Racism In The Church
Getty ImagesMormon high priest Douglas A. Wallace baptized and confirmed Larry Lester, first black ever ordained into priesthood of the Mormon Church. The ceremony, which took place in the Portland Motel pool, was declared ‘null and void’ by spokesman of the Church in Salt Lake City. April 02, 1976.
Today, The Mormon Church teaches that there is no distinction between races and that “all are alike unto God.” According to the Church, this is evident from even a cursory reading of the Bible and the Book of Mormon, which – again, according to the Church – have always viewed black and white men as equals.
That ineffable truth would come as a surprise to millions of LDS members who lived and died before 1978. Before this time, the church’s policy had always been to racially segregate its members and withhold priesthood membership from black adherents.
This policy essentially meant that nonwhites were locked out of almost every office and sacrament of the Church since virtually all of these require a male member to “hold priesthood” before he can move on to becoming a bishop, perform baptism, or bless the sick.
Black members were also not allowed to seal their marriages (that is, to become eternally bonded to their wives), or to be exalted. In other words, they could audit services, but not get too directly involved.
The justification for this goes back to the LDS Church’s early days. According to the Book of Mormon, which purports to be the history of a spiritual war between two groups of angels, the pre-born antecedents of today’s black people showed “insufficient valiance” in that war, and so Father God “cursed them with a sore cursing,” which would be that dark skin of theirs.
Meanwhile, the heroes of the story, the Nephites, were described as “exceedingly white and delightsome” to behold. White Mormons were supposed to be the descendants of these Nephites.
To be fair, black people interested in joining the Church were not entirely excluded. They were always allowed to attend church and study with missionaries. It was even taught that, after a certain number of generations in the faith, their “skin of blackness” would eventually fade due to good works, and their remote descendants would then be eligible to hold the priesthood.
This kind of talk went over well enough before the Civil War, when it could be argued that having black skin in America really was a sore cursing, and for the century or so after it. However, it began to wear a little thin by the Civil Rights Era, when Americans of every color started noticing how crazy-racist things were and resolving to change.
Like any church, the Mormon hierarchy at first resisted this sea change. In 1947, a statement from the First Presidency (which is basically binding, like a Mormon papal bull) reiterated the Church’s opposition to interracial marriage.
Later, in the 1960s, the Church fought a running war of words with the NAACP over whether it would support Utah’s civil rights laws.
Later still, the 13th First President of the Church – and Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture – Ezra Benson, spread around his opinion that the Civil Rights movement was nothing but a front for communist subversion of the United States.
All this came to a head in 1978, when President Spencer Kimball finally went on record renouncing what he called “folk beliefs” regarding race among his people. For the first time, black Mormons were allowed to participate in temple rights and marry each other for all eternity like proper Mormons – even if the spouse they were sealing to happened to be white.
Enjoy this article on Mormon history? Next, read about how for centuries evryone thought Pope John VIII was really Pope Joan. Then read about John Frum, the mysterious American GI who has an entire island cult dedicated to him.
