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The idea that church leaders—Church Presidents, who we sustain as Prophets—could be spectacularly wrong and deny millions of people access to the covenant path of the gospel because they were black is terrifying to many of us. We have invested so totally in the bureaucracy of church leadership as to have completely conflated the calling of Church President and role of “prophet,” obliterating any linguistic distinction: “Follow the Prophet, he knows the way!” Confronted with the possibility that such leaders were so catastrophically wrong, we have been willing to invent ideas to save the framework even if it means repeating the errors of our past.



Let’s first delineate a bit of the history:

1) During Joseph Smith’s lifetime, black people held priesthood office in the church. There are several documented examples. 2) In the first half-decade of the Utah era, Brigham Young established a restriction against black people participating in the Temple liturgy and priesthood ecclesiology of the Church. 3) Brigham Young clearly and repeatedly stated his reasoning for this restriction, namely that Cain killed Abel in order to cut Abel out of his place in the sealed structure of heaven. This was a distinct adaptation of the theology that had supported slavery in the US. 4) When the theological framework that supported Brigham Young’s restriction declined in the decades after his death, church leaders began to support other justifications for the restriction, such as lack of premortal valiancy. 5) Even though church has not clearly stated that the restriction was itself an error, the First Presidency has endorsed a disavowal of Brigham Young’s and subsequent Church leaders’ teachings establishing and maintaining the restriction. 6) Therefore, Brigham Young and other church leaders including Church Presidents consistently taught false and damaging racist ideas about black people, and were completely wrong about the restriction. 7) Even the prophesied “long promised day” of the restriction being lifted was contingent on certain racist ideas being fulfilled (which weren’t).

Most people are not aware of this history. But some that are have wanted to find ways to maintain the de facto infallibility of church leaders. Basically saying that even though they were completely wrong about the restriction, church leaders were doing the right thing by creating and maintaining it. For example:

We don’t know when, why, or how the restriction began.

This is completely false, despite its appearance in church publication. See here.

Church leaders sought to remove the restriction, but when they prayed about it, God told them, “Not yet.” How could that happen if God didn’t want the restriction in place?

First, what we have are a couple second hand reminiscence that David O. McKay prayed about lifting the ban, and feeling like he shouldn’t. It would irresponsible history, and poor theology to accept these accounts as being accurate or, more particularly, revelations to McKay. I’m deeply skeptical of the accounts. But even accepting them as true (which is irresponsible), it wouldn’t matter to the question. Speculating about the mind of God is complete folly.

What we do know is that President Kimball spent years working, not only with himself, but with other church leaders getting to a point where a revelation was even possible. He was able to change hearts and minds before the revelation. No church leader up to that point had ever done that. Perhaps someone might ask, well, why did he need to do all that work? Again, I don’t believe that is a question that is possible to answer. However, one might argue that it he did all that work because that is how much was necessary. Tautological, but accurate.

God didn’t want the strain on the church that integration would cause.

This one is just so stupid and racist that I have a hard time engaging with it. God didn’t seem to care all that much about what other people thought of the church and its members: POLYGAMY. The idea that integrated congregations, leadership, or even marriages, would have been too much peril for the church requires a complete ignorance of history and a complete moral bankruptcy. In this scenario not only are church members racist jerks, but God cares more about white people than black people. It is infuriating.

Also a bonus: There is no meaningful difference between the restriction being a “doctrine” of the church or a “policy” of the church. It simply doesn’t matter. It only mattered for church leaders who thought it might make lifting the restriction easier. It was about those church leaders, not about the people being restricted.

The only real reason for believing the restriction was God’s will appears to be the maintenance of a measure of infallibility within the ecclesiology of the church. However, it seems to me that if you are going to assert a belief that the temple and priesthood restriction was the will of the Lord, then you must also assert Church leaders were simultaneously completely wrong about it and taught false and damaging ideas to the church for generations. Such a position undermines the infallibility of the church’s ecclesiastical governance that was the sole reason for a belief that the restriction was God’s will in the first place. It is lose-lose.