Welcome and Panel Introductions

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is August 13, 2024, and today we are bringing back an all star panel. As far as I'm concerned, we are here again to talk about this amazing book, Second Class Saints. We can't get enough of this book, Second Class Black Mormons and the Struggle for racial equality by Dr. Matthew Harris. What we've recorded is 17 episodes with Matt Harris talking in depth about the history of black Mormons and the way the church has treated them. Doctrines, policies, theology. And the treatment of black Mormons from the beginning of the church until present day. And while we. While we are proud of those 17 episodes and we tried to get people like Summer and Nate and Darren on those episodes, we really also wanted to sort of every three episodes or so, allow a panel of black Mormons slash ex Mormons to just react to the book into the series. And it's. It's been such a fun thing for me. So we have back with us today, Summer Rain. Hey, Summer Rain.

Summer Rain [00:01:11] Hello. Hello.

John Dehlin [00:01:12] Thanks for joining us again.

Summer Rain [00:01:14] Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:01:16] Summer, do you want to just tell people in 30 seconds who you are and what you do?

Summer Rain [00:01:20] Sure. My name is Summer Rain. My parents converted to church when I was three. My father is a congressman of Utah District 4, Burgess Owens. So I work for him and his campaign regarding church. I am what they call pimo. I'm physically and mentally out, so I am a member of record. I do attend church. My husband is a believing member. So we still take our kids to church, but I don't believe the truth claims.

John Dehlin [00:01:49] All right, well, we're so glad you're with us, Nate. Remind us who you are and what you do. Yeah.

Nate Byrd [00:01:55] My name is Nate Byrd. I'm a former BYU student, graduated and working in Salt Lake. I was born and raised in the LDS Church and now consider myself, I guess, post Mormon, no longer attending church or, you know, really affiliated with it. And, yeah, happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:02:11] And your podcast.

Nate Byrd [00:02:12] Oh, yeah, I've also done the Black Menaces podcast with Rachel Weaver and some of the other black Menaces. We had a good time with that. So if you're ever looking for a good podcast, educational podcast, check that one out. It's on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast.

John Dehlin [00:02:24] And TikTok.

Nate Byrd [00:02:25] And TikTok as well.

John Dehlin [00:02:27] And we've got Dr. Darren Smith. Hey, Darren, tell us. Remind us who you are.

Darren Smith [00:02:33] Nice to be here again with everyone. I am currently located in Seattle, Washington. I teach at the University of Washington. And I am a convert to the church for well over 40, 30 years. 40 years. Getting close to it. Now I no longer attend church. I don't believe the truth claims, but I've had opportunities to write about the church, to speak about the church, to talk about some of these issues we're addressing today and some of my own work. So it's nice to be here with other black folks who look like me discussing this issue. And I want to applaud you too, John, for continually to keep these issues in the public domain. So thank you very much. I'm glad to be here.

John Dehlin [00:03:15] It's a true honor and a pleasure. Thank you, Darren. Okay, so this is the book and this is the podcast. You can see it on the screen. I just want to remind everybody that what we're doing is we're releasing this podcast as its own Spotify podcast, as its own itunes podcast. And there's a playlist on Mormon Stories podcast where you can just watch all of these episodes along with the panelist reactions in succession by the name Second Class Saints, Black Mormons in the struggle for racial equality. We are honored to be paying everyone who's involved in this series, both Matt and these panelists. And what we're doing is we're just asking those of you who value this content and want to see it continue to please just donate. Go to donorbox.org Matt Harris. And we're using that money to pay 100 goes to Matt. Once we pay it, Matt all the way through, you know, we'll figure out what to do. But we're. We're grateful for those of you who have stepped up to support this, but it's only been like 100 people and we know tens of thousands of you are enjoying this content. So please donate and help us make this program. At least coverage costs. So. But. But regardless, we're proud to be doing it. All right, so to begin, I just want to say, overall, I think the feedback has been incredible to the series. The viewers are loving it. People all over the world are watching it again. Many of these episodes have gotten over 50,000 views or listens. Some of them is maybe as high as 100,000. So I know this is reaching a lot of people. I know there are people just totally loving it. So I. I want to start with that positive feedback. I don't know if you all have anything you want to add about that, but there was a piece of feedback that I think Summer Rain, you wanted to address a comment. And I want to give all of you a chance to speak to it. One YouTuber basically wrote in the comments, can you please try to get black African Mormons on the podcast? They are the current focus of the church projected growth. So it would be an interesting perspective, and I think that's a valid request, but it might not be a fit for this particular series. So, Maureen, did you want to respond to that?

Summer Rain [00:05:40] Yeah, that's really. What you just said sums it up. I think that. Because in the last panel, we did discuss Africans, black Africans, and how the church is in Africa right now, and there's a big boom that the natural thought would be to have black Africans on to get their experience. I think this book, when it talks about black Mormons and the fight for racial equality, is focused more on black Americans. And so even though it'd be. I think that that would be an amazing panel, I don't think that it's right for this book because as historically, if people have read the book, they see that the church went to Africa a couple times and left because they couldn't make it work. And so it's not really a black African experience. But I do think it would be cool to get a panel of what they're seeing now.

John Dehlin [00:06:41] Yeah. And we definitely are going to be interviewing Africans and. Or African ex Mormons on the podcast, just not part of this series particularly. So, anyway, so we're grateful. Nate or Darren, did y' all want to add anything?

Nate Byrd [00:06:55] Personally, I'll just leave it at what Summer said. I think that was great.

John Dehlin [00:06:57] Well, I do think a point y' all made is important for us. Can I say white folk. Us white folk to realize, like, it's not all people with black skin have the same experience. And I think there's a tendency for white people to go let them all in together because they're all the same. And is it okay to say that the. The African American experience is just a completely different experience than the African experience, and just because y' all may share some skin color, we shouldn't think as white people to just throw them all in together and it's the same thing.

Summer Rain [00:07:28] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:07:29] Is that fair?

Nate Byrd [00:07:29] That is fair.

Darren Smith [00:07:30] Yeah. Yeah. I would add that I think that the American understanding of race is so limited because we don't expect this material to be taught unless you go to college, if you even take it, then. So there's a lot of ignorance around this that continues to sort of steal the thunder. So when Africans get to the United States who are Mormon and they go to church and so on and so forth, there is the tendency to lump them together, unless you white folks are not terribly sophisticated in doing that. And so there is a significant difference between how black Africans have experienced Mormonism and inequality in their own nations and states versus how the North American black folks have experienced it here in this country. And it's very, very different. And so the two cannot be conflated that they need to be parsed out because they have different issues that are germane to Africans that are germane to African Americans. And so it's not helpful and useful to lump these folks into the same category. So I would also like Summer and Nate Welcome. A podcast that would address post African Mormons and others who are around the country world, actually who are Mormons and who are dealing with some of these issues as well. If they are, in my experience with Africans, black Africans, they have a completely different cosmology around these issues. In fact, I want to just keep. I'll say one last thing. I'll keep pressing on this. John, you did a survey years ago. I keep bringing it up, and it was never published, but it revealed a lot of good information about how people are thinking about the issues that we're about to talk about. We've been talking about regarding Matt Harris's book. So it would be nice to see, you know, some of that come out as well. That the differences between how blacks see the world now African Americans see the world is really quite remarkable. So I support a separate. A separate series.

John Dehlin [00:09:27] All right, excellent. All right, so let's jump in. So what we're going to be doing is reviewing episodes 4, 5, and 6 of the podcast series. And what I asked you all to do is to pull out some of your favorite clips, and. And we'll play the clips from the podcasts, and then we'll have y' all react to it. Does that sound all right?

Summer Rain [00:09:47] Sounds good.

Overview of the Documentary Series

John Dehlin [00:09:49] Okay, so episode four, we have the thumbnail, the Report Mormon Leaders Feared. Of course, that's a reference to the Bennion Report, which we'll be talking video clips. But the first clip that we have is entitled Belief that the Lost Tribes were European. So let's go ahead and play that clip, and we'll. We'll have y' all react to it.

Nate Byrd [00:10:16] I was gonna say, if I remember from the chapter, too, like, the goal was to gather the. Like, the lost tribes of Israel. And so, you know, they were going wherever they could find Europeans, it sounds like. So if that was, you know, the German population in Brazil or the South Africa or the white South African population, it sound like they were. You know, since they believed that Europeans were the lost tribes of Israel, that's what they were trying to do is go gather them from all the corners of the earth.

John Dehlin [00:10:38] Okay, so this part was just mind blowing to me to learn that the reason why the Mormon Church sent missionaries to Brazil and to South Africa was what was why. Anyone want to fill in the blank?

Summer Rain [00:10:51] Gather the lost tribes of Israel.

John Dehlin [00:10:53] Meaning.

Summer Rain [00:10:53] But only the white ones.

Speaker E [00:10:55] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:10:56] Okay, who picked that clip? Who picked that clip?

Summer Rain [00:10:58] I did.

John Dehlin [00:10:59] All right, Summer, why'd you pick that clip?

Summer Rain [00:11:01] No, because it was shocking to me. I actually.

John Dehlin [00:11:04] What part of it. What was shocking?

Summer Rain [00:11:05] Well, Matt had said in a previous episode, he had said that he found it offensive that the compromise, once the priesthood ban was lifted was to say that black Americans can be adopted into the tribes. And I was thinking it was more like grafting. We talk about that in the Book of Mormon. But what he was saying was, is the belief was all white people were the lost tribe of Israel, and the only way you could become part of the tribe if you were not white was to be adopted in. Which is just, on its face, so unbelievably racist and degrading. But. So when I heard you, Nate and Matt were speaking about that particular thing of, well, why would they go to Brazil? Like, why. Why won't they just go? That was the question beforehand. Why won't they just go to Sweden or Norway? Why are they going to Brazil? And Nate pointed out that, well, it's because they thought they were gathering the lost tribes of Israel everywhere. They just wanted. Their belief, though, was it was only white people.

John Dehlin [00:12:28] Yeah. They were looking for white folk and they knew there was some white folk in Brazil and in South Africa. Nate, did you want to add anything?

Nate Byrd [00:12:35] No, I think that sums it up pretty well. I just want to say what a well spoken guy.

John Dehlin [00:12:41] He's brilliant guy.

Summer Rain [00:12:42] Can I also say too, that this also leads to the patriarchal blessings, which we've talked about before, where black people were given the lineage of Cain, the lineage of Ham. This is why because.

John Dehlin [00:12:59] Or no lineage.

Summer Rain [00:13:01] Or no lineage. But it's because they. And I think we may talk about this later, but it's because they were not believed to be Ephraim. Ephraim was supposed to be the leaders of the church. They couldn't give them these direct lines. And so it's just interesting that this is what the. The base of the faith beliefs.

Darren Smith [00:13:22] Yeah, I want to. Can I add something to that, please? I think the church was also church. Church leaders were drawing on this British, Israeli, Israel ism sort of theory that was out there, that these. That white folks were part of the lost tribes of Israel and they should be gathered from the nations of London, British Isles, Scandinavian, Finland countries, those kind of countries, North European countries. So a lot of it's. I think a lot of this thinking is drawing on that, this movement that was occurring at the time in the United States.

John Dehlin [00:13:58] Absolutely.

Nate Byrd [00:13:59] It seems like whenever the church, you know, in the past, picked ideas to believe in, they were always like the ideas that we end up not wanting to believe in now. You know, like, they love to believe in, like, the superiority of the white race and things like that. But when it came to believing things about equality or even now believing things about the LGBT community, they just seem to kind of be on the wrong side of history when it comes to those things.

John Dehlin [00:14:22] Yeah, I'm just. Just my reflections. If you think about, you know, you think about just the Book of Mormon. Right? Well, start about the Old Testament. The Old Testament begins with God having a chosen people. And, you know, sometimes they're Jews and ex Jews who watch ex, I don't know, believing Jews who watch Mormon Stories podcast. And they're really sensitive to how I talk about Jewish people, which is reasonable. And they say the Jews don't talk about themselves as chosen in the same way that Mormons talk about Jews as being chosen. So I want to acknowledge that. But if you think about how we were taught the Old Testament works, it's that God chose a certain race of people. And there's no other way to say it. It's race. It's a race of people. And Jews were the chosen people. Not the Chinese, not the Japanese, you know, not the Africans, not the Native Americans, the Jews. Right. They were gods. And it's all about blood. The pure blood, blood Jews. I mean, it's starting to sound like eugenics. It's starting to sound just like pure racism. And that's how the Old Testament was framed to us as Mormons. And so then Jesus is a Jew, so he's chosen. And then he has the, you know, and the whole 12 tribes thing, it's just racist. And then you. And then you go to the Book of Mormon. Well, just the idea that God's going to have a chosen people, isn't that ridiculous? Like, doesn't God love all his people equal? Why would he have a chosen people?

White Chosenness and Mormon Racial Theology

Summer Rain [00:15:51] Well, I do. I feel like Nate probably grew up the same way I did. But the Jewish people was more set in their lineage, but also their faith. And so I grew up knowing that there could be black Jewish people, white Jewish people. Like they're not just white. So, you know, I've gone to Israel and they're just all shades. You know, there's just everybody. And so it's interesting because when I heard Jewish, I, growing up thought it was a chosen people, but not the skin color. It wasn't race based. When I'm hearing this, what I'm learning now is that the way that Mormonism was taught was not only the Jewish people are a chosen people, but they were all white. You know, I mean, even now we talk about Jesus, right? And in these pictures he's white with, you know, flowing hair. He looks like Fabio. But when you look in the scriptures, people talk about how his hair was coarse as wool and his skin. And so it's just interesting to me that there is a, there is a such a prominence on race within this church, whereas with other faiths, I see that it's not necessarily, you know, because you're white, this is your lineage. So, yeah, I just find that interesting. And I don't know if Nate felt the same. So when I read Chosen People, I wasn't, I wasn't reading white. By the time I was learning this, it's the 80s, 90s.

John Dehlin [00:17:35] But that's, I mean, that's part of what's so mind blowing is. Yeah, first of all, people living in the Middle east, you know, 600 to 1,000 to 2,000 years before Jesus, they're clearly dark, darker skinned, shorter, you know, just a different racial makeup. But in the Old Testament, God's talking about a specific tribe. You know what I mean?

Summer Rain [00:17:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:56] And yeah, of course over a couple millennia there's going to be converts and people who are Jewish religiously. But it starts out as a tribal blood lineage thing, I think.

Summer Rain [00:18:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:07] And, but, and the only thing I was going to say is the Book of Mormon carries that through. So like Joseph Smith sometimes just takes things super literally. So if you just read like, who the Book of Mormon's written for, it's written for the Native Americans. Why? Because they're, quote, the pure blood of Israel, which of course is wrong scientifically. But Joseph Smith believed, or at least taught that some Jews came over to America, settled America, they became the Native Americans. And so again, it's the bloodline thing. And if you read that really super weird chapter in Jacob, in the Book of Mormon, is it Jacob 5 or Jacob 2? It's all about the olive tree and the pruning, and that's all racial crafting. That's all racial stuff. Right. And so the Book of Mormon just imports this sort of God has a chosen people based on race and their blood. And that's why these patriarchal, patriarchal blessing things all come out of who's got the blood, who doesn't have the blood. Okay, but now there's gentiles, but they get adopted in because somehow their blood gets converted to chosen, even though they're gentiles. But it's all based on racial superiority that God endorses.

Summer Rain [00:19:14] And that's just which was what was going on during their time. I mean, this was Protestant teachings, right. That. I mean, I don't know how many people know this, but the Protestant teaching then was we see these Native Americans, they're darker skinned, so there must have been a white race beforehand, a white Native American. And these savages, the darker skinned killed the white. So this was Protestant teachings. And then now there's a. A book of scripture that is, you know, vindicating these teachings from these other churches. I can see why black people are saying, oh, wow, yeah, that makes sense. The Nephites were killed off by the Lamanites. So. So, yeah, it's. Yeah.

Darren Smith [00:20:00] And I would add that this, this, this, these notions that we're talking about really stem from this larger belief in the Curse of Cain theory that came out not just in Mormonism, but in larger Protestant faiths. David Goldenberg's book, the Curse of Ham, does a nice job of really unpacking this curse and the misuse of it. People have read this stuff and have assumed that it's talking about African folks, and it's not. It's completely been misused to justify the marginalization, subjugation of black folks. Yeah. And so I would add that to the narrative too.

John Dehlin [00:20:42] Yeah.

Nate Byrd [00:20:43] For me, growing up, there was kind of an interesting theory that we had, but I believed basically that black people and white people were both descended from the Jews, but that the split happened with Jacob and Esau. Because in the Bible there's the prophecy that talks about how two nations will come out of Rachel's womb. You have Jacob who's born, and you have Esau who's born. And it talks about how they look completely different. Like Esau came out super hairy and red, you know, with red hair. And so my belief was that, you know, the tribe, like, you know, the Israelites and the tribe of Jacob, you know, black people came from that side, and then from the side of Esau came white people. And then, you know, things that were, that were taught to me, to back that up was like, you know, in ancient Egypt, Moses grew up in the king's court, in the pharaoh's court. And nobody really thought twice about it. Right. So of course he had to look like them. Or when Jesus, Mary and Joseph went to Egypt, they were able to hide from the Jews there. So of course they had to blend in. Right. So those things just kind of made sense in my head at the time. See, I believe that that split kind of happened. And so in my head, the lost tribes of Israel contained both black people and white people. And they were kind of spread all over the world. And then you have the Native Americans who are also one of those lost tribes, the Polynesians, another one of the lost tribes. So in my head it was just kind of like everyone in the world was one of those lost tribes of Israel. And that was kind of the theory that I had in my head growing up.

Summer Rain [00:22:06] Yeah, that's what I was, that's what I was taught. That's what I'm saying. It was jarring for me to hear them say the lost tribes of Israel are all white. And so let's gather the white people but leave the other people. Then we'll graft them later.

John Dehlin [00:22:23] But it's all so weird because none of it has any scientific basis. Like all humans go through Africa, the cradle of civilization. We all have drops of black blood in us. Jesus wasn't white. The Israelites in Palestine pre Jesus weren't white. They were dark skinned. Native Americans have no relation to Israelites or people in the Middle East. It's all like fan fiction.

Darren Smith [00:22:50] It's pure folklore. There's no scientific basis for any of it. Yeah, these, this, that and the third. And our species, Homo sapiens, we are so go, we are so good at telling stories. And you know, you start, if you have 100 people, you start, you know, with number one, you tell, you tell a story and you, and you pass it down, down the line. By the time you get to the hundredth person, it's not the same story. And so you also have to recognize too, I think is that the Bible was interpreted, you know, several centuries after the fact.

Summer Rain [00:23:22] Yeah.

Darren Smith [00:23:23] So I'm not even sure if what's in that, if what's in that text is actually accurate.

John Dehlin [00:23:28] Yeah.

Darren Smith [00:23:29] So this, these beliefs. But humans, even though we, we, we can be critical of these belief systems, this is a part of our, our DNA. And then when we use the word like for instance, I'm gonna push back on the word blood, right. There's blood Right, we have blood. No, it's not blood, it's genetics.

John Dehlin [00:23:50] Genes.

Darren Smith [00:23:50] Yeah, genetics, DNA. Let's talk about MT DNA. Let's talk about, you know, epigenetics. And so we're talking about genetic changes that have been verified. Verified, you know, and so the scriptures are really not rooted in any scientific evidence, any fact, but yet they do serve a purpose. Even still, even with, even without that really, you know, you know that religious wars have been going on in the world for, I mean, centuries and still are. I mean the crusades are still going on and stopped.

John Dehlin [00:24:22] So yeah, yeah, and it's all fine if it's just taken as metaphor for myth and story, but it's not, it's literal. It's taken literally to then justify treating people as second or third class citizens, which is what the whole book's about. So all this race fan fiction garbage was, was literally incorporated and glommed onto as a justification for just treating people in shitty ways. Am I wrong?

Summer Rain [00:24:50] No, I love it.

Darren Smith [00:24:51] And I love hearing you say shitty too, John. Ever heard you say that on air? So I appreciate you. Swearing is actually market intelligence, so we need to use it more often.

John Dehlin [00:25:04] I noted. I'll work on that. I'll work on that. Everyone's laughing at me. Okay. All right, well I think that's a good intro to this, this, this series. So let's go to the next clip from the the podcast part four, and it's David Lloyd's letter to George Albert Smith. Does anyone to set this up before we actually play it?

David Lloyd's Letter and Its Legacy

Summer Rain [00:25:27] Let's just play, let's play it.

John Dehlin [00:25:28] All right, let's do it.

Speaker E [00:25:30] The first one is who is a Negro? The student writes, does the church accept the south definition that a Negro is a person who has from 1 64% to 100% Negro blood? Number three, if yes to question number two, then is a person with 1 65th% Negro blood a white individual? Number four, are Negroes only those persons who have been so designated by revelation? That one cracks me up. Number five, is there any explanation in the case of Elijah Abel? What about him? He's light skinned. What is he? Number six, how does the church determine who and what a Negro is?

John Dehlin [00:26:11] All fair questions.

Speaker E [00:26:13] Actually, this is when I read this letter. I was just shocked because it really is a perceptive letter. It's really this student, this BYU student. I think he's a young married student, has one or two little babies, so he's probably been off his mission. And anyway he's putting his finger on something that's really, really troubling in the church. How do you identify somebody who's black and what do you do? He further asks if they've been ordained to the priesthood, a man, and then it's revealed or determined that they have a cursed lineage. How do you deal with that? Do you take their priesthood away? Do you nullify the ordinances that they had performed if they were in a position of ecclesiastical authority? Or what do you do?

John Dehlin [00:27:00] So, yeah, this is from chapter two of the book, very beginning. And I think a really important point to add there is this student, David Lloyd, who is a BYU student. He's writing the First Presidency in 1948.

Summer Rain [00:27:15] 1948.

John Dehlin [00:27:16] And what's significant about that is it's telling us how early the Brethren were put on notice. Who wants to go first on this clip? Whose clip was this?

Summer Rain [00:27:24] It was mine, but Nate, do you want to speak on it first?

Nate Byrd [00:27:27] Yeah, just, you know, same thing with what Matt said. The idea that you can be Negro by revelation was just kind of, you know, bizarre to me. But it also just. This letter kind of points to the folly in this logic. Thinking that or trying to, you know, determine what makes someone curse or what makes them black, or not even having a set way to do that just kind of speaks to how unnecessary and how illogical this band was. And since this letter was written in 1948, you know, they continued this for another 30 years. Right. And so it's just. It's frustrating to see that lack of. Not perception, but, like, that lack of, like, foresight. Right. And, you know, you have these issues. You can see that it doesn't make any sense. And you still decide to hang on to that. What, because you think that God told you to? When God is not going to do things that don't make sense. Right. If you follow what the scriptures say about him, he's not. He's not. He's not a God of confusion. Right. But this is clearly a very confusing revelation for a lot of people.

John Dehlin [00:28:27] Darren, anything you want to add?

Darren Smith [00:28:29] I was just going to say that, you know, we're talking about who determines who's Negro or not. Well, the Office of Management and Budget, omb, they set the standards for declassified race and ethnicity in the United States. I mean, so the categories are there. They were there in 1948. So these notions are there. And people have been using them forever. And so, yeah, I think it's just the way that the Brethren had gone about doing all of these things really reveals the deep struggle that they had with race to Begin with. I mean, just so it was such a hot topic for these folks to even deal with. So, yeah. So the Office of the Ombudsman, they set the standards of what classifies race and ethnicity in the United States, not the church or anybody else. Although the office of OMB is not always accurate in their definitions as well. But they use it for reporting purposes and survey purposes and so on. But there is no biological basis for race, period, in this country that's so important.

John Dehlin [00:29:35] Race doesn't really exist. It's just a human construction to describe clusters of people by certain characteristics. But there's no, like, black gene, white gene.

Summer Rain [00:29:45] It's a social construct. So what stood out to me with this letter is progress doesn't happen without critical thinking. And David Lloyd, from what I remember, he was not. He was concerned about, as they call them then, Negroes in the church. And from what I remember, it wasn't. He wasn't writing this letter to say, I want, you know, interracial marriage and all this. I believe he was concerned to say, well, we're being taught that these people should be separate from us. What are your thoughts? So to me, it was very interesting that he is thinking outside the box and saying, wait a minute, this doesn't make sense. Everybody else. Well, that everybody else. But most people during this time, and even now, the leader says something and their brains shut off. There's no critical thinking. So with David Lloyd, I just thought that letter was so incredible because he's putting a finger on the real issues that the Church is having with the teachings that they are going through. And civil rights is going to show up soon, too, and you'll see that it continued to have an issue.

John Dehlin [00:31:01] Yeah, thank you. And for me, it's just. It's a matter of the hubris and the pride and the problematic structure of Mormon leadership. Because what happens in almost every case is some early Mormon leader, Joseph Smith or Brigham Young, comes up with some super problematic policy or scripture or doctrine or teaching or practice, and then at some point, people start realizing it's a problem. Problem, whether it's polygamy, whether it's, you know, the priesthood ban, whether it's the LGBT stuff, and what you find is, decades before any change gets made, there are these heroes that. That are the real prophets, you know, who notice the problem, and they let the brethren know. And if the brethren were true, I don't know, Visionaries, visionaries, prophets, or even. Well, if they were true prophets, they wouldn't need the feedback of the membership. But let's just say, okay, we'll notch down our expectations and not actually expect them to be prophetess and revelators. Let's just expect them to be decent human beings who really care about the people. Then they'll be humble and they'll go, oh, my gosh, this BYU student is asking really important questions. And yeah, I know we've been doing stuff a certain way for 100, 150 years, but, like, let's at least listen to our people. Oh, my gosh, he's asking really good questions. You know, what is a Negro? What does it mean to be 1 64th black? And. Which means 63, 64th white? Who's white and who's black? And. And, you know, what about Elijah Abel? Like, and if you're a. If you're a thoughtful, kind, caring leader, you're gonna. Whoa, let me listen to that feedback. Let me incorporate it. Let's talk about it. He's making good sense. Let's make a policy change in 1948 or 1950 or 1952. Give them a couple of years to work it through. But they don't do that.

Summer Rain [00:32:58] Well, I think there's, there's an issue too, because they've created nyc. They, the leaders, have created a monster already. There's been bigotry within their scriptures, there's bigotry within their talks. So they're not listening to the people, would be listening to the public, listening to their people. The saints at the time, there would be a lot that would have exited the church at that time because they literally, from Joseph Smith days are being told that blacks are unequal and all of that. So I think this just speaks to tribalism. Everybody wants to feel special, part of a group. And Mormonism is very good at saying, you're chosen, you know better than everybody else. And no matter what everyone else says, we know better.

Darren Smith [00:33:51] I would say this tribalism you refer to is a global phenomenon. And I think it's something that, I think we're. I think how we practice our tribalism in today, modern world is through these. Race, racial, you know, the great train of the great chain of being that sort of ranked northern Europeans at the top and then Africans at the bottom. Everybody else in between is still very, very much alive. And we actually. And unfortunately, when I read through Matt's book, this has been a long time that this has been going on. This has not been just, you know, just an era here, an era there. This has been a long time with these teachings that people have been. And people have been hearing about These teachings in the church for a very long time. And so it's hard to purge these ideas once they're in your head, Especially when you taught to believe that everything that comes out of a president's mouth is holy writ. And so it makes it difficult to sort of, you know, to think. You mentioned thinking critically about these things. People are afraid to think critically who are members of the church. They feel if they do think critically, it'll challenge their testimony. And they don't want to have their testimonies challenged. They just kind of maintain, you know, the rank and file. So these are. And this David Lloyd letter asking the presidency about these questions to which the presidency was not prepared to answer. We're not prepared to answer these questions. So the great confusion continues.

John Dehlin [00:35:16] Ironically, it reminds me of the story of Jesus going to the elders of the temple and, like, teaching them. Right?

Summer Rain [00:35:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:24] Like, that's what this is. It's a BYU student instructing the Brethren 30 years before they had the courage and the insight to make a decision. Did you want to add something?

What Could Have Been Different

Nate Byrd [00:35:32] Yeah, I just want to. I was just thinking about it. Imagine how different the church would look if they had. If they had really listened to David Lloyd and, like, lifted this ban back in 1948. That's before the civil Rights movement. So then you have the church actually looking incredibly prophetic and incredibly foreseeing. And then, you know, by that time, that was almost 20 years later. So when the. I'm sorry, the civil rights movement was almost 20 years later. So when all of that's going on, the church is already ahead of this. They're able to support the civil rights movement, look very progressive, probably gain a lot of support from black people, get a lot of black membership into the church. Then we go into, you know, like, these new revolution. The church would have had a much more significant impact on society in a positive way had this ban been lifted in 1948. And I wish I could, like, go to the TVA and see a different timeline where this happened to see how things turned out.

John Dehlin [00:36:23] What's tva?

Nate Byrd [00:36:24] The time? Was it the time variance authority for Marvel movies?

John Dehlin [00:36:27] I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Darren Smith [00:36:29] I think the challenge to that notion, Nate, is the fact that you have this conservative bit and conservative thinking in the church, which would preclude any of those wonderful things that could have happened. Particularly as we've read in Matt's book, that the church really put the smack down on those that were challenging their authority. Even if it was wrong, their authority was wrong. And all of it was Wrong when it came to black fol. So that's the problem, is that the conservative bit wouldn't have allowed that to happen. Unfortunately, when you got people reading people who are like Benson and Harold B. Lee and Markey Peterson, all these other hardliners that Matt talks about, makes it very difficult for that kind of change to happen.

John Dehlin [00:37:18] 100%.

Nate Byrd [00:37:19] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:37:19] But the other ball and chain in Mormonism is what the church sells is its true crown jewel value proposition, which is that they are led by prophet seers and revelators. And what that means is whatever was said 150 years ago that might be racist or sexist or homophobic or just downright despicable, they can't change it because then it makes past prophet seers and revelators look like they didn't know what they were doing. So then people start questioning whether current prophecies and revelators know what they're doing. So they're always stuck defending the past, and that makes them unwilling to consider feedback and progress. That's the ball and chain of the church.

Nate Byrd [00:38:01] But then also apologists use the past and they blame. They blame past prophets. Oh, those were just men of their time. They didn't understand what was going on or. Yeah, racist.

Speaker E [00:38:09] Right.

Nate Byrd [00:38:10] So they kind of. They like to toe the line.

John Dehlin [00:38:11] Yeah, they play it both ways.

Nate Byrd [00:38:13] Exactly. Yeah.

Summer Rain [00:38:13] That's what I was going to say. Like the general. You go in general conferences, talk, and you start talking about don't look at past profits. Right. They say it's only the current profit that's valuable.

John Dehlin [00:38:27] Yeah.

Summer Rain [00:38:28] So they, they're starting to kind of the apologetic is now. Well, you know, and I mean, Brigham Young has been thrown under the bus a lot by the church, but, yeah, they.

John Dehlin [00:38:41] Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, that's the crux, I think, of this whole thing, really. All right, let's go to the next slide. The next clip from episode four is entitled Racial Passing. Eduardo Contieri. All right, let's play the clip.

Eduardo Contieri and Racial Passing in Brazil

Speaker E [00:39:01] Lives in Brazil, but he has Italian ancestry. He looks white. He joined the church in 1963. They recognized right away that Eduardo had this sort of magnetism about him. People liked him. He had this charming personality. He was a natural born leader. And so within months, if you can imagine this, within months of his baptism, he was named the branch president in a small branch in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And within the first, oh, I don't know, year of his branch presidency, when his flock really are starting to, you know, relate to his leadership and they find him inspired and all of that Salt Lake sends him a memo. And they basically say, we want people in your stake to emphasize genealogy. And so with the instruction of the brethren from Salt Lake, he instructs his branch to increase their genealogy work. And the branch president does it as well. Well, when he starts to do his genealogy, he recognizes almost immediately that he has an African ancestor. And he goes into the stake president and he breaks the bad news. He said, look, I have an African ancestor. And the stake president tells him that we're going to have to release you. We won't take away your Melchizedek priesthood, but you will stay your hand. That's the word they use, stay your hand. What that means is that you can no longer perform any ordinances or ordinations in the branch. You can only exercise your priesthood at home to your own family members.

John Dehlin [00:40:42] Summer, why'd you pick that clip? What is it about that story that was impactful to you?

Summer Rain [00:40:47] It's the. Just coming from the David Lloyd letter, right the very end, he starts to ask, what happens if somebody has been given the priesthood and you find out that they have black blood or lineage or however they put it. And then the next question was, does it nullify his ordinances? What? I mean, it's just a cluster at this point. And I found it interesting that. And there's gonna be another clip coming up about the same guy, but he is a good member. He is branch president. He's now a branch president.

John Dehlin [00:41:26] This is the equivalent of a bishop of just a smaller unit.

Summer Rain [00:41:29] Yeah, but I mean, this is. You have to do a lot to, like, prove yourself worthy enough to be able to get this calling. And here he is with this calling, and they're saying in Salt Lake, you know what? We need you guys to really buckle down on genealogy because we want to make sure that this priesthood is only going to white people. And he's like, yeah, okay, great. I'm going to read this letter in sacrament. And then he goes and sees that he's one of those. And so it was interesting to me to see the inconsistency where here we are. Now he knows. What do you do next? Well, you can take it away from him. They don't. They release him from his position. But then they say, you can practice it at home to your family. But then there's somebody on the other side of Brazil who, if they found out, they're told, you know what, by their area, no, we're going to take the priesthood. We're going to strip you completely. And then there might be another person in Brazil with a different area that's saying, you know what, let's just keep this under lock and key. You know, you don't have that much. So it just. They we're taught the Lord is consistent. And this to me was interesting to marginalize someone because. Not because of his actions or because of his faith, but because of his genealogy.

Nate Byrd [00:43:02] Yeah. And I just want to highlight again how incredibly just illogical this band was. Right. Because the Book of Mormon and also the brethren taught that if you, you know, repent, if you join the church, if you follow the gospel, then your skin will become white. Right. Here we have an example of someone who had white skin. So technically that would mean that the curse was removed from him. But then because he had a drop of black blood, then, you know, he's a part of this curse even though he has completely white skin, wouldn't that mean that he's not cursed? If he was cursed, wouldn't his skin still be dark? I don't know if they were expecting some kind of like, Etch A Sketch moment. You just pick up a black person, you shake them, and then they turn white and that's how you know the curses are moved. But you would think, like, if you look white and if you appear white on the outside, that would be an indicator that the curse has been removed. So it's just very illogical for them to go in and release this man from his position, his priesthood position in the church because he had a black ancestor.

Darren Smith [00:44:01] It's cruel knowing that everybody in Brazil at the time and continue to have black ancestors.

Summer Rain [00:44:07] Right, right.

Darren Smith [00:44:08] I mean, they would roll over in their grave right now if they had. If we had. If they had, had had access to 23andMe or, you know, some of these other genetic testing things you can do at home. And everybody opens it up and they go, Damn, I got 1% African meat. Or, you know, I got 5% African meat. I mean, they're freaked out. So if we do it by blood, knowing with what we know now, then nobody could hold the priesthood.

John Dehlin [00:44:33] Exactly.

Nate Byrd [00:44:34] The next person, the next time I'm in Walmart and someone tells me that they're 3% African or Obama is their distant cousin, I'm going to tell them that they're cursed.

John Dehlin [00:44:44] So a couple things for me and y' all tell me if I'm wrong. So the first is we're all taught that callings come from God within the Mormon Church. And a bishop is called, or a branch president is called by stake president or district president. And as I understand It Bishops get approved by the prophet himself. They get a letter from the prophet. So, number one, what about the fact that Mormon callings are supposed to be inspired by God? Why was this guy ever called ever? So that's problem number one. Problem number two is this is now the brethren realizing super early on that. That they've got this problem of you can't really rely on appearance. So they should have known this was going to be a problem in South Africa and Brazil, all over the world. But again, they just ignore it, probably because of, you know, their. Their inherent racism. And they just. You know what. What we find out time and time again in this book is the big fear of Mormon church leaders was the black men would sleep with white women. That was the fear. Everything else was just. Was just justification. It was just motivated reasoning. It was just, let's come up with whatever policy, with whatever doctrine we can, but we just can't have black men sleeping with white women. The final thing is, if the dude can keep practicing his priesthood with his family, how many black members would love the ability to practice the priesthood just with their family? So if they're going to let this dude continue. I shouldn't say this dude. If they're going to let Eduardo Contieri continue, continue to practice, why don't they give the priesthood to everyone and just say, y' all white folk can go ahead and officiate and lead the church, but the rest of y' all can at least use the priesthood within your family? Wouldn't that have been amazing?

Summer Rain [00:46:33] That's the inconsistency. That's what I was saying. With the inconsistency, it's really, really sad, and that it speaks to racial passing, which is we've talked many times about before, but this idea that if you look a certain way, you can pass as white and black people want to pass as white because there were different rights that they had. And that's what's happening within the church. Shout out to Eduardo. I know a lot of people that would have kept that 23andMe genealogy that he found under wraps and just said, I'm not gonna let anybody know. But he literally believed the gospel. So he's like, I'm gonna tell the presidency that I have black blood. He could have just not said anything.

Speaker E [00:47:20] Yeah.

Nate Byrd [00:47:20] And think about how damaging.

John Dehlin [00:47:24] Nate. And then. Darren.

Nate Byrd [00:47:25] Nate, you know, I'll save my comment for the next clip. Okay, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:47:27] Go ahead, Darren.

Darren Smith [00:47:28] I was gonna say, so many sacrificial lambs.

John Dehlin [00:47:30] Yeah.

Darren Smith [00:47:31] At that time, this young, this guy. And and there's, I'm sure there's others besides him when you try to push a round peg into a square hole, and that the church was warned about this years ago and they're still doubling down on their belief systems. And I think, John, you said it so aptly here, that what's driving all of this is the fear of miscegenation, the fear of interracial marriage. People are seriously paranoid about that. And so that's all I have to say about that.

John Dehlin [00:48:05] Yeah. All right, well, let's go to the next clip. This clip is entitled Marriage and the Curse

Speaker E [00:48:14] Contieri. What happens is that the saints in Brazil, this is a biracial country, they're not happy that this beloved priesthood leader gets released. And to further complicate the story, Cantieri is such a loyal, devout Latter Day Saint that when white Latter Day Saint men, young men, come to his house to date his daughters, plural daughters, he tells these young men, you could date them, but you need to know something. My daughters bear the curse and you not be able to take the temple if you marry them.

Nate Byrd [00:48:56] That's pathological.

John Dehlin [00:48:57] And it's not even, why, why, why Nate? And then Darren, you know, and it's

Nate Byrd [00:49:03] not, I wouldn't even necessarily blame it on, on concierge because he, this was truly his belief and the belief of a lot of people. But just imagine, like processing the idea that I am a worthy, you know, card holding member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and then you find out that you have this black ancestor and now you have to cope with the idea, well, because I have this black ancestor now, I am no longer worthy of the blessings of the church, of the gospel, of the priesthood, of the temple, and then also feeling like you have to pass that along to your children, right, who are young, who are innocent, and who are teenage girls probably just starting to figure out life, and now they have to deal with this idea that, okay, well, now I'm this second class individual within the church. Temple marriage is like, that's the biggest thing that is taught, you know, And I've watched a lot of episodes of Mormon stories where women come on and talk about how like temple marriage was pushed for them more than anything else, right? More than education, more than, you know, finding a good career. It was always, you need to be married in the temple. So now to tell these girls who have been dreaming of this probably since they were three years old, that now they're no longer worthy of that, basically their entire purpose in life as they've been taught has been ripped from them. Right. And that's just such a demented and traumatizing thing to have to go through. And I'd be interested to hear from the concierge sisters how that affected their psyche or how that made them feel about themselves to know that they were once these worthy, pure individuals and now they are cursed. Now they're no longer worthy of temple marriage, when that's what they've been taught that they need to. To seek for their entire life.

John Dehlin [00:50:42] Darren. Oh, you're muted.

Darren Smith [00:50:46] I was just gonna add that it's dehumanizing. I think, Nathan, how you're describing it is just dehumanizing. To have this special blessing and then to be able to take it away or be able to remove someone from a position on that basis was completely dehumanizing. So I'm sure there's some trauma that go. Went on with that. Now, you said something was really interesting about how temple marriages are pushed on women. I was gonna say that. Ut as the LDS women in Utah are the least likely to get educated of all LDS women, women who live outside of Utah are more likely to be educated than women who are inside Utah. So that sort of underscores this notion that women are socialized in Utah to aspire to a temple marriage. That's.

Speaker E [00:51:32] Some of.

Darren Smith [00:51:32] You know, I'd love to hear Summer's thoughts on it. But the whole thing, this whole thing is just so bizarre and incredibly hurtful that so many people like this Brother iguardo and others have suffered for. From Mormon racism. So, yeah, it's just when I. When I heard that, it just really. It triggered something in me.

John Dehlin [00:51:59] I'm sorry, Darren.

Darren Smith [00:52:00] No, it's okay.

Summer Rain [00:52:02] Yeah, I. We speak a lot about generational trauma with black Americans, and this is something that you can pinpoint and say would be generational trauma. I find it very interesting that when it comes down to you are wrong or God is wrong with believing, members are going to go with, I am wrong. And to me, it was sad to see the internalized hatred that flipped on a dime to tell these guys that come to your house, just so you know, my daughters are cursed. What does that do to somebody? You know, what does it do to his. His daughters? Nate made a great point of their being told temple marriage and exaltation, and. And now you're being told that you have a temple ban. This isn't just priesthood. This is a temple ban. It's dehumanizing, like Darren said. And it's trauma. It's Trauma.

Darren Smith [00:53:14] Can I add this? It reinforces the idea that there's something wrong with black people. It continues to reinforce this idea so we can never escape the, the, the prison of the mind, how people believe their belief systems, and then of course, the actions that are taken by the church.

Speaker E [00:53:39] Just.

Darren Smith [00:53:40] Yes, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:43] So that's such a powerful point, Darren. And I. I'm reminded of my original interview with you, by the way, listeners and viewers, I've interviewed Darren Sommerane and Nate to tell their own Mormon stories. So please check those out. We'll make sure they're in the show notes. But Darren, I remember a long time ago asking you, why would any black person ever join the Mormon Church ever? And you're like, man, if a black person held, you know, required a church to not be racist before he or she joined, no black people would ever join any church ever. And that's such a good point. But I also think in addition to that, I want to highlight one very common technique used by high demand religions or cults. And it's called blame reversal. And it's one of the most distressing psychological principles I've ever encountered. And here's kind of how it goes. So it's kind of like Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, predict that Jesus is coming in 1905 or whatever, all the members get ready for it, and then Jesus doesn't come in 1905. You would think that all the members would just leave the Jehovah's Witnesses Church. That's not what happens. What the leaders do is they turn and blame the members for Jesus not coming. It's not the leader's fault for predicting wrong. It's the members fault for not being righteous enough to usher in Jesus's coming. So they reverse their own weaknesses, blame the members. And guess what happens with the members? They believe more after the failed prophecy than they did before. Yeah, Joseph Smith did this with Zion's Camp. He tells all these, you know, Kirtland people, let's go down to Missouri, let's fight the militias in Missouri. And so they all march down there. And then they realize if they actually try and fight the Missouri militias, they're going to die. So what does Joseph do? He blames all the soldiers from Ohio for not being faithful enough. And what do they do? They believe more. And that's the psychology. Warren Jeffs did this. He told all his members, the FLDS members, that like 2004, whenever the Olympics were coming to Salt Lake City, that's when Jesus was going to come. While Jesus didn't come. He blames the members. They're more faithful. And I wonder if that's a play you tell these black folk, oh, sorry, stay in your place. You've got the curse. You need to be patient. I wonder if that blame reversal, it's your fault. You weren't validating the pre existence. I wonder if there's some psychological dynamics there that actually just make them feel like, okay, I'll try harder, I'll be even more faithful because I'm sure it's my fault somehow in the end.

Internalizing Racist Doctrine and Cognitive Dissonance

Summer Rain [00:56:17] There has to be. There has to be. It's the only way to deal with the cognitive dissonance. It's the only way is to internalize what you're being told. And the problem is, is you end up losing. We talked about critical thinking earlier. You lose autonomy of your own mind. You literally are saying, this person knows better for me than I know for me. So I'm not gonna think about it. I'm just gonna listen. And there's.

John Dehlin [00:56:47] And double down, right?

Summer Rain [00:56:48] And double down. And it's for some people, there's safety in that to say, I'm not making those decisions. I'm just gonna listen to this other person and they're gonna tell me what's right for me. The problem is when you end up hearing something like this, you are cursed by someone you've given all your autonomy to. What do you do? You either look at that person and now have to think about all the other things you did and believed and say that's not true, or you say all of this is true and I'm the problem and you sink even deeper.

Nate Byrd [00:57:24] Maya.

Darren Smith [00:57:25] John, I was gonna mention to your point, I'm going back to that survey again that you did. I don't know if you remember the survey you did.

John Dehlin [00:57:32] I'd have to look at this up. Darren. I'm going to look this survey up.

Darren Smith [00:57:34] You're going to have to. Because when I looked at it, it clearly said that black people tended to believe the curse more than white people believed it, which I found really, really interesting. So I think it speaks to the point that you're making here about folks, the members doubling down on utterances from church leaders about this, that and the third, and they take it to heart. And you can see it, at least in terms of that survey that I saw, that African Americans, I was surprised, were much more believed the curse of Cain more so than white people did. I find that really fascinating.

John Dehlin [00:58:15] It's also true that Mormon women, faithful Mormon women, want the priesthood less than Mormon men want Mormon women to have the priesthood. That's also true. Nate?

Nate Byrd [00:58:27] Oh, yeah. I was going to kind of give an example here. My. My upbringing was interesting. I'd never personally believed that I was cursed as a black person, even though that was taught to me. But I always kind of held that belief that I was not cursed. And I'm not sure where my dad stood on that when I was younger. But I know that as I got older, he started to try and teach me that I was cursed, though not necessarily for the reasons that are put forth in the church. But he would use the Bible, specifically Deuteronomy 28, where it talks about God cursing the Israelites. And so it kind of goes into this belief that's more and more prevalent amongst conservative black Christians that black people are the real Jews, the real lost tribes of Israel. And that, you know, because of the sins of our ancestors, you know, mixing with the people of Canaan and things like this, that God had to curse black people. And that's why we suffered slavery. That's why, you know, all of these things are happening to black people now. And I guess Deuteronomy 28 says that it's supposed to last for 400 years or somewhere in the Bible. But, yeah, that. That specific chapter talks about, like, a curse being put upon the tribe of Israel and how that curse is supposed to last for a specific amount of time. And so allegedly, this curse was supposed to lift in, like, the. The 2010s and black people were supposed to start waking up. Right. But there is this idea that black people are, in fact, cursed. And so that idea coming from the Bible made my dad kind of double down on the idea that black people are cursed and kind of reinforced that white supremacist belief within the church. And so, you know, that's just. That was an example that came up to me now is, you know, remembering him. Teach me about that. Oh, you know, black people are cursed, while kind of at the same time not really acknowledging the priesthood and temple ban, because that's something I never really learned about in my house growing up. But that idea still kind of finds a way to worm its way in.

John Dehlin [01:00:18] How about we all reject the idea of any God that's worth worshiping cursing an entire group of people? How about we just say no more? If a God that's being presented to us is cursing an entire group of people because of skin color or lineage or whatever, that's not a God worth believing in or worshiping either. Don't believe in that scripture don't believe in that God. But, like, how about we just have a minimum standard for a God that's worth worshiping?

Summer Rain [01:00:44] When are. When are we meeting on Sunday, John,

John Dehlin [01:00:47] to go to Delinque church of summer rain? Church of summer Rain? No, no, no. There's going to be no Delin church, but. No. No delin church but a submarine church. I'll go to submarine church of Nate. Church of Nate.

Summer Rain [01:01:02] It's such a. So interesting to me because my parents. I wish somebody would try to. Told us that we were cursed. My mother. There's just no way. And so it's just so interesting to hear the inconsistencies. I don't know where Nate and I are around the same age, and he's. You know, his father is teaching him this because this is what he's learning. And then with us, we're on the east coast, and nobody's gonna come and teach that. They skipped that lesson.

John Dehlin [01:01:36] Yeah. Well, speaking of inconsistencies, the next clip is entitled Contieri, reordained in 1973. So if we haven't put this man through enough, it looks like they're gonna reordain him. So let's play that clip.

Nate Byrd [01:01:51] Shout out to Edward O.

Speaker E [01:01:52] So this is probably less than 10 years after he was released. Another junior apostle gets involved, a guy named Howard W. Hunter. And it's Hunter that will fly to Brazil and reordain Cantieri to the office. Now bishop, no longer branch prose, but bishop, and basically knowing that he has African ancestry, reordains him, and then man will serve honorably as bishop for the next several years.

Nate Byrd [01:02:23] That's crazy.

John Dehlin [01:02:25] I don't even understand why that didn't end the priesthood ban completely. A Mormon apostle, and I always liked Howard W. Hunter. Yeah, he was one of the more reasonable ones. He was prophet for, like, 12 minutes.

Nate Byrd [01:02:34] Unfortunately, that's why God took him so early.

Summer Rain [01:02:37] Yeah, yeah, that's.

John Dehlin [01:02:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's dark. But. But, like, what's. The church's. What's. An apostle is consciously ordaining someone who he knows has black ancestry, not just to the priesthood. Again, reordaining them, but also making him bishop. Why didn't that end the priesthood bit? But somehow the brethren are like, well, we'll just do the secret little thing down in Brazil.

Summer Rain [01:02:59] Shh.

John Dehlin [01:03:00] Don't tell anyone. But then it continues for another five years in the church. What is up with that? It's crazy. Inconsistency.

Darren Smith [01:03:10] Yeah. For the same reasons we talked about before. John. You've got this hard Line, you know, contingency in the, in the, in the quorum of 12. And so you have to, you have to find a way to reach them. And that's. And with, you know, Harold B. Lee and Mark E. Peterson and the rest of the rest of the crew, it's, it's a hard sale. These folks are very, very committed to their conservative views and they drag them into the church all the time.

Mark E. Peterson's Proposed Solution to the Brazil Problem

John Dehlin [01:03:33] Well, speaking of Markey Peterson, the next clip is Markey Peterson's proposal to shut down the broken. Did y' all want to say anything about that last inconsistency?

Summer Rain [01:03:43] I mean, to me, it's just not just the leaders, but he didn't even ask. He didn't say, wait, I was taken. This was taken away from me. I told my daughter's suitors they can't go to the temple. He ends up serving back in branch president for years after that. I mean, it's, it's the sinking of lower and lower, of advocating for yourself.

John Dehlin [01:04:09] Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of humiliating. It's kind of like y' all said, dehumanizing.

Darren Smith [01:04:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:16] All right, well, let's see. Markey Peterson's got a solution. Speaking of dehumanizing, Marky Peterson's got a solution to the Brazil problem. To the inconvenient Brazil problem. Let's hear what that is.

Speaker E [01:04:27] This is Brazil. And when they opened the mission in 1929, they knew, they knew it was a biracial, mixed race country. J. Reuben Clark, in 1940, in a council meeting, he stands up and he says to his fellow apostles, he said, I know we're going to ordain black people to the priesthood. That's just inevitable given the racial makeup of this country. And so one time, Mark Peterson, another apostle, returned home from an assignment in Brazil and he argued to his colleagues, we should shut it all down. We should close the mission in Brazil because we're ordaining black men to the priesthood. And obviously Peterson didn't get his wish, but that was his proposal.

John Dehlin [01:05:10] And honestly, that's consistent, at least just shut it all down. But anyway, what do y' all think? What's interesting about that?

Nate Byrd [01:05:18] Basically, he's like, do we really need the lost tribes? I think with the one we have?

John Dehlin [01:05:22] I mean, does God really love all his children?

Nate Byrd [01:05:25] Was he serious? We said, go for and teach everyone.

John Dehlin [01:05:29] Did Jesus mean it when he said all nations, or did he mean kind of some nations when Jesus said all nations?

Summer Rain [01:05:35] I mean, given Marky Peterson's history, I was shocked that he didn't just say, guys, we should lift the ban. That's sarcasm, by the way. But it's just sad. It's so sad. And it's a little disheartening because you're hearing in this book, you're seeing behind the scenes that the church is not monolith. There are people in the ranks. We just talked about Howard W. Hunter, who goes back to Brazil, and he's like, listen, go ahead. You could practice priesthood outside your house. Like, this is ridiculous. But then you have Markey Peterson that's like, you know what? Take him out.

John Dehlin [01:06:17] Let's shut that whole shit down in Brazil.

Summer Rain [01:06:19] Shut it down, because we cannot have this. And. And so it's just sad that things did not progress earlier. As Nate said, it would be a prophetic church if these guys did say in 48 and 50 and, you know, in the 60s. You know what? We're gonna give this to the black Americans. They chose not to because of their own stubbornness and arrogance. Really? I mean, it's pretty arrogant to say we're going to go to a biracial country and we're going to find only the whites through the Holy Ghost.

John Dehlin [01:06:56] Yeah, yeah.

Darren Smith [01:06:59] Very poor planning on their part.

John Dehlin [01:07:07] And again, they hold themselves up as prophets, seers, revelators, and special witnesses of Christ. It sounds like we're not being fair, but the truth is, that's what they told us.

Darren Smith [01:07:15] They are prophesiers and instigators.

Patriarchal Blessings and the Race Problem

John Dehlin [01:07:23] All right, so the next clip just talks about this patriarchy trauma that, you know, imagine being a Mormon patriarch, and, like, you're in Toronto and some amazing black convert joins the church, and then they're like, oh, I love this church so much. I want to get a patriarchal blessing. And you're sitting there thinking, okay, I've been telling all the white people. I've been ordaining either Ephraim or Manasseh. You know what I mean? Chosen children of Israel. But then they're staring at what? And having to declare what lineage to

Summer Rain [01:07:55] the Ham or Cain. Ham or Cain.

John Dehlin [01:07:59] And what did Ham do? Like what?

Summer Rain [01:08:02] He looked at his father naked when he was drunk.

John Dehlin [01:08:05] It's Noah's son, right?

Summer Rain [01:08:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:07] It's like, oh, you're black. Okay. You're a descendant of Hail.

Darren Smith [01:08:11] People supposed to believe. People supposed to really believe that.

Summer Rain [01:08:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:15] Or Cain. And why Cain, Nate? Why Cain?

Nate Byrd [01:08:18] I don't even know.

John Dehlin [01:08:19] Because he killed his brother. Oh, that's so like, oh, you have dark skin. Oh, well, then you're clearly a descendant of a guy who killed his Brother.

Nate Byrd [01:08:27] Yeah, he's still roaming the earth as Bigfoot.

John Dehlin [01:08:30] So.

Summer Rain [01:08:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:31] And the patriarchal blessing, we just for never Mormons. This is like the spiritual map of your life. It's the thing that you're told to keep with you. Keep it in your scriptures, read it, because it's God's blessing for you to guide your life. And you're the patriarch about to give this patriarchal blessing. And it's like, oh, yeah, wait, what's the color of your skin? Yeah, yeah, you're, you're, you're. You're someone whose ancestor killed somebody. You know, that's clearly you. It's just.

Summer Rain [01:08:58] And don't think, Think about the articles of faith because you know, that second one managed to be punished for their own sins, not Adam's transgressions. That just ignore that.

John Dehlin [01:09:08] Yeah. So that's some context to this next clip that we'll play about the church leaders meeting with disturbed patriarchs.

Speaker E [01:09:15] Let's roll the clip with the patriarchs of the church. And they're trying to hash this out. And I have the meeting minutes of this remarkable meeting, and the brother, and frankly, are all over the place. They can't. They don't know what guidance to give. The only thing that by 73, they say is there's a patriarch that asks a question to the brother, and he said, I've got a Negro man that I'm going to give a blessing to week when I return home, if I feel inspired to tell him that his lineage of Cain, can I do that? Now, I know that is so profoundly offensive, but Legrand Richards, this elderly voluble apostle, he answered. He was the first to answer the question. He said, I don't think you should do that. It won't give him comfort. And so they don't resolve anything. They pretty much say, follow the Holy Spirit, use your own judgment. But that's the point. Up to that point, they had been using their own judgment. And that's why they issued a whole range of different lineages, some of which were priesthood and temple lineages that were off limits at that time. And let me say one last thing about this, is that even after the revelation in 1978 is issued, they still don't know how to deal with this. And so what happens is even after 78, there are still some patriarchs in the church declaring the lineage of Cain and Ham on priesthood holders, including as late as 1987 or 1991. And the other thing that they talk about is that black people could now be adopted into the House of Israel. And obviously, if black people are singled out for that kind of treatment, that's offensive because nobody wants to be told they're adopted into a privileged lineage. And Elder McConkie, of all people who had strong views about race, he once said in the early 1980s, he gave a talk to some church educators, and he said that I believe that all people, all members, have some of the blood of Ephraim, or, excuse me, some of the blood of the House of Israel in them, except black people. So.

Nate Byrd [01:11:36] Charming guy, Bruce.

John Dehlin [01:11:37] Yeah, Darren, you go first on that one.

Darren Smith [01:11:41] Well, I think this is more fundamentalist thinking, more conspiratorial thinking about black people and the position of black people. Problem is that Bruce R. McConkie held a very prominent place in the minds of Mormons for his scholarly writing, his religious writings and so on. So he had a lot of. Much like Johnny Witzo or some of the other great writers in the church at the time, he was considered one, or Joseph Erling Smith, one of the more prominent ones. And so Bruce Armaconki's notions about race, if you've read what's Bruce's.

John Dehlin [01:12:22] His opus, Mormon Doctrine.

Darren Smith [01:12:24] Yeah, Mormon Doctrine. He gets into this quite a bit in Mormon doctrine. And of course, it's all just part of the same. The same, you know, stuff we're talking about now. It's not grounded in anything that's. That's. That's scientifically valid. It's grounded in his own prejudicial thinking about black people that. That he's been socialized to believe since he was probably a very young boy in the church. And so this is just more of the same as.

Speaker E [01:12:50] As.

Darren Smith [01:12:51] As. As I see it.

John Dehlin [01:12:52] Any other thoughts on that clip about Pitcher?

Summer Rain [01:12:56] I just. I. For me, it. It's a house of cards, because when you really think about it, God did not tell them that they are of the house of Cain or Ham. So you've got a whole generation of people that were told that this is their lineage or not given one. And, you know, the church can disavow any racist whatever, but what do you say to those people? You know, what do you say to those people that God did not tell them that. That it's not real. That's not a real thing. And things like this were kind of difficult for me, too, as I was deconstructing, because I still have my patriarchal blessing, and it spoke to me as an individual, and there are a lot of things in there that came true and whatever. So when you start to think, well, God spoke to me or God spoke to the patriarch, Patriarch Brown, that gave me my patriarchal blessing. But then listen to these other blessings and you have to start thinking, no, this was what the patriarch was thinking about them because God did not tell them, just so you know, patriarch, this person is lineage of Cain. God never did that. So this is from the patriarchs themselves and their own discriminatory thinking.

Darren Smith [01:14:26] More of the same.

Summer Rain [01:14:27] More of the same, More of the same.

John Dehlin [01:14:31] My question is, doesn't this demonstrate something fundamentally untrue about the Mormon Church? Because Mormons, y' all were raised Mormons. What is a patriarch? Why is it a special position? Because when they give you a blessing, where does it come from?

Summer Rain [01:14:49] God.

John Dehlin [01:14:50] Right?

Summer Rain [01:14:51] It comes from God directly for you.

John Dehlin [01:14:53] And, and can a patriarch be specific? Like, is it just like, can they be specific?

Nate Byrd [01:14:59] I mean, they can be. Mine was not specific.

Darren Smith [01:15:02] Mine was very specific.

John Dehlin [01:15:03] Yeah.

Summer Rain [01:15:03] Was specific.

John Dehlin [01:15:04] Yeah. I could say you're gonna get married or not, you're gonna go on a mission or not, you're gonna get buried in the temple or not, you're gonna have kids or not.

Summer Rain [01:15:11] What could be going on in your career, what kind of career that you'll succeed in? And I mean, they, it can be really specific.

John Dehlin [01:15:18] So if a, if a, if a patriarchal blessing by a patriarch can be as specific as to tell you whether or not you can have kids, whether or not you're going to get married, whether or not you're going to serve a mission, whether or not you're going to serve in high level leaders of the church, and for some, whether or not you're going to be one of the two prophets killed in the streets of Jerusalem to usher in the second coming of Jesus, which has happened more than twice, by the way, like, then, then the patriarchs should be able to know your lineage because God will just tell them. So if, if God's not telling patriarchs their lineage, what does that tell us?

Summer Rain [01:15:52] Or if they're being told in their patriarch blessing, you will see the coming of Christ.

John Dehlin [01:15:58] How many people have died? A gazillion.

Summer Rain [01:16:01] I mean, thankfully I, I wasn't told that, but there's so many people and it's. But again, a lot of it goes back to, well, were you faithful enough? Were you faithful enough?

John Dehlin [01:16:15] The blame reversal.

Summer Rain [01:16:16] The blame reversal. If this didn't come true, because that's what it says in there. If this is supposed to come true, you have to be faithful. But with the lineage, that has nothing to do with faith. That has nothing to do with if I'm Good or not, you're telling me what my bloodline is, and that's what I'm saying. It's. It's not true. Because God never said this person is the lineage of him.

John Dehlin [01:16:40] Exactly. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, why nowadays a black person is never given. Oh, is not given the lineage of Ham or Cain or. No lineage. They're just given a lineage. So what does that tell you about the veracity of Mormon patriarchal blessings? Are they revelation from God?

Summer Rain [01:17:00] That's the thing that.

John Dehlin [01:17:01] I mean, they can't be.

Summer Rain [01:17:03] I want to get Nate on record answering that.

Nate Byrd [01:17:06] I'm sorry, could you repeat the question I was asked in Chatgpt to write me a patriarchal blessing?

Summer Rain [01:17:11] No, because he. He followed his patriarchal blessing to a T. So I want to know if he believes in his patriarchal blessing.

Nate Byrd [01:17:20] So my patriarchal blessing was actually a source of consternation for me because I got it when I was 13. My parents felt that I was ready, and so I did the interview, got it, and my patriarchal blessing was about as generic as they come. It was basically just, you know, keep the commandments, and you go on a mission. Keep the commandments, and you'll, you know, get your endowment. Keep the commandments, you'll get married. Keep the commandments, you'll have kids. And there was nothing in there that was very specific. It was incredibly generic. And so I would often go back to my patriarchal blessing, like, trying to read between the lines, get some insight from my life. And basically all of those major decisions that I made, I didn't get any guidance from my patriarchal blessing to the point where, when I was still a practicing member, I actually considered requesting another patriarchal blessing because I felt like mine was not inspired. And so, you know, trying to follow that but not really getting any specific guidance for it was kind of a source of consternation for me because I was constantly looking for guidance as a black member of the church, trying to figure out what direction my life needed to take, you know, what I needed to do, what I needed to study all those kinds of things. So it was difficult for me, so I would say no. Even as a believing member, I didn't necessarily believe in my patriarchal blessing because it didn't provide that guidance that I expected or hoped for. Especially when I heard other people talk about the things that were told to them in theirs, I was like, well, why didn't I get that? Same with every blessing that I ever got, I felt like none of the blessings that I ever got felt very inspired, which is why when I gave blessings, I did my best to, to try and channel that inspiration and give other people the things that I was not getting or the things that I was lacking. And so I felt like, you know, as a missionary and as a member, I was able to do that. My blessings tended to be very helpful to people that I gave them to. But yeah, for me, I was constantly looking for that guidance, you know, from God and I never really felt like I got it in the ways that I hoped for.

What Patriarchal Blessings Reveal About Church Authority

John Dehlin [01:19:10] Well, for me, this disproves the veracity of patriarchal blessings coming from God. Like if they're going to tell people you're going to serve a mission, you're going to get married in the temple, you're going to stay a faithful member of the church and you know, rise in the morning of the first resurrection to be exalted. Those are all things that are either unfalsifiable. How could any of us prove whether or not in the afterlife we're going to be exalted? So it's either unfalsifiable or it's just a prediction that's self fulfilling. If I tell you when you're 12, summer rain that you're going to get married in the temple and go to BYU and have lots of kids, what are you going to do?

Summer Rain [01:19:49] I'm going to go to Syracuse University now I'm going to go to byu. I mean that's, that's the thing. I, I'm always interested to know where people got their patriarchal blessings because I was on the East Coast. Mine was extremely specific and went with my personality. But I also have been the same since I was three. So it's one of those things that, it's interesting because it talked about marriage, it talked about all of that, but it also mentioned what I would do work wise. It said that you'll enjoy your work as long as it's service oriented. And I don't hear a lot of women, female patriarchal blessings that mention that. But I was on the east coast, so it's just very, it's very interesting. I think if you had a progressive patriarch, you know that he would say something like that our patriarch was awesome. But if you have a, you know, very, very hard line, one, they are still trying to figure out how to say that you're the lineage of Cain in 1981. So yeah, it's just, it's, it's fascinating. I just think that people need to understand that their life is their Life, it is not predestined. And however they want to live that life, however they want to get inspiration for that life, they should get, but don't put it in somebody else's hands.

Nate Byrd [01:21:24] And I will say, I want to add too, that I think that there is some merit to patriarchal blessings. Like you said, there's a lot of things that came true for you in your summer rain. I think that, you know, but I think it's probably just as hit or miss as, you know, going to a psychic. There are some psychics who are completely phony and there are some who really seem to be in touch with some kind of deeper understanding of like the human condition or people's personal experiences. And so I think it can be the same with patriarchs. I think that there maybe are some patriarchs who are called to that position and really have no idea what they're doing and do not understand people at all. And I think that there are those patriarchs who, if they understand someone well enough or if they're able to just kind of feed off of the person, because there are some people who just naturally understand people well and can interact with people well. I think if they have the ability to do that, then they might be able to tap into some unknown source and garner some inspiration from that and kind of some guidance for that person. Right. And so I think that there can be some merit to that. I'm not saying that all patriarchal blessings are phony, but I just don't think that my patriarch knew what he was doing or was inspired at all.

John Dehlin [01:22:32] Y' all are too kind. Because I think this proves that patriarchal blessings are made up.

Nate Byrd [01:22:36] I mean, it's definitely made up.

John Dehlin [01:22:38] Made up by well intended men who believe that they're channeling God's wisdom. But if they can't get something basic like someone's racial lineage. Right. Spiritual lineage. Right. And then all of a sudden, when the priesthood bands lifted, all of a sudden the lineages magically change. It shows that it's just a smoking gun. The patriarchal blessings are made up by well intended people. Darren. I'm sorry, that's my opinion.

Darren Smith [01:23:01] I was going to say, you know, if someone's going to throw digital fruit, it's going to be at you, John. Because this is something that's very sacred and dear to practicing members of the church, those who believe or faith based. Right. Because at the end of the day, patriarchal blessings of faith are intended to be faith based. So if you are a believer in Mormonism, that you tend to Believe that, you know, your bishop and your stake president and all these other characters in there, then your patriarchal blessing will have some relevance for you. And if you don't, then of course it doesn't. So the whole idea of a patriarchal blessing to me just falls within this. This nomenclature of religion and conspiratorial thinking. If the more fundamentalist the church is, the more conspiratorial thinking that they. People are. You know, things like rainbow, like unicorns and, you know, and we call them leprechauns underneath. Underneath rainbows, shit like that, the tooth fairy, you know, stuff like that. So if you tend to fall for those kinds of things, then, you know, then this kind of a patriarchal blessing would make a lot of sense. Mine was very long. I was like four pages long. And he went on and on about when Rome was built and this and that and the third and still blah, blah, blah. It went way back to the 400, a long time ago. BC time.

John Dehlin [01:24:18] Yeah.

Darren Smith [01:24:19] Well, held in reserve for now.

John Dehlin [01:24:24] And if you go. And honestly, Darren, if we were to compare your patriarchal blessing with the other blessings that your patriarch gave to people, there'd be like an 80 to 90% identical match. Because everybody's patriarchal blessing is pretty much a template that the patriarch gives all the people he gives blessings to. And that's literally why the church tells people what.

Nate Byrd [01:24:43] Don't share your patriarchal blessing.

John Dehlin [01:24:44] Don't share your patriarchal blessing because they know. They know what, what the outcome will be. And by the way, is there a

Darren Smith [01:24:52] template that they use, the patriarchs use?

John Dehlin [01:24:53] Of course.

Summer Rain [01:24:55] There's a website. There's a website. I don't know the website, but there's a website where if you know when your patriarchal blessing was given the date, you can put it in and see how many other people had the same type of blessing.

John Dehlin [01:25:10] We'll have Julia look that up and add it as a link in the show notes. But people are uploading their patriarchal blessings and then comparing them. Yeah.

Darren Smith [01:25:17] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:25:18] And again, it was sacred to me, my patriarchal. I laminated it. I kept it in my scriptures. And it's like telling me I'm going to be exalted to become a God someday. I'm like, I'm in. I love my. Because I'm going to become a God someday. Who doesn't want to become a God, right? But I also am old enough to remember going to the temple and like, slitting my throat as part of a sacred temple ordinance, only to have them remove that and so the church kind of ruined me for quote, the sacred, when these sacred things all of a sudden started to change. Why? Because of social pressure. Like evangelical Baptists criticize the church for the Kulti temple ceremony and it becomes, you know, the God makers and public, you know, public gets put on notice. Voila, the temple ceremony changes, right? Yeah, enough.

Summer Rain [01:26:04] I mean, the temples changed for us, for Nate and I. By the time we went in, those were the penalties were gone. And I didn't even know what was removed. Right. Because you're not supposed to talk about what happens in the temple. So my parents weren't, you know, they didn't say, well, just so you know, this was taken out. They just believe that that's it needed to be taken out.

John Dehlin [01:26:26] I mean, it's either from God and sacred or it's not, in my view. And these types of things show that it's not. All right, but that's just my opinion. You can still believe your patriarchal blessing is inspired and sacred. That's up to you. All right, so let's go to episode four, five and it was entitled just for the thumbnail. God established segregation. That's you know, most of the Mormon church apostles, prophets here and revelators believe that segregation was from God. From the 50s and the 60s and the 70s. You know, if you haven't watched the episodes yet, they believe that Martin Luther King Jr. Was a communist, that Satan sent Martin Luther King to the earth to kill America. And the civil rights movement was evil. And again, it was all based on a fear that black men would sleep with white women. But it was disgusting that the Mormon church fought the civil rights movement instead of being ahead of the civil rights movement, which is what we would expect from prophet seers and revelators or instead of like joining it, that's like the second optimal option. The third would be just to leave it alone and then the fourth would be to fight it. Right. They chose the fourth. Am I wrong?

Summer Rain [01:27:44] Go along, get along, go along.

Darren Smith [01:27:47] You gotta again want to underestimate the idea that it's not just faith based, but it's an amalgamation of everything that's going on in these leaders lives where they grew up, friends that they had, the things that they believe, things they talk about. And the conservative bent is not an exaggeration. And so that's partly why these changes have not occurred. You've got these very fundamentalist thinking men who are in leadership positions and their racism and their prejudices come out and the church. John, you mentioned this earlier. You said something A few minutes ago about. The church does respond to social pressure, but it acts like it doesn't respond to social pressure. Right. It sort of will veil it and it will veil that in, in the form of a revelation or some kind of a policy change or something of that nature. But they do respond to public pressure, but not in the same, not in the way that you would expect them to do, but they eventually will do that at some point if there's enough inside pressure coming. And most of the resistance, I would argue, to changing any of this from the Brethren's perspective was really, as you indicated, was really rooted in racial discrimination. Race based discrimination was so much a part of the church. The church's history, its historical trajectory, as Matt has defined in the book and has outlined in this book, really does speak to this, you know, speak to the white supremacist nature of the church and how these teachings have been sort of institutionalized and reified, if you will, in trying to convince black people they're cursed. Those are the ones that want to participate in Mormonism, which is a real, real head game to play on folk. And that's one of the things I really have had a hard time with, is the church and people who are black members of the church who sort of buy into this, these ideas. Because if you're practicing black, if you're a practicing member of the church, you're African American, you have any idea about any of this stuff, we have to make compromises. We have to compromise our sense of our black identity, if you will, with the racist teachings and practices that are contained in the church. And so you have to make a decision. You want to be in it or you don't want to be in it. And that's a very tough sale for people who are practicing more, in my opinion. That's why we don't have a lot of African Americans joining the church. It's very, very. It's not. The numbers are not, are not great. Most black people in the church are from Africa, are coming from Africa. So African Americans have not, have not drank the Kool Aid, who.

John Dehlin [01:30:28] They don't have the memo that the church was racist for 150 years.

Summer Rain [01:30:31] By and large, I mean, to be fair, the boomer generation right now, black boomers don't have the same, don't have the information. So I see even here, yeah, I see a lot of Gen X, I see a lot of millennials that they're the ones that are starting to look on the, the Internet started kind of seeing these things. But There are people that are in an older generation where they just. They literally do not know what we're talking about right now.

John Dehlin [01:30:58] Most Mormons. Most white Mormons don't know.

Summer Rain [01:31:00] Most white Mormons. Yeah.

Nate Byrd [01:31:03] They're the ones exclusively running the church, pretty much.

John Dehlin [01:31:05] They're like, the church was never racist. What are you talking about?

Summer Rain [01:31:08] Yeah, yeah, it was the people, not the leadership.

Church Leaders and Segregated Blood Banks

John Dehlin [01:31:12] All right, well, chapter, you know, episode five, you know, gives a spotlight into some of the really important issues that the Brethren were dealing with. One being their realization. What happens if black people start donating their blood to blood banks? And then that cursed blood of Cain gets used on a white person who's a member? Does that taint or curse their blood? That's the type of thing the Brethren were worried about. Instead of, you know, segregation or, you know, Jim Crow laws or, you know, the racist implications of the priesthood band, they're worried about their blood being tainted. Go ahead.

Summer Rain [01:31:54] Can I say something really fast? When you said earlier that their main concern was black men sleeping with white women, that's what it's all about. It's the purity of the blood. So I want to make sure that everyone listens, understands. It's about lineage and purity of blood. It's not the act. It's not. So what I find, especially in reading this is anything that will taint the blood of the tribe of Israel is bad, and black people are cursed. And so if black men are sleeping with white women and they have children and interracial. Now the blood is being mixed. Now we're gonna talk about blood banks. The blood is being mixed. It's all about this blood. You know, we've talked about genetics and DNA, but for them, it's blood, blood, lineage, blood, blood, because that's what the Bible talks about. So I feel like the racial discrimination that was happening in the south and across the country, it fed into this. It made it a little easier to say, yeah, we should. We should believe in segregation and all that, but the core of it is we need to keep our seed pure.

John Dehlin [01:33:07] And I know that that absolutely was key. Summer rain.

Summer Rain [01:33:12] Don't. Don't disagree with me.

John Dehlin [01:33:14] I'm not going to. I'm going to also say, isn't it very Mormon to be obsessed with sex? Like, the church doesn't want you masturbating. They don't want any premarital sex going on. On. Like the Book of Mormon says, you know, sex is next to murder. Premarital sex is next to murder. So can it be? And can it be everything? You said is true. And the sexual act, which church members are obsessed with, church leaders are obsessed with, just amps up the stakes a

Summer Rain [01:33:44] little bit, I think. I think it's exactly that. I think it is an. And I think that, again, the core is this purity, purity, purity. But then they use everything around it to add to that purity. Like, it's just. It's just. Yeah, it's just. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:00] But I would never disagree with. You kidding me?

Summer Rain [01:34:03] Just disagree with me. After the podcast offline.

John Dehlin [01:34:06] All right, well, let's. Let's. Let's introduce the blood transfusion problem that the brethren were super concerned about.

Speaker E [01:34:14] They had segregated blood banks in World War II. And in 1942, in a very esteemed medical journal, some people had pushed back on this idea of. Of segregated blood banks because it was just born out of pure racism to think that that Negro blood could somehow sully somebody's white blood. So they were talking about how racist that was. But nonetheless, the church had picked up on this larger societal practice. And during the Korean War, J. Reuben Clark of the governing First Presidency decided that they wanted to figure out ways that they could segregate blood banks. Because, of course, they took it a step further, that if a white soldier in Korea, a white LDS soldier in Korea needed a blood transfusion and he received one from a Negro soldier, his blood would be tainted, he would be cursed, he would bear the drop.

John Dehlin [01:35:14] And so the church wanted the bad received by transfusion.

Darren Smith [01:35:23] John, you ain't right.

Nate Byrd [01:35:27] What a terrible fate.

Darren Smith [01:35:27] Dumbass. Dumbass beliefs. Just. It's crazy listening to that, Listening to that clip. What do you say to that? I mean, what do you. How do you. I mean, how do you square that?

Nate Byrd [01:35:41] It's insane.

John Dehlin [01:35:42] Nate, why'd you pick that? Why'd you pick that clip?

Nate Byrd [01:35:45] Just because of, you know, again, just the thought process behind that. So nowadays we're still very wary of blood contamination, but for different reasons, or maybe the same reasons. Right, so like nowadays, hepatitis or hiv. Exactly. Yeah. You want to avoid, you know, touching other people's blood or, you know, needles, things like that, especially if you're not aware of who it came from, because you want to avoid getting diseases. So if you think about the racism behind this, white people literally considered blackness and black skin to be a disease that they didn't want getting into their bodies. Right. So it's the same thought process where, like, blackness was a disease. And then the church took that a step further because then they're saying black people have a disease. It is their skin color. It can be passed through blood transfusion. And this is.

John Dehlin [01:36:29] And then passed down to children.

Nate Byrd [01:36:30] Yeah, and then passed down to children. And this is ordained by God.

John Dehlin [01:36:32] Because that was the concern too. It wasn't just that the white person, like the white man would be tainted with the black blood, but then when he had sex with his wife, then those children would be tainted with the blood too. And then they would be subject to the priesthood.

Nate Byrd [01:36:49] Bear like, not to mention that, you know, if the skin is the sign of the curse, then, you know, based on LDS logic at this time, if they got a blood transfusion, you would know about it because that white LDS soldier would suddenly become black. Like, we see those silly memes of like, you know, the guy walks in the barbershop to get a haircut and he comes out, he's a black man with a beard. I don't know if you've ever seen those. But like, that was basically the thought process. Like, oh, if this white LDS soldier in Korea gets this blood transfusion from a black soldier, well, then they now have the ban, which also means that their. Their skin is going to turn dark. But that never happened because this was completely illogical. This wasn't anything that made sense. It was based in race or it was based in racism and hatred. Right. So just thinking about that and, you know, hearing that clip, I was just like, this is such an inconsistent theory and such an illogical belief.

Summer Rain [01:37:38] I just want to piggyback. I found this clip extremely offensive because I have a close family member who had to get a blood transfusion, almost died in the early 90s and contracted hepatitis B and was able through treatments and all of that be fine. But to hear that the early 90s, late 80s, there was a big uptick in that with HIV, like you were saying, John, and the contamination and making sure things are okay. And to think that in this time their focus was on what type of person is giving the blood, not is that person had these other diseases that could affect somebody. It's just very offensive because when you're getting a blood transfusion, you're saving your life, you're saving someone's life. And their thought was, well, we'll save their life, but also make sure that they're not cursed. It just sucks.

John Dehlin [01:38:41] It's gross.

Darren Smith [01:38:42] And the links to which they went. The links to which they went through to do this is, to me, that's the really. That's the real rub is they actually went through. You know, they thought about it, they conceived of it, they tried to implement it, and it's Just. And I think at the time there was some evidence, there was some scientific evidence regarding blood products and fallacies associated with that were being put forth by segregationists like members of the church and high ranking church leaders and so on. So the illogical basis of it, the extreme root racism associated with it, it all falls in line with the, what I call the white racial Mormon frame is to justify why black people couldn't hold the priesthood and why black people couldn't be married in the temple and so on and so forth. It's just totally dehumanizing, Totally dehumanizing.

John Dehlin [01:39:38] And again, you could write it off as just, oh, they're all products of their time. Well, except for the fact that David Lloyd was telling them this didn't make sense. Lowry Nelson was telling them that it didn't make sense. Lol. Bennion was telling them it didn't make sense. You know, even Sterling McMurran was telling them, even David O. McKay by 54 acknowledges that he doesn't believe that the priesthood ban is doctrinal. So they were on notice decades and decades and decades early and they just refused to change. All right, the next clip is entitled White Skin but still cursed. Let's go ahead and roll that clip.

Speaker E [01:40:19] Oh, Bennion went on to talk about something that really, really put a face to this policy in this doctrine. He said that I know of a student of mine at the University of Utah, and this student has blond hair, blue eyes and quote, a fair complexion. And there was a rumor in this student's community that his family bore the curse, even though they didn't look it, they had African ancestry. And so the question was posed to Apostle Smith and Peterson, what do you do with this young man when he looks white, but his church has deemed him cursed, that is, his church has deemed him African or Negro because he bears one drop. And Smith, Apostle Smith was asked that and he paused for like several seconds and he replied, quote, I would not like to give that young man any advice at all with regards to marriage. I would not like to be involved. Close quote. In other words, who should this young man marry? Somebody who's white and bring the curse to that union, or somebody who's black and already cursed, but he doesn't identify as black. And Elder Smith, President Smith just simply says, I don't have any advice for this young man. So he's in racial no man's land. And Lil Bennion had to counsel him, you know, and commiserate with him and sympathize with him. And it was a tough situation that was never resolved.

Nate Byrd [01:41:55] Yeah. So the reason I chose that clip and I had brought this point up earlier, you know, just this idea that there wasn't even confirmation for this particular gentleman that he was. That he bore the curse. Right. But there was just a rumor about it, and that was enough to bring his worthiness and his standing in the church into question. And also talking about the fact that, again, his skin was white. So by outward appearances, he doesn't bear the curse because his skin has turned white and delightsome because he's kept the commandments of God. Right. That's what the Book of Mormon says. But because of this rumor, that was enough to call into question whether or not he was worthy of the priesthood, whether or not he was worthy to enter the temple. All these different things. I mean, so just again, kind of pointing to how illogical this belief was and how inconsistent it was depending on who you talk to. It just didn't make any sense. And it would have made a lot more sense for them to just, you know, nip it in the bud.

John Dehlin [01:42:47] Yeah, it's kind of like God sucks at his curses. Because if God was effective at his curses, anyone who got the blood would clearly turn black and we would all know. Why would he design a biological curse that over time got diluted or didn't remain manifest?

Summer Rain [01:43:07] It's the adversary, Satan. Satan foiled him again.

Nate Byrd [01:43:13] You know, Satan's in charge of tanning salons, too.

John Dehlin [01:43:16] And genetics, apparently. Genetics as well. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's all kind of silly. All right, well, if that's not enough, we're going to have some thoughts about Mark E. Peterson and his thoughts on race, because we all want to know what Mark E. Peterson thinks about race. So let's hear it.

Mark E. Peterson's 1954 Speech on Race

Speaker E [01:43:34] And Apostle Peterson, of all the general authorities, he was the most exercised over the Brown decision. And so when he gave his talk on race, this is August of 54, the Brown decision had only been rendered two years earlier. And so it was fresh on everybody's mind. And Markey Peterson, during much of the talk, he talked about interracial marriage, how it was against the church's teachings. But he reaffirmed some of the most radical theology in the Way to Perfection. And by radical theology, he appealed to the Bible to argue that God intended to segregate the races. He argued that if you had dark skin, it's because you did something to inherit God's wrath and a premortal existence. He argued that people had privilege in middle class, let's say Caucasian Homes, you did something that gathered God's favor, guarded God's favor. And so he's tying conduct in mortality, or one's situation mortality to decisions that they had made in a pre earth life. But it goes deeper than that. Markey Peterson argued that black people would only be fit to be the servants to white people in the hereafter, borrowing this biblical trope that Canaan's descendants would be his cursed descendants would be the servants to non cursed lineages. And this is of course, the biblical justification for slavery.

Nate Byrd [01:45:10] Good old Martin Luther Peterson.

Summer Rain [01:45:13] Yeah, I. Marky, Marky, Mark, I picked that clip. Marky Peterson has a special place in my heart because he's the reason why my shelf completely shattered.

John Dehlin [01:45:27] Really?

Summer Rain [01:45:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:45:28] What was it? What was it about him? How did he do that?

Summer Rain [01:45:30] What was it about him? Do you want to play that clip again?

John Dehlin [01:45:34] But you read the book later.

Summer Rain [01:45:37] Well, what it was is I went, I saw the priesthood essays and kind of read through that, and that's when the deconstruction process started. But like I said earlier, Brigham Young is thrown on the bus a lot now nowadays. Well, you know, he's a prophet's time and he was wrong. And he may have been racist, whatever, but I'd never heard of Markey Peterson ever. And I remember seeing Stumbling on a podcast and they were just listing and talking about every single thing that Markey Peterson had said during his tenure as apostle. And that point, I mean, there are a lot of other things, but when I listened to that podcast, I just said, this makes no sense. Like the God that I believe in would not have called someone like this. I kept hearing people say, well, Brigham Young may have been racist, but he was needed during that time. Right. He was a lion and they needed him. So that's why God picked him, even though he was weak. I could not hear a justification on Markey Peterson and the just bigoted, racist, horrible things that he said. And so that's why Markey Peterson, everything that he says, I just. Yeah, if I could summon a dead person, it would be Marky Peterson. So we can just sit down and have a chat on what he was thinking.

Darren Smith [01:47:14] Yeah, he had a lot of. A lot of things to say about this. I mean, this, the speech he gave in 54, the race problem as. As they affect the church. He gets. He starts to list all of the things that Harris Matt just talked about his. He was a staunch segregationist. So basically he believed in the same kinds of things that Bull Connor believed in. Bull Connor. You guys know who Bull Connor Is right, the governor of Alabama. Yeah, Alabama guy. The governor of Alabama. But Bull Connor was. And so he was. He was cut from the same cloth as this Bull Connor individual and his views on segregation. He supported segregation. He believed that the church should keep the races separate. And I think everybody here on this podcast have talked about the reasons why, partly mostly because of the fear of miscegenation. That's something that really drove his racism and his belief systems. And so, you know, people, you know, his, I mean, Markey Peterson's opposition to civil rights, I mean, just on and on this guy, you know, and he's very influential. I mean, he's saying things that people are thinking. And I think someone said, maybe you said this earlier, John, you know, when an apostle says something and people who are listening to this apostle who are very steeped in faith based notions and ideologies, tend to believe these things. And so this talk that he gave was devastating, a very devastating doubling down on racist rhetoric. The church really was not in 54. Please, come on.

Nate Byrd [01:48:56] Yeah, so not to mention just how fundamentally unchristian a lot of these beliefs are. You know, Jesus Christ himself, you know, he said to Peter in a vision call, nothing I have made unclean. But the church's entire brand for like a hundred years was that black people are unclean. And they emphasize that in everything. Right? And then also the fact that he's no respecter of persons, but they're preaching this curse and this idea of being chosen and sanctified, set apart from everyone else. A peculiar people, if you will. So, yeah, just it's a fundamentally unchristian belief. The priesthood and temple ban and the curse that was behind that. And so for Markey Peterson to be preaching these things over the pulpit just shows of a lot lack of understanding of Jesus Christ, which as a. What do they call themselves? Special witnesses of Jesus Christ. Like you don't even understand what the guy was saying, you know, so just. And not just him, but, you know, Bruce R. McConkey and many other people. It just. These are very men who are claiming to be well educated, maybe in their respective fields, but just woefully ignorant when it comes to the actual fundamentals of Christianity, which basically is just to love and treat everyone the way that Jesus Christ would. And there are multiple examples of what Jesus Christ did in the scriptures and this just completely contradicts all of them.

Darren Smith [01:50:06] So we talking about Mark E. Peterson, we're talking about Brigham Young, Joseph Felding Smith, Bruce R. McConkey, Ezra Taft, Benson, Spencer W. Kimball, and There's a host of others in there who had a megaphone. A megaphone and reinforce these beliefs. You wonder why the racial rhetoric in the church has yet to die is because they were teaching these things. They were promulgating it from the pulpit, they were writing in magazines, they were delivering these sermons. For instance, the Way to Perfection, I think. Was it the Way to Perfection that was commissioned as a manual for Sunday school. They were teaching. And it went through what, 18 revisions or 19 revisions or something like that.

Nate Byrd [01:50:53] And it's printings.

John Dehlin [01:50:55] Printings.

Darren Smith [01:50:56] Think about how many generations of white Mormons heard this stuff. Yeah, so this is deeply ingrained in Mormon theology, in Mormonism's understanding of race. And these people are doubling down on their beliefs. And so what we're saying on this podcast, folks who are in the same line of thinking that we're talking about, they'll completely dismiss this as being an attack on the church and so on. But this is a very real thing, that the church has a very real problem of having racists outwardly facing a Ku Klux Klan type rhetoric in the church that no one is really questioning much, save a few members here and there, like a few Lowell Binions and Larry Nielsens and so on. Some of those folks, and then also John de Lynds who are challenging these in a very public way to try to reverse some of this dastardly thinking that exists in the church. I was 15 when I joined the church. And I think my conversion was largely social. I mean, I needed some damn friends. And so I went to church, I saw kids all over the place. I was like, damn, we got a lot of kids and I went to the Sunday school and there was a lot of young folks in the Sunday school. So I really clicked there, connected there. I never really connected with any of the racial theology stuff that was, that was. I heard, didn't hear. And believe it or not, I was in Tennessee, in Nashville. And I figured that my experiences, I think had I been able to stay in my. In a ward that I was in, like Nashville and all the places that I've been, I probably would have stayed a member of the church I probably would have stayed in because people were so very different than they were in Utah, in Idaho, where I spent most of my time at my adult years. And so. And having in Utah and Idaho, I heard a lot of, a lot more outwardly facing racist stuff that came out of people's mouths. And they were very, and these people were very, these are well intentioned folks, innocent. Just commenting on Things that they had heard. Right? And at the time, I didn't know. I didn't have a clue how to retort it or anything. I was just. Well, yeah, I mean, I had nothing to say. What changed me with all of this was two brothers that my missionary companion I encountered when I was in. I served my mission in Michigan. It was very sexy and glamorous in Michigan. And we knocked on two brothers doors who were students at a local university there. And the first thing they said to me was, they said, you believe this stuff? You really believe this. They talking about black people and such racist ways. You need to wake up, brother. Right. That really seared. That really left an impact on me. And from that point on, I started to get my hands on everything I could read about blacks in the priesthood. I mean, I'd heard about it, but I wasn't really that schooled in it. And then that started my, that was my slow decline out when I began to read these things and begin to speak about them in public, about some of the issues that I felt were very, very wrong with. Church needs to be better at these things. And I keep running up against the same thing. The church itself, the people themselves are very wonderful people. Some of my best friends are white Mormons, believe it or not even still today. But they cannot divorce themselves from the church. Even though these racist teachings have now gone, at least publicly, they're gone, but it still goes on and it hasn't gone completely away, unfortunately.

Nate Byrd [01:54:34] You know, I also want to point out, Darren, you talking about those beliefs, one thing that the church doesn't ever talk about or express openly, but is very much a part of the core doctrine, is that you have to believe these things to get into the celestial kingdom. These beliefs are necessary for your salvation. In a lot of other, you know, churches or denominations, it's enough to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. That's enough to get you, you salvation. But in the church, like when you know the, the temple ordinances are necessary, are a necessary step in, in being able to be with God again. And one of the things that they ask you is if you sustain the apostles and the prophets and everything that they've said, and if you don't, then you're at risk for not getting your temple recommend, which means you don't have access to these saving ordinances, as they're called. All right, so it's, it's literally you have to believe these things. And so when you were talking about the, the generations of, of white Mormons that were Taught these things through the way to perfection. These things were taught in church, in Sunday school. And because they came directly from the prophets and apostles, they have to believe those things in order to have access to those saving ordinances. So it's literally a requirement that you believe black people are cursed in order to obtain salvation. And the church is trying to, you know, say, oh, no, this was just a policy. It was never a doctrine. Regardless of that, if this came from the, from the mouths of apostles and

Summer Rain [01:55:51] prophets, prophets, you have to sustain it.

Nate Byrd [01:55:52] You have to sustain it. Right. So you are literally required to believe that black people are less than, that black people are second class saints, that black people will be your servants in heaven in order to get into heaven.

Summer Rain [01:56:03] Right. So, yeah. And I just wanted to add that it's. To me, it's interesting that Marky Peterson was one of the few apostles that were sent out on a mission for the temple ban being lifted. Because this was set in 54. Yeah, yeah. And you know, so the temple ban is lifted decades later, in 78. In 78, decades later, when Kimball wanted

John Dehlin [01:56:30] to hold the meeting, call all the apostles together to approve the lifting of the ban, he waits until Peterson's out of town in like South America.

Summer Rain [01:56:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:56:41] Before he convenes the meeting to then

Summer Rain [01:56:43] have the vote and then lets him know on the mission, hey, by the way, while you were gone, we lifted the ban. So, I mean, I hear a lot of apologists say, no, it was unanimous, he's unanimous. It was not unanimous.

John Dehlin [01:56:57] That's true.

Summer Rain [01:57:00] Yeah. I had somebody, there was a historian on a podcast that really was like, it was unanimous. All 12. They had a revelation. And it's like, no, this Markey Peterson is just one of, I think three that were sent away and then one

John Dehlin [01:57:17] was in the hospital.

Summer Rain [01:57:18] Yeah. But when they came back, Marky Peterson, and it talks about that in this book, his biggest thing was interracial marriage. He's like, you know what? I'll allow the priesthood ban to. I'll sign my name on this and say, I'm okay with this as long as we put a notice out there, make a statement that the church is

John Dehlin [01:57:39] still opposed to interrelated.

Summer Rain [01:57:40] Absolutely. But to kind of go off of what Darren and Nate are saying. This is why I think it's so important for the church to do more than just disavow. They have not acknowledged that this came from leaders. Even in the priesthood essay, they say, we don't know where these teachings came from. You know, not valiant in the pre existence, but we disavow those things. There are people that heard this from the prophet's mouth and from the apostles mouth. And so until the church can say, listen, this was said by leadership, but it didn't come from God. These people are going to still believe it because they, like Nate said, sustained these leaders while they were saying this. And so as long as the church says, you know, it was cultural or just in Utah or you know, the leadership doesn't believe this but we don't know where it came from, it will never be healed because you know the 80 year old woman in freaking Provo is going to say, okay, that's great that they disavow it, but God did say it for all my life. He just changed his mind now.

John Dehlin [01:58:51] Yeah, yeah. And this is going to be. Go ahead, Darren.

Defending and Justifying Racist Policies

Darren Smith [01:58:56] The last thing I was just add on to Summer. I hate when they say the time wasn't right. The time. I want to smack somebody when they say that the time wasn't right. Please, please.

John Dehlin [01:59:08] Yeah. When's the time for justice? Right. When's the time for equality? Right.

Darren Smith [01:59:13] Well you know white folks, if social change occurs in white America, it's always incremental, incremental changes and there's justifications for why. And clearly the brethren were, were doing these things and justifying these things. And really their whole bet as I saw it was to protect the white members. To protect the white members, to do it, not do anything to offend white members, to keep their membership robust. And so there was really black people, really an afterthought. Yeah, you know,

John Dehlin [01:59:49] absolutely. Well, this may seem kind of heavy handed or ham fisted but like if Brigham Young. I think we can all agree that Brigham Young wins the blue ribbon for the most offensive, egregious, racist statements in the history of Mormonism. Do we have a. Do we agree?

Summer Rain [02:00:03] I think he was a product of his time.

John Dehlin [02:00:06] But he was the worst, right?

Summer Rain [02:00:07] No, he was the worst. But I think he was only the worst because the things that he said were a pioneer western thinking. If Markey Peterson lived back then, I think that he made.

John Dehlin [02:00:18] Yeah, he would have outdone him. He would. But, but, but for the 20th century I'm going to read for, for the members that want to say we're just being mean to the church or just pick it on people. I'm going to read the one Markey Peterson quote. This was again, this is from the 1954 talk. It's called Race problems as they affect the church. And it's given at the Convention of Teachers of Religion on the college level at Brigham Young University. So this is to all the church educators. Yeah, Right. Let's pull all the Mormon churches educators together. Let's have them listen to a special witness of Christ, a prophet, seer and revelator, a mouthpiece of Jesus. What does he have to say? And this is the quote. And this is like, I am doing something very harsh right now. I'm reading you guys a super offensive quote, but I want it to be read into the record, and I want to have y' all have a chance to respond to it. And this is horrendous. So here it is. Now, we are generous with the Negro. Like, right off, we're generous with the Negro. We are willing that the Negro have the highest education. I would be willing to let every Negro Negro drive a Cadillac if they could afford it. I would be willing that they have all the advantages they can get out of life in the world, but let them enjoy these things among themselves. I think the Lord segregated the Negro. And who is man to change that? Segregation. It reminds me of the scripture on marriage. What God has joined together, let not man put asunder. Only here we have the reverse of the thing. What God has separated, let not man bring together again. Any. Any thoughts?

Summer Rain [02:02:10] This was given after brown, right? Brown versus education, 1954.

Darren Smith [02:02:19] This was given.

Summer Rain [02:02:20] Yeah. I believe this was given after that decision because he was so upset that schools were going to be integrated.

Darren Smith [02:02:28] It was two years after. Two years.

Summer Rain [02:02:29] After two years. Okay. This talk was given two years after the Brown decision. Yeah, he was raging segregationists. I mean, he did not want.

John Dehlin [02:02:43] Now I'm reading the. I'm reading that. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. I'm reading the Brown versus Board of Education came May 17, 1954, and this is in August. So this is three months after Brown.

Summer Rain [02:02:57] That's what I remember. I remembered it being pretty soon after. Thanks for checking that. But this was indirect response to that, where he's saying, we're now integrating schools and they should not be integrated. They need to stay among themselves. I don't know if people understand how horrendous at first. The first part of the thing is we are generous with the Negro.

John Dehlin [02:03:25] What does that mean? What's your reaction to that?

Darren Smith [02:03:27] What does that mean, being generous with the Negro? What does he mean by that?

Summer Rain [02:03:31] Well, that's what I find.

John Dehlin [02:03:33] Who's the we? Who's the we?

Summer Rain [02:03:36] And that's what I find kind of horrendous, because people need to understand what that time was like for black Americans. They were looked at as lesser than. I mean I told this story on Mormon stories, but my grandfather and grandmother were in the backwoods of Alabama driving, just driving and was pulled over by the kkk. And literally two minutes after Black Panther party pulls up behind them. And my grandfather, they never got out of the car, they just drove off. And he said, I don't know what would have happened if the Black Panther party didn't show up. My grandfather didn't even live in Alabama. He was just driving. And so to say we are generous with the Negro is that you allow them to come to church, but their own church because they're not being treated as human, let alone equal. And so it's just, it's a horrendous thing to say given what is happening during this time.

John Dehlin [02:04:43] Yeah. What's the basis for claiming generosity? Like they're literally designated as sub human second class citizens. And he's not going to say we treat them equally. He's saying we treat them generously. Nate, I don't even know what the

Darren Smith [02:04:57] hell he means by that. I'm sure trying to figure that out. I caught at least six issues that came up to me, came up for me when he was during this 54 talk. One is his justification for racial segregation, his strong opposition against interracial marriage, his belief in racial hierarchies, the great chain of beings and northern Europeans at the top and blacks at the bottom, everybody between. And in that scheme, black people are inferior. He has his strong defense of the priesthood ban, that it was divinely inspired and of course his social and political disdain for the civil rights movement. And then of course his rationalizations for inequality. And what he's done, I think what he's done skillfully is what John said earlier. He's putting all of this on the members, right members, what the members need

John Dehlin [02:05:57] to do

Darren Smith [02:06:00] in order for this to, to manifest right by making sure that they adhere to, you know, not marrying people of color, not, you know, or using blood products as a basis for why they shouldn't, you know, blacks shouldn't have the priesthood and all this ridiculous shit that this man has said over the years and that remains, I don't know, a major. This stuff is still around in Mormonism. It hasn't like disappeared. So when you talk about avowing the priesthood ban from the brethren and all of that, they need to issue a damn apology for this. That's what they haven't done is issue an apology. And I've been screaming at the top of my lungs about the importance you teach about atonement. You teach about being redeemed. This is the church leadership. You can show that inaction by issuing an apology for the wrong. The harms that have been done to African American people, black people in general, and for white people. White people were harmed from this as well by believing in this bullshit. Right? And so. And clearly, if they hadn't already believed that black people were inferior, this would have been. This is an easy sell because people had already had those beliefs, given the conservative bet in the church. You got these hardliners who are. And what's so funny about this, y', all, is that these people who I just mentioned earlier, these people are, like, in prominent positions where they have a megaphone. That's what. That's what really, really asks me, is that they can spread this stuff far and wide.

John Dehlin [02:07:38] Nate.

Nate Byrd [02:07:39] Yeah. I was gonna say the irony of this entire thing and what he's saying, oh, you know, they're fine to do all these things. Get an education, own a Cadillac, just do it themselves. The irony behind that is that white people are notorious for not minding their business when it comes to black people. Nobody. I don't recall black people writing a letter and sending it to Europe and saying, hey, if you don't mind, could you just come down and kidnap some of us and take us to a land we've never been to before and then make us work for free for 400 years? White people showed up. They invented the theory of race and phrenology to justify the slave trade. They shipped us all over, over the world. Then we get to America. You know, once the Civil War was over and the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, then we were trying to do our own thing, to mind our own business. We had places like Tulsa, Oklahoma, Seneca Village in Central park, or what is now Central Park. It used to be a black community. You know, Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a fully black community. And white people came in because they hated to see black people doing well. And they destroyed it. They burnt it to the ground. They literally bombed it, you know, killed people.

Summer Rain [02:08:41] They can look up black Wall street

Nate Byrd [02:08:43] if they want to get more black Wall street, yeah. It was literally a booming black community. And white people were so upset about that that they literally made up an excuse to go in. They accused a black man who was in an elevator with a white woman. They accused him of trying to assault her, and then, you know, took him, lynched him, and then went into the town and burnt it to the ground. Right? And they've done things like that over and over and over again. Segregation. Black people didn't necessarily have a problem with segregation. What they had a problem with was white people interfering with that and making it impossible for black people to have the same rights as them. It wasn't so much about black people not wanting to. Wanting to live amongst white people. We had our own communities. Those communities were good. But the issue was that white people interfered with those communities and made it impossible for those communities to have the same access to resources. You see that now as well, where even now in a so called integrated society, we see these huge discrepancies in wealth, we see these huge discrepancies in education, and it's because white people have systematically done things to prevent black people from having access to the same resources. So for him to say, oh, we're being generous with you guys, you should just do these things among yourselves. We tried, and people like Mark E. Peterson and Bull Connor and all these other people were like, were so committed to not seeing black people succeed, you know, at the expense of, or, you know, at the. The behest of white people that they did things on purpose to interfere with that process.

John Dehlin [02:10:11] Yeah.

Nate Byrd [02:10:12] So it just is just the height of folly to say that, oh, we're being generous with you guys. You guys should just do these things among yourselves because they wouldn't let us.

John Dehlin [02:10:21] Yeah, that one. That's so beautiful. So well said, Nate. That sentence just help me understand. And I would be willing to let every Negro drive a Cadillac if they could afford it. What does he mean, he would be willing? It's like he's sitting on some perch. Yeah. And he's saying, you know what? I'm so benevolent and generous that if they could afford a Cadillac, I'd be willing to let them have it.

Nate Byrd [02:10:46] Which that's a microaggression in itself.

John Dehlin [02:10:48] It's a macro aggression. It's super racist.

Summer Rain [02:10:52] Right. Macro aggressions. Macro aggressions.

Darren Smith [02:10:55] So, you know, Nate's comments were well noted. The foot dragging, the stonewalling, the interference that white folks have done to make things more difficult for black folks. So Brown versus Board of Education was in what, May of 1954. White people still couldn't. Still couldn't get it together. So the court had to go back and do a Brown versus Board of Education, too. Basically saying, y' all gotta get y' all's asses moving on this with all deliberate speed. And it's only when that ruling came out in 55 that people started taking action on reducing, you know, segregation in American life.

Nate Byrd [02:11:42] And used.

Darren Smith [02:11:42] And at the same time, you have this going on, you've got people like, and I didn't mention Harold B. Lee, but he's another, he's another person. And again, I want to underscore the fact that these are prominent church leaders with megaphones. And interestingly enough, Ali's views were very similar to the other folks that I mentioned before. His defense on priesthood ban, his statements on race and lineage, his opposition to change. These people are not willing to change. So the church stays insular and conservative and conspiratorial the way it's been, you know, since then. I'm not sure if currently, if the conservative Ben is still in the church. I'm sure it is.

John Dehlin [02:12:25] Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of Harold B. Lee, one of the quotes that comes out of this book, and I'm paraphrasing, when the IRS comes in in 68 to BYU and says you have no black athletes, no black professors and like two black students on your whole campus, you're violating the Civil Rights act of 1964, what's Harold B. Lee's response? I'd rather shut BYU down than have black students here. That's his initial response. Now he gets overridden. But, but talk about, I'd be willing to let them have a Cadillac if they could afford it. Well, if you're not even giving them access to education, how in the world are they going to get good jobs to be able to afford a Cadillac? If Harold B. Lee, future profit of the world Mormon Church, by the way, is saying he'd rather shut BYU down than risk having black men walking around that could sleep with his white daughters. That's exactly what he was saying.

Summer Rain [02:13:15] It's just, yeah, it's, it's tough because 1954, it's just a year before Rosa Parks gets on a bus and says, I'm, I'm tired, I'm not going to go to the back of the bus. And same year is when emma Teal, the 14 year old that was killed over a rumor that he whistled at a white woman who later on she just said, you know, that didn't really happen that way. The three white guys that were part of that were acquitted. They had. No, they were not. Nothing happened to them.

Nate Byrd [02:13:51] And then confessed to the crime. Confess to the crime after they were acquitted because they couldn't be tried again.

Summer Rain [02:13:55] Absolutely. So this is a 14 year old from, I believe he was from Chicago and he was visiting the South. But you have someone who in 54 is saying, we are generous. And then you have a year later a 14 year old boy who is horribly killed for whistling, which again, didn't happen. It's just.

John Dehlin [02:14:20] Didn't they chain him to a washing machine and throw it in?

Summer Rain [02:14:22] The tortured him.

Nate Byrd [02:14:23] Yeah, they tortured him. They beat him, they cut off his penis. They did all kinds of things.

John Dehlin [02:14:27] But his body was so bloated from being dragged to the bottom of the water.

Nate Byrd [02:14:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:14:33] That the mom had an open casket.

Summer Rain [02:14:35] She said. She said they said that they would have a closed casket. And she said, I want the world to see what they did to my baby.

John Dehlin [02:14:42] Yeah. And that was an important.

Darren Smith [02:14:43] You know, what's interesting is that, you know, there's a very. There's a Mormon, a Mormon scholar who wrote a book about Emmett Till. I don't know what the guy's name.

John Dehlin [02:14:54] Devere Anderson is his name.

Darren Smith [02:14:56] So you may have had him on your show, but he talks about this experience with him. I was going to mention that. You know, you talked about John, you had mentioned that, you know, some things about BYU and the athletes in the early 60s, the Nigerian student Project, that happened at the behest of the LDS Church and byu, where they brought in some Nigerian black students into BYU to study there. And of course, there was an opposition there, of course, with Ernest Wilkinson and his cronies, but they brought these black students in. And of course on their mind was what lingering on their mind was these black students and women and white women. But they went through it anyway. Well, as it turned out, some of these black men started to date these white women. And they came in early in 1960, and by 1961, those students were gone. They had left BYU and were sent home, essentially. And what drove that was the fact that the church and byu, their fears of miscegenation had came true. And so they said hail to the no, and they shut it down and sent those students home. And then not long after that, you start to see the influx of black athletes coming into BYU because 1970.

John Dehlin [02:16:16] 1970 was the first year BYU allowed black athletes.

Darren Smith [02:16:19] So you had early 1960s that these Nigerian students on campus, you had this lull. Then you had starting to see black athletes show up at BYU only because

John Dehlin [02:16:31] the IRS threatened to take away all government funding for byu, which would help Pell Grants. That was research loans, research.

Darren Smith [02:16:43] That was certainly on their mind. Also on their mind was winning football games, winning NCAA championships. And so you can't do that without black athletes. If you start you playing football, you cannot do that. And so they recognized that and started to recruit these folks, like some of the early ones that come to mind is Like Benny Smith. By the way, John, this is kind of all you should. Benny. The story of Benny Smith is fascinating. I don't know if you heard Benny Smith. No, was. He was very, very important in the Olympics. When Romney took over the Olympus Olympics in what? In 2004. I think it was in Utah at the time when I first moved to Utah. Y' all white folks. White folks. Y' all crazy, man. Y' all come up to me and talk to me about shit that I have no idea. Do you know Benny Smith? This white woman told me. I said, who is Benny Smith? I have no idea who Benny Smith is. Black prominent guy in the church who, you know, people like to refer to him. He's going to be the first black general authority. I can tell you that didn't work out too well for Benny. But the point is that Benny ended up joining a black Israelite group and left the United States and lived somewhere and nobody knows where he is. Even his kids are trying to find. That's what John usually have him have Adam Smith come on and talk about his father, Benny Smith, and what he went through as a. As a Mormon, being one of the early prominent Mormons who lived in Utah. Found it real fascinating, but I forgot what I was saying.

John Dehlin [02:18:18] Oh, no, it's good. I appreciate that.

Nate Byrd [02:18:20] Anyway.

John Dehlin [02:18:21] All right, well, that's an episode to come. We've got. We've got about 40 minutes before Nate has to go and we got to finish this up. So we're going to pick up the pace just a tiny bit. We could. I'm. I'm loving this. And we could talk about this stuff forever. But we've got some clips to go, so let's go and jump to the next clip called Brown versus the Church, the Brethren.

Brown v. Board and Fear of Interracial Marriage

Speaker E [02:18:41] There was. There are a range of responses to the Brown decision because they were afraid that even though the Brown decision only affected public schools, they saw the writing on the wall that if you desegregate public schools, what's next? Restaurants, bus stations, all of that. So they. They feared it. And of course, the elephant in the room were. Was the church's teachings on marriage, that if you have integrated people together, working and worshiping together and other things that you would do together. They're afraid that, of course, they'd become too cozy. They would start to date and ultimately marry, which would complicate the church's teachings on interracial marriage. So that was what.

John Dehlin [02:19:25] All right, so who picked that clip?

Nate Byrd [02:19:27] That was me, I believe.

John Dehlin [02:19:28] Okay. Anything worth adding, really?

Nate Byrd [02:19:32] Just that one, you know, Kind of we're pile driving a dead horse at this point. But I mean, it's just the, the big fear. Yeah, the big fear of interracial marriage.

John Dehlin [02:19:40] All right, let's go to the next clip. When will black people become white? That was an important question. We'll see how the church dealt with that question.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [02:19:48] This is something that the church had been teaching in the magazines and manuals for a very long time. The curse on brown. And black people represented a curse. If they repented of their sins and became worthy again, that that curse would, would, would revert, would go away and ultimately revert back to a state of whiteness. And so they're asking off the record, does this apply to black people? And Smith was smart. He wasn't going to say this in public with sermon in general conference or a book he would write because this is the civil rights movement. He recognizes intuitively that this won't go over well to a larger audience, including even the church. So he says in private that we know of cases where the curse really has disappeared. And then he, the Nibley's question, he asked a follow up. He said, well, when will it happen? And Smith said that meaning when will

Video Clip 1 [02:20:38] black people be turned white?

Video Clip 1 [02:20:40] When will they lose their courage and become white? Yeah, and Smith said that he didn't know and that that particular question, quote, has plagued me more than anything I ever wrote. End quote.

Summer Rain [02:20:55] Wow.

Nate Byrd [02:20:56] Yeah. So, you know, for that one, I really would like to know what those cases were because we've talked about this where, you know, there were people who had white skin but they had a black ancestor, therefore they bore the drop and they were cursed. So what were these cases in which the curse disappeared and what did that entail? How does the curse disappear? You know, if it's in your blood, I'd love to know what that was or if that was just a flat out lie. Right. Because we've clearly seen cases where there shouldn't have been a curse. By all outward appearance and by, you know, definition from the Book of Mormon, the skin has turned white over a period of generations and over a period of righteousness. So, you know, what is it that that determines the curse? It sounds like the brethren don't even have an idea of what the curse really is, where it comes from, how it's defined.

John Dehlin [02:21:42] And I think, you know, Matt makes the point that a lot of people like to quote Bruce Armaconke's sort of semi apology in 78 or 79 when he speaks to church educators and he says, forget everything, we taught about the priesthood ban. We were wrong. Matt makes it really clear in his book that Bruce Alamakaki wasn't talking about the teachings around the ban being wrong, just about the timing of when it would be lifted. Because obviously what Bruce Amakonki and others, I think, taught was that the black people wouldn't get the priesthood until like the millennium, basically. And he was basically just saying we were wrong about that. The timing, not the ban itself.

Darren Smith [02:22:22] Yeah, about a lot of things, actually. This idea of turning white is highly offensive. Highly offensive. And again, as one turns white, it's synonymous with their righteousness and they're accepting in the gospel and following the commandments and so on and so forth, and a sign of divine favor. It's just so, so, so hard to swallow.

John Dehlin [02:22:52] And yet the Book of Mormon talks about white and delightsome, black and loathsome. So, I mean, it's enshrined in the.

Darren Smith [02:22:59] And they're using racial metaphors to be able to, you know, common metaphors that people would know already to lean into. Remember, the 18, 1870 or 1880, 1780 edition of the Oxford Dictionary defines black as, you know, baneful, woeful. You know, it goes on with all these different adjectives to describe blackness. Right. So this is what Europeans believed black blackness to be. When they first showed up on Africa and they saw black people for the first time, their fears, their worst fears came, you know, came to fruition. Here's the literally embodiment of the Oxford Dictionary that those who could read then, you know, leaned into.

John Dehlin [02:23:41] Yeah. All right. Well, I think, I think that final clip is, is the clip that I read about Markey Peterson where God is the author of segregation. So if it's all right, we'll go to episode six as the final one. The episode is called Mormon Church Fires Educators for Opposing Racist Doctrine. And specifically, you know, that that episode features Lowell Bennion, who was just super beloved church educator for decades, who ends up getting fired, you know, just for teaching, just for talking to Hubie Brown, you know, being told, told that the ban was going to be lifted in as early as 62, being open that he felt like it wasn't doctrinal, which is what the Bennion report showed, which is what David O. McKay himself believed as a prophet. And yet he's the fall guy and gets it, gets ousted. So let's just go ahead and play some of the clips that y' all selected from part six.

Firing Educators Who Opposed Racist Doctrine

Speaker E [02:24:42] So just to recap, Marion Hanks, the general authority, Adam Duncan, the friend of Hanks, also A Mormon congressman, also a member of the NAACP. They're working with the NAACP to get church support for this 1957 Civil Rights Act. And Hanks was. Was disappointed, as was Duncan, when President McKay said, We're not going to do this. We need to remain silent. We don't want to cause. Bring attention to ourselves either supporting the act or. Or not because we're afraid that people will take criticism at our church teachings on race.

Darren Smith [02:25:17] So.

Speaker E [02:25:18] So they don't do it and they leave themselves open. And by 1960, this all sort of starts to slowly seep out, the way that black people are treated in Utah. And there's a civil rights commission that had evaluated the state of racial equality in Utah in 1960, and it wasn't pretty. The NAACP executive director, a guy by the name of Roy Wilkins, he said, quote, the Mormon Church is further behind than even the bigoted white churchmen in Mississippi or Alabama. That's a. I don't know if I agree with that. That's extraordinary. I know a lot about Mississippi and Alabama, and it's hard for me to imagine. I mean, they're lynchings galore there. For him to say that Utah's just as bad or worse as. I don't know if that's, you know, sustained by the evidence, but it doesn't matter. I mean, the perception that he has is it's a terrible place for. For minorities, and he's not wrong.

Nate Byrd [02:26:14] Do you think that part of it is Because, I mean, I think in your book, Nate. Yeah. So for. For this one, I had titled the slide, David O. McKay sits for what's Right. Just because I felt like this was a very unprophetic thing for him to do. If you think about the Moses and the Jeremiahs and the. The Jonahs of the Bible, their whole job was to get out in front of things and go and say things that were hard to hear. Moses had to go and confront his, I guess his stepbrother, right, someone that he grew up with, and tell him, what you're doing is wrong. You need to let these people go. Jonah had to go to this city full of, like, the most wicked people on earth, allegedly, and tell them that everything that they knew about their life and what they were doing was wrong. Jeremiah had to go and tell the Israelites, like his own people, that they were living in wickedness, right? So, like, all of these things that prophets are expected to do, and here David O. McKay is having these feelings of what we're doing isn't right. These things need to be changed. And then when an opportunity for him to stand up for that comes, he says, ah, no, no, no, don't say anything. We need to stay quiet on this matter. And I just thought that that was a very, you know, even though we talk about, you know, McCabe being noble for having these sentiments, I almost think that it was very cowardly of him at a time when speaking up and saying what was on your mind was so important. Like, this was a time that the civil rights movement was kicking up. There were these people out there being very outspoken. What's her name? Joan Mulholland, a white woman who was a freedom rider. I don't know necessarily how the timelines match up, but here she was, as a woman in America speaking out very vocally.

John Dehlin [02:27:49] White woman.

Nate Byrd [02:27:50] A white woman. Yeah, in America. And I don't know if she was member of the church or not, but speaking out.

Darren Smith [02:27:54] Her son is Loki.

Nate Byrd [02:27:55] Okay. Yeah. So her son is a member of the church, but, you know, her out here speaking out. And there were plenty of examples of white people stepping up and speaking out for what's right. And here you have this leader of this church full of millions of people who has these feelings, and he decides that he doesn't want to say anything about it, you know, for whatever reason, for appearances or for his own personal discomfort. I just think that was a very unprophetic and a cowardly thing to do.

John Dehlin [02:28:16] And Mormons want to say that their prophets have the courage to stand up against.

Nate Byrd [02:28:20] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:28:21] Social dynamics that are unhealthy. You know, whether it's like what being gets porn or being against abortion or whatever. But like, how about being against racism? Right? And that's what. One of the things this book is so amazing it shows us that David O. McKay tells Sterling McMurran in 54, I don't believe the priesthood ban his doctrine while he's a prophet, and yet he dies. The year before he dies, he signs a first presidency statement saying that it is doctrine, in effect, lying to the world because of, you know, because of whatever social oppressors. Summary.

Summer Rain [02:28:58] But also as the mouthpiece of God. I mean, I. That can't be missed.

John Dehlin [02:29:03] Alleged mouthpiece of God.

Summer Rain [02:29:04] Well, yeah. I mean, that's the thing is regardless of what they think, I mean, if he's sitting here saying, I'm having this feeling for a member of the church, we would say, well, I have this impression. Let me pray about it. Let me whatever. And instead of following that impression and saying, you know what? This isn't right. The Bennion report that we touched on earlier again, IN54. IN54 was a report that was undercover. I don't think we talked about it, really, but it was a report that went undercover, commissioned by the church, by

John Dehlin [02:29:45] the church, led by an apostle, Adam Bennion, that finds the same findings that Larry Nelson and that other BYU student found.

Summer Rain [02:29:53] Absolutely. David Lloyd. The question was, we want you to research as much as you can and find out where this is doctrinally and scripturally. And they came back with, not only is it not scripturally, we can't find a doctrine, and it's actually the antithesis of what Christianity is.

John Dehlin [02:30:11] It's unchristlike.

Summer Rain [02:30:12] It's unchristlike. That's literally what they came back with. And so to have a report that says, okay, there's nothing in the scriptures, there's nothing doctrinally that supports what we're doing, and to feel like, you know what, maybe we should be lifting this, and then to turn around and write a letter and sign your name on a letter to say, yeah, you know what, we're going to double down on this. It's just.

John Dehlin [02:30:40] And wait 24 more years to fix it.

Summer Rain [02:30:43] Well, it's kicking the can. It's like, you know, I don't want to deal with this. So, you know, we'll see if the next profit will.

John Dehlin [02:30:49] And it's the opposite of courage. What's the opposite of courage, exactly?

Summer Rain [02:30:53] Cowardly. Being cowardly. I mean, and that's the thing, I think that is, for me, that's what was just disappointing, was, you know, I think. I mean, it's not nice, but I feel like it's easier to think that all the leaders were like Markey Peterson, that they were all racist and all thought this way about women and lgbtq. But when you hear that there are people at the leadership that know that this is wrong, but they won't stand up. And you have these civil rights things that are happening. It's just. It's just disappointing. It's very disappointing.

Nate Byrd [02:31:34] And I want to read. So there's two quotes here from. This is from the church's website. I just looked up really quickly because I feel like I remember, like, hearing David O. McKay, like, he was known for talking about, like, do what is right. I feel like I remember learning that in primary. But this page, it says that David O. McKay was known. He often spoke about developing character. And there's a couple things that he said. He said, to have the approval of your conscience when you are alone with your thoughts is like being in the company of true and loving friends, to merit your own self respect gives strength of character. Conscience is the link that binds your soul to the spirit of God. Then he also said, more important than riches, more enduring than fame, more precious than happiness, is the possession of a noble character. Truly, it has been said that the grand aim of a man's creation is the development of a grand character. And grand character is, by its very nature the product of a probationary discipline. So hearing those two quotes directly from President McKay, such hypocrisy there, right? Because I cannot think that if these are your personal, private thoughts, if these are the feelings that you're having, if your conscience is eating you up, as the prophet of God, it should be your duty to emphasize that noble character and serve, stand up for these things, to speak out against these things, to make efforts. But instead he chose to do the exact opposite. I just think that's very hypocritical to be teaching those things but not living them.

Darren Smith [02:32:53] Darren, I just wanted to say that what is the impact of all of this on these communities, on people of color? And I just wanted to mention a couple of things. Lowered self esteem, shame and guilt, alienation from God, religious decisions, disenfranchisement, stress and anxiety, hyper vigilance, fear of judgment, identity confusion, conflicting identities, erosion of personal identity, feelings of hopelessness, isolation and loneliness. And one of the most important things is religious trauma syndrome and increased mental health issues are sort of the end product of the impact of these belief systems on communities of color who have remained in the church. Right. And who struggle with these things all the time. And so, you know, I think. I think, you know, it would behoove those who are in it and struggling with this to really reevaluate whether or not this is something that they should really consider, because I think it takes a significant impact on our emotional and mental health.

John Dehlin [02:33:55] Yeah. Yep. And Matt would say. Matt Harris would probably want to Give David O. McKay the benefit of the doubt and say he did his best. He had to have unanimity in the quorum. He didn't have the numbers. And he fought valiantly to try and move the needle. And maybe he did move the needle some, but he was just. His hands were tied by the other members of the quorum. But I say he could have just done it. He could have done what Russell M. Nelson did with, you know. What were you going to say, Nate?

Nate Byrd [02:34:25] Oh, just the same thing. Like, you know, there have been a lot of other policies that were hammered through, like Brigham Young. He pounded that that square peg into a round hole with the priesthood ban. President Nelson did the same thing with rebranding the church and had all of that under wraps within a year.

John Dehlin [02:34:39] Or the LGBT discriminatory exclusion policy of 2015.

Nate Byrd [02:34:48] Exactly. So there's precedent. And was it antecedent? I don't know. Those things came afterwards. But there are also precedents for David O. McKay being able to do something. Something. And, yeah, you're right. I think, you know, Matt would. Wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I think in the position that he was in, you know, in the position that he was in, I just think that there. There's really no excuse there, especially when there was so much outside influence and, like, other momentum going in that direction. I think that if he had been able to have the courage to make that decision and, you know, display some of that noble character that he talked about so much, he would have been able to push that through maybe a week.

Darren Smith [02:35:25] I totally agree with Nate, and I'm not giving. I'm not giving these people any. Any leeway at all. And so. But. But I would. I would. You know, I know Matt's gleaning off of his research on this, but I'm gleaning off my personal experience living in a. In a white supremacist society. And so it's not, you know, it's not what you. The benefit of the doubt doesn't. Doesn't work for me.

Summer Rain [02:35:48] I think in politics, we have this phrase, people over politics. Right. And I agree with Matt that if there was. If he did just hammer it through, there would have been a schism in the church. There would have been people who left. But the question is, are we going to put people over the institution? And I think that time and time again, we are seeing the church leaders put the institution over the people, and that's the problem.

Nate Byrd [02:36:19] And if we look at the situation with the LGBTQ community now and the decisions that they've made, and women.

John Dehlin [02:36:25] Don't forget women.

Nate Byrd [02:36:25] Yeah. You know, like, in 10, 20 years, are we gonna say, oh, well, we have to give President Nelson the benefit of the doubt? We have to give Elder Haaland the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he didn't want to give that talk. Right. I think if we look at it from that lens, what we can see that they're doing now is clearly wrong. Like, they're taking a stand against something that denies people equality within the church. It denies them the ability to express themselves. It denies them to be who they

John Dehlin [02:36:47] really are, denies them humanity.

Nate Byrd [02:36:48] Denies them humanity. Exactly. We can see that that is clearly wrong. So, you know, if the narrative changes 10 or 20 years down the line and we just say, oh, we have to give them the benefit of the doubt, well, you know, maybe it just wasn't the right time, you know, because eventually this ban is going to be lifted or like this discrimination within the church against the queer community is going to go away. It has to, or the church will not survive. And so for that to be the case, if we think about that moving forward, are we going to do the same thing? Are we going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say, oh, they're just a product of their time?

Summer Rain [02:37:18] And 20 years from now, the orthodox members who are Learning it now, 20 years from now, if the church disavows it, then what do you do with those people who grew up in this era and were told no family proclamation. Family proclamation. I see a lot of parallels because you've got the racial passing that we've been talking about of, well, if you are in this certain ward or if you're in this certain country, you might be able to keep the priesthood if you look a certain way, whatever. And then you've got situations now like Charlie Bird and his husband where, you know, they're living a great LDS life.

John Dehlin [02:37:58] Same sex married.

Summer Rain [02:37:59] Same sex married. Very open about it. Not just, you know, behind closed doors, they're very open. Open about an Instagram. And there is this discourse of should we be happy that that's happening or what should be going on, because there are people that are not getting that

John Dehlin [02:38:21] lesbians are getting excommunicated still.

Summer Rain [02:38:22] They're getting excommunicated still. And so that's the question is what will the Church do? I see a lot of parallels where they're saying on a case by case basis, we'll allow this, we'll allow this, or we'll excommunicate or we'll excommunicate. And that's what was happening in this book over and over again.

Darren Smith [02:38:41] Yeah, I think this is a forecasting of what our LGTBQ brothers and sisters are going through in the church too. But it's been. But what's interesting about their struggle is that there's been some much more affirmative movement in that direction than it had been for black folks in their experience. So there's not this doubling down of racist rhetoric associated with that. And most of these folks were pushing for. And I totally believe that whenever you deny people of their full humanity in any realm, it's not A good look. And so my hope is that the church will have learned from its mistakes in the past and take corrective action. But I'm not hopeful when I know that the majority of the people that are serving in these leadership roles are hardliners, are very conservative men. And as long as they're there, I think the change is gonna be, you know, it'll come slowly, incrementally.

Deseret News, Intermingling, and Final Clips

Nate Byrd [02:39:42] Darren, I do wanna push back on that for just a second. You are, you are correct in saying that like there has. There's a lot less. There was a lot less support for black members of the church and things like that, you know, before the band, but there still was some support. And, you know, on the opposite side of that with what we're seeing with the queer community in the church, there definitely there's been support. There has been a lot of that from progressive Mormons, but there's also been a lot of opposition to that.

Speaker E [02:40:07] Right.

Nate Byrd [02:40:08] You have the Brethren themselves opposing it. And then you have. There were enough people that wrote into the Brethren, wrote into BYU to inspire Elder Holland's musket talk. Because he got up there and he said, people have been writing to me or expressing concern over the progressive views of teachers at byu. Right. So there has been kind of that opposition as well. And so even though there is that supportive side, and we're very much a part of that, that's the community that we interact with. I just did want to point out that there also has been enough opposition to where Brethren are taking a stand on it as well.

Darren Smith [02:40:39] Stand against lgtbq, folks.

Nate Byrd [02:40:42] Yes, that's enough. To where that inspired Elder Holland's musket

Summer Rain [02:40:45] talk and the reversal of the 2015 policy.

Nate Byrd [02:40:49] That is one.

John Dehlin [02:40:51] So just to conclude this point on whether we give the Brethren the benefit of the doubt, unfortunately they taught us too well. Let's play a quick 10 second game, Y'.

Nate Byrd [02:40:59] All.

John Dehlin [02:40:59] Fill in the blank. Where much is given, what much is required. Right. Do what is right.

Summer Rain [02:41:04] Let what the consequence follow.

John Dehlin [02:41:06] Right. They taught us that. Yeah, right. So do we give them.

Darren Smith [02:41:11] They can't practice their own own, their own utterances, though.

Nate Byrd [02:41:15] That's the problem.

Darren Smith [02:41:15] They can't practice it.

John Dehlin [02:41:17] No, it's. It's rules for the. Not for me. You know, that's the problem. All right, next clip is, is entitled don't ever do that Again. This is from episode six.

Speaker E [02:41:29] Ezra News had published a picture of a white, a brown and a black kid on one of its picture headings. And some saints saw that and thought, oh my Goodness, this is anathema. This is, this is really indicating, this is the 1950s. This is indicating the Desert News, the church's newspaper, that it's okay for black and white kids and brown kids to hang out together. And so they complained about that, that the church is becoming a little too racially progressive. And Reuben Clark put a stop to that when he. He was also angry that when he read that the Desert News, he told the churches or the Desert News editor, don't ever do that again.

Nate Byrd [02:42:09] Yeah, you know, and kind of going back to your point, Darren, this is one of those, those situations in which there was heavy opposition to, to integration and to the appearance of racial unity within the church. Right. Where, you know, black people were seen taking pictures. You know, the Deseret News, which is the church, you know, media publication, published a picture of basically people from different races getting along within the church, within the gospel. I mean, that was heavily opposed by members of the church to the point where, you know, one of the brethren was like, you know, don't ever do something like this again. I mean, you know, that's a wild, a wild thing to say.

John Dehlin [02:42:46] And if I'm remembering right, I think it's Gerardo that had it confirmed that up until even like five, let's just say five ish years ago, the church had a policy of never showing interracial married couples their photos in like the Ensign or the Liahona, that the church just until recently would not allow mixed race marriage couples their photos to show up in church publications.

Nate Byrd [02:43:12] Now that I think about it, I remember like looking through the Ensign, the new era, and I never saw.

John Dehlin [02:43:15] Yeah, that was policy. That was policy.

Nate Byrd [02:43:17] I didn't know that.

John Dehlin [02:43:18] I mean, J. Reuben Clark said, don't ever do that again or whoever it was. I mean, so they didn't ever do it again.

Nate Byrd [02:43:23] When the Lord speaks, you're racist.

John Dehlin [02:43:26] Except now they might be doing it.

Darren Smith [02:43:28] So I mean, I mean, when I hear, when I hear us talk about this, we're talking about you guys. When I hear us talking about this stuff, I'm just scratching my head, like, how in the hell did I end up, you know, in this? I mean, this, you know, looking back at it now, it's just all of what stuff we're talking about today. I just scratched my head now.

Nate Byrd [02:43:48] It's like, wow, hey, people fall for multi level marketing schemes all the time because you only. You don't learn about the bad stuff until you're in it. Right?

John Dehlin [02:43:56] And nobody in a cult thinks they're in a cult.

Nate Byrd [02:43:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:43:58] And I'm not calling the church a cult. That's just another example. Like we, we join either because we're born into it, or there's some social situation where basically someone's desperate and they need community, they need structure. And then the missionaries show up and they join and they, oddly, unfortunately, ironically, people benefit from joining. So even though they're joining a racist, sexist, homophobic, you know, untrue organization, there's still benefits.

Summer Rain [02:44:30] And those aren't in the lessons. Right. We don't, they don't go over the racism and the sexism and all that. It's, it's this beautiful message of families being together forever. And if you've lost a family member, you're thinking, I want to be with them again. And it's just, it's a nice message as long as you don't scratch under the surface.

John Dehlin [02:44:51] Yeah.

Nate Byrd [02:44:51] And you know, Darren, you mentioned, you know, how did you get involved in that? You were 15, which is a very impressionable age. You met a group of people that I'm sure were very nice to you when you first, when you first met him. And you know, I guess nowadays the term would be love bombing. Right. But, you know, as a missionary, I was taught to, we were specifically taught and encouraged to go after people who were vulnerable. Like, they didn't call it that. What we called it was in transition. Right. My mission president said the people who are most likely to receive the gospel are people who have gone through a major life change. Whether that was moving, the loss of a loved one, you know, a change in a job, all things like that, things that make people extremely vulnerable. Right. When they're in the middle of a major transition. Those are the people that we were taught to seek out and offer the gospel to. Right. So we would ask questions, leading questions to get people to share things like that with us. Oh, I just had a loved one die, or, you know, I just moved here. I'm new to the area. Right. And those were like our, our golden people that we were sought to or that we were, you know, taught to, to go after. So I don't feel bad about, you know, getting involved with the LDS Church because like, they, they found you at a vulnerable time in your life and they took advantage of that and, you know, it wasn't necessary. You know, that is by definition, is predatory. And I wouldn't say that people are out here with bad intentions, but that's how you get people to join any religion, you know, and same with, with high demand religions and cults. Right. They. They look for people who are vulnerable or who need. Who are trying to fill some type of gap in their lives. And that's why a lot of those testimonies that you hear, conversion stories, they tend to. They tend to deal with the same themes where people are searching for something, they're looking for something, they're trying to fill a hole in their lives, and then the church comes along and it fills that hole.

Darren Smith [02:46:28] You know, you mentioned. You mentioned that on your mission that you were. You were told to seek out the vulnerable. It was just the opposite of my mission. We were told to avoid the vulnerable and that the church needed builders to go after builders. We were trying to track in one particular area that was predominantly African American, and we were told that don't go in that area. The church wants to get builders. Let's get all the builders first.

Nate Byrd [02:46:51] Okay, See, I did get that, too. They told me to only baptize people who would be a strength to the church.

John Dehlin [02:46:57] That's right.

Darren Smith [02:46:57] That's right. That's right. So it was very interesting that the president said to avoid this area. And at the time, I was a. Why avoid that area? Because black people in that area. So we wanted. So the emphasis was on getting, you know, people who could lift the church as opposed to take. Take away the assumption that they would take away from the church.

John Dehlin [02:47:17] Part of what's weird, though, to all this. And Darren, you may vehemently disagree with this, but I. I could see a Mormon, a faithful Mormon, asking you, Darren, how many of your junior high buddies ended up with a PhD at a Division 1 university as faculty? Darren, like, it seems like you turned out pretty good, and part of that's probably because of the church. And you're shaking your head. Summer rain.

Darren Smith [02:47:42] I would not disagree with that, John. I mean, I know what side my bread is buttered on, and I know that the opportunities that have came to me in my life has been because of my association with the church. And I will even go even one step further by telling the story of Elder Christofferson Todd D. Kristofferson, who was actually my stake president when I was in Nashville. I've known this guy for years, and I remember getting off my mission. He called me, like three months before I was getting off my mission. Just called me out of the blue and said, hey, Darren, you're coming home soon. We're looking forward to seeing you back. This is D. Todd Christoffer said, what are your plans when you get back? I want to go back to school. You know, I Went to Rick's. But I have to admit, I wasn't a very good student the first time I was there. I didn't do very well. And my mission really helped me to, you know, get better at studying and learning and so on. So I can't. So I told him I wanted to go back, but I couldn't afford it because I didn't have any money because I pissed away my first. So he told me to come see him when I got home. And so I did. I went home, he went to his house, and we had an interview and all that. Then he. I went to his office. He was a corporate lawyer for Third National Bank. So I remember walking to his office. This man had an enormous office, marble tables and shit. It was nice, big, high.

Speaker E [02:48:56] Wow.

Darren Smith [02:48:57] He said, listen, I want you to go back to school. He said, I'm gonna help you go back to school. You need to go back and finish up your degree and so on. He made arrangements to give me a loan through the bank. I walked downstairs with him. He already had this worked out. I walked downstairs. This man gave me a check for like 8 grand, and that allowed me to go back to school and finish up at BYU Idaho, which was then Rick's college. And of course, the story goes on with what you were saying, John. So I'm not saying that my experiences with Mormonism have been all bad. They have not been all bad. They've been quite positive in many respects, which is very hard for me, to the dissonance that Summer Rain talks about is real. Is real. But I am forever grateful to Todd Christofferson for his generosity, because without him helping me, I never would have. I probably wouldn't went back. I probably would have just done something, found something else to do. So there have been moments like that in my life, not just with Todd D. But with other folks that I've met in the church who've been very, very good people. So there's nothing. I don't have anything wrong. Bad to say about Mormon people in general. What I have problems with is Mormon racism, Mormon racial theology that continues to percolate. I also have problems with LGTBQ plus discrimination that happens in the church. Any kind of discrimination that happens in a place where people are coming to worship and to bring out their best selves in churches where they don't allow various groups to do this. That and the third is deeply problematic. So I want to make clear, I want to be on the record. Mormon people that I know personally are wonderful people, including Elder Todd D. Christofferson, who I consider a friend. But the racism, that's my red zone.

Nate Byrd [02:50:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:50:59] Beautiful. All right, well, I appreciate you sharing that because we try as best we can to cover all sides and to be fair, and that's a beautiful story. So kudos to you, Darren, for sharing it and for D. Todd Christofferson, who's now an apostle, who did something super kind and generous. And I'm sure Summer Rain, you and Nate might have stories of gratitude, too.

Nate Byrd [02:51:21] Absolutely. Lots of amazing generosity and great people within the church. It's just that this particular problem puts such a damper on those experiences because you have to reconcile the hatred that the institution has for you while acknowledging the love that some of the members have.

John Dehlin [02:51:39] You know, it's like an abusive parent. You love your parent, but they're abusive.

Nate Byrd [02:51:42] And I've experienced that as well. You know, it's like my parents kept me alive, but they also left me with a lot of trauma, you know, so that's something I have to deal with and reconcile with as an adult.

Darren Smith [02:51:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:51:51] Okay, well, we got about five more minutes before Nate has to leave, so let's run the last two clips, and then we'll call. We'll call it a day for this episode. The next clip is called J. Reuben Clark on Intermingling.

Speaker E [02:52:06] And in this case, Reuben Clark chose to address missionaries or mission presidents and basically tell them that, look, interracial mingling is wrong. Amalgamation is wrong. And he says something that's fascinating. He says that amalgamation is wrong on both religious and biological grounds. So in other words, it's not just wrong from a scriptural standpoint, he posits, but it's also wrong because we don't want to mix the purity of the bloodlines. And, I mean, this is a hardcore position, which is much different than Spencer Kimball's position, which is, you know, marriage is hard enough. Let's have white people marry white people. Catholics marry Catholics. Middle class marry middle class. That was President Kimball's line because he was following marital prescriptive literature from the 20th century. But J. Reuben Clark's line was different. We've just got to protect the purity of the bloodstreams. And amalgamation would ruin that and obviously curse people from the priesthood.

Darren Smith [02:53:03] Could I add something that John, I don't think the young white women at Ricks College when I attended got that memoir, because when I was there,

Speaker E [02:53:16] you

Darren Smith [02:53:16] know, it was jungle fever. When I was there, you know, they always talk about how. You know, they always talk about how black people are predators, black men are predators, and this and the third, it's the white women at BYU Idaho and BYU Provo who were the predators.

John Dehlin [02:53:32] So white BYU students would come after black men?

Darren Smith [02:53:36] White women would come after black men? Yes, they would come after black man. It wasn't that other way around. It was. It was the. It was what it was. If. If it's kind of Orwellian, right. In the sense that we don't want, you know, amalgamation. Okay, great. Amalgamation. They didn't tell the white women there when I was there because they were coming after me like I was, you know, Denzel Washington or something like that. I mean, it was. It was a. It was a freak show up there. I mean, for real. And so. And I'm sorry.

Summer Rain [02:54:02] That was everywhere. I. That was everywhere, too, though. My dad went to University of Miami, and he was the first.

John Dehlin [02:54:11] 70s, right? 60s and 70s.

Summer Rain [02:54:12] 73. First. Sorry, before 73. But he was one of the first of seven football players to ever. Black football players to ever go to University of Miami. And the white women were just all over it then. Yeah.

Darren Smith [02:54:27] So in the book When Race, Religion and Sport Collide, Blacks at BYU and beyond, that I wrote that. Nobody ever acknowledges, but I wrote it. I talk about that, and I talk about this idea of BYU honor court office officials calling black men predators. And when I talked to the black men at BYU and I said, the ones who went there, the football players. And I said, well, did you have any. Tell me about your dating experiences? They said they got no dates until they started winning games. When they won games, they got had. People coming after them, had to beat them back with a stick. So even though the church, you know, had these thoughts and feelings, like, I think Amber. I mean, I think Summer said it.

Speaker E [02:55:11] Said.

Darren Smith [02:55:11] So you said it, right, Summer. The women were very infatuated by black men, at least the ones that I experienced when I was at Ricks College and at byu. So don't try to blame black men. Hell, blame white women for being attracted to black men. Shit, we can't help it. Y' all coming after us. Ain't the other way around. Talking about, we predators, we want white women. No, dog. You know, white women want black men. That's why y' all doing this.

John Dehlin [02:55:38] White Mormon, White Mormon, White Mormon.

Nate Byrd [02:55:41] Well, I say white women in our experience. Yeah, but, you know, it could be. Could be anywhere. And, you know, it's nothing new. It goes back also to slavery, which pretty much everything racist in America does. It goes back to those times where you had, you know, the owners of slaves, the men and the Women both raping the slaves. Right. You know, and feeling like they had ownership over them. And, you know, that same idea was definitely passed down. I mean, I wouldn't say that that's necessarily the case when it comes to pursuing athletes. I think there could be, you know, like, some financial benefits and stuff like that there. But, yeah, also just like a sexualization overseas sexualization and fetishization of black people and exoticizing.

John Dehlin [02:56:23] Is that also.

Nate Byrd [02:56:23] Yeah, that as well.

Speaker E [02:56:24] Yeah.

Nate Byrd [02:56:26] Yeah. You know, and so a lot of that definitely does happen where, you know, people will go and serve among a certain group of people and then come back and only want to date that type of person. But, yeah, same thing. When I was at byu, I did have some white women aggressively pursue me. And my goal when I was at byu, which is kind of an oxymoron of a goal, but my goal was to only date black women. And so that's what I did. And I remember one time a girl asking me, you know, why I wouldn't go out with her. And I told her, well, actually, I didn't tell her. I told one of my friends and told him not to tell her. And then he went and told her. And so then it was a whole thing. But I remember coming home from class one day, trying to go inside my dorm, and she was laying outside in, you know, the front yard, and she's like, nate, I'm tanning for you. You know, so.

Speaker E [02:57:12] Right.

Nate Byrd [02:57:12] She shouted that to me as I'm walking inside the dorm. So that's just an example of something.

John Dehlin [02:57:16] What year was that? That was the seventh day.

Nate Byrd [02:57:18] 20.

John Dehlin [02:57:19] 1973. Right. 1965.

Darren Smith [02:57:24] You contrast Nate's. What Nate's experience is with, you know, older folk like myself who went through that, too, up there. So I think.

Speaker E [02:57:34] I think.

Darren Smith [02:57:34] But the narrative is. The narrative is that it's, you know, when. When. When the brethren are trying to intervene in this. The narrative is that black men are the predators and they're preying on white women as if white women are, like, mindless in this.

John Dehlin [02:57:47] Yeah. Victims.

Darren Smith [02:57:48] And they're not victims. They're very much participants in it.

John Dehlin [02:57:50] Yeah.

Nate Byrd [02:57:51] Also had a lot of women talk about, like, wanting mixed babies. That was a big thing as well.

Summer Rain [02:57:55] Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that, too.

Darren Smith [02:57:56] Yep. I've heard that.

John Dehlin [02:57:57] Yeah. That's great. I'm glad we covered this. All right, last clip we have before we end is entitled race problems as the affect. As they affect the church

Speaker E [02:58:10] following year. And she said something like, the flowers were not even yet wilted on my husband's grave when this book was published. And so what that means is that Smith sees the opportunity to publish this book when one of his biggest critics had passed. So this is why McConkie went to the swearing elders to defend this book, even though there was a cloud of controversy swirling around it. And so as they started talking about the book and they were being gentle, they were being respectful that a general authority was there. But as they were criticizing some of the ideas, McConkie wanted to weigh in and defend the book, and they allowed him to do it. But they had a rule that nobody could pontificate for more than a few minutes before other people needed to weigh in with their ideas. And when Sterling McMurran, the convener of the meeting, when he told Bruce, he said, bruce, your time is up. McCaughey just ignored him and kept talking. And finally McMurran, he stood up and he pounded his fist on the ground on the desk. And he said, now, damn it, Bruce, sit down. And he yells at him. And it took McMurran yelling at Bruce McConkey to get him to shut up and sit down. And later in life, McMurran would later chuckle about that, you know, telling his grandkids, let me tell you about the time I told the general authority to shut up and sit down. And, you know, he's laughing about it in his later years. But

John Dehlin [02:59:40] this would have been before McConkey was an apostle, is that right?

Speaker E [02:59:43] This would have been in 54. And McConkey wasn't called until the early 70s. Yeah. Okay, so this would have been early 50s, his famous book that will put him on the map in Mormondom. Mormon doctrine would not be published until a few years later in 58.

John Dehlin [02:59:58] Okay, right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker E [03:00:00] So he's unknown at this point in the church. He hasn't really established himself as this great doctrinal authority yet. But that'll come.

Nate Byrd [03:00:07] Do you know what kind of arguments

Darren Smith [03:00:10] he was making in order to support

Nate Byrd [03:00:15] Joseph Feelings Mith's book?

Speaker E [03:00:18] Yeah. So both he and his father in law were scriptural literalists. There was nothing or very little that was allegorical or metaphorical. When. When God said that he created the earth and. Or when the scriptures said that the earth was created in six days, I mean, it meant six days. When the scriptures said that Adam was the first human. Adam was the first human. And the swearing elders, some of the more scientifically inclined of them, including there are a few scientists in the room, including guy named Pack and some others, Frederick Pack. But anyway, when it said 6,000 six days. It meant six days. But Adam being the first man, that didn't leave any room for. For pre Adamites, as they were called, for people who may have existed before 6 or 7,000 years. I mean, cavemen, all of that. I mean, that would have been unknown to them. Neanderthals, unknown to them, didn't care about that.

John Dehlin [03:01:17] And for those who don't know doctrine and Covenants 77, which is scripture to Mormons, basically says that the Earth is 7,000, has a temporal existence of 7,000 years.

Darren Smith [03:01:29] Yeah.

Speaker E [03:01:30] So, yeah, thanks for that. And there's. I mean, John and Gerardo. There's a. I can't emphasize enough. This is the mid 20th century and a lot of universities and frankly, a lot of religions are trying to grapple with modernity that there could be readings of scripture. They're not always literalist. And there. It might be okay to think that you could. You could support this scientific theory called evolution, and it can actually be compatible with Christian teaching that maybe God.

John Dehlin [03:02:02] All right, well, let's go ahead and bring. I was a Darren. Or was it Nate that chose that? That.

Nate Byrd [03:02:07] That was me.

John Dehlin [03:02:08] Okay, do you want to tell us what you. What made you choose that?

Darren Smith [03:02:12] Well, I mean, I think. I think that that talk really sums up. Can you hear me? Okay.

John Dehlin [03:02:18] Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

Darren Smith [03:02:18] Okay. I think. I think that talk really, really kind of sums up a lot of what we've been talking about today. Sort of encapsulates all of the. The fears and, And. And concerns that. That Markey Peterson, African Americans and About the African Americans position in the church. And I think it really speaks volumes to the things that we've talked about today. The problems and concerns, and they all stem around the idea of black miscegenation. And so, yeah, that's kind of. I mean, I think. I can't. I mean, we can talk about it, but I think we've really beat this. Beat this horse.

Speaker E [03:02:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:02:58] And I'll just say, I just want to highlight that, you know, that the church had heroes all along the way, whether it's Lowery Nelson or whether in this case Lowell Bennion or Shirley McMurran who were putting the church on notice that they were in the wrong. And. And in the case of Lil Bennion, they literally fire the guy for. For standing for truth and for being, in effect, actually being a prophetic voice in the church. All right, so this has been an amazing three hours. I'm really super grateful that you all would. Would take the time to share with us your experiences and your Thoughts? Let's give each of you a closing thought. Nate, let's have you go first.

Closing Reflections on Faith and Racial History

Nate Byrd [03:03:40] My closing thoughts. Just, you know, I do want to express that kind of like we talked about earlier, there are a lot of good things about the church, but there are a lot of also, like, glaring issues, like this race issue, like the issue with queer people that kind of overshadow those things because you're denying people their humanity, and you're making up scriptural and doctrinal reasons for that. You're basically telling people that they're not worthy to experience their religion, to be with God because of how they were born. And when you have a fundamental teaching like that, it kind of overshadows any good that you might do, especially when you double down on that. And so, you know, to those who are out there thinking that, you know, we're just criticizing the church or we're just here to hate it, what is it that they say? You know, the people who work the hardest against the church or those who. I don't remember exactly what it is, but, you know, I don't have any hatred for the church, but I do want to see the church be better. And I think, John, that's something you talk about all the time, is that we're not out here to hate or to tear down the church. We just want to see it change. And these are glaring issues that have not been addressed by the church, and they need to be addressed. And if the church is not going to do it, then I'm going to be one of those people that does.

John Dehlin [03:04:46] There needs to be atonement. There needs to be repentance.

Speaker E [03:04:48] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:04:49] And the church needs to follow the steps of repentance to achieve atonement. Darren, you go next.

Darren Smith [03:04:54] No, John, you took the words right

John Dehlin [03:04:55] out of my mouth.

Darren Smith [03:04:56] Exactly what I was going to say. But I was going to also pay homage to all of the truth tellers that you had mentioned earlier. Some of the older cats, but I want to mention some of the more modern ones. Folks like Armand Moss and Paul Reeve and Joanna Brooks and. And Max Miller and my colleague Newell Bringhurst or Margaret Blair. Young, Quincy. Young Quincy Newell. Excuse me. And Darius Gray, his work on this. These are. And all the other ones we mentioned. These are folks who are freedom fighters, who are truth tellers, who are trying to tell the truth about a historical faux pas that should never have happened in the church. I mean, I agree with what Nate said. I echo exactly what I have. No animosity toward the church whatsoever. Actually don't. I would like to see it do better than what it has done in its past. And I don't believe it will change until we change the makeup of the leadership. And the leadership is right now fundamentally conservative. And so that's a problem. But I have no animosity for the church. I still consider myself LDs, although I don't practice, but I still consider myself LDs. And the reasons that I have decided not to practice stem largely from the issues of race and the issues stemming from the issues that affect my queer brothers and sisters in the church as well. So that's why I am abstaining from participating until they decided to do better.

John Dehlin [03:06:25] I love that, Darren. And isn't it crazy that we always forget women like oh black people and oh LGT people and happy of more than half of the church is made up of women.

Nate Byrd [03:06:36] That's an excellent point.

John Dehlin [03:06:37] Who are completely discriminated against. And there's still an afterthought even amongst people that are completely civil rights minded. Right?

Summer Rain [03:06:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:06:46] Yeah.

Nate Byrd [03:06:46] Anyway, thank you for misappointing.

John Dehlin [03:06:49] No, I'm not trying to call you all out. I'm calling myself.

Darren Smith [03:06:52] No, no, that's an important point to make. So I really appreciate you making that because women have also been discriminated against in the church and the US from day one. So, yes, thank you for mentioning.

John Dehlin [03:07:02] And with that segue, Summer Rain, the woman.

Summer Rain [03:07:07] No, I just want to say thank you to you, John. And thank you guys for taking the time to do this. And I'm grateful for everybody that is watching, especially if you are a member, to just kind of say, let's get into the history of things. I do want to say that in this book it shows a kind of cyclical thing happening which I think shows that there is promise in the future for change in the church. When we were talking about the CES educators that were fired before then, the CES educators were very welcomed and their thoughts were very welcomed. And then all of a sudden a new change of guard came into town. Boyd K. Packer and all those guys and they shut everything down. But I always thought about when I was growing up and how President Hinckley, we talked about Hunter, he was a prophet when I was growing up. And Monson and the whole thought and process then was speaking to the media and how people were Christian and just this love your neighbor type of attitude. It's changed a little bit now that Russell M. Nelson is at the helm of the board. It's more if you're not a member, don't listen to what they have to say. But I have hope that, you know, with a new change of guard, that there will be some apologies, there will be some healing of this trauma. And the people that are in the church that want to remain in the church will have a different church, a better church than the ones that we're talking about in this book. And the progress that's been made will continue to be made. So that's my hope and wish.

John Dehlin [03:08:59] Love it. All right. Thanks, Mraine. Thanks, Nate. Thanks, Darren. The book is Second Class Black Mormons and the Struggle for racial equality by Dr. Matt Harris. Please buy this book. The podcast can be again. This podcast can be found on Spotify, on in on Apple Podcasts, and then there's a YouTube playlist on Mormon Stories podcast channel with all of these episodes, including these panels sort of listed in succession. Please check them out as well. And then finally, of course, we are proud to be paying these beautiful people and these wise people for their wisdom and for their sacrifice in sharing with us, educating us white folk on stuff that we should be educating ourselves about. So if you want to support their generosity and Matt Harris, just, you know, a couple hundred people have donated at the most, and tens of thousands of you are joining these series. Please don't make us keep begging. Go to donorbox.org Matt Harris, just donate to this series and we'll use that to support them all. Y' all are awesome. We'll have you back in three or four episodes if you're willing. We'll have you again. Thank you so much for today. Thanks to Julia for all her work, Gerardo Maven, Brooklyn and the whole Open Stories foundation team. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

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