Review
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Title: The Mormon Church & Blacks: A Documentary History
Authors: Matthew L. Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst, editors
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Genre: History
Year Published: 2015
Number of Pages: 217
Binding: Paper
ISBN10: n/a
ISBN13: 978-0-252-08121-7
Price: $25.00 (also available in hardback at $85.00)
Reviewed by Richard Packham for the Association for Mormon Letters
The attitude and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in regard to people of African descent (variously referred to over the years as “Negroes,” “Coloreds,” “darkies,” “people of color,” “Blacks,” “Afro-Americans,” as well as many derogatory versions of those terms) have fluctuated over the years of the church’s history, varying from relative indifference in the earliest years, through many decades of exclusion and derogation, both by leaders and members, to today’s nominal acceptance into full fellowship, activity, and equality. This volume is a chronological documentary history of the entire saga. Even those who may think they know the general history of the church’s changing views on blacks will likely learn something new from this extensive collection of documents. I certainly did.
The authors/editors are well-known already as authorities on this part of Mormon history. Bringhurst, professor emeritus of history and political science at College of the Sequoias, has already authored one book and numerous articles on the subject. Harris, associate professor of history at Colorado State University Pueblo, contributes his knowledge and insight as an authority on the general history of religion in America.
The format of the book is to give a general introduction to each of the seven chapters, each of which covers a period of church history, from the beginning to the present day. Each chapter contains pertinent documents of the period (sometimes complete, sometimes with only pertinent excerpts). Preceding each document is an in-depth discussion of why the document is important, the context in which it appeared, the effect that the document had on solidifying or changing the church’s position, the effect it had on the general public’s view of the church, and how the document is pertinent today (or no longer pertinent).
Documents from Joseph Smith’s time show that Smith’s attitude changed after the Saints largely left the northeastern states (non-slavery) and tried to establish themselves on the western frontier in Missouri, which was a slave state. Missourians feared that the non-slave-holding Mormons, in their attempts to make Missouri their “Zion” through political action, would cause problems for Missouri slave owners. The Mormons, as shown in the documents from this period, tried (unsuccessfully) to mollify their neighbors, assuring them that Mormons were not abolitionists, even though Smith had made several anti-slavery statements, and the Book of Mormon had proclaimed that all men were equal, including black people.
Smith’s 1844 short-lived campaign for the U.S. presidency included a proposal to return blacks to Africa, with the government reimbursing their owners.
With the move to Utah under Brigham Young, the church’s position on blacks became solidified. The first wagon trains west included negro slaves. Young’s statements on race (included here) were clear: they were inferior, they were intended by God to be slaves, intermarriage (or even non-marital sex with a negro) was punishable by death under “the law of God” (“and it will always be so,” said Young). Young also prophesied that the Civil War would never result in freeing the slaves.
Many Mormons are unaware that Utah under Young was a slave state, and the earliest Utah laws contained regulations about the treatment of slaves. Some of the regulations are rather puzzling: a slave could not be brought to Utah against his will (what notion of slavery grants any weight to the slave’s desires?).
Once the Civil War had ended, and slavery was no longer an issue in the United States or its territories, the nation turned its attention to abolishing the other American “evil”: Mormon polygamy. There is no documentation given here during that period that shows that anyone (Mormon or not) made any objection to the refusal of the church to grant the priesthood or temple access to blacks. During those decades the church’s attitude was completely in line with the general attitude of much of the white American populace. Interesting is the correspondence, included here, between Jane Manning James, a faithful black Mormon woman, and church leaders, in which she begged them to allow her to receive the endowment, pointing out to them that Emma Smith had said she could be sealed to the Smith family. The Brethren finally relented to an extent, and arranged a special ceremony whereby she was sealed to Joseph Smith for eternity as a “servant.” She was not allowed to enter the temple for the ceremony, but was represented by a proxy. (Obvious question for today’s leaders: What is her status now in the Celestial Kingdom? Is she still a slave?)
Pressure on the church over this issue did not come until the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Although most church leaders asserted that they were indeed in favor of equal civil rights for blacks, they emphasized that that did not include religious rights. Some high-ranking leaders even preached that the civil rights movement was Communist-inspired, and therefore contrary to the gospel, and thus dangerous.
It was during this time that some Mormons, both black and white, began to question the theological basis for the exclusion of blacks from full fellowship. Excerpts from their writings show the basis for the later change, and the editors make a very good case that those studies had a profound influence on the Brethren’s later “revelation.” Even more practical impetus for the change was fear of loss of tax exemption, the boycotting of BYU sports teams, and the desire to build a temple in Brazil, whose population had a large mixed-race component. All of this is documented here.
The most recent documents in this book show that the problems of race have not ended for the church. Many black converts are unaware of the church’s racist past. Many older Mormons are bothered by the church’s attempts to deny the past, even denying that what they had been taught for years was “doctrine.” (The official “Statement of the First Presidency” from 1949, stating that the ban was not mere “policy” but was “doctrine” was not included in the six-volume collection published 1965-1975 by James R. Clark, professor of religion at BYU, “Messages of the First Presidency,” because of objections by church leaders that it might be “misunderstood.”)
The authors/editors generally avoid stating their own opinions or conclusions, which allows readers to evaluate the material themselves. This is, in my opinion, a mark of a well-made documentary history.
The amount of material on which this collection is based is huge. The bibliography occupies seven pages, but the footnotes – often quite long and extensive, and often with additional information – cover more than 150 pages, over half the book.
In my reading of this collection, I found myself asking many questions for which there were no satisfactory answers. I did not expect the authors to provide the answers, but I wondered why the documents themselves (mostly from Mormon leaders or Mormon authors) did not confront those questions about the changing view of blacks. For example:
– Why didn’t the church, in justifying the exclusion of blacks from the priesthood, make more use of the Biblical limitation of the priesthood to persons of a certain lineage (members of the tribe of Levi)?
– Why didn’t the church publish the precise words from God of the 1978 revelation removing the ban, since the apostles present testified that they all “heard” the same words?
– Why did the revelation (unpublished) or the subsequent official statement (D&C OD-2) say nothing about marriage between black members and members of other races, even though this was also part of the ban?
– Why did the discussion in the church center on the issue of priesthood only? It was also an issue for black Mormon women, who were denied admission to the endowment rituals, even though white women were admitted who held no priesthood.
– How did it happen that Elijah Abel, a descendant of the black man Elijah Abel (ordained to the priesthood under Joseph Smith) was ordained an elder in 1935 in Logan, Utah, during the period of the ban (a fact not mentioned in this volume – one of the few pertinent documents omitted)?
– Why does the church now dismiss the scriptural basis of the decades-long ban as mere “proof texts”? Scripture is scripture, is it not?
– Why was there never any discussion of the problem that the ban applied to Egyptians and anyone of Egyptian descent (even “one drop”) according to the Book of Abraham, and yet Ephraim and Manasseh (from whom most Mormons claim descent) were sons of an Egyptian mother, according to Genesis?
– How can the church, which is fundamentally based on the principle that its prophets are inspired to give correct doctrine, now assert that for many decades its prophets were completely wrong on a fundamental issue, and their doctrinal statements were merely reflections of society’s mistaken beliefs and prejudices of the time, mere erroneous “folklore”? The problem was stated well by Mormon historian Richard L. Bushman, as cited by the authors (p 142): “…if you say [Brigham] Young could make a serious error, it brings into question all of the prophet’s inspiration.” [sic – shouldn’t it be plural: “prophets’ “?]
– Why does the church in its recent essay on the topic (“Race and the Priesthood,” posted in 2013 on the church website at www.lds.org) – one in a series of essays intended to be more open and frank about problems in its history – blame Brigham Young as the instigator of the ban, when there is ample evidence to show that it was in fact begun by Joseph Smith?
Other questions will likely occur to other readers, demonstrating that this issue is still problematic for the church, in spite of everything the church has done to deal with it. The 1978 revelation did not put an end to its race problems.
Faithful Mormons will be able to read these documents as evidence of the truth of the Mormon principle “line upon line,” the power of continuing revelation, the reception from God of “further light and knowledge,” and they will feel proud that their church is not racist (and never was, according to present-day church leaders). Others may be troubled by the statements in these documents and the efforts of the church to explain them away. Unfortunately, the past does not disappear, however much we might wish that it would.
Thanks are due to the editors for this extraordinarily thorough collection of documents and to the University of Illinois Press for this valuable work.