LDS Church Acknowledges Past Racism, Repudiates Racist Remarks
Post by Joanna Brooks
LDS Church and BYU officials moved quickly Wednesday to reject racist statements made by BYU religion professor Randy Bott to the Washington Post.
After convening a Wednesday morning meeting in Salt Lake City between high-ranking Church leaders and BYU faculty representatives, the LDS Church issued through its newsroom the following statement:
The positions attributed to BYU professor Randy Bott in a recent Washington Post article absolutely do not represent the teachings and doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. BYU faculty members do not speak for the Church. It is unfortunate that the Church was not given a chance to respond to what others said.
The Church’s position is clear—we believe all people are God’s children and are equal in His eyes and in the Church. We do not tolerate racism in any form.
For a time in the Church there was a restriction on the priesthood for male members of African descent. It is not known precisely why, how, or when this restriction began in the Church but what is clear is that it ended decades ago. Some have attempted to explain the reason for this restriction but these attempts should be viewed as speculation and opinion, not doctrine. The Church is not bound by speculation or opinions given with limited understanding.
We condemn racism, including any and all past racism by individuals both inside and outside the Church.
The statement officially abandons as “speculation” or “opinion” a number of rationale for the ban propounded as doctrine by nineteenth- and twentieth-century Mormon leaders.
The statement is also significant, say observers of Mormon history, because it may be the first time the Church has acknowledged that the priesthood ban did not originate with LDS Church founder Joseph Smith. Finally, the statement acknowledges past and present racism within the Church.
Note the subtle, passing remark that the Church "acknowledges past and present racism" within the Church. Now go back and read the Church's statement, and notice that the Church condemns "any and all past racism by individuals" within and without the Church. Then go back to the title of Brook's essay, and note that it says, "Church Acknowledges Past Racism, Repudiates Racist Remarks." Someone reading that title, and going no further, would assume that the Church had acknowledged past racism as a matter of institutional policy or official attitude within the Church. But the actual Newsroom statement doesn't even acknowledge past racism as to the theological speculations and explanations for the priesthood ban, let alone any offical doctrinal position, but only that it was speculation and opinion, and not doctrine. The ban itself is never broached as a subject.
Brooks uses vague and loaded language here to give the impression that the Church has in some sense "come clean" about racial issues, when a reading of her own essay indicates that the Church's statement is very carefully worded to disassociate itself only from Bott and individual acts of racism that may have occurred in the past, but mentions nothing regarding race as to any doctrinal or speculative theories regarding the priesthood ban.
Joanna Brooks, one of the Anointed, in an exercise in traditional leftist public moral self congratulation among her fellow "progressive" Mormons and members of the Ruling Class (and who all chapel and TBM Internet Mormons should listen to intently and look to for wisdom and guidance, and not sas back or argue with, because she has a degree in Native American lit, African American lit, and woman's studies and she's therefor smarter than we are) plays games with words and massages the Church's messege for her own ideological ends.
What this does go to show, at the very least, is that leftist ideology, whether within or without the Church, always displaces and dislocates the gospel and any other values/principles, no matter how central they may claim to be to the human condition and to the "terrible questions" of existence, from the soul and becomes the central organizing philosophy of one's life.
Leftism is, in point of fact, a secular religion and is experienced in a religious manner by those consciously and deeply committed to that ideology. It tolerates no other gods before it and is jealous of its prerogatives.
When cornered, the Church, its doctrines, its standards, and its culture will go "under the bus" before liberal/leftist philosophies come in for second thoughts or criticism with the doctrines of the gospel as the frame of reference and standard of critique.
As Buckley once said, that which is not moving to the Right, is moving to the Left. There is no true neutrality or inertia. Brooks has her real religion, but wishes to keep one foot in Zion at the same time. More power to her for wanting to keep some connection to the Church, but her desire to claim "believing" Mormon status is an attempt to eat her Mormon cake and have it, as well as confuse and obfuscate to others both within and without the Church just what being a Latter day Saint actually means and what constitutes authentic discipleship and "faithfulness" within that framework, and she has already settled down within the Great and Spacious Building far too comfortably to be, in any sense, an authentic voice of "Mormonism."
Note: the wild, hostile, anti-Mormon vitriol of the blog posters below her essay. Reminds me of another forum...