that former prophets and apostles taught." This is untrue. The church has never proclaimed in any kind of official capacity that this or that explanation is formally repudiated, but leaders have denounced those rationales since the 70s. Even before 1978 the church claimed that the exact rationale for the ban was unknown. From a 1969 First Presidency statement:
.

This is simply not true. You have statements, teachings, etc made from the pulpit and other LDS materials that all put the prior ideas about the ban more than simple folklore.

How about this:

The First Presidency Statement on the Negro Question

August 17, 1949

The attitude of the Church with reference to Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the priesthood at the present time. The prophets of the Lord have made several statements as to the operation of the principle. President Brigham Young said: "Why are so many of the inhabitants of the earth cursed with a skin of blackness? It comes in consequence of their fathers rejecting the power of the holy priesthood, and the law of God. They will go down to death. And when all the rest of the children have received their blessings in the holy priesthood, then that curse will be removed from the seed of Cain, and they will then come up and possess the priesthood, and receive all the blessings which we now are entitled to."

President Wilford Woodruff made the following statement: "The day will come when all that race will be redeemed and possess all the blessings which we now have."

The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the Church is kept in mind, namely, that the conduct of spirits in the premortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these spirits take on mortality and that while the details of this principle have not been made known, the mortality is a privilege that is given to those who maintain their first estate; and that the worth of the privilege is so great that spirits are willing to come to earth and take on bodies no matter what the handicap may be as to the kind of bodies they are to secure; and that among the handicaps, failure of the right to enjoy in mortality the blessings of the priesthood is a handicap which spirits are willing to assume in order that they might come to earth. Under this principle there is no injustice whatsoever involved in this deprivation as to the holding of the priesthood by the Negroes.

So here we have an FP statement the references the idea that blacks may have been less valient in the pre earth life.

So for 140 years we have leaders teaching things like this that is suddenly folklore and we are told to just forget about it. And now the Church wants to pretend such things were an aberration? Oh please!

[_Equality]

I think this is probably what happened. The problem here is that this does not support the LDS church being God's one true church, lead by God.

It doesn't lend support to the claim, but it doesn't preclude it either.

I agree with maklelan. It's possible that Brigham Young mistakenly adopted the racist priesthood ban because he was a racist and he lied or was deluded when he said the doctrine came from God. It's possible that God was communicating with His Prophet Brigham Young but never corrected him or disabused him of his racist ideas when giving him the revelation needed to lead and guide the one true church on the face of the earth that God had restored a few years before after a millennium-and-a-half-long apostasy in preparation for the imminent Second Coming of Christ.

It's also possible that over the next more-than-a-century, God led the church by revelation to multiple prophets and apostles speaking to them regularly and consistently, and even when they questioned and raised concerns about the priesthood ban in their councils and then published official pronouncements stating that the priesthood ban was doctrinal and from God and not just a policy (in which they offered reasons for the ban), God sat silently by and let His appointed and anointed representatives on earth speak falsely on His behalf (even though the hour was getting late). Until 1978, when God finally decided to let His real opinion be known to His prophets--more than a hundred years after the Civil War and a quarter century after school desegregation in the United States. Yes, it's possible God was there all along leading, guiding, walking beside Brigham Young, then John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F. Smith, Heber J. Grant, George Albert Smith, David O. McKay, Joseph Fielding Smith, and Harold B. Lee, but God was unwilling to correct this little "policy" misadventure or the "folk doctrine" speculation that supported it.

If that's the case, then it only lends credence to my assertion that the Mormon God, if He exists, is, umm, kind of a dick.