Just wow!

Elder Stapley felt Governor Romney was too “liberal” on the issue of civil rights for black Americans and not in harmony with the teachings of Joseph Smith. His letter contains brazen threats of divine retribution:

When I reflect upon the Prophet’s statements and remember what happened to three of our nation’s presidents who were very active in the Negro cause, I am sobered by their demise. They went contrary to the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith—unwittingly, no doubt, but nevertheless, the prophecy of Joseph Smith, “… those who are determined to pursue a course, which shows opposition, and a feverish restlessness against the decrees of the Lord, will learn, when perhaps it is too late for their own good, that God can do His own work, without the aid of those who are not dictated by His counsel,” has and will continue to be fulfilled.

In this respect, let me give you a personal experience. A friend of mine in Arizona—not a Church member—a great champion of the colored race—came to me after my call into the Twelve, and acknowledged President McKay to be a Prophet of God. He wanted me to ask President McKay to inquire of the Lord to see if the Lord would not lift the curse from the colored race and give them the privileges of the Priesthood; therefore, it was the Lord’s responsibility—not man’s—to change His decision. This friend of mine met a very tragic end by drowning. He was a most enthusiastic advocate of the colored cause and went about promoting for them all the privileges, social opportunities, and participation enjoyed by the Whites.

He then tells Governor Romney that the “Negro” must be kept in their place:

It is not right to force any class or race of people upon those of a different social order or race classification. People are happier when placed in the environment and association of like interests, racial instincts, habits, and natural groupings.…

I fully agree the Negro is entitled to considerations, also stated above, but not full social benefits nor inter-marriage privileges with the Whites, nor should the Whites be forced to accept them into restricted White areas.

The following statement needs no further comment:

Now, don’t think I am against the Negro people, because I have several in my employ.

All of this would be less disturbing—and less damning for Mormonism—if Elder Stapley was just one religious bigot, one bad apple in a barrel, except he wasn’t alone. Elder Stapley was well justified by statements of the LDS church and Joseph Smith. He referenced the following passage drawing special attention to the last sentence:

Elder Hyde inquired the situation of the negro. I replied, they came into the world slaves, mentally and physically. Change their situation with the whites, and they would be like them. They have souls, and are subjects of salvation. Go into Cincinnati or any city, and find an educated negro, who rides in his carriage, and you will see a man who has risen by the powers of his own mind to his exalted state of respectability. The slaves in Washington are more refined than many in high places, and the black boys will take the shine off many of those they brush and wait on.

Elder Hyde remarked, “Put them on the level, and they will rise above me.” I replied, if I raised you to be my equal, and then attempted to oppress you, would you not be indignant and try to rise above me, as did Oliver Cowdery, Peter Whitmer, and many others, who said I was a fallen Prophet, and they were capable of leading the people, although I never attempted to oppress them, but had always been lifting them up? Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species, and put them on a national equalization. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, “Status of the Negro”, pp. 269–70, emphasis added)

He also notes Joseph Smith’s views on slavery (worth reading in full) with emphasis on this paragraph:

Trace the history of the world from this notable event down to this day, and you will find the fulfillment of this singular prophecy. What could have been the design of the Almighty in this singular occurrence is not for me to say; but I can say, the curse is not yet taken off from the sons of Canaan, neither will be until it is affected by as great a power as caused it to come; and the people who interfere the least with the purposes of God in this matter, will come under the least condemnation before Him; and those who are determined to pursue a course, which shows an opposition, and a feverish restlessness against the decrees of the Lord, will learn, when perhaps it is too late for their own good, that God can do His own work, without the aid of those who are not dictated by His counsel. (History of the Church, Volume II, “The Prophet’s Views on Abolition”)

I hadn’t taken the time to look up some of Joseph Smith’s views on the subject until today. I have lost some respect for him. I thought Brigham Young was the true racist culprit, but God’s alleged first prophet of the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times was just as blind to his own racism as was the second prophet.

Elder Stapley encloses a copy of Mormonism and the Negro which says:

Briefly, the LDS policy on Negroes is this: Negroes and others with Negroid blood can become members of the Church, and through righteous works receive patriarchal blessings, enter the temple to perform baptisms for the dead, become heirs to the Celestial kingdom and otherwise partake of many blessings afforded worthy members of the Church, but they cannot be ordained to the Priesthood, nor are they eligible for marriage in an LDS temple; Negroes and Non-Negroes should not intermarry.

Thankfully I can say that I don’t recognize this racist church. This isn’t the Mormon church that I grew up in. It was quite rare when I was a child to meet a black Mormon (and continues to be, Gladys Knight notwithstanding), but I never heard anything so blatantly bigoted in church. I’m happy that the Mormon people have changed their stripes. They deserve kudos for that.

There is just one thing that still bothers me: there has never been an official repudiation and condemnation of the bigoted doctrines of the past. The LDS church, in effect, proclaims that those bigoted teachings regarding people of African descent were according to God’s will. They may protest that they don’t understand, but the doctrines were taught by God’s Prophet and are therefore beyond mortal reproach. They are forced to conclude that these teachings came from a God of love and justice.

Until there is an official condemnation of its racist past, bigotry will taint the heart of Mormonism.

(via Trapped by the Mormons)

Oldest daughter: No, I want the light-skinned one. I think she’s prettier.

I swear that I’m not teaching her to be racist. I blame the TV.

The summary provided at the beginning of Doctrine and Covenants 132 says “Although the revelation was recorded in 1843, it is evident from the historical records that the doctrines and principles involved in this revelation had been known by the Prophet since 1831.” This revelation is a commandment to practice polygamy although modern LDS interpretation no longer recognizes the “New and Everlasting Covenant” as referring to polygamy. I was always mildly curious about what documents this referred to and why the LDS church avoided going into greater detail. Now I know.

I recently learned that Joseph Smith received a revelation in 1831 advising Elders of the church that they would marry Lamanite and Nephite (i.e. American Indian) women. The reason the Lord laid this plan was so that the Indian race would become white again. For those who don’t know, Mormons historically taught that the American Indians—who had once been white-skinned—had been cursed by God for their ancestors’ wickedness. Their darker skins were a sign of this curse. Intermarriage with white men was apparently God’s way of lifting his curse on the Lamanites. As W. W. Phelps recorded Joseph Smith’s revelation from memory (as late as 1861):

For it is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome and Just, for even now their females are more virtuous than the gentiles.

It is thought that this revelation foreshadowed polygamy because many of those present when Joseph Smith received the revelation were already married. When W. W. Phelps asked how already married men could marry Lamanite women, he reports that Joseph said:

In the same manner that Abraham took Hagar and Keturah; and Jacob took Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah; by revelation—the saints of the Lord are always directed by revelation.

The manuscript was suppressed for years by the LDS church who held it in their vaults away from the eyes of historians.

I guess it goes to show that a) Joseph Smith obviously wasn’t racist since he was an early advocate of racial intermarriage (and sometime sufferer of jungle fever) and b) there’s always new stuff to learn about those crazy early Mormons.

You can take issue with Ed Decker, the producer of this video, and the presentation is a bit sensationalist, but to my knowledge, there is only one factual error in this cartoon (I make no claims about the stuff after the cartoon). As far as I’m aware, Joseph Smith never claimed to have done more for mankind than any other man including Jesus. It was John Taylor who claimed that Joseph did more for mankind than all other men except Jesus.

All other doctrines in this video were taught at one time or another by leaders in the Mormon church and believed by the members thereof. Current Mormons don’t believe all of this stuff and might not even be aware that it was ever taught. If forced to do so, I’ll find references. I dare anyone to call me Anti-Mormon for presenting the truth.

Before any religious reader from another religion gets too smug, I think your beliefs are just as outlandish… if you believe them literally. Admit it, talking snakes, the universe created in seven days, zombie gods rising from the grave, etc. would all sound pretty strange the first time you hear about them. At least Mormons get Endless Celestial Sex.

But my prejudice extended beyond my childhood. As an adult member of the LDS church, I canvased for an amendment to the Constitution of the State of Nevada which bans any marriage other than that between a man and woman. The effort was organized by the local university ward. We met at the church building and organized therein.

As an adult, I despaired at the first airing of Will & Grace, a sitcom with an openly gay main character. I noticed the worrying trend of famous people like Ellen Degeneres coming out. Society was becoming more tolerant of wickedness. My Mormon faith consoled me that Jesus would be coming again to wipe this wickedness from the face of the Earth. I wasn’t alone in my attitudes. Other members of the Mormon church supported my attitude. Some members of the church still hold these values. The LDS culture supports this bigotry.

I excused my bigotry by saying that I loved the sinner but hated the sin. I don’t know whether anyone is genetically gay, but I do know that people intimately connect their homosexuality with their sense of self, just like heterosexuals. Causing homosexual people to hate homosexuality is no different than causing them to hate themselves. Seeking to draw the line between sin and sinner is naïve.

My Young Men’s President planted the seed of my eventual change of heart. When I was a teenager, he told the young men in my class that homosexuality was no worse than adultery. That blew my mind! How could he think such an absurd thing? After all, homosexuality was a crime against nature. I thought about that for a long time.

I finally let go of my bigotry when I lost my faith in God. I had no God to justify the righteousness of my hatred. I saw how ugly my attitudes had been.

Attitudes toward homosexuality have changed tremendously since I was a child, even within the LDS church. I hope that the bigotry of the past will go away just like old Mormon attitudes about miscegenation and birth control.

It shames me that the video God Hates the World (via Pharyngula) represents my attitudes of the past. As a Mormon, I thought most of those same things, but I was too politically correct to say them out loud to the wrong people. At least these people are honest, even if their gleeful hatred disturbs me.

The toddler’s solo at the end breaks my heart. Is that not child abuse? I hope she can free herself from their indoctrination.

Please forgive me for my part in spreading bigotry in the world.

Q: Was there ever a season of doubt after [your conversion experience]?

A: Yes. I went off to college after my mission. I took some philosophy classes. I took some anthropology classes. I’ve tried to read widely. I’m not an intellectual, I don’t think, in any stretch of that word, nor am I a brilliant person. But I do think; I do discuss. I have a substantial library, and I’ve tried to test my belief against other philosophies and other theories of life.

And sure, your question, I think that’s part of life. I think it’s in that questioning, if you’re honest and if you’re really a true seeker—if you’re not just a skeptic sitting back and taking potshots at everything and everybody and their philosophy of life—I think it tends to bring one to a deeper seeking, and I hope that’s what my doubts have done. They’ve caused me, I think, to study and to ponder and to compare and in the long run to become even more convinced that the way I’ve chosen, the way that came to me early in Germany, is the right way.

What an utterly refreshing thing to hear from a General Authority! Why don’t we hear more things like that coming out of General Conference? I have never heard another General Authority make the connection between doubt and being a true seeker. (Maybe I’m just poorly-informed?)

If the LDS culture could accept the reality of doubt (when was the last time that you heard “I believe that the Church is true” or “I hope that Joseph Smith was a prophet but sometimes I’m just not sure” in a public church meeting?) and even see how beneficial doubt can be, perhaps it could start to really help those who doubt secretly for fear of appearing weak.

Other highlights of his interview:

So we need to be better, I think, in the teaching process. We need to make sure that people really are committed before they join the church, and then I think as members, we’ve got to be ever so loving and careful in bringing them into our midst and making them feel a part of our society, our Gospel. Not easy. [emphasis added]

We can accept, I think, the indictment that sometimes we have been provincial, and I think we probably were to some extent on this point. [priesthood for men of African descent]

I think the hardest public relations sell we have to make is that this is the only true church.

And yes, some people argue sometimes, well, for the gay person or the lesbian person, we’re not asking more of them than we’re asking of the single woman who never marries. But I long ago found in talking to them that we do ask for something different: In the case of the gay person, they really have no hope. A single woman, a single man who is heterosexual in their thinking always has the hope, always has the expectation that tomorrow they’re going to meet someone and fall in love and that it can be sanctioned by the church. But a gay person who truly is committed to that way of life in his heart and mind doesn’t have that hope. And to live life without hope on such a core issue, I think, is a very difficult thing.

We, again, as a church need to be, I think, even more charitable than we’ve been, more outreaching in a sense. A religion produces a culture, and culture has its stereotypes, has its mores. It’s very difficult, for instance, in our culture not to be a returning missionary. What about the young man who chooses not to go, or the parents who marry and for whatever reasons don’t have children, or the young woman who grows old without marrying, or the divorced person? I think we can be quite hard—in a sense unwittingly, but nevertheless hard—on those people in our culture, because we have cultural expectations, cultural ideals, and if you measure up to them, it’s a wonderful life. If you don’t, it could be very difficult.

…when I compare our little bit of persecution to what the Jews have suffered for 6,000 years, we’d have to carry their briefcases. What do we have to tell them about what it means to be persecuted or to be exterminated or to have their memory obliterated?

I’ve come to believe that it’s probably the best course for the church to take to dwell on what I might call a sacred history and to talk about those elements: the restoration of the church, the gathering of Israel, the establishment of Zion and the creation of a covenant people. Those are things that not only run throughout history today, but they run through the history from the beginning. Those are the things you’ll find in the Old Testament as well as the New. …

If we could kind of have that as our organizing principle and then as part of that encourage the more traditional, narrative-type history of the church and biographies that have been written and to make our archive available for that, make our assistance available for that, and leave that writing to other Mormon historians and other non-Mormon historians, I think that will gradually dissolve the tension that exists between what is faithful history and what isn’t. We’ll each have our individual roles, and the Lord will be better served in that way.

We don’t have to believe anything that isn’t true in this religion, but there is something that holds sway over just the intellect, and that is the counsel of God. When that comes through men, who may be very fallible, that’s probably very difficult for people to accept.

There were also many humdrum, disappointing comments which towed the party line, but those weren’t especially interesting to me.

Marlin K. (as he was affectionately known to his missionaries) is a great guy. I no longer share his faith and I must admit that he does spin and whitewash some of the issues, but as I’ve said before, what’s a little theology among friends? He gives me a small glimmer of hope that the future of Mormonism may be brighter than I expected.

I also watched Bill Maher’s recent discussion on Mormonism. Yes Harriet, Elder Mark E. Petersen did preach that “If that Negro is faithful all his days, he can and will enter the celestial kingdom. He will go there as a servant, but he will get celestial glory.” and President Brigham Young taught that a white man who “mixes his blood with the seed of Cain” (i.e. descendants of black Africans) should be punished with death. I had to look those statements up (this was news to me), but I’m not too surprised that they in fact taught exactly what he said.

What these critics say is substantively accurate. It is not anti-Mormon lies. It is based on the unvarnished, un-correlated facts. Apologetics only works on the faithful. To most everyone else, it looks like excuses. This is the greatest threat that I can see to Mormonism: the truth.

I feel a kind of sympathy for Mormons over the next few years. Mitt Romney’s candidacy for President of the United States is going to put Mormon beliefs in the spotlight of American consciousness even more than the Winter 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. People are going to want to know what a potential Mormon President’s beliefs are all about. Mormonism is going to get publicly scrutinized, and I have a feeling that it isn’t going to be pretty in a lot of cases if these two examples are a good indicator. They will watch as their religion is attacked in the public arena. They’re going to learn facts about their past which have been censored from church approved materials. Many will retreat behind comfortable lies to excuse their religion, but some will take the truth to heart. I feel sympathy because I remember how painful it was to unlearn what I thought I knew.

More and more, I think the public is going to see all the uncomfortable secrets hidden in Mormonism’s closet. Personally, I hope (probably without good reason) that seeing Mormonism’s foibles will cause them to examine the skeleton’s in their own closets.

By the way, don’t forget to watch the Frontline and American Experience documentaries about The Mormons next Monday and Tuesday.

They’re all crazy!—Bill Maher