Join us as Matthew Harris returns to discuss Gordon B. Hinckley’s efforts to address lingering racism in the church, the push to remove Bruce R. McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine from shelves, and members’ calls for an apology for the church’s past racism. We also explore Elder Holland’s attempts to rebrand these doctrines as “folklore,” the continuation of racist teachings by BYU professors like Randy Bott, and the creation of the Gospel Topics Essays.
To purchase Matt Harris book Second Class Saints, visit here.
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Guest: Matt Harris
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introducing the Book and Today's Guests
Guest [00:00:00] Hi everyone.
John Dehlin [00:00:00] This is Dr. John Dehlin of Mormon Stories podcast. I want to thank you for joining us today on this epic 17 part series featuring Dr. Matthew Harris and his amazing book, Second Class Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality. This series has been groundbreaking. We've never had the response so far that we've had in terms of people really valuing our in depth coverage. This groundbreaking book that's talking about the Mormon Church's priesthood and temple ban against black people and then the dynamics, the inner workings, the political machinations of how the sausage gets made in terms of lifting the priesthood ban in the aftermath. So we have some good news and bad news about this series. The good news is thanks to the generous donations of those who have been watching it so far, we've been able to, I believe, more than generously compensate Dr. Harris for his contributions. That's the good news. The bad news is, you know, because we made the promise that 100% of the donations would go to Matt, we have not received any compensation for about the $20,000 of production costs that we incurred to produce this series and that that sort of imbalance would make it so we wouldn't be able to produce series like this going forward. So if you value this series, if you want to see the Open Stories foundation also be compensated for its production cost for this series and if you want to see series like this with Matt and with other people continue, we kind of need you to step up and donate to cover our production costs. And it's really easy to do that. All you have to do is go to MormonStories.org donate or go to MormonStories.org and click on the donate button and you can do a one time donation, a recurring donation, and if you want to, you can type Second Class Saints or Matt Harris in the description and that will hopefully allow us to cover our production costs for this epic series. Regardless, we want to thank Dr. Matt Harris for his generosity in doing this series. We want to thank all of you who have supported us. Please go buy this book, Second Class Saints, Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality. And again, if you're wanting, if you're grateful for this series and you haven't donated and you want to see it continue, please please donate to Mormon Stories Podcast. Thanks again to everyone who donated to make this series possible. Thanks to Matt and we hope you enjoy this next episode in the series. Take care. Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is 7-24-2024. And today we're, we are talking about chapter 10 of this amazing book, Second Class Black Mormons and the Struggle for racial equality by Dr. Matthew Harris. We're going to be talking about the Gordon B. Hinckley and the Thomas S. Monson administrations mostly, and how they dealt with the, with the race issue, with the race questions and various historical events that happened during, during those years or decades. And with us to talk about it, we have Matt Harris. Hey, Matt.
Matt Harris [00:03:23] Hey, John.
John Dehlin [00:03:24] This is, I believe this is episode 16 in our series. So we're going to make 17 episodes. That's pretty good.
Matt Harris [00:03:32] Wow, that's, that's amazing. Where did my summer go?
John Dehlin [00:03:37] And I'll say it looks like we have now 10 episodes of the 16 funded, so fully funded. So as long as donors continue contributing, we may even get you fully funded for, for 17 episodes. How would that be?
Matt Harris [00:03:56] Oh, amazing. I appreciate the support.
John Dehlin [00:03:59] I know you're just a professional and that you don't care about that, but, you know, we care about it for you. I'm just being silly. I'm teasing. Okay, so if you want to support this series, hundreds of you have contributed, tens of thousands of you have benefited from these episodes. Just go to donorbox.org Matt. Matt Harris. Just donate what you can. 10, 10 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, thousand bucks, whatever you can afford. We just need the funding for, you know, about seven more episodes. 100% of those donations go to Matt. And most importantly, we were so thrilled to report last week that this book, for at least a time, reached the number one on Amazon for history books, I believe, beating out Jared Diamond's Gunstrooms and Steel. Second in Christianity sandwiched between two versions of the Catholic Bible, and first in Mormonism. So, Matt, you had your moments of fame, your seven minutes of fame or whatever. How was it?
Matt Harris [00:05:03] How long talking to my kids, haven't you. My kids are like, how does it feel to be famous for 30 seconds? Daughter pops up and he says, that's not true. It's 40 seconds. I can always rely on my kids to keep me grounded.
John Dehlin [00:05:20] But in all seriousness, I know we're, we've already talked about this a bit. I, I, I'm guessing Oxford's pretty happy with the sales of sales of this book. They have to be, right?
Guest [00:05:29] Yeah.
Matt Harris [00:05:29] In fact, I just received an email day or two ago that it went out of print right away. It's just record time.
John Dehlin [00:05:37] Wait, how many copies did they print?
Matt Harris [00:05:39] I don't know. I didn't ask them. They didn't volunteer it, but it's out of print. And that's the bad news. The good news, that's good news for I guess, I guess an author because it means that people are buying your work. But the good news is that they're going to have a new shipment early August. So there's still a little bit. I should tell you what that means, out of print. So it means that the warehouse itself is out and they're going to get a new shipment in, in early August. So the first week in August. So it's not really that much of a gap. And but Amazon, what they do is Amazon will buy so many copies from the warehouse and sometimes it's. That's frustrating for independent booksellers because Amazon will swoop in with their big bucks and buy up a massive stock. And then when an independent booksellers like Barnes and Noble or anybody else goes to order more copies, they're out. And so they're out of the warehouse. But Amazon still has some copies left. I don't know how many, but I do know they have a little bit left. But anyway, if anybody wants to order through Benchmark Books or Amazon or anywhere else, you'll be able to to do that without a delay. Really?
John Dehlin [00:06:50] That's nice. Well, I'm just super thrilled. When Gerardo and I were reading this book, we're just like, how do we make, how do we help make this book go out of print? And it sounds like it happened and I'm just. Couldn't be happier. Couldn't happen, in my opinion, to a better historian. So good work, Matt.
Matt Harris [00:07:07] Thank you. I appreciate that.
John Dehlin [00:07:09] All right, well, we've also got today joining us, Gerardo Sumano. Hey, Gerardo.
Gerardo Sumano [00:07:13] Hi, John.
John Dehlin [00:07:14] How you doing?
Matt Harris [00:07:15] I'm doing great. Really excited for this one.
John Dehlin [00:07:17] How'd you like chapter 10?
Matt Harris [00:07:20] It's, it's really good chapter. I think we're really start seeing the ramifications of what the church did for, for many, many years, like the rhetoric that they taught and how the new leadership are going to deal with these issues. Are they going to confront them or are they going to pretend they were never there? That's just really interesting to see what, what happens.
John Dehlin [00:07:42] Yeah. And I would say Gordby Heagley comes out as a mini hero in this chapter, which I think was cool of you to acknowledge. I don't know. Those are my words, not yours, Matt. But we'll talk about it. Julia, thanks for joining us.
Gerardo Sumano [00:07:56] Yeah. Hi.
John Dehlin [00:07:57] It's so great to have you on as always. You do such great Work.
Gerardo Sumano [00:08:00] Thanks.
John Dehlin [00:08:01] All right, Matt, take it away.
Internal Church Tensions Over Racist Teachings in the 1990s
Matt Harris [00:08:04] Well, we left off last hour talking about the 1990s. And in the 90s there were some internal issues going on at BYU with some of the religion faculty wanting to keep Elder McConkie's Mormon doctrine alive. They were perpetuating those teachings, particularly those teachings that were anti black. And then there were some progressive people on campus like Eugene England and Stephen Eppertson, who. And others, but who didn't think that these teachings were good for the church, particularly as the church was trying to proselytize in sub Saharan African countries. So there's a debate there. There's also a thing going on where the brethren in Salt Lake are trying to distance the church from Elder McConkie, but they don't want to repudiate him and his legacy because he is a significant or he was a significant theologian beloved among scores of Latter Day Saints. And so what they did was they started to very subtly denounces work in General Conference sermons and also in some of their writings in which they would say that God didn't have favored lineages. He doesn't play, you know, privilege one group, racial, ethnic, racial or ethnic group over another. And there is nobody who's, you know, superior in God's eyes. So this is the kind of stuff they're doing. And they're implicitly, the key word is implicitly, they're implicitly pushing back against McConkie. And in the meantime, there are black Latter Day Saints who were also pushing back on Elder McConkie's legacy. One of whom we talked about at length in the last episode, guy named David Jackson, this African American convert from Orange County, California, joined the church in 1990. He was in the church for roughly eight years before he and his family dropped out into inactivity because President Hinckley refused to acknowledge the racism, to repudiate it and to retract Mormon doctrine. And that really bothered David Jackson. It made the Washington Post the idea that the church refused to apologize because David Jackson was leading this charge with a couple of members in his area, in his ward in California. Also they got involved, a general authority named Marlon Jensen and the church public relations guy was involved. And they were trying to get President Hinckley and his colleagues to repudiate the church's racial theology in time for the 20 year priesthood revelation anniversary in 1998. So that didn't happen. And the Washington Post got a hold of the story. They leaked it. And anyway, so what we have now is chapter 10, the last chapter in the book where the church is now faced with this juggernaut of criticism against racial teachings. And when the Internet really becomes popular in the early 21st century, it'll blow all of these criticisms up. The brethren will feel the wrath of Latter Day Saints who are angry that the church refuses to come to grips with its past racial teachings. And in that setting, President Hinckley asks a general authority from Canada, a scientist by profession and with a PhD his name is Alexander Morrison. And Elder Morrison will do what President Hinckley asked him to do, which is to acknowledge at the conference that the church has not been racist, that there's never been anything in the church's past. The church has always stood strongly against racism. And Morrison was a good person to give that sermon. This is in 2000. He was a good person to give the sermon because he had spent time in the late 1980s and into the early 90s on church assignment in Sub Saharan Africa. And he wrote two books out of his or from his experiences as a general authority living in Sub Saharan Africa. The first one was called Dawning of a Brighter Day and Visions of Zion. And the thrust of those two books, and also this General Conference sermon that he gave in 2000, and also an Ensign article that he had written the previous month in September, the thrust of all of that was Morrison was trying to get Latter Day Saints to treat black Africans as their equals. And so what he says was, this is really important. Elder Morrison condemned racism broadly, and this is how he defined racism as the abhorrent and morally destructive theory that claims superiority of one person over another by reason of race, color, ethnicity, or cultural background. Those are things that Bruce McConkie and his father in law, Joseph Fielding Smith, have been teaching for decades. There were superior people in God's eyes because of where they lived, where they were from. And Morrison's very gently pushing back on that. But he's tiptoeing around specific teachings taught by Smith, McConkey and others. He doesn't want to embarrass prior church officers. He doesn't want to repute them. And frankly, he doesn't think he has the authority to, because he's a general authority 70. Or remember the first quorum of the 70? And. And of course, Joseph Hilling Smith was a church President and Elder McConkie was a church apostle. So when Elder Morrison said that the church has always stood strongly against racism, of course that wasn't true. The church had a long history of exclusionary practices. And I don't mean just with the priesthood ban and the Temple ban. There were exclusionary practices from having black Latter Day Saints teach Sunday school lessons, or give sermons in their local warden branch meetings, or count church tithes, or the women to serve in the Relief Society or primary presidencies, none of which requires the priesthood. So to suggest that the Church has a long history of standing strong against racism is simply not true. And this is to say nothing about the racist literature that the Improvement Era and the Church's Millennial star in London, England had been publishing throughout the 20th century, just borrowing some of these larger cultural racial tropes. So the Church had been doing this for a long time. But the point of this is that Elder Morrison was asked by President Hinckley to give this talk because they're really feeling the pinch that the Church ought to address racism. In the 1990s, just a handful of years before Elder Morrison gave this seminal address, as we mentioned in the last episode, there were a number of Protestant Christian sects that had gone on record to denounce their prior racial theology. The Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, they had all done it. And now there's this growing movement for the Latter Day Saints to follow suit. And the tactic here, as the 21st century approaches, is to condemn racism more broadly without specifically attributing it to Mormonism's anti black teachings. That's a strategy that President Hinckley and others will do. But as we'll learn throughout this episode today, that strategy backfires when Latter Day Saints continue to talk about black people being cursed and less valiant.
Gerardo Sumano [00:15:51] And we have visuals of these if we want to show them this Ensign article and then his conference talk in 2000.
Matt Harris [00:15:58] Yeah, so this is the talk. It's called no More Strangers. And simply talking about racial equality. That black Latter Day Saints in Sub Saharan Africa, they shouldn't be strangers in the church. We should accept them. Racism is offense against God and tool in the devil's hands, as the sub quote says. There's. And this is just stuff that Elder Morrison had been distilling from his book. In fact, there are chunks of this talk that were lifted from this book in terms of, you know, the content. So the first one's called no More Strangers. That's the, the Ensign article that he published, I think, in, in September of 2000. And then the next one is, it
John Dehlin [00:16:41] says, I think this is a quote from the article.
Matt Harris [00:16:43] Oh, this is a quote. Thank you. This is a quote from the article. And Julia or John, if you guys want to read that, that'd be great.
John Dehlin [00:16:49] Julia.
Gerardo Sumano [00:16:51] So this is Alexander Morrison. He says how grateful I am that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has from its beginning stood strongly against racism and any of its malignant manifestations. President Spencer W. Kimball stated that the church's positions. That the church's positions. Position. Well, we do wish that there would be no racial prejudice. Racial prejudice is of the devil. There is no place for it in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Matt Harris [00:17:16] Thank you. One of the things that's really important about this quote and this talk, this sermon he gives and also the article he published in September 2000 is that, and I will be happily proved wrong on this if somebody wants to correct me, one of your listeners. But in my research, I found that this is the first time ever that a general church officer denounces anti black racism in a church publication or in general conference. And I want to be clear what that means. That Elder Kimball, then Apostle Spencer W. Kimball in the 1950s, gave a sermon about tolerance, racial tolerance. But he's talking about tolerance towards Asians, tolerance towards Hispanic people. But, and I read this sermon very carefully, does not mention black people in 1954. Hubie Brown, who is very sensitive to racial issues, doesn't address specifically black people. N Eldon Tanner, his cousin who was in the first presidency at one point, gave a talk in 1972 on racial issues. Doesn't mention black people. Marion Hanks, who is very sensitive to racial equality, gave a devotional address at BYU in the 1960s. Doesn't mention black people. And so this is the first time a general church officer is going to link racism with his experiences in Sub Saharan Africa. The context is, of course, he's talking about black people. Whereas other church officers who had given addresses on racism never mentioned black people. It was mostly just Asian people, Hispanic people and other groups.
John Dehlin [00:19:02] Yeah.
Matt Harris [00:19:04] And Matt, do we have a sense whether the reason for not mentioning black people before was to not basically get some members upset, specifically maybe in the. In, in the South? Do. Do we know or what. Why was it something that they would try to avoid saying before this date? Well, yeah. And so when Elder Kimball gave his anti racism address, it was in 1954. And if your listeners, if you're curious, it's on YouTube, I think, and you would know it's Spencer Kimball talking because his voice is very pristine. It's very clear. And of course later he gets throat cancer and his voice gets very raspy. And so people who were Alive in the 1970s during his presidency, it's etched in their minds, his raspy voice. But in 1954, when he's given his address, the tape recording I've heard is this is. His voice is different, but it's because of the time. Gerardo. It's. It's the 1950s. And I would speculate that if Kimball were to say in 1954, you know, don't be racist towards black people, I mean, Southern Latter Day Saints would have thrown the book at him. Because, sad to say that in the 1950s, especially in the South, I mean, you know, the racism was. There wasn't a lot of separation in racism between Baptist Southerners, Presbyterian Southerners, and then Mormon Southerners. So racism, anti black racism was fair game in the 1950s, and Kimball just didn't want to touch that also, too. There's always that issue that, you know, giving a sermon about anti black racism and then having, of course, racist policies, and people were already. Critics were already pointing that out to the church. You know, you say you're in favor of civil rights, but how could you be in favor of civil rights if you deny black people the privileges of the priests of the temple? That doesn't make any sense. And then you get critics, too, who also will say that Mormon racial theology doesn't even comport with Mormon doctrine. If you look at second Nephi 26, you know, 33, all are like unto God, or you look at, you know, St. Paul in the Bible, where God is no respecter of persons. I mean, those two beautiful passages of scripture cannot be reconciled with Mormon racial teachings.
John Dehlin [00:21:28] Yeah.
Guest [00:21:28] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:21:32] All right, let's see. So you will come to understand that God have a video clip. Should we play that, Morrison? Yeah, yeah, let's go ahead and. Let's go ahead and just play that really quick just so that we get a sense of. Of what he said. All right, here's the. Here's the clip.
Matt Harris [00:21:57] You will come to understand that God hath made of one blood, all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth. And you will see all men everywhere, every as your brothers and all women as your sisters, with all that implies in terms of sibling responsibility. You will see that he denieth none that come unto him. Black and white, bond and free, male and female, and all are alike unto God.
John Dehlin [00:22:23] And did I hear you right, Matt? That's the first time racism that we know of, that racism's ever been denounced across the General conference pulpit. Is that what she said?
Matt Harris [00:22:34] Let's be clear. Anti black racism.
John Dehlin [00:22:37] Okay.
Matt Harris [00:22:38] There have been other leaders and Eldon Tanner, Hubie Brown, and Spencer Kimball who have given conference sermons Denouncing racism, but, and even mentioning the great groups, but not black people, that is really, really critical. I read those sermons with very critical eyes and I didn't see anything. They called them Negroes in those days. I didn't see anything about, you know, Negroes in their sermons. And it's clear that they're, you know, they're worried about criticism of the ban and their teachings. And so it's, it's just, it's just so tragic. I'm just going to go off script for a moment. It's just so tragic that leaders could recognize racism in so many other groups but leave out African Americans from, you know, the 20th century. The group. I don't want to talk about racism and privilege because there's no question Hispanic, Asian American, I teach history. So the racism is thick. Native Americans, my goodness, indigenous populations, I mean, the racism is thick with all of those different groups. But anyway, but nobody seemed to really address the anti black racism. And because of the church's race teachings, I'm certain that that's one of the reasons why they left black people out when they started to name all of the groups that they would instruct the members to not be racist against.
John Dehlin [00:24:05] Got it. All right, well, what, what next? What should we go?
Gordon Hinckley's Role in Addressing Racial Doctrine
Matt Harris [00:24:10] Well, yeah, let's go. Let's go to President Hinckley because you mentioned at the hour onset here that he's a hero in this story, at least in this chapter. And I, I would agree with that. And when I think your listeners know, if you've made it this far through the episodes, you'll know something about me. And that is, I try to be as fair as I can be and as sensitive as I can be and to the people I write about. And, you know, I try to follow the golden rule when I write, which is that if anybody were to write something about my life, not that they would because I'm not significant, but if they did, I would want them to be fair and, you know, be fair to me, my accomplishments, be fair to my weaknesses and all of that. And that's how I approach this, trying to follow that golden rule. And I didn't start out to, you know, make Gordon Hinckley the hero here, just as I didn't start out to make anybody a villain. I just follow the documentary record and I go where it takes me. And so President Hinckley, in my view, as the church president will recognize he's the first church officer in the modern era to recognize that the church has a huge problem with the black Community. And President Hinckley was colleagues with Ezra Taft Benson for decades. And in the mid-1980s when he was President Benson's counselor in the first presidency, he did a number of things that would that made President Benson angry. I'll just give you one. President Hinckley gave a sermon in conference in 1985. And this is, I guess just a little bit before Benson would have been the church president. But that, but President Hinckley said that it was okay to receive church assistance as long, excuse me, government assistance, as long as you didn't become dependent upon it. Now President Benson being the ultra conservative guy that he was, I mean, that was just something that was not permissible. He had spent his entire ministry, it seems like, railing against the welfare state and government programs. And here you have a high ranking church officer in Gordon hinckley saying in 1985 that it's okay to take government assistance but just don't be dependent upon it. And so they had ideological differences from the get go. And certainly about the Burt Society, certainly about the role of government in the Saints lives, certainly about the extreme rhetoric that Benson and Scousa and others have been, you know, spouting in the church. And so President Hinckley recognized when he became the church president in 1985 that one of the first things he had to do was to make it right with the black community and, you know, decades of conservative Mormons in the leadership, some of the conservative members of the leadership demonizing the civil rights leaders and the naacp. Hinckley thought that was wrong. And so what he did was that he started to. He thought about the ways in which he could make it right with the black community. And I'll talk more about the NAACP in just a moment. But one of the things that Hinckley did from the David Jackson story is he was in complete denial at first about racism in the church. And in 1999, a year after the David Jackson interview, that whole scandal that we talked about last hour when it broke, and the Post reporter said in his initial story that the church was poised to rescind its racist teachings and to apologize for the ban, that wasn't true. But that's the story that broke. And then when President Hinckley and his colleagues got word of it, they issued a sharp retraction. That that's not true. We had no idea what this is about. And then that Larry Stammer of the. Actually I said Washington Post. It was LA Times. I'm sorry, Larry Stammer of the LA Times wrote a retraction saying, you know that's not true. They're not poised to do it after all. And anyway, so it made the church look bad. And year after that interview President Hinckley gave did an interview with Larry Stammer. And he said that there's no racism in the church. That's all behind us. We're not bigoted. President Hinckley said. And when he said that, shortly after he said that Darius Gray, whom we've talked about extensively in my book and also in these episodes, the founding member of the Genesis Group, one of them, Darius Gray, was hearing as the president of the Genesis Group. So he become the president. By the late 1990s, Black Saints from all around the country would call Darius Gray in his capacity as president of the Genesis Group. And they would say that we're dealing with racism in our church and our wards and our branches. What should we do? Our children were told that they were cursed and that they were neutral in the pre existence. We had white members who would pull their children from Sunday school because they didn't want them in the same class as a black child. This is the late 90s. And so Darius Gray is hearing all of this racism and he's deeply bothered by it. He had been telling the brethren behind closed doors, of course, that this is a problem in the church. It's still in our manuals, it's still in our books that we sell at Desert Book. And one of the people whose ear he had was Gordon B. Hinckley. And so Hinckley's listening to Darius Gray tell all of this stuff. And now I'm about to tell you is a is a third hand story. But I've read it in a few places and I don't question the veracity at all. Dryas Gray told me this. He said he was talking to Virginia Pierce, who I think was in the Relief Society general presidency at one point. So Virginia Pierce is Gordon Hinckley's daughter. And Virginia Pierce told Dryas Gray, who told me that one day in the early 21st century, she went to visit her father and her mother just, it was unexpected. Unannounced, she just dropped in. And as she dropped in, Sister Pierce found her father, the church president, pacing his living room floor, flinching in disgust. So it was noticeable that something was wrong with her father. And so she asked him what's going on? And he told her, he said, dryus has told me some things that are very unsettling. And so Darius is telling me this. And what Darius told him was this racism is still very intense. He told the president, I receive about 100 complaints a year about all of this less valiant and cursed stuff. And so, shortly after Darius told the church president about the racism, President Hinckley decided to give a sermon in General Conference, or the priesthood brethren, just before the conference in 2006. And I know we're going to listen to part of it in just a second. But President Hinckley will do something that Alexander Morrison didn't do. President Hinckley will put a personal face to it. When he says, I have been told so. He's using passive voice. I have been told that there are members who use racial slurs. Well, it's Darius Gray who told him. And so when President Hinckley gave that sermon, members of the black community, they wept, they jumped for joy, but they still wanted it to go further because they wanted President Hinckley to address Mormon doctrine. It's probably appropriate now if we want to share President Hinckley's sermon.
John Dehlin [00:32:17] All right, let's roll it.
Guest [00:32:22] I have wondered why there is so much hatred in the world. We're involved in terrible wars with lives lost and many crippling wounds. Coming closer to home, There is so much of jealousy, pride, arrogance and carping criticism. Fathers who rise in anger over small inconsequential things and make wives weep and children fair. Racial strife still lives its ugly head. I am advised that even right here among us, there is some of this I cannot understand how it can be. It seemed to me that we all rejoiced in the night came 1978 revelation given President Kimball. I was there in the temple at the time that that happened. There was no doubt in my mind or in the minds of my associates that what was revealed was the mind and the will of the Lord. Now I am told that racial slurs and denigrating remarks are sometimes heard among us. I remind you that no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ, Nor can he consider himself to be in harmony with the teachings of the Church of Christ. How can any man holding the Melchizedek priest priesthood arrogantly assume that he is eligible for the priesthood, Whereas another who lives a righteous life but whose skin is of a different color is ineligible. Throughout my service as a member of the First Presidency, I have recognized and spoke a number of times on the diversity we see in our society. It is all about us, and we must make an effort to accommodate that diversity. Let us all recognize that each of us is a son or daughter of our Father in heaven, who loves all of his children. Brethren, there is no basis for racial hatred among the priesthood of this church. Church. If any within the sound of my voice is inclined to indulge in this, then let him go before the Lord and ask for forgiveness and be no more involved in such.
John Dehlin [00:35:10] Matt, I just have to say on the one hand, I love that he gave that speech and it's very inspiring when he says, I don't understand how there could be racism amongst our membership. Does that, did that seem odd to you, knowing the history that he lived through?
Matt Harris [00:35:31] Well, I mean, it's a good question. President Hinckley, I've been critical about this publicly before to anybody within earshot when they've heard me speak. I've said this in front of general authorities before who've been at some of my conference sessions, sessions, papers, public addresses I've given over the years. And what I've said is, is that you can say, you know, using racial slurs or this or that is offensive to God and repent. And that's what President Hinckley said. And I applaud that. I think it is inspiring and it was necessary. And I heard this talk in real time. I remember it very well.
Gerardo Sumano [00:36:11] And.
Matt Harris [00:36:14] But what's missing is that President Hinckley did not address the church's racial doctrine that fuels that racism. He didn't address the less valiants. He didn't address the fact that black people are cursed and all the scars that black people have incurred being told that repeatedly. What I've said publicly to people within earshot is that most of the time when people hear a church officer say, don't be a racist, they simply say, well, I'm not a racist. I don't use the N word. I don't use whatever word. But yet they don't recognize that by believing and thinking that a black person's skin is a curse from God, how horribly hurtful and offensive that is, or to be told that they were less valiant or even worse, perhaps a fence sitter in the pre existence and that you as a white person made good choices when they didn't and you got a white body and you were born into a middle class or an affluent home because you made good choices. Whereas somebody, let's say, in, I don't know, some underdeveloped country was born there because of their poor choices in the pre existence. I mean, that's the kind of garbage we're talking about. And so President Hinckley does not put a specificity to it. And so what happens is when the leaders say, don't be racist, in my opinion, it just goes over the heads of the people who need to hear it because they don't know what racism looks like. They don't know that they have these racial attitudes. And I've said this again, and I'll. We'll talk about this in the epilogue, but when we all live through the Black Lives Matter movement, how many of us have friends and neighbors and relatives who said that all lives matter without realizing how deeply offensive that was because it was black people, particularly black men, who were being harmed by police officers, police brutality. It wasn't white people. So when you say that all lives matter, you're just simply saying that black lives, you're callous to and so obviously a form of anti black racism. When you say all lives matter. Well, of course all lives matter. But all lives can't matter until black lives matter, because those are the people being harmed, at least in reference to the Black Lives Matter movement. So that's the issue going on here, is that they, all of that racial doctrine is still out there floating around. But when, when President Hinckley said that he made reference to racial slurs, I think that was his verbiage. And there were a couple of instances just before this talk occurred that Peggy Fletcher Stack of the Selig Tribune wrote about in her stories as a religion writer. And President Hinckley read her columns, and I'm going to quote from one of them that she mentioned. And so this is Peggy Fletcher Stack interviewing an African American woman in Utah who was at the temple. And so the black woman at the temple, and as she was going through the veil, which is a part of the temple ritual, there was a white brother priesthood holder, when he found out that this woman was black. I don't want to say anything more about the temple. It's. It's secret or not secret, but sacred to Mormons. So let's not go into details about that. But as this white brother recognized that there was this black woman that he was going to assist at the temple, he said, quote, I can't believe they have an N woman working in the temple. And, sorry, he was a white member going through the temple and there was a black woman helping. I guess that's the story anyway. I can't believe there's an N woman working the temple. And it's stuff like this that trickles back to President Hinckley. And also at this time, social media is coming of age and black Latter Day Saints John You've had some of them on your show, including one of my good friends, Darren Smith. And so you've had, and others are starting to broadcast the story of racism. And with social media, it's being spread wide and far. And all of this trickles back to President Hinckley. So he's aware of this in 1999 when he said we're not bigoted. He wasn't going to say that in the 21st century because he had heard countless stories from Darius Gray and things he had read and things he had heard from other people that the Saints weren't measuring up. And part of it was racial doctrine that it hadn't been repudiated yet. And so part of it was that the Saints could go to Deseret Book and they could buy any number of general authority books from the, you know, 1940s, 50s and 60s, or even into the 70s. And they could read offensive things about black people. And they could quote them in their conference talk, their, their ward talks, branch talks, or even church lessons, quote them as though it's still fair game because it's a general authority. It's still being sold at the church's bookstore. So this is what's going on. And, and President Hinckley, of course, doesn't want to address specific anti black teachings because. Because he doesn't want to embarrass church officers. And so he's just trying to do what a little bit what Alexander Morrison did, which is condemn racism more broadly and then move on, focus on the church's growth in Sub Saharan Africa and be done with it. The other thing that President Hinckley tries to do is that he forms a friendship with the naacp. So he meets with Janetta Williams, who's the president of the Salt Lake branch of the naacp. This is the national association for the Advancement of Colored People, this high profile and very prominent civil rights group with different branches across the United States. He met with Janetta Williams, the president at the time. When Janetta Williams met with President Hinckley, one of the things that was of concern to the NAACP was that the state was not. Didn't want to call, devote a federal holiday to Martin Luther King. They called it Human Rights Day, which is an affront to this iconic civil rights leader. And so Janetta Williams worked with President Hinckley and she would later go on record that it was because of President Hinckley's leadership. He's the one that got Mormon lawmakers to change their, their minds and support it. And she praised him when he died. In 2008, she said it was his doing. And a little bit of an exaggeration. I've written an article about this. I mean, there were a lot of people, you know, pushing for this change. But no question President Hinckley was significant in helping to make that name change. They honored President Hinckley, the naacp, at their big convention that happened to be in Utah. They gave him a big award. And I've talked about this in a prior episode. Also, President Hinckley talked about when I think Larry King asked him one time on CNN during an interview, is it possible there could be a black LDS president one day, just like there could be a black pope? And Hinckley said, yes. So he's acknowledging these things. Hinckley's the first person to build a temple in Sub Saharan Africa. And so also what Hinckley does is that he not only reaches out and forms friendships with members of the naacp, but he also forms a friendship with the Reverend Cecil Murray of the African Methodist Episcopalian Church in Los Angeles. And some of you might be wondering, you know, what does President Hinckley had to do with this African American preacher, Episcopalian preacher in Los Angeles. And the connection to that is there was a slave in Utah named Biddy Martin. And Biddy Martin lived in Utah for a while. And as I recall the story, Biddy Martin left Utah and ended up in California. And she was one of the founding members, if I remember. One of your listeners may correct me on some of these details if I misremember, but she was one of the founding members of the Methodist Episcopalian Church. And so there was that LDS connection between Biddy Martin, this Utah slave, and Reverend Murray's church. So President Hinckley, they brought Reverend Murray to Utah. And I can't remember the circumstances that he. Which he came to Utah, but he went to byu, met with some faculty and students, and met at church headquarters with some of the church officers, including President Hinckley. And I'm going to read your listeners what I write in my book about this meeting. This is from Reverend Murray's account. He said, as we sat around the conference table, President Hinckley apologized for the role the church had played participating in slavery. He said, I have learned of the background of your church and the founding of your church, and I want to apologize for whatever role the Mormon Church has played, not only there, but it's played in racism in America. I said, this is Reverend Murray. I thank you very much, President Hinckley, for making that statement. It is certainly true that the Mormon church has been a factor in discrimination, but you've done so much good. And now to hear these words, I would certainly say that your hearts are right. One of the backstories to this that I wish I could have written about, it got cut from a prior iteration of the book just because of space constraints, is that when Reverend Murray, who just passed away, by the way, when Reverend Murray gave that. When that became open, that President Hinckley had apologized, the church PR handlers, they were not happy because the idea was that he's apologizing for Mormon racial teachings, he's apologizing for the ban, all of it. And that clearly was not the position of the church. This is. If I can just pause for a quick moment, this is really an interesting discussion. When you get a church president speaking by himself in a private setting and then you. And the feeling is that he said something that doesn't really jive with where the rest of the brethren are. And without going into a lot of detail, it caused some issues at church headquarters because they felt that the perception would be he's apologizing for Mormon racial teachings when the reality was he wasn't. He was simply apologizing. As I read this statement, in two ways. He's apologizing for the role that the church had played in. In early slavery in Utah. So that's the first reference. And the second reference was that President Hinckley had apologized for the role the Mormon Church has played. The Mormon Church would be president, Reverend Murray's words, the role the Mormon Church has played in racism in America. Maybe you could argue that that racism would be the church's racial teachings, but that's not what President Hinckley said. He just kind of kept it vague. And the point is, when they push back on this, that, you know, that's not what he meant. That's not what he meant. It just shows you where they're at in the early 21st century. They're not interested in apologizing, and they're not interested in confronting these very difficult racial teachings.
Gerardo Sumano [00:47:42] Was this private meeting known throughout the membership of the church?
Matt Harris [00:47:46] No. Let me think about that. This private meeting, I mean, there were professors there. Other people had heard this. So this. It wasn't just. It was, as I recall, and I'll stand corrected if it's been a while since I've looked at this material. But there were people in the room. There were BYU professors in the room. So people heard it.
Gerardo Sumano [00:48:04] Okay.
Matt Harris [00:48:05] And so what happened, Julia, is that one of the people who heard it was a professor at BYU who is a close friend with Dry Skray. Name is Margaret Young. And Margaret started to blog about it. In fact, this is where I first heard about it was from, I think, one of Margaret's blogs on an LDS blog site. And so she was friends with Reverend Murray. She had participated in meetings with him and Margaret. And Dryas also produced a film about this time. And it was a film that was. Had a pretty good showing across the United States. It aired in Park City first, I think, in 2008. Anyway, the film was about black Latter Day Saints and how the band had affected them. And it was very respectful towards the church and its racial teachings. It wasn't interested in, you know, exposing anything in some dark, sinister way. I mean, she's a BYU English professor, so she's not going to do that. And Dryas is a very loyal Latter Day Saint. But they wanted to raise awareness about how the church's racial teachings had harmed black Latter Day Saints. And so they. They put. They interviewed Reverend Murray and they put. I think this is the context for this quote that I use in the book is that they interviewed him and then he recounted, you know, what President Hinckley had told him. And they wanted to use it in their film. And of course, they had to get copyright permission for a number of things. And they also wanted to put President Hinckley's 2006 General Conference address in their film, the one that you just showed John and the church handlers, they didn't want to give him permission because they didn't want the people who would view the film to think that President Hinckley was apologizing for the church's race teachings. And Darius and Margaret just said, fine, if you don't want to give us permission, then we'll to use the President Hinckley's president or his general or his priesthood conference sermon. Then we'll just use it through fair use. We'll just do little segments of it. So anyway, they had to, really, there's more to the story here, but I'll just say this, that the church PR team and the dress and Margaret had to compromise in how they told the story about President Hinckley allegedly apologizing for the church's race teachings. And there are things that the PR people wanted them to take out. There are things that they didn't want them to take out. And I might add that some of this has been published, the transcript in dialogue. So this is not all, you know, secret knowledge on my part. A lot of it's been written about by Margaret over the years and blogs. And also the transcript for the film is in dialogue. I think they published it like 2009 or something. So anyway, I went into great detail about a lot of this in my book and it sadly got cut because of space constraints. But anyway, the point is that it wasn't just Darius and other black Latter Day Saints trying to get President Hinckley to come to grips with Mormon racism. It was also Margaret Young, who's a white professor of English at byu. She teams up with, with Dryas. They'd already written three books on the Church and Raised the Desert Book published in the early 21st century. So they've been thinking about these race issues for a long time and they're trying to get the Brethren to understand them. And when they showed a screening of the film, the Brethren had mixed reactions. And one of the segments that they showed the Brethren in Salt Lake that provoked probably the biggest reaction was when they interviewed one of my friends, the late, great Armand Moss. And Armin died a few years ago and he critiqued many of the chapters in my book, which I was very grateful for since he's an expert in race relations. Anyway, they interviewed Armen and Armen talked about growing up in Northern California in the 1950s. And he knew a light skinned black kid in his war, his priesthood group, a deacons quorum I think is what it was. And anyway they learned that this light skinned, very light skinned young man, their friend that the bishop told me couldn't hold the priesthood. And Armin's recounting this as the camera's rolling, he's telling the story and essentially Armin and his other friends, all of whom were white, they couldn't understand because the kid looked just like them. But what they didn't know was that he had somebody in his family tree was thought to have derived from Africa. And so he had African lineage. And so this young boy, just the young boys in the deacons quorum couldn't understand how, you know, one of their friends could be denied the Aaronic priesthood because of this one drop rule. So they really, the general authorities flinched at that one.
Gerardo Sumano [00:53:10] And they know what year that happened
Matt Harris [00:53:13] with the boy would have been. 50s.
Gerardo Sumano [00:53:15] The 50s.
Matt Harris [00:53:16] Yeah. And the general authorities, when they, they showed that segment, it's they, they flinched. And I have to confess, it's, it's startling. I mean, I watched it when it was broadcast and I want to say 2008. And so I remember watching it my home in Colorado and I blenched. Whoa. I mean, I knew the church's teachings, of course, but just to have it be told in such a direct and stark manner, it was amazing, right? And they also interviewed Martin Luther King III, so Dr. King's son. They interviewed a whole range of people. My good friend, New Bringhurst. They interviewed a. A young woman whose account I tell in this book where she. BYU student, this black BYU student, she tells the story that in the film that she returned to her apartment where she lived while she was a student in Provo. And as she walked in the door, her white roommate just stared at her. And this young black woman asked her white roommate, what are you staring at? And the white woman said, I'm just trying to visualize what you'll look like in the celestial kingdom because you'll be white. I won't recognize you, so you'll have to come find me. And of course, you know, this is so deeply, deeply, deeply offensive. And so they're telling stories like this, and you can imagine that the Brethren are just wincing. And they asked him, you know, why are you doing this? And Brother Gray and Sister Young, they're very candid. They said, look, we're trying to raise awareness. Were trying to be part of the solution, not the problem. And so, you know, I think the general authorities knew that their hearts were in the right place, but it was still. I guess the point of my telling you this story today is. The point of this is the Brethren are still trying to reckon with decades of very deeply entrenched teachings. And this film just brings it out right in the open, and it made a number of them uncomfortable.
Church Statements and Elder Holland's Public Comments on Race
Gerardo Sumano [00:55:25] Wow. So this 2004 apology wasn't from Hinckley.
Matt Harris [00:55:28] Wasn't really an apology, not for the ban overall. I mean, I've asked both Darius and Margaret this, both of whom I've interviewed, and, you know, so the. The whole. The fear was that people would hear apology. The fear from the PR people, Church headquarters. The fear was they would hear apology, and they would just think it applied to the band. When I just read it to you, he said President Hinckley apologized for the church's role in slavery in utah in the 19th century and also for their. The church's contribution towards anti black racism. But nowhere did he apologize for the ban of the race teachings, although one could maybe imply that. So that was the big issue. And it's stunning because the church doesn't want to apologize for this.
Gerardo Sumano [00:56:16] And.
Matt Harris [00:56:17] And they don't want Darius and Margaret to put this in their film because they're afraid that People will draw the wrong conclusion.
Gerardo Sumano [00:56:26] Right.
John Dehlin [00:56:29] So we also have just. Just, you know, for history's sake and for fun, we have an Elder Holland quote from that same year, 2006, from the Helen Whitney PBS documentary the Mormons, which I think still probably really stands up and I think was a really important event in mormonism in that mid 2000 time period. I'm old enough to remember it, but I'll go ahead and read it. Elder Holland says in that documentary, we don't pretend that something wasn't taught or practiced, wasn't pursued for whatever reason. But I think we can be unequivocal and we can be declarative in our current literature, in books that we produce, in teachings that go forward, whatever that. Whatever that. From this time forward, from 1978 forward, we can make sure that nothing of that is declared. That may be where we still need to make sure that we're absolutely dutiful, that we put a careful eye of scrutiny on anything from earlier writings and teachings to just to make sure that that's not perpetuated in the present. That's the least, I think, of our current responsibilities on that topic. And that's a great quote from Holland. I don't know that the church totally quickly lived up to that or has fully lived up to it, but it shows that his mind and heart were at least in the right place. When he talked to Helen Whitney. I'm not sure if he would have said something different publicly or if he would have owned up to those comments more publicly. And I'll just say hinckley's statement in 2006 was great. I just didn't see or hear in it any acknowledgement that when he says, I can't believe we're still having racism in the church. Like, he lived through the teachings, the publications, the Bennion Report, like, he lived all through that. He knew about it. So clearly he knew why there was still racism in the church. So I don't know what to make of him saying, I can't understand why there's still racism in the church, when you would think he probably knows full well why. So I don't know exactly how to make sense of that, other than he's compartmentalized or he's just trying to put a good face on things, you know?
Matt Harris [00:58:49] Well, I think you're giving him more credit than I would for recognizing things. I mean, first of all, he wasn't in the quorum of the 12 when the Ben Report came out. And so that came out in 54 and he didn't come into the Quorum, I think, until, what, 61, 62. So he wouldn't have known about the Bennion report, at least at the time.
John Dehlin [00:59:06] Employee, though. Okay, you're saying the Bennion report was a select committee?
Matt Harris [00:59:10] It was a slight committee, but he wasn't an apostle. He wasn't even a general authority then. So he wouldn't have been privy to that. And whether they. He would have known about it in the early 60s when he was ordained an apostle. I mean, I just. I just. I don't know. Yeah, but I would tell you, I'm going to. I don't like to speculate, you know, jump into somebody's mind. But knowing what I know about Gordon Hinckley, which is significant, he was like a lot of other church officers, I think, and that is the church. There were two kind of sort of ways to look at the racism going on after the revelation. One would be that, hey, the band's been lifted. Let's just move forward. Worthy black men and women can go to the temple. They can hold the priesthood and do everything that white people and brown people can do. So all is good there. Let's just move forward. Full steam ahead. Let's work together and build the church in majority black countries where we haven't been able to go, and we'll just put our energies there. Not interested. What Joseph William smith said in 1931 in the Way to Perfection, or Bruce McConkey in 58 with Mormon Doctrine. Not interested. Move forward. That's the first line. And the second line would be, yeah, okay, we probably shouldn't say that black people are cursed publicly, but it's still true. And the church just can't accept that deep doctrine. It's just too, too deep. So you get those two lines of thought. And President Hinckley is the first line that let's move forward. Let's not look back. And whatever issues we've had in the past. That's what he said. Whatever issues we've had in the past with race, they're no more because of the ban being lifted. Clearly, that's not true. As I've the last couple of chapters of my book. I'm talking about the debris in the streets that they had lifted the ban in 1978, and they announced publicly through official declaration number two, that black families and can enjoy the temple and the priesthood and all of that. But they didn't deal with the racial scaffolding, the doctrine that had sustained it. And so members still think that it's fair game to say that black people were cursed. And the, the nomenclature began after 78. It was that God lifted the curse in 1978. And I mean, you know, again, deeply offensive to any black or brown person to ever think that their skirt, their skin color represents a divine curse. But that's what these racially insensitive white members would say, hey, God lifted the curse. What are you worried about? The curse curse has been lifted. And black people would say, you don't get it. There was never a curse on my skin. And so Hinckley's not aware of this. He's just not hearing these things. I mean, the guy President Hinckley grew up in was born in, what was it, 1915 in Salt Lake. He just didn't know black people. He's not around black people. And so I don't. He's just not racially sensitive to these things. That's. That's how I read it. And so he has to have people tell him, look, President, there's stuff going on. You need to know about it. There is racism in the church. In particular. They have a problem with Elder McConkie. They have a problem with the whole less valiant stuff and the curse stuff. They're still being told they're using racial slurs in the temple. And so when he heard all of this stuff, sadly, in 2006, he addressed the racial slurs, but not the anti black doctrine. David Jackson had told him about this. And I made this clear last episode, and I'll say it again, that when David Jackson was pushing for a retraction of Mormon doctrine and its associated teachings, President Hinckley, through his secretary Michael Watson, wrote him back and said, hey, Brother Jackson, what's the problem? You can go to the temple. Brother Jackson wrote him back. And he said, Brother Watson, President Hinckley, you don't get it. I know I can go to the temple. That's not my concern. My concern is, tell me if the church still believes I'm cursed. And the church doesn't want to go on record to David Jackson saying that, no, we don't believe that anymore. And McConkey got it wrong. They just don't want to get into the business of correcting their predecessors. And so they avoid it like the plague. And then as we'll talk about this episode, it's going to come. It's going to boil over in the 21st century where they're going to be forced to. To deal with this. But right now, they're not dealing with it. And so what you See with Elder Holland is Elder Holland the first time that I've ever seen from a major officer. This is in 2006, as you mentioned. This is to Helen Whitney of PBS, a very well respected documentary authority, decided to do a film about the Mormons. And she flew into Salt Lake and she wanted to interview with the church president. She interviewed with Dallin Oaks, an apostle. She interviewed with Marlon Jensen, who was then the church historian. She interviewed with disaffected Latter Day Saints, those of whom had left the church, including Hubie Brown's great grandson. So they wanted to put a really, a sort of a balanced look at church teachings. And of course, the church, they weren't happy that they were interviewing disaffected Mormons. They also interviewed some evangelical people who were somewhat friendly with the church.
Folklore, Priesthood Ban, and Competing Narratives
John Dehlin [01:04:18] Margaret Toscano, that was a fun one,
Matt Harris [01:04:20] interviewed Margaret Toscano, who, professor at the University of Utah, who was excommunicated in 2000 for some of her teachings on feminism and the divine. And so, you know, there were a number of people and Margaret told a very gripping story in her account that, I mean, it moved me. I remember watching it with my wife and, you know, in 2008, and I mean, this is PBS. This is not small fry stuff. This is going to be broadcast throughout the world. And I remember Margaret Toscano telling a really moving story about her mother passing away. And they were preparing, they were. Margaret and her sisters were preparing her mother's body for burial. And in the Mormon tradition, those of you Latter Day Saints who have been, who went through the temple, there are special temple clothing called garments that Mormons wear throughout their life. And when somebody dies, they are to be dressed in their temple clothing, the special clothing that one wears in the temple. And Margaret tells the story of wanting to participate in this sort of last rite to pay homage to their mother as they prepared her body to be buried in dressing her in these, you know, sacred Mormon. The sacred Mormon clothing. And anyway, she was told that she couldn't participate because she had been excommunicated and she wasn't in good standing in the church. And obviously, you know, she was telling the story and she. It's very emotional for her because at this time when she needed to come together with her sisters and to mourn, to mourn the loss of their loved ones, she was turned away. So a lot of really gripping stories like that. And with Elder Holland, I remember watching it and he, he said that he called Mormon racial teachings folklore. And I about fell off my sofa. It's the first time a leader had ever said that publicly. Just a quick pause for a minute. In Holland, Dallin Oaks and Neal Maxwell told the Associated Press in 1988 at the 10 year anniversary of the priesthood revelation, they said something like the reasons for the ban are not known. Sometimes people put reasons to them, but they're not always right. And that was their very delicate and tepid way of saying, you know, the whole reasons we've given in the past, you know, cursed and less valiant. You know, that was just their opinions. That was 1988. They didn't mention the pre existence of the curse in 1988. They just said there are some church leaders have given reasons for the ban and we don't know what those reasons were. Well, the reasons they're talking about is the less valiant the curse stuff. But they don't mention them by name again. They don't want to offend anybody. By 2006, Holland goes out and says it that he said that we don't know much about the less valiant position in the premortal councils. And he said essentially we don't know why black people were stymied from the privilege of holding the priesthood and receiving their temple ordinances. And then he goes on to say that we don't pretend that something wasn't taught or practiced and that wasn't pursued for whatever reason. But I think this is Holland. I think we can be unequivocal and we can be declarative in our current literature, in books that we reproduce, in teachings that go forward, whatever from that time forward, from 1978 forward, we can make sure that nothing of that is declared. That may be where we will still need, let's see, that may be where we still need to make sure that we're absolutely dutiful that we put a careful eye of scrutiny on anything from earlier writings and teachings just to make sure that that's not perpetuated in the present. That's the least, I think of our current responsibilities on the topic. He's talking about the pre existent stuff that McConkey had been teaching.
John Dehlin [01:08:19] And I guess that's the type of candor that is just so refreshing. But it's also the type of stuff the general membership would likely never hear, including with this PBS documentary. First of all, I don't know if that quote made the cut because there was lots of transcript parts of interviews that were included on their website that never actually made the the video release itself.
Matt Harris [01:08:45] I'm pretty sure it made the cut because my memory could be flawed on this. John But I remember, at least in my mind's eye, I remember hearing it in real time in 2008.
John Dehlin [01:08:54] Awesome. That's. That maybe that's true. But I also just want to say that the members generally tend to feel discouraged from watching or listening to anything that's sort of sometimes isn't approved or correlated information. So all I'm saying is it would be nice to hear an apostle use that type of language at a General conference where all the global membership are likely to hear.
Matt Harris [01:09:26] Well, I think there's, there's two things that are instructive here. Holland had been saying this in private to missionaries, when missionaries would ask, you know, does the church still believe that black people are less valiant? No, I mean, this is in private. And I, you know, I can't, I can't emphasize enough how important this is. He's saying it in public now. I wish it would have been General Conference. I wish it would have been an Ensign address or something published in the Ensign. But the fact that it said on pbs, that's pretty, that's pretty. That's second best to General Conference, maybe. And I mean, seriously. Right? And also, too, I haven't interviewed Elder Holland. Elder Holland, if you're listening, I want to interview you. One of the things I would ask Elder Holland is did you just say this just sort of extemporaneously, or did you plan on saying this to Helen Whitney? And what did Boyd Packer say to you afterwards? I mean, seriously though, jokes aside, did the Brethren think about that? Because clearly you're representing an opinion that was not shared by some of your colleagues in the 12th, although you do
Gerardo Sumano [01:10:35] mention that another general authority and then a church spokesman and then the director of the CES all kind of repeat this, that it's, that it's folklore. Did you want to talk about that a little bit?
Matt Harris [01:10:47] Yeah. Yeah. So, boy, this is really, really critical. And talk about memory lane. I mean, I, I, we all live through this. And this is about the time when I, a little before this, when I started to think about, you know, I want to write about the church and race. And so perhaps, you know, I'm listening to this with a different set of eyeballs and maybe most people, because I knew I wanted to write about this, I knew that it needed to be written about. So I'm really paying attention to all of this. And when Holland called it folklore, I thought, wow, that's interesting, because, you know, every single one of his predecessors had always called it doctrine. And now for a high ranking church officer to call it folklore. That's really interesting. And in 2008, I remember thinking, you know, is he leading some kind of effort here where they're going to rebrand and call it folklore, or is he just speaking as a man? All right, I digress. Anyway, he's just speaking for himself. There's no question about it. But he's.
Gerardo Sumano [01:11:54] It's significant.
Matt Harris [01:11:56] He's calling it folklore. And so he's trying to rebrand. And the most critical part of this is he's trying to distance the church from Joseph Finley McConkey and Bruce McConkey or in Joseph Smith and Bruce McConkey who had called it doctrine. So that's what they're doing. They don't want to repudiate them. They're trying to distance the church by calling it folklore. And my good friend Armin Moss first wrote about LDS racial teachings calling it folklore in an article he published in dialogue in 1967. And I told Armin, I said, how could you call it folklore in 1967 when nobody else called it folklore in the church? And he said, simple. If I call it folklore, it's easy, easier to repudiate, because people repudiate folklore, they won't repudiate doctrine. And I said, well, that's pretty clever, Armin, but how did it feel to be a one man wrecking crew? Did you find any support at church headquarters? No, but anyway, that was the strategy. If you can label it something that it's not, it's easier to repudiate. It's the same thing that Lowell Bennion did in 1960 when he quibbled with Sterling McMurran who called it a doctrine to the NAACP. Bennion wrote him a letter in private, said, don't call it doctrine. Merrin wrote him back and said, but it is. Bennion wrote him back and he said, if we call it a practice, it'd be easier to discard. And neither Bennion nor Maass are wrong on that. But the truth is, the Brethren called it doctrine. They taught it as doctrine. They referred to it in private as doctrine, and thus it was doctrine. So Holland's calling it folklore, which is a. It's. It's a. It's. It's an important thing. And just to give your listeners a sense of this moment, Mormon doctrine is still in print. And you know, I love it when people say it's folklore. Really? Conquer wrote a book called Mormon Doctrine.
Gerardo Sumano [01:13:54] Well, I like that you quote Darren Smith's response where he says the new folklore line is bullshit.
Matt Harris [01:14:02] Yeah, I mean, so, so what happens is, is that this whole folklore business, some of the general authorities pick up on it. I quote a couple of them in my book, and they call it folklore. The church PR spokesperson Mark Tuttle said, quote, this is. This folklore is not part of and never was taught as doctrine by the Church. Wow, that's rough. And people like Darren Smith and former BYU anthropology professor David Knowlton and others, they picked up on it and they blogged about it, you know, and said, how could you say it was never doctrine? My goodness. Because people had shared their personal stories on social media saying, you know, I grew up in the church. It was always doctrine. And the Brethren produced books and called it doctrine. And then, of course, Darren Smith, when he read, you know, this new folklore line, that's what he said. He says, this is bs. This is. We know why the band began. It's called racism. And so people like Darren and others are trying to force the Church's hand. And as a scholar, one of the things that kind of caught my eye was that the folklore line, at least for a short period, it caught on. And there are some significant colleagues of mine in Mormon studies, and they produced some important books, and they started to refer to the Church's race teachings as folklore. And I remember telling them, I've told them a couple of them this in conferences and elsewhere. I said, don't refer to it as folklore. That's just an uncomfortable way, or that's just a way to distance yourself from a teaching you don't like. That's not right. Because it wasn't folklore as taught by the Church. It was the doctrine of the Church. And it was also a policy and a practice, as I've mentioned in previous episodes. So anyway, some scholars in Mormon studies have called it folklore folk doctrine. And, you know, it's such a silly word, folk doctrine. What does that even mean? And so call it folklore. Then you can do two things. You can distance yourself from an uncomfortable teaching, and B, you can avoid criticizing Elder McConkie and President Smith. That's what the Brethren are trying to do. Here's something that's really interesting, though, as the Church is trying to rebrand. The rebranding does not catch on because BYU faculty that we'll talk about in a minute are still calling it doctrine. And a scholar, a very good scholar of Mormon studies named Jana Reese, who's been doing some wonderful quantitative work over the years, she produced a survey in 2016, and I quote this in my book, it says that 30, 37 of Mormon men and 36% of Mormon women were confident that the band was inspired of God. I mean, think about what that means. That 37% of Mormon men and 36% of Mormon women say that the ban was inspired by God. And here you have Elder Holland calling it folklore. So, you know, the folklore is inspired by God. That's another way of putting it. So, you know, the rebranding of stuff is not catching on. And, you know, the church is really trying to come to grips in the 21st century with the criticism that they're receiving over their past teachings and also trying to figure out how to make sense of it so that they don't sully the memory of prior apostles.
Gerardo Sumano [01:17:28] Right.
John Dehlin [01:17:31] Love it. Should we. Where should we go next? Should we. Do you want. Did. So did you complete the story about how Mormon doctrine was removed from print?
Matt Harris [01:17:42] Well, we haven't gotten there quite yet. Yeah, let's wait off on that. Just a few minutes. Okay.
BYU Devotional Address and Pre-Mortal Racial Theology
John Dehlin [01:17:48] First, where do you want to go next?
Gerardo Sumano [01:17:49] We go to Terry Ball.
John Dehlin [01:17:50] Okay.
Matt Harris [01:17:51] Yeah. Terry Ball. So Terry Ball is a religion professor at BYU. He had been teaching since there. Since 1992. And in 2008, the same time, the church is going through this rebranding mode with Elder Holland calling it folklore, that Terry ball, who by 2008 was the religion dean at BYU, and he gave an address and a devotional assembly address at BYU that I didn't hear in real time, but I read about it almost as soon as it came out. One of my friends who heard it at BYU shared it with me, and he said, you know, I can't believe what I just heard today. And he sent me the link to it. So I heard it after. So it should have been whatever, a week or two after Ball had given it. And my friend called my attention to this and what was noteworthy about this address.
Gerardo Sumano [01:18:52] We do have clips from it, too. Do you want to.
Matt Harris [01:18:54] Yeah, let me. Let me set it up just. Just for a second. But what is noteworthy about this address is 2 or 3 or 4 sentences or lines that he says in the address that caught my friend's attention. And I know, Julia, you said that. We have a clip that we want to share.
John Dehlin [01:19:12] All right, I'll go ahead and run it now.
Gerardo Sumano [01:19:18] Have you ever wondered why you were born, where and when you were born, why you were not born 500 years ago in some primitive aboriginal culture, in some isolated corner of the world? Is the timing and placing of your birth capricious for Latter Day Saints? The answer is no. Fundamental to our faith is the understanding that before we came to this earth, we lived in a premortal existence with a loving heavenly Father. We further understand that in that premortal state we had agency and that we grew and developed as we used that agency. Some, as Abraham learned, became noble and great ones. We believe that when it came time for us to experience mortality, a loving heavenly Father who knows each of us well, sent us to earth at the time and place and circumstances that would best help us reach our divine potential and help him maximize his harvest of redeemed souls. So some of you are fitches and cummin. You were born and raised in tight knit and supportive communities and you are a vital and contributing part of that community. Others of you are wheat. You have been placed in exceptionally fertile and promising places because God, who knows your special potential, is counting on you to produce so much. Some of you are barley and rye. You have been placed in some difficult circumstances, perhaps having to face handicaps and hardships. But God knows you. He knows your needs and your hearts and your abilities. And he knows you can reach your divine potential even in the face of great trials. Perhaps it's the very trials that will help you reach your potential. Perhaps he allows you to face those trials so you can help others reach theirs as well.
John Dehlin [01:20:59] Man Oof. That one is hard for me to hear.
Matt Harris [01:21:04] Foreign it's hard because of the, the theology that's behind it. Maybe if somebody didn't know the theology, the past theology in particular, it might not be as jarring to the ears. Possibly. But when he says, have you ever wondered why you were not born 500 years ago in some primitive aboriginal culture in some isolated corner of the world? Is the timing and placing of our birth capricious? For Latter Day Saints, the answer is no. There's a whole host of problems with this. And what he's saying is that God privileges or punishes you based on your premortal existence. If you were born in some isolated country that's replete with poverty and hardship and tragedy and warfare, it's because you did something in the pre existence to warrant that. If you were born in a home of privilege where you didn't have to worry about a meal and you had food security and homestead housing security, and you could afford piano lessons or basketball, the traveling basketball team, whatever, it's because you did something right in the pre existence. Now, I want to be clear. He didn't say anything about race. He didn't say, you know, you're black or brown because of your conduct in the premortal existence. But that's the line, he's going. And he's referring back to a question and answer format that two general authorities had used back in the 60s. So Ball said, have you ever wondered why you were not born 500 years ago in some primitive aboriginal culture in some isolated corner of the world? And that is very similar language to Joseph Fielding Smith, who speculated that there is a reason why one man is born black with other disadvantages while another is born white with great advantages. It's because of their premortal conduct. Another general authority is and also First Presidency counselor Alvin R. Dyer. He asked, why is it that you are white and not colored? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Who had anything to do with you being born into the church and not being born a Chinese or a Hindu or a Negro? Is God such an unjust person that he would make you white and free and make a Negro cursed under the cursing of Cain that he should not hold the priesthood of God? Close quote. So, I mean, he's. He's recalling these. Ball is recalling these uncomfortable flashbacks to these premortal teachings of these deceased general authorities, not recognizing at all how deeply offensive it could be to people who were born in impoverished countries or who are black or brown and who can make the connection that he seems to want to make.
Gerardo Sumano [01:24:08] Right?
Matt Harris [01:24:09] So people in the Church are picking up on this. Liberals are picking up on it. And one of the liberals we talked about last hour was Eugene England and how he got into trouble with the Brethren because he went after Bruce McConkie when Elder McConkie died. And one of the things that England had been pressing the Church to do for a very long time is that he wanted the Church to quit associating skin color with sin or skin color with privilege if you were white. He quoted in one of his writings from the late 90s, Eugene England quoted the late Dr. King. He said that the church leaders need to not worry about skin color and focus on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. But the idea was that the Church was still emphasizing that if you were white skinned, you did something in the pre existence to merit that white skin. And if you had black or brown skin, you had done something to earn God's disfavor. Even Armand Moss, my friend, wrote this very, very influential and seminal piece in 2004 in which he complained about this Mormon teaching of divinely disfavored lineages, as Armand put it. And he implored the Brethren to cast off the curse of Cain. Those are his words. This is 2004 and so Arman and Eugene England and other liberals were just emphatic that the church move away from this stuff. You get people like Darren Smith, who taught at BYU for a while, taught Mormon kids and he got tired of hearing that, you know, black skin was something, a result of premortal conduct. There is a great quote from Jesse Stott, a student in Utah in the early 21st century. He said that nothing hurt him more than when white Latter Day Saints called him a fence sitter. He'd rather be called the N word, he said. And anyway, it just goes on and on and on that black and brown people in the church are feeling this stigma that they have to defend their skin color because of something they had allegedly done in their pre mortal life. And these teachings are still out there and Latter Day Saints still think that they're acceptable to teach.
Gerardo Sumano [01:26:29] Wow. Yeah. That story with Jesse Stott where he says he'd rather hear the N word than be called a fence sitter, like that kind of surprised me. But if you're a deeply believing Mormon, you don't want to, you don't want to think that you didn't pick Christ in the pre existence or that you sinned in some way.
Matt Harris [01:26:45] So yeah, it's, you know. Once again I love Eugene Orr, one of the charting charter, founding charter members of the Genesis group. But Eugene or told APostle Hinckley In 1971, Apostle Hinckley, Gordon Hinckley was the apostolic advisor to the Genesis group. He told Apostle Hinckley, he said, you know, how is it that, you know, meaning the general authorities, how is it that, you know, we've been less valiant when we black folk don't know this? And, and I love Eugene Orr because he cut right to the chase. And he also said that that isn't this sort of incompatible with the gospel, that we're to be judged for our own sins and not for Adam's transgressions? How is that possible? Isn't it possible that if we did make a mistake in the pre existence, if we concede that argument, isn't it possible that we could repent and move on and the ban didn't allow you to repent? If you did do something in the pre existence, it didn't allow you to repent? And so the leaders have been told about the difficulty of this theology for a long time, but it had never been retracted. And so what you see is Terry Ball. I'm sure I don't know him personally, I'm sure he's a good person. I have no Doubt about that. But what you see is people still teaching these things, thinking that they're okay to teach. And we also see this the same, like a month later we see this on KBYU tv. If we want to talk about that for a moment, you guys. KBYU TV had been publishing a roundtable discussion of the church's standard works. So they would invite BYU religion scholars to hold a. They would tape the BYU religion teachers talking about the, the Bible or the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants or the Pearl of Great Price, whatever was up in the rotation that year. So they made a series of tapings and then they would broadcast them on KBYU tv, where people like me in Colorado or anywhere else, if you got kbyu, you could watch it. And I heard about this. This is when I was already interested in these kinds of things, knowing that I wanted to write about them. So I heard that Abraham chapter two was coming up in the queue and they called it priesthood restriction through the ages. And I thought, this, this is 2008. I thought, this ought to be interesting. I'm gonna tune in. And so I decided to tune in. We get KBYU where we live. And I tuned in and I saw a whole bunch of professors that were there. I put them in my footnote. But the discussion leaders were Joseph Fielding McConkie, Elder McConkie's son, Professor of Religion at BYU, and also his fellow co leader Robert Millet, who was a significant voice on the religion faculty. He was also a one time religion dean. And so they led the discussion with their colleagues. Andrew Skinner was part of the panel. One of my old teachers at byu, a woman named Camille Frank Olson was one of the participants. And they had filmed this. I want to be clear about this. They had filmed this in the late 90s. And I'm watching it being rebroadcast in 2008. And so they didn't film it right then and there. It had already been filmed, you know, a decade earlier. But it was just sort of going through the cycle. And I remember watching it and I was just absolutely stunned that in particular McConkie and Millet were defending Mormon racial teachings. They said a number of things about the Book of Abraham in the ban. They obviously use the Book of Abraham, chapters one and two as a proof text to defend the ban, which is what the Brethren had been doing for decades. So they were talking about, you know, the premortal existence theology that the church had always taught. They had talked about chosen lineages, that God had favored lineages, or as I write in My book, Racial Hierarchies, that God had favored races in this hierarchy of his. And then they said, quote, they felt very comfortable, those are their words, very comfortable believing that the band began with Joseph Smith. And we know now today, of course, and we've known for years that it began with Brigham Young. And they didn't identify or address any of the black priesthood brethren who held, you know, church callings or they didn't talk about Joseph Ball becoming a branch president in Boston, none of that stuff. And so they're just sort of defending all of the traditional stuff. And what was really interesting about
Race in LDS Scripture and the Book of Abraham
Gerardo Sumano [01:31:45] when
Matt Harris [01:31:45] that was broadcast in 2008, it's about the same time that Dryas Gray and Margaret Young's film came out talking about how racial teachings, the church's racial teachings have harmed black and biracial members. And I'm not kidding, I saw both of them within a week apart and the contrasts were astonishing. Also, also In June of 28, 2008, there was a big celebration about the priesthood revelation anniversary. So it would have been the 20 year anniversary. And the same time that, that the brethren are, you know, feeling the heat from not reputing the racial teachings. The church had sponsored a, a concert series in the tabernacle and they had Alex Boyer sing. It was a, it was a diverse multiracial group of singers. And I remember watching that too. And it was beautiful, the music was beautiful. And the whole idea was, you know, they were sending this message of racial harmony and brotherhood and sisterhood. So it was beautiful. And the very next day I'm watching on KBYU TV the priesthood restriction through the ages talking about black people being cursed and less valiant. I mean, you couldn't have drawn a starker contrast. And the fact that KBYU TV allowed that to run even though it had been taped 10 years earlier. I mean, astonishing to me that people didn't know where the winds were blowing. And so as is as Latter Day Saints are want to do, they complain, including me, and made our voices known. How could you be doing this? This is so deeply offensive. And Margaret Young complained and I called up my friend Michael Quinn, the late Michael Quinn, I said, what did you think about this? And the word he used was astonishing. I mean, Mike was always just in my opinion, very diplomatic and straightforward, but that's what he said, astonishing. And Margaret Young said it was, she called it awful. And so they complained. And then after about a week later, I went to watch it again. This is when it was. You could find them on the KBYU web page. I don't know if it's still there. They may have been taken down by now, I'm not sure. But anyway, I looked on the BYU webpage and all of the Pearl of Great Price ones that they had taped were there, except for that one. And so I called and I said, I'm just, I'm looking for this one called Priesthood Restrictions for the Ages. Do you know where it is? And I hear this, you know, long pause, like, great, should I tell them? And anyway, well, it got taken down. They said, well, why? I'm playing stupid. Why? Well, we don't know why. Oh, B.S. i know. You know why? Because people like me and Margaret Young and Mike Quinn and others complain that's why they took it off the air. But they didn't want to acknowledge that. So it just quietly disappeared.
Gerardo Sumano [01:35:08] So what does that mean that somebody at K. BYU allowed that to run even though it was filmed 10 years before? Like
Matt Harris [01:35:16] I wouldn't, you know, honestly, you guys, the way I think and people can disagree with me, that's fine. There's nothing sinister behind this. It's, it's, it's really, I mean, in terms of, oh, we're racist, we're going to play this racist film. There's none of that. I mean, I don't know that for sure. I don't know the KBYU producers who make these decisions. I would just chalk it up to ignorance. I mean, they have no idea that this is not a good thing to teach on the churches or the university's TV station and by extension the church. I mean, they just don't know where the winds are blowing. Yeah, and so they're racially insensitive for sure. But we're starting to get mixed messages. That's what I wanted to emphasize. We're getting mixed messages. We're getting this horribly racist episode on KBYU and it's being broadcast at the same time the church is promoting racial harmony and brotherhood at the 20 year anniversary of the revelation. And I mean, they're not on the same page. People are just not on the same page. Yeah, I'm convinced that Terry Ball wouldn't have said what he said if he knew that he would get the blowback that he did from. From that address.
Gerardo Sumano [01:36:25] Oh, yeah.
John Dehlin [01:36:25] Do you wanna. Matt, did you want to just review the section in your book? Did you already cover this or do you feel like you want to just cover this really quick?
Matt Harris [01:36:36] Yeah, no, I read that a minute ago and that's the part you're so wearing. John is from my book.
John Dehlin [01:36:42] Okay.
Matt Harris [01:36:43] From Alvin Dyer and Joseph Feeling Smith, who talked about, you know, you're black because you made bad decisions in the pre existence and that's kind of the format that Ball was following without even recognizing how racially insensitive all this is.
Gerardo Sumano [01:36:56] Can I just, can I just add something else too? Because you made me like, you're making me think about things. So, like, people often ask if Mormons are Christian or if members of the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints are Christian. And there's a couple of things where I think they're not or in some ways they aren't. And when I, when you think of like blood atonement, where there's sins that you can commit that Christ atonement doesn't cover, that's one that I would say is not very Christian. The second anointing, where you can, you can get blessed and then pretty much you're saved no matter what you do. And then. But this idea that black, the people, black individuals, sin in the pre existence and Christ's atonement didn't cover these sins for being on the fence or just not picking Christ's side, that's very unchristian. And so I just, I'm just processing that. That's just. This whole thing is so unchristian.
Matt Harris [01:37:42] Yeah, I would, I would not say that Mormons are not Christian. That's not an argument I would ever make. I would say that certainly that there are tenants of the faith that. And you just put your finger on a couple of three of them, Julia. Certainly those appear to be terribly unchristian. And one of the reasons, there are a number of reasons why they're unchristian, but one would be theologically be difficult because if you believe in blood atonement, that simply means that God's atonement is not infinite.
Gerardo Sumano [01:38:08] Right, right, right.
Matt Harris [01:38:10] The Church teaches that today. But if you say that, ah, there's a couple of ways where God's or Jesus's sacrifice didn't really cover this sin and that sin then now makes it finite, that's just not good theology. So. But the church is definitely Christian. I mean, they've always talked about Christ. They've always believed that. One, to make the celestial kingdom, you have to be cleansed of your sins through the blood of Jesus.
Gerardo Sumano [01:38:33] So I'm, I didn't mean to say that they weren't Christian. I just, I just hadn't added this one thing onto this little tiny list of things that the Mormons, the church has believed in the past that is not Christian.
John Dehlin [01:38:44] I, I would I. I would just use language, maybe something like beliefs that are not mainstream, you know, in the Christian mainstream.
Gerardo Sumano [01:38:53] Right.
Matt Harris [01:38:53] I think that's a fair way to
John Dehlin [01:38:55] identity, maybe just go, you know, prevailing belief or doctrine, you know.
Gerardo Sumano [01:39:02] Right. Yeah.
Matt Harris [01:39:03] One of my. One of my old teachers is a Catholic scholar, and she writes frequently on. On Catholic history, Catholic theology. And I mean, if she were to hear this conversation, she would say, oh, let's talk about the Catholics and all of the things that they taught over the years that were not really Christian, maybe. But John, you put a nice point to it. It's obviously, it's just. I mean, a lot of religions teach things that are on the margins and. And then they end up repeating those teachings. So Mormons are no different.
John Dehlin [01:39:36] Yeah.
Mormon Doctrine and Efforts to Remove Racist Texts
Matt Harris [01:39:38] All right, so let's take the Mormon doctrine.
John Dehlin [01:39:42] Okay. Mormon doctrine.
Matt Harris [01:39:43] Yeah. So. So been taking the. We've been at this for a while now, and we basically covered the first 10 years of the 21st century, and we've been stuck on 2008 with the KBYU address, with Terry Ball's address that he gave, and with the Margaret Young Darius Gray film being released. So those three critical moments in 2008, also around that same time, Elder Holland trying to rebrand by calling it folklore. So all of this, the racial teachings are in flux, and there are Latter Day Saints who are trying to push back and trying to get the church to come to grips with everything. And in my opinion, there are two major things that happen in the first decade or so of the 21st century or where the lid gets blown open on all of this, and that is the retraction of Mormon doctrine in 2010. And the church will release a very important statement called Race and the Priesthood as part of their Gospel topics essays in 2013. And both Mormon doctrine being removed from print and the Race and the Priesthood essay, I think need to be paired together, because it was. Those are the last vestiges after decades of really protests from a lot of black Latter Day Saints, but white Latter Day Saints and brown Latter Day Saints as well, pushing back the church to own the racial theology that they had once taught, to apologize, to repudiate it, and to move in a different direction. And Mormon doctrine has a very interesting curiosity. A number of people, beginning with David Jackson in earnest, but also Darius Gray and others, they had been lobbying the Brethren with various degrees of intensity for a long time to get rid of this very anti black book. And President Hinckley, as I write in my book, was the holdup. He didn't want to get rid of Mormon doctrine, even though he didn't like the book. In fact, I'm told secondhand, that from somebody at church headquarters, that President Hinckley said that Mormon doctrine left us a pile of poop in the street, and we're still cleaning it up. And what he meant by that, of course, is Elder McConkey's Dead. The book's still in print and didn't want to repudiate it because it would offend the McConkey family. It might force members to question why. Why is this seminal book out of print? What's wrong with it? Because a lot of the Latter Day Saints don't believe the stuff in Mormon doctrine. And they've been tiptoeing around McConkie for a long time with Alexander Morrison's sermon that we talked about earlier, President Hinckley's 26th Priesthood Conference Sermon we talked about earlier. So they're dancing around it. Nobody wants to confront it head on because they don't want to embarrass a predecessor. So this all comes to a head in 2010 when, when there are historians like me at the Mormon History association conference in 29, the year before, they circulate a document and they want to send it to the Desert Book Corporation saying, this is wrong. Remove this book. They send letters and call Corey Maxwell, who is the late elder Neal A. Maxwell's son, who works at the Deseret Book Book Corporation, and they tell him, this is not right. Get rid of it. They contact Sherry Dew, who is a significant executive at the Deseret Book Corporation. And one of the people who contacted Sherry Dew is a very close friend of mine. I'm going to be seeing him very soon. As I go to Utah, I'll go hiking with him. LDS attorney Sterling Adams. And Sterling, there he is in his late lovely yellow shirt. There's Sherry Dew, the Deseret News officer, and Sterling Adams. When he sent this letter to me, he said, matt, I know you write about these things. You got to see this letter I just wrote to Sherry Dew and Henry B. Eyring of the governing First Presidency. And also Mark, I think Wiles is, how you say his name, Mark Wiles, chairman of the board of Desert Book. So Sterling sent a letter that I'll quote to you in a moment. He sent it to Sherry Dew, Mark Wiles on the. Who's on the board of Desert Book, and also Henry B. Eyring and of the First Presidency. And so the letter said that this is what Sterling said to Sherry Dew. I am writing to express my Concern with the role Desert Book has in distributing negative teachings about people, People, dark skin, and they're placed before God and within our church. That's Sterling's words. And then I write, Adams cataloged a number of egregious statements for Mormon doctrine to make his point and told DO that it was, quote, unethical for any book publisher, much less the church, to propagate them. In 2009. Close quote. And I remember when Sterling sent this to me, emailed it to me, and I wrote him back, you know, Sterling, you little devil, this is the late great civil rights leader John Lewis. You know, what did he call it? Good trouble. And this is definitely Congressman Lewis's definition of good trouble. Is Sterling Adams trying to make it right and get this book removed from print? I have a story that deals with my experience with this. And in 2013, so three years after they removed it, so they removed it in 2010, I interviewed with Michael Otterson of the church's, head of the church's public relations department, and very nice and gracious man. And I remember meeting with him. He'd read everything I'd ever written. It seemed like he knew exactly who I was, what I'd written. He knew I was a scholar. He knew I was a liberal scholar of Mormon teachings, meaning that, you know, I just, I write and go where the evidence takes me. I'm not into apologetics or faith promoting things, nor am I critic. So he understood what I. Where I was coming from. And so one of the things, in the course of our very lengthy conversation, I asked him about Sherry Dew or, excuse me, Mormon doctrine. And I, I read to him what, what the Deseret Book Corporation said to the Sully Tribune when the Tribune asked, why did you take this book out of prayer? Print. And Gail Holiday, the managing director of marketing at Desert Book, said, quote, that Low Sells was the reason for the book's demise. Low Sells. So I told Brother Otterson, I said, brother Utterson, he said, call me Mike. Okay, Brother Utterson. And I don't know, I like to call people brothers and sisters. That's who we are in the human family. Anyway, so I told Mike, I said, I said, I read that quote. And he said, he put his hands over his eyes and he said very seriously, I can't believe we said that. Oh, wow. And I said to him, I said, look, I'm not here to beat you up or the church or. It's not what I do. I don't. Okay, fine. I get it. I know the politics. I know there's a public relations thing going on here. You can't just take something out because it's a best seller, because that's what it was. It's a bestseller. I want to be clear about this. It is a best selling book in 2010. It is not because of low sales, in spite of what the person said. And so I told Brother Artisan, I said, look, you know and I know both know that's not true and I'm not here to beat you up. But what I want to get is a more accurate statement of why it went out of print and I will write it. And I mean, I know that's bold because I don't speak for the church, but I said, I'll write it and I'll send you a copy and can you approve it? Because I was at the time I was writing something, something else. And I said, I need a statement about why it went out of print. I can't say because of low cells, because that's not true. And he said, that sounds reasonable. Why do you think it went out of print? And one of the reasons there's a lot to this story, but one of the reasons was I said, because the material is just simply dated and just doesn't need to be reprinted. It was published in the 1950s. It bore the values of the church and Elder McConkey in the 1950s. And it's just simply not right, right to continue to do this in the 21st century. Oh yeah, that's good, he tells me. He said, okay, that's a good plan, but it will need to be. It'll need to go up the chain to the quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the First Presidency and it'll take probably 60 days. And I said, mike, I've got all the time in the world. So that's how it was left. I would go back to Colorado, I would write up short, 2, 3 paragraph statement talking about that the Mormon doctrine no longer aligned with the Church's values and current teachings and it was just sort of outdated and that's why it went out of print. He said, that's fine. And so I went back, wrote the statement, sent it to him, and sure enough, man, he was spot on. 60 days later, I get a response from him and he said, he said that the Brethren approved it, the quorum of the 12 and the First Presidency approved the statement. And you can use the statement if why it went out of print. That's awesome, Matt. And, and so, but the backstory of course is, is that there are so many people complaining. Black Latter Day Saints, white Latter Day Saints, brown Latter Day Saints. It was just simply untenable to give, you know, sermons like President Hinckley saying that, hey, we're not racist, don't be racist, but you're circulating this terribly offensive RA racist book. Those two just didn't align. And I don't know, more of the backstory question that I would ask Sherry do if I was able to interview her. And Sherry do, if you're listening, I want to interview you too. Maybe you and Elder Holland in the same room. But anyway, I reached out to Sherry Dew on at least three occasions and just doesn't want to interview with scholars. And I can respect this. I'm just making jokes, of course, but I can see why, you know, she wouldn't want to go on record and talk because, you know, she has the trust of the brethren and, you know, doesn't want to probably be dishonest and, you know, saying something to me that she shouldn't say, let's say. So I get it. I'm not offended that she doesn't want to talk about these things. But anyway, so that's. They. They remove it from print. And the. This is in 2010, and this is just, by the way, about what, a year, year and a half after President Hinckley died. I told you earlier he was the hold up. Now that he's gone, they took it out of print. One of the questions I'd ask us to do is, you know, did you remove it out of print unilaterally or did other folks higher up give you the green light to do this? And I don't know the answer to that. I don't know how much autonomy she has. But I suspect because it deals with this seminal best selling book and because it deals with this v very respected church apostle. I suspect she had to go higher up and to get approval from some of the brethren to remove this iconic book from print.
Gerardo Sumano [01:51:36] Can I ask. So there's other books in circulation, I think, still or at this time in 2010, the answers to Gospel Questions and Doctrines of Salvation by Joseph Fielding Smith were efforts made to remove those books from print?
Matt Harris [01:51:50] Yeah. I am so happy you asked that question, Julia, because it's an important one. And I remember, you know, my interview with my lengthy interview with Mike Otterson, we talked about Mormon doctrine quite a bit because that's where my focus was because frankly, that's the most significant book advancing Mormon racial teachings. But I asked Mike Otterson, I said, mike, what about Doctrines of Salvation that is still in print and in, I think the late 1990s Desert Book had decided to take those four volumes and to put them in one big, thick volume. So in a new reprinting, they combined all four volumes into one. And I said, what about Doctrines of Salvation? I mean, the stuff that, that Joseph William Smith said about race and all of that is just, no, it's not good. And he looked at me and he said, you know, you were not the first person to, to say that. And I said, I'm well aware. Yeah. Anyway, I don't ever reveal confidences, but I, I was thinking to myself, I bet we're talking to the same people. And so anyway, he said, you're not the first person to say that, but that book also ought to go. And, and then he said something about this is a real decision for us at the church leadership level. I said, what's that? And he said, well, you're right, it's got racist teachings in it that we shouldn't circulate. But he said, what about 90% of the other book, rest of the book, where it's not racist and it's just, they're good commentaries on church teachings.
Gerardo Sumano [01:53:35] It's just a little bit bad.
Matt Harris [01:53:38] He said, are we supposed to put an errata sheet in the, you know, introduction where it says, hey, chapters, you know, 1 through 20 are really good, but chapters 20 through 24, forget about those. I mean, I don't mean to make light that this is a dilemma. You know, what do you do? Do you throw the baby out with the bath water? And of course, you know, I'm just pretty easy going on these things. I looked him in the eyes and I said, mike, these are offensive racist passages. Do what is right and let the consequences follow. That's what I said. Coded the old primary song to him. So, you know, there's nothing redeemable about things that advance anti black racism or any racism. And the Saints can get their, their teachings and their doctrinal points from other books that general authorities write that are more current.
Gerardo Sumano [01:54:30] Right.
Matt Harris [01:54:30] But it's just not good enough to circulate a book that's frankly full of racism.
Changes to Book of Mormon Chapter Headings
Gerardo Sumano [01:54:36] I also, like, I was really interested when you talked about the headings, the chapter headings, and it was just clicking to me because, like, Bruce R. McConkie wrote the chapter headings for the Book of Mormon and during the same period of time, I'm Pretty sure in 2010, they're trying to rewrite these McConkie headings so that they're not as racist. Can you talk a little bit about. About that?
Matt Harris [01:54:56] Yeah, yeah. So we've talked about in a previous episode that, that President Kimball was worried about the church's white centered theology. You know, that the curse that everybody was white, the theory went, not just Mormons are not the only ones who taught this. I just want to be fair. But the idea from Protestants and Mormons back in the day, in the 19th century, everybody was white. God cursed some of them with black and brown skin because they did some bad things. Protestants were saying this about indigenous populations as well. Again, not just Mormons. So everybody's white, they got cursed. And then if they found the light of Christ, repented of their sins, got baptized, had their sins purged, their light skin would. Or their dark skin would turn white again. And as I've noted in previous episodes, Mormon leaders couldn't determine when that whiteness would occur. Would it occur in mortality or would it occur her in the resurrection? And a minute ago, I referenced something that happened in 2007, 2008, with the black BYU student going home to her white roommate, saying, you know, I just can't visualize you white in the hereafter. That's where this theology is coming from. And. And so President Hinckley or President Kimball recognized in 1981, because he had been asked about it by a journalist, John Dart at the LA Times, he wanted to move away from it. And so they changed the Scriptures with McConkey, Monson and Packer, along with a handful of BYU professors. They went through and cross referenced a whole bunch of verses and they changed white and delights him to pure and delights him to sort of move away from that white centered theology. The purity would represent, you know, your, your soul rather than your skin color. And then Elder McConkey wrote the chapter headings that I used, the standard works that I used on my mission and throughout my adult years. And so those chapter headings were offensive. They talked about skins of blackness, they talked about other racial tropes. And in 2008, Julia, to your question, with that context, in 2008, Doubleday, I think it's Doubleday, big commercial publishing house in the United States, they contacted President Hinckley and they said, hey, we want to publish a version of the Book of Mormon. And we think that we can sell it and make money and we can put a nice little cover on it and. But we need your permission, obviously. And of course, I don't have. I'm not privy to how they initially responded and, you know, all of that, but I know that they thought that this would be an excellent missionary opportunity to promote the Book of Mormon. If you have this, this Doubleday commercial press doing it, they have a massive international reach. And so the church said, yes, you can, you can do this. And they recognized that those chapter headings that Elder McConkie had written in 1981, they needed to be changed because they needed to be racially inclusive for the church that it was trying to become. And so they went through the headings before they gave the manuscript to Double Day to publish. They went through the headings and they softened all of those racial teachings that McConkey had put in, including the Skins of Blackness. And of course, I noticed it when I read a story from the Salt Tribune about it. And they interviewed a very wonderful Book of Mormon scholar named Grant Hardy, who's done some great work in the Book of Mormon over the years, professor of Religious Studies and History at University of North Carolina. Also they, they interviewed Royal Skousen, who's done some good work with the Book of Mormon and its original texts. And so they interviewed Scousen and Grant Hardy and they both recognized that the, the edition that Doubleday had published was conspicuously missing some of the offensive racial headings that McConkie had put in. And according to Hardy and Skousen, this was a way for the church to move forward from those racist teachings. So they're not, they're not, they know that there's stuff going on and they're sensitive to it, and they made the changes accordingly.
John Dehlin [01:59:24] And it's, it's worth noting that, that, you know, the Salt Lake Tribune covered this, these changes in October 20th of 2010. The headline is Church removes racial references in Book of Mormon heading. So it even, even made the news.
Matt Harris [01:59:46] Yeah, yeah. Let me, Can I add something to that, John, that happened to me recently? A couple of weeks ago, I was, I gave a talk at Benchmark Books and a book talk. And so Benchmark Books is in Salt Lake City for those of you not in that area. And there's a sold out crowd. It was standing room only. It was just, it just tells me, you know, how much of an interest there is in this topic. And one of my friends in the room asked a question about the Book of Mormon and the racial passages. And I thought I was being so clever by trying to avoid the question. And then I gave him whatever response I gave. And the next person who shot right up was Sandra Tanner. And Sandra Tanner is a great, great, great, great granddaughter of Brigham Young. And she and her late Husband Gerald became critics of the church and felt that God had called them to talk about the contradictions in Mormon theology and history. And just off the record here for a moment, Sandra Tanner is one of the nicest people I've ever met. And she goes to the Mormon History Association Conference, and Mormon scholars enjoy talking with her. She just has such a delightful sense of humor and such a delightful demeanor about her. Anyway, so Sandra raised her question next. And I'm thinking to myself, oh, great. So Sandra, you know, basically asked the same question, question in a different way. And I responded to Sandra by saying, you. You picked up on it, that I didn't really answer his question. Now, didn't you, Sandra, you know, she's in her early 80s now. She's like, you're darn right I picked up on it. I'm not gonna let you weasel out of this. And the question was, is, you know, what would you instruct the Brethren to do about the racialized verses in the Book of Mormon? And I had to say, well, first of all, I don't instruct anybody on anything except my kids and my students at the university. But I said, if I control the levers of power for one day and anybody cared what I thought, I would simply tell them that, you know, you obviously can't start removing some of the racialized verses from the Book of Mormon. You just can't go through with your redaction pen and start crossing things out. That could be really difficult.
Church Response to a Racist Statement by a Leader
Gerardo Sumano [02:02:10] Right?
Matt Harris [02:02:11] But what you would do. And I told Sandra this, and I told the rest of the audience this. I said, what. What you ought to do if I were to, heaven forbid, cancel the brother. And I would simply say, acknowledge that the way that people had interpreted these verses over the years, they did it through a deeply racist lens. And they. In that the way that the church. Church leaders over the years had interpreted was deeply offensive to black and brown people. Telling them that there is a racial fluidity, that if they were righteous, their dark skin would magically disappear. I mean, that's what they did. And what's important for some of your listeners, if you've studied English literature, you may know anything about or something about reception history. What's important is not just the way the early Brethren had interpreted these verses, but what's important is how successive generations of Latter Day Saints read the verses themselves and created meaning. That's reception history. How do they receive it and how do they add to the meaning and the reception and so explain those things and then just simply say that we don't interpret skins of blackness today like they once did in 1856 with Bram Young and now how should they interpret skins of blackness today? You're guess is as good as mine. I'm not a theologian. That's for them to figure out. But that's how I would instruct them to do it. Acknowledge the racist hermeneutics behind it for so many decades, own it and just simply say, hey, we're in the modern era, we don't do that anymore. But I don't think it's tenable to go through with a knife and start whacking off passages of the Book of Mormon. This is not Thomas Jefferson's Book of Mormon Bible where you just pick and choose the stuff you want. Yeah. So that's what the Reverend Harris would say to anybody who cared to listen.
Gerardo Sumano [02:04:06] That's good advice.
Matt Harris [02:04:09] But we hear that often, don't we? Right. We hear that often about the racism is still there. So yeah, I hear it all the time and that's what I would say.
John Dehlin [02:04:18] It's true.
Matt Harris [02:04:19] Well, and it's clear that the, the ones that are struggling the most to grapple with this are LDS apologists who are trying to figure out how to respond to the criticisms and the Church is not giving a lot of guidance from, from the top, so. Well said. Well, should we move to, to the last segment maybe of our time in talking about Randy Bot and the race and Randy Bot. Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:04:52] Here's a photo for those who want to see what Randy look looks or looked like.
Matt Harris [02:04:58] So Randy Bot is or was a, a 40 year veteran of the church education system. He taught for the church's seminaries and institutes for the first part of his career and then he moved over to the BYU Religion department where he spent the I think the latter third of his career, which is where he retired from in 2012, as we'll get to right now. And Randy Bot, quite frankly was from the old school. He was a diligent follower of Joseph Fielding smith and Elder McConkie. He also had read church apologetic books on the priesthood band particularly book from a guy named John Lund who published a book in 1967 defending the church's rationales for the ban. And I, I want to add that what the following, what I'm about to say about Bot is sensitive and I'm sensitive to it. And I tried interviewing him on at least two or three occasions and I, I just, he didn't want to talk to me, which is understandable because of what you're going to hear Next. So in 2012. Jason Horowitz of the Washington Post. I did interview Horowitz, and Horowitz was he went to Provo, to byu, to interview a faculty member in the religion department about the church's race teachings or excuse me, I'm sorry about the church in general. I misspoke. Not the race teachings, but just the church's teachings in general and theology. And the context is Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. So he wanted to write about Governor Romney running for the presidency in 2012. And your listeners might recall that Governor Romney tried in 2008, didn't get the nomination. Barack Obama did. And so he tried to. Not Barack Obama, I'm sorry, John McCain did. And so Mitt Romney got the nomination in 2012. And this is a pretty important story because Mormons have not fared well in presidential politics. Mitt's father, George Romney, whom we've talked about previous episodes, he tried to run and didn't fare well. The race issue was tied around his neck and he couldn't escape it. That's the words the brethren used, the race issue tied around his neck. And there are other. Benson tried to run and didn't get very far. But so the church couldn't really do much in presidential politics because of the ban. Really, it was the race issue more than anything, even more than polygamy. And so Mitt Romney is running and he's attractive, he's well educated, he's wealthy, he's well spoken. And the brethren think that there's a good chance that Mitt Romney could win this thing. And they're worried. And they're worried that the media, especially in the age of the Internet, that they're going to hound the church and its PR people about 2 things. These are the things they're worried about the most. One would be polygamy, and the other one would be race and the priesthood. And so Jason Horowitz went to BYU to get just sort of a greater background on Mormon teachings. And he knocked on several doors in the religion faculty, the various faculty whose doors he knocked on opened the door and he said, hey, I'm Jason Horwitz of the Washington Post. I'd like to interview in preparation for a story I'm doing about Mitt Romney. And they very wisely said no to Horowitz. You're not cleared. There's a process that we're supposed to follow with the administration before we speak to the media, at least in an official capacity. And you didn't go through the right process. And so I can't speak to you. So Horowitz just didn't give up, kept knocking on doors. And I don't know how many doors he knocked on when the faculty told him no. But when he got to Randy Bot store, Bot opened it up and said, sure, come on in. And I'm certain that, you know, Bot would regret this. So Bot knew that he was supposed to get approval, but he didn't follow protocol. I'm not sure why. It's one of the questions I would have asked him. And so he, Horowitz, told him why he was there. I just want to ask you teachings about questions about Mormon race or not racial Mormon teachings in general. And so he did, and they had a nice conversation. And part of the general questions about Mormon theology dealt with race and priesthood. So that was not his focus. He was not there to play gotcha politics. That wasn't it at all. But that did come up. And Horowitz said that Bot was gracious in his responses. He was likable. He was charming. He was. He was all of that. And then Horowitz said that at a certain point in our talk, these are Horowitz's words when I interviewed him. At a certain point in our talk, I asked about the ban on blacks. And while he, Bot was at first somewhat reluctant, he eventually delved into the issue. It's really interesting how he put it that Bot was at first reluctant. And that tells me that Bot knew that this could be an issue, that it was. It could be tough. Well, so this is what I write in my book. Horowitz listened intently as Bot spoke candidly about divine curses, biblical counterfeiters, and preferred lineages. Bott informed Horowitz that black people couldn't hold the priesthood because they weren't ready to emphasize the point. Bott said that, quote, God has always been discriminatory. That's the exact quote that David O. McKay had once given that God had always been discriminatory, but then compared black men to little children, explained that ordaining them to the priesthood before 1978 was akin to, quote, a young child prematurely asking for the keys to her father's car. In other words, my words. Bott stressed that black men weren't ready to hold the priesthood any more than a child was ready to drive, but also asserted that black people were better off without the priesthood because they weren't prepared for it spiritually or emotionally. If they had the priesthood and abused their authority, he reasoned, God would have punished them. A merciful God had actually, quote, protected them from the lowest Rungs of hell, close quote. And I asked Horowitz, I said, what did you think when he was telling you all this? Horace said, oh, I knew I had
Guest [02:11:49] a story,
Matt Harris [02:11:52] and I. I just. I wanted to find Horitz. He's a good dude, and he, you know, he's just doing his job. Right, right. He wasn't there to play Gotcha. But when. When. When Bot was. When he got started, Bot didn't stop, and he just kept going about all of this stuff. And how could Bot say this? And the answer, I think is Bot had been indoctrinated with this stuff for decades. It had never been repudiated. And even though he knew it could be controversial, this is the same guy, by the way, back in the late 90s, who circulated that CES letter talking about black people being representatives of Satan. I mean, you know, he was never, ever sensitive when it came to racial things. And so when. When he got talking, he just talked as though all of this was just normal and standard because it had never been repudiated by the church. And so Jason Horowitz published the story. And even though his story wasn't all about what Bot said about the church's race teachings, I mean, it was. It was there. And as a historian, when I read this, I. I was. I cringed for a number of reasons. One would be that you're comparing grown black men to little children. Are you serious? This is the same thing that. That white Southerners had said after the American Civil War, when black people wanted their freedom, they wanted the right to vote. Vote and marry who they wanted to marry and own businesses, own property. And white Southerners said that black people are like children. They can't be trusted with this. And that's a sort of. It's part of a lost cause myth of history, as we say in the history profession. And Bot was unconsciously echoing these racist tropes from the late 19th century and comparing grown men to little children. And one of the biggest tropes from the early 20th century, when white Southerners taught this, was that black people had children. They're not ready for freedom. They'll abuse it. And of course, the line is, if you're not ready for freedom, you're better off being enslaved.
Gerardo Sumano [02:13:59] Well, and it's not just children. He's saying little girls because it says the keys to her father's car. I just thought that was interesting.
Matt Harris [02:14:06] Yeah, that's a good, good catch, Julia. That's really good. So. So I went into Mike Otterson, back to that interview again. I told You. It was lengthy. We covered a lot. And I asked Otterson, I said, you know, tell me about Randy Bot. I want to be serious here because I take this seriously, that Bot was harmed by all of this. And so I said to, I said, when the story broke, the Washington Post story broke, recounting the interview with Bot. I mean, what did you do as the head of the church's public relations? How did it affect you? What did you do? He said, oh, we were already on high alert because we were worried about what the media might ask about polygamy and the race issue. But this is now coming from a BYU religion professor. And we, we knew, we meaning the Brethren and his bosses, we knew that we had to produce a statement right away to denounce it. This is during Mitt Romney's election when there was a darn good chance the Brethren thought he might get elected. So they wanted to sort of, you know, mitigate any damage control. They needed to get a statement out asap. And I asked him, I said, did you have the authority to produce that on your own? He. He said, with lower sort of things we do, we can just produce a statement circulated from the PR team and we don't need really approval. And sometimes we get approval from our apostolic advisors. There's like, I think two of them and they can just sign off on something, but something as big as this, it has to go all the way up to the top. And so we, and they have a system that they do this. They have, you know, Mike Otterson has the brother and they each of their numbers on speed dial. You can call them anytime time. The Brethren recognized that if they get a call at Saturday night at, you know, 10pm it's, they're not just calling to do mundane business. This is something that's an emergency. That's how it works. And so they knew they needed to get this out and get in front of it right away. And so they produced not one, but two public relations statements in which they denounce Randy Bought by name. In one of the statements, a BYU professor. The statement says, I, I, you know, I just, just everybody pause for a moment and listen or consider what this means.
John Dehlin [02:16:36] Should we read, should we read the statement, Matt?
Matt Harris [02:16:39] Yeah, let's read it. Then I'll conclude my thought. That'd be great.
John Dehlin [02:16:42] All right, I'll just go and read it, if that's okay.
Official Church Statement on Race and the Priesthood
Matt Harris [02:16:45] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:16:46] This is February 29, 2012. This is from the church, LDS Church's newsroom. It's titled Church Statement Regarding Washington Post Article on Race and the Church. And it says. The Church issued the following statement today in response to news media requests. The positions attributed to BYU professor Randy Bot in a recent Washington Post article absolutely do not represent the teachings and doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. BYU faculty members do not speak for the Church. It is unfortunate that the Church was not given a chance to respond to what others said. The Church's position is clear. We believe all people are God's children and are equal in his eyes and in the Church. We do not tolerate racism in any form. For a time in the Church, there was a restriction on the priesthood for male members of African descent. It is not known precisely why, how or when this restriction began in the Church, but what is clear is that it ended decades ago. Some have attempted to explain the reason for this restriction, but these attempts should be viewed as speculation and opinion, not doctrine. The Church is not bound by speculation or opinions given with limited understanding. We condemn racism, including any and all past racism by individuals both inside and outside the Church. And Matt, I'll just add that it's your book that helps us understand and put this statement into context, because we know about 1949 and the first presidency statement signed by the first presidency. We know about. What was it? The 1969 first presidency statement drafted but never formally released. We know about, you know, all the other. The book, Mormon Doctrine and of course. And of course, one of my favorite books of all time, the Way to Perfection by Joseph Billing Smith. We know kind of more about the story.
Guest [02:18:52] Yeah.
Matt Harris [02:18:52] The context that is that, you know, Randy Bott is an astute follower of the Church's teachings. He knows about the 49 statement. He knows about the 69 statement. He's read Joseph Fielding Smith and the Way to Perfection. He's read Mormon Doctrine and as I mentioned, he's. He's read John Lund's apologetic book on the band. So he's very familiar with the standard talking points. And so, I mean, again, I haven't interviewed him, but when it broke the next day and. Or when the story broke and then they re. The brethren, repudiated him in these PR releases. You know, a lot of people were just saying, oh, that's just the PR newsroom. They're going rogue and they're, they're doing this and, you know, they were defending Bot. And it's one of the reasons why I asked Bot, or excuse me, Otterson, the process, you know, what was the process? It said, oh, this went all the way up to the top of the food chain. So it wasn't the church's PR people. They did this with the full approval of the First Presidency of the Quorum of the twelve Apostles. They didn't even think that their apostolic advisors should be the ones to sign off on this. It had to go all the way up to the top because the context is so important. Again, Mitt Romney is running and this is the Washington Post that has millions of readers. And so they want to put it out there that the church is not racist. And I misspoke a minute ago. I said that they didn't include Bot's name and they did, as you just showed, John. So they call Randy Bot by name and just want people to consider what this means for a moment. This is a guy who gets paid by the church to teach in a department called Church History and Doctrine that presumes that he knows the doctrine. And I know at some one point I read somewhere that one of Bot's colleagues said that he went rogue. And he didn't go rogue. You don't go rogue teaching in the Church History doctrine department, in the religion. On the religion faculty at byu. You don't go rogue. You just don't do that. You'd get fired. They could fire you so quickly without even batting an eye.
Gerardo Sumano [02:20:56] And he.
Matt Harris [02:20:57] So I'm defending Bot in the sense that he thinks that what he's teaching is still appropriate. Clearly, he's racially insensitive. Clearly he's not seeing where the winds are blowing, what Gordon Hinckley's been doing with the black community and what Jeff Holland's trying to do to distance the church from these teachings by calling them folklore. I mean, he's insensitive and he's just tone deaf, if you will. But these teachings have not been repudiated, and therefore he thinks it's fair game. I interviewed Jason Horowitz, as I mentioned, and Horowitz told me I'm going to read what he told me. So I get it right, he said. I received dozens of messages after the story's publication from African American Mormons, but also white Mormons expressing relief and appreciation for prompting the church to address the ban. I write a lot of stories about a lot of topics, and it is rare to get a response like that. So this has hit a nerve. In 2013, there is a growing and loud chorus on social media who are furious that this could go on, that Bot could do this and that the church wouldn't repudiate this stuff. Because if the church had repudiated the race, the cursed and Less valiant and favored lineage doctrines and all of that. He wouldn't have done it. He wouldn't have done it. Going rogue would mean that they've denounced it publicly and in writing, and you still teach it anyway. That's not what happened. He did not go rogue. He was just following all the protocols that the Church had put in place with these teachings, even though he clearly was missing the point that the Church was trying to move away from these teachings very subtly. And anyway, so Bot is. He's in a tough position because the Church has repudiated him by name. And I don't. To my knowledge, this has never, ever been done before. And we've had people in the religion department be reputed before. Bruce McConkey did it to two people. He did it to George Pace, as we've mentioned in a previous episode, did it to Eugene England, the English professor. But those were in front of BYU faculty and students. This is now published to the world. And so this takes it to another whole level with Randy Bott being reputed by the church, as opposed to just one apostle doing it at byu, where the outsiders don't know what's going on. So Bot is on the hot seat and his colleagues criticize him. I mean, they're in full damage control. Even Terry Ball says, quote, the comments attributed to Professor Bott do not reflect the teachings in this classroom, in the classroom at byu. Even Ball said that. And I remember giving a talk at Sunstone symposia years ago and just probably after this happened, I think, and I was talking about this story a little bit and talking about some other things that deal with this subject. And I finished my remarks, and there's this woman in the third row. She was looking and just staring at me the whole time. Very, very. Just like I couldn't read her. I didn't know if the stare was what it was about, but clearly if something was on her mind. And I finished my remarks, and she was the first one to rush up to me, and she said, my name is so. And so. My husband teaches on the faculty at the religion department at byu. And I want you to know that not everyone teaches it the way that Bot teaches it. And I told this woman, I said, I have no doubt that what you're saying is true. I have no doubt that your good husband does not teach these racist things because he's of a different generation. So Bots from the old school. He's older, and I'm not here. I don't want to pick on older, you know, people. But. But But Bot is just not racially sensitive like this. This woman's husband is. And anyway, so his colleagues beat up on him even in the religion department. Colleagues across campus criticize him on social media. And Bot immediately produces a statement in which he says he was misquoted. And I wanted him to be misquoted so badly for his sake. And the problem with that is, is that Jason Horowitz taped the entire thing. It was. He was not misquoted. Bot had also been saying that to his students in his religion classes at byu and they affirmed that he had taught similar things almost even verbatim from his interview with the Post. And finally, Bot was a popular speaker on the church's Know your Religion series. This is a church sponsored program where BYU religion faculty and others who work for the church in CES and otherwise, where they travel around to Utah and Idaho and California and Oregon and Washington and places with a significant LDS population. They travel around and they give talks or kind of sermons on particular gospel topics that people might be interested in. And for example, one of the most popular sermons of the Know youw Religion series was one called Joseph Smith the Prophet that the BYU religion professor Truman Matson gave. And it was so popular that they made tapes out of them. He gave them on the Know youw Religion series. And he also gave them BYU Education Week, which is just a. It's a weekly gather. It's a gathering every summer on the campus of BYU where Latter Day Saints fly in from around the world to receive training on theological topics, from topics to how to manage your church finances, to, you know, what do you do if you have a child who left the church? And, you know, all of that. So it's a whole range of different topics. Well, Bot had been talking about his views on race to the Know your Religion series. And interestingly enough, I had. He was already on my radar at this point before the Post interview. And so I went on his webpage and I found his. Some of the comments that he'd made during his know your Religion presentations. And he said almost word for word on his know your Religion pages is what he said to, to Randy or to Jason Horowitz. So unfortunately he wasn't misquoted. And after, in April of that year, Mormon Apostle Todd Christofferson addressed in General Conference how doctrine is received in the church. And he gave a bunch of interesting things. He said that the doctrinal exposition of the church comes through the combined Council, the First Presidency in the Quorum of the Twelve. And then he talks about, we have
Gerardo Sumano [02:28:00] Clips from this as well.
Matt Harris [02:28:02] Okay. Yeah. And then. Well, let me just finish this comment here. Then he talks about the council deliberations of their leaders. And anyway, BOT had followed all of the protocols that Elder Christofferson outlines in this sermon. And the upshot of all of this is, of course, is that the brethren had never repudiated the things that bottom taught. Yeah, if you want to show Elder Christofferson's conference address, that'd be great.
John Dehlin [02:28:30] All right, here we go.
Matt Harris [02:28:34] The president of the church may announce or interpret doctrines based on revelation to him. Doctrinal exposition may also come through the Combined Council of the First Presidency in Quorum of the Twelve of Apostles. Council deliberations will often include a weighing of canonized scriptures, the teachings of church leaders, and past practice. But in the end, just as in the New Testament Church, the objective is not simply consensus among council members, but revelation from God. It is a process involving both reason and faith for obtaining the mind and will of the Lord. At the same time, it should be remembered that not every statement made by a church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. It is commonly understood in the church that a statement made by one leader on a single occasion often represents a personal, though well considered opinion not meant to be official or binding for the whole church.
First Presidency Statement and Gospel Topics Essays
John Dehlin [02:29:45] Well, I certainly have opinions about that statement, but I want to hear yours first, Matt.
Matt Harris [02:29:52] So this is an important sermon, not just because the timing of it, it occurred just a couple of months after the BoT interview or debacle broke. It's an important sermon because it's. It's the first time that I can think of where in the modern era where an LDS apostle acknowledges that the doctrine is now part of the provenance of the quorum of the 12. And so just a quick, big picture view of all of this. In the 19th century, if Brigham Young were giving. Were to give a sermon in General Conference, he would often say, you know, this is the doctrine of the Church, Thus saith the Lord. And Brigham Young, being the authoritarian leader that he was, he would never think that he had to get the quorum of the 12's approval for the doctrine. That's just not what they did in those days. And that wasn't Brigham Young's personality. And if some of your listeners who may be astute followers of church history will know that Brigham Young clashed with particular members of the quorum of the 12, they never would have supported some of the things he taught, including blood atonement. They didn't teach that slavery was the right thing to do. In the 19th century, Utah. So, you know, Graham Young couldn't get the Quorum to get behind him on some critical things and didn't feel like he needed to. He was the church president, he was the prophet. By the 20th century, by the mid 20th century, you see another layer of, of complexity, which is the First Presidency is now the sole arbiter of doctrine. The church president slash prophet and his two counselors, they're the ones, the highest church body in the governing body in the Church. They're the ones that proclaim doctrine. And the 12 and the rest of the membership are just supposed to utter what the first presidency says. In fact, Marion Romney in 1944, he's an assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve at the time, and he would later become a full apostle. But as an assistant, the member of the quorum of the 12, he gave us a sermon in 1944 and he said that whatever the First Presidency says, he likened unto Scripture. It's as, it's as though it's what the Lord would say himself if he were here. That's what Rami says. This is the first presidency he's referring to. And then by the 21st century, with Elder Christopherson, he's saying that the doctrine of the Church is a priority process that the quorum of the 12 and the First Presidency work out together. That is a new. That has not always been the case. And so, and then he outlines how they determine what's, what's doctrine, that it has to, of course, accord with the Scriptures. It has to accord with, you know, things that the brethren have taught in the past, you know, that sort of thing. And to Randy Bot's mind, you know, he was following all of those protocols, that he was reading the Scriptures a certain way that justified biblical curses, justified the less valiant stuff, all the stuff that the leaders had interpreted through the years. He thought that was still fair game. And the problem is, as I've been saying this hour, it wasn't fair game. But nobody told him.
John Dehlin [02:33:07] Yeah, absolutely.
Matt Harris [02:33:10] So he retired in 2012 in. And that was the Church's line. I'm going to speculate here for just a moment. Excuse me. Bot did. I'm sorry. Yeah, thank you for that, brother. Bot retired in, in 2012. And that was the official line. But there's, there's no doubt in my mind he was pushed out. I mean, I'm speculating here. Just want people to know. This is just such a traumatic thing. And I had a. I think it's
John Dehlin [02:33:40] important to say with, with full Retirement benefits. So I mean, loses a full super nice pension. So not the types of consequences of a normal firing.
Matt Harris [02:33:52] Yeah, yeah, they pushed him out. Yeah, I'm certain. I don't again speculating. I'm sure he kept his pension, John. I'm sure all of that. But just after this happened again, I was at another conference and I had
Gerardo Sumano [02:34:05] a
Matt Harris [02:34:08] religion faculty member, different one from the one I mentioned at Sunstone, but he approached me and he said that, I mean, this is an exact quote because it's burned in my mind. He said, this is a religion colleague to Randy Bot. Just after this whole Bot Washington Post story broke. He courted me after I gave a paper and nobody else was around. And this religion faculty member said to me, quote, we all taught what Randy taught. This could have happened to any one of us. We had no idea the church's position had changed. I told him, so this is a little older faculty member, unlike the younger, the wife I was referring to a minute ago, whose husband was quite young, the older faculty member who told me that. He said, we had no idea that the church's position had changed. And I said, well, why would you? It's never been publicly repudiated. And unless somehow the brethren met with you in private, the religion faculty, and told you don't teach us anymore. We're not. We don't teach or believe this. But they didn't do that. And so this faculty member was obviously upset that one of their own could be treated this way. But yet from the church's position, they had to make an example of Bot because of what was going on nationally with Mitt Romney. And I might add that the church was also under criticism for the Book of Mormon musical that had come out the previous year in 2011 that was still being played nationally to big audiences. And in the Book of Mormon musical, one of the lines in the musical is that God had changed his mind about Black people in 1978. And you know, I've seen the musical as I'm certain that a lot of your listeners have, and they said a number of things about Mormon teachings. It wasn't just race, but they were making fun of the, the core truth claims of the church, including race. And so the church has already bothered by the Book of Mormon musical and its success. And now you've got Bot doing this and the Washington Post doing this. And then they're, they're scapegoating him by. With these two PR releases. It's, it's really something and something. John, if you want to go back to that statement. I want to read the. The Church's statement that you showed a minute ago on Bot. It's if you can blow that up just a little bit. So one of the things that the statement, it says that I think is really, really instructive here because it's going to be a segue to what we talk about next is that it says that for a time the church, for a time in the church, there was a restriction in the priesthood for male members of African descent. It is not known precisely why, how or when this restriction began in the church, but what is clear is that it ends, ended decades ago. Some have attempted to explain the reasons for this restriction, but these attempts should be viewed as speculation and opinions, not doctrine. The Church is not bound by speculation or opinions given with limited understanding. Can you imagine them producing that statement if Elder McConkey were alive or Harold
John Dehlin [02:37:34] B. Lee or Barky Peterson? Right.
Matt Harris [02:37:38] Elder McConkey, that big book you wrote about Mormon doctrine, those are just an opinion by, you know, nobody. Yeah, they all taught it, John. They all taught it. And, and so there's that. And then the other thing is, is that we don't know how the band or why the band began. And that's an extraordinary statement because there is no revelation that we've talked about in prior episodes. They couldn't find a revelation from the founding prophet, Joseph Smith. They had looked and. But it doesn't take, you know, how I would say this tactfully. It's not a far stretch to read the Journal of Discourses when Brigham Young is talking about a lot of this stuff and saying the most demeaning and degrading things about black people. It's just simply born out of anti black racism. That's all it is. There were 4 million Africans enslaved when Brigham Young instituted the priesthood ban in 1852. It's just not a stretch to ascribe the ban to racism. But yet, for political purposes, the Church just clung to this we don't know line. They tried the folklore line and none of this is working because people don't believe it. And so with Randy Bot hovering over the Church, the Church decided to move into high gear on a series of essays they had been working on for quite some time. At this point, they would become known as the Gospel Topics Essays. And I've done a book with Newell Bringhurst on these essays that Signature books published in 2020. We talked about in the book about how the essays came about the reception of the essays. And then we asked scholars, mostly lds, but some non LDS scholars to critique the essays and to talk about what they did well and where they fell short. And I did the essay on the race and priesthood one. And so they realized that the essays needed to come out, especially the one on race and priesthood. And I should add that the gospel topics essays, the whole purpose of the essays that were conceived of before the Randy Bot thing broke. So they were already in the works at this point, but they hadn't been released. The purpose of the essays was to be more. The Church, to be more transparent about its past teachings that dealt with difficult issues, whether it's race in the priesthood, DNA in the Book of Mormon, the translation of the Book of Abraham, women in the priesthood, historicity of the Book of Mormon. Just pick one. There's a number of topics that they wanted to deal with. And so the race in the priesthood essay was one that Paul Reeve, a friend of mine from the University of Utah, he wrote the first draft. They asked him to do it. The brethren wanted scholars outside of the employee of the Church history department to take the first stab at the draft. And they told people like Paul Reeve and others who wrote whatever their respective expertises were. They said that this is going to be a collaborative project. You guys on the outside will write the drafts. You'll submit them to the church historians for editing and review. The church historians will then submit them to the apostles, who will then submit them to the First Presidency. So these essays went all the way up the food chain. And there were a number of people who weighed in on these essays, which is always, always problematic when you have to satisfy many cooks in the kitchen. And so one of the things with the. There's a couple, three things with the essays that are important to note. One is that the Church is trying to address controversial issues they had once ignored or even denied. And this could be ranging from Joseph Smith using a stone in a hat to translate the Book of Mormon, or it could be acknowledging polyandry or Joseph Smith's relationships with some of his younger plural wives, any number of things. And so they wanted to try to figure out how transparent they could be without pushing people away from the church and having them lose their testimonies. That was a real issue. And the other one was, how long should these essays be? If they're 20 pages, will people read them? Or if they're five pages, will they go into enough detail, can they be transparent enough? Another issue was how should we release these essays? Should we acknowledge them in general conference? Should we publish something in the ensign about them or should we just put them four clicks away on the Church's webpage so that if somebody asks about that we're hiding our history, we can say, no, that's not true. Something the Church's website and then you have to give them the four step process to find them. So there were a number of issues with all of these things and with the race and the priesthood essay, it went through, as I mentioned, multiple people. Armand Moss critiqued a draft, Patrick Mason critiqued a draft, Dryas Gray critiqued a draft, and as did others. And so Paul will tell you, and Paul's been public about this, that the, one of the essays that he, the first draft that he produced, it didn't really bear what was finally published because it went through so many different editorial iterations. And I don't want to speak for Paul about how he felt about the final draft compared to his original draft. So I just don't want to do that. But one of the big issues was with the race and the priesthood essay was the, that they didn't know, they, the brethren, didn't know how transparent they wanted to be with the ban in attributing it to racism from Brigham Young's day. Or was it divine? Was God behind the ban? Because if you, if you put God as the person who was behind the ban, you're really, really moving into a difficult situation because what you're saying is God's responsible for anti black racism. And a number of people in the church, including Darius Gray, just absolutely get frustrated when people attribute the ban to God because Darius does not think that God is responsible for anti black racism. Now Darius would tell you that God allowed the ban to happen, to see how people would treat each other. So he does say that. But that's far different than saying that God was responsible for the ban itself. And so there are, there are issues among the brethren and how to tell that story. And if you read the document on the race and priesthood essay, it really is the one that gets published in 2013. It's challenging because it is not the most clearly written document and it has nothing to do with, with Paul Reeves great contribution. It's a function of many people tampering with it and it's also a function, in my opinion, of being deliberately opaque. So one of the things that some people in the committee wanted to do was to talk about that, hey, look, the ban was part of anti black racism from the 19th century. And then there were some other apostles who didn't feel comfortable with that. And that's why it's opaque. And just a quick anecdote to this. My brother, who has a doctorate degree and two or three or four graduate degrees, is well educated. And I remember years ago when he called me and he said, matt, you've told me that the church is coming clean with acknowledging that it was racism from the 19th century. I said, yeah, I've said that. He said, well, that's not how I read it. Well, how do you read it? Well, it's kind of vague. He says, it's not clear. You're reading a lot into it. My brother tells me. And I told my brother, I confess, I said, geez, I'm guilty. And I'm guilty because I know some of the early drafts and what the intentions were supposed to be. But I also told my brother, I said, your, your reading is correct too. It was deliberately vague. And it just represented really how these kinds of things play out in the upper leadership of the church when they can't get on the same page. And so what you get is what you see in the race and priesthood document. And I haven't looked recently if it's been changed. I want to be clear that I'm Talking about the 2013 version, the first draft. I know they've made some changes to it since. I want to be clear on that. But the original version that my brother and I Talked about in 2013, it was vague and he didn't read what I read into it. And so that was by design. The brother and did that by design because some of them were not ready to. They weren't prepared to acknowledge anti black racism. And I've been telling people for as long as they would listen that you can't, you can't read Brigham Young in the Journal of Discourses and try to defend that it's indefensible. It is anti black racism. Own it and simply say, that's not what the church teaches today. That's what, that's what somebody from the 19th century taught. But that's not where the church is at today. If you acknowledge that, I think people can move on. They're forgiving. But if you try to sweep it under the rug and cover it up, boy, the COVID up's always worse than the crime. And you know, so. But again, I don't have any authority with these kinds of things.
John Dehlin [02:47:27] Excellent.
Analyzing the Race and the Priesthood Essay
Matt Harris [02:47:28] Do you guys have any comments or should we just. As we wrap this up today, do we want to talk about what it says, the document?
John Dehlin [02:47:33] Yeah, I was trying to pull up an original version. I can try and Find that really quick. But we have. We have. Julia, the slide that you created is that just from what's. What's being.
Gerardo Sumano [02:47:44] Exactly what's on the website today. Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:47:46] Okay. Do you want to read that, Julia? Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [02:47:49] Today, the church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life, that mixed race marriages are a sin, or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.
Matt Harris [02:48:15] That's great, Julia. That's. If there was one statement. If you wouldn't mind going back to that statement real quick, John, if there was one little slice from the essay that I would want you to read, it would be that. And let's just unpack this for a quick moment. The church disavows the theories advanced. I'm a little uncomfortable. Theories? It's not a theory. These are doctrines. But we'll take it. The church disavows the theories or doctrines advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or cur. Curse. Boy, that's a shot across the bow to Bruce McConkey and Joseph Hilling Smith. Also, the church disavows that it reflects an unrighteous actions in a premortal life, that mixed race marriages are a sin, or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Again, all shots across the bow to Elder McConkey and President Smith, who had taught these things for decades. And for the church to now come full circle in 2013, I mean, they're now, for the first time ever, publicly repudiating specific anti black teachings that had done so much to harm black and biracial Latter Day Saints. Whereas before, with President Hinckley in 2006 and with Alex Morrison in 2000, when they just condemned racism more broadly, now we get 2013 where they're going after specific anti black teachings. And the reason why they're so specific is because of Randy Bott teaching these to the Washington Post. They had to do this lest there be more situations like bot in which they would embarrass the church. And so today, as I've often said to Latter Day Saints and other groups today, if somebody says in, you know, gospel doctrine or anywhere else in a church setting that they believe that black people are cursed or whatever, any Latter Day Saint Today can hold up that race and priesthood document and say that is not the teaching of the church. You're out of line. And it's important to have that artifact rather than just something oral in nature, because that artifact allows you to give it to the person and say, you know, you should read the race and the priesthood essay. That is not where the Church is at today. And so I think it's an extraordinary statement because it's forcing the church to come to grips with its long history of systemic racism.
Gerardo Sumano [02:50:45] I still, you know, you hear stories about these gospel doctrine teachers who, who teach from these gospel topics essays and then they get in trouble for it. And then they, they point, they're like, hey, well this is on the church's website. It's okay. And so like, and I know that some, like one recent talk by Renlund, he, he alludes to the, or he points to the, the Mother in Heaven gospel topics essay. But other than that, I don't really know very many cases of them talking about these essays in conference. And if, if somebody has better information, I'd like to know, but I don't know that these essays are really well known by the membership. Maybe, maybe a bit more now in 2024 than in 2013. But like, I don't know if it's. I, I wish that they could do more, but yeah, I do appreciate what they've done. I just wish that they could do more.
Matt Harris [02:51:27] Yeah, so I'll just speak to that for a minute. Julia, I'm glad you brought that up because in the early rollout of the essays, the essays, by the way, I forget how many of them were 14, 15 maybe, but they were published between, I think. Let me get this right. They were published between what, 2013 to 2015? I think over a two year period. And they've just sort of evolved from there. The original core was published over two, two and a half year period. And then they've added on since then. So it's, this has been sort of a work in progress. And it's again designed to, to counter this idea that the church is countering or hiding its history. They're trying to be transparent. And so because they were worried about disaffection, Julia, they didn't want to make the essays prominent. They didn't want to talk about them in the ensign or broadcast them over the pulpit. And then you're referring to a specific example of a young man in Hawaii who was teaching the youth. So young married guy in Hawaii teaching the youth of the church and was about Race, something about the band, maybe not even quite sure. But he appealed to the race and priesthood essay just four or five months after he'd been published. And his bishop, when he got back to the bishop, but he was, his teacher was referring to this race and priesthood essay he released him for, quote, teaching from unauthorized sources. That's a close quote. And anyway, the Salt Tribune ran the story. I didn't interview the guy, but the Tribune ran it. And so obviously the guy's bishop didn't know that, hey, look, this is sponsored by the church. The brethren had signed off on all this. And so they recognized that there are other examples like this, and they couldn't hide them from people, you know, that they were fearful of leaving the church over. And the reason why people leave the church over it, they feared is because they've been taught their whole life, you know, about oranges and now they're reading apples. You know, they're taught their whole life that the translation process to the Book of Mormon played out this way. And now in the, the essays, they're acknowledging it was something quite different. They taught their whole life that black people were cursed, and now they're saying, we don't believe that. So they, they were very attuned to the fallout from this. And anybody can take two minutes on social media today and just punch in gospel topics and testimony. And you'll find that a lot of Latter Day Saints have talked privately or publicly rather through blogs and other ways in which they left the church when they read these very forthcoming essays. So at first they were not rolled out very well. That was by design. They were four clicks away on the church's webpage. And then they recognized that people were getting into trouble quoting them in church sacrament meetings, at least the ones who found out about them. And then slowly they started to implement the core ideas of the gospel topics essays into some of the BYU religion curriculum manuals, also ces, also the. The Saints volumes. There's a new history of the church that, that's almost finished. There are four volumes that are projected. Three volumes are out now. The fourth is supposed to come out, I think, later this year. And some of the Gospel topics essays are linked in those books. So they are out there and they're trying to target people that they think could benefit the most from these gospel topics essays, particularly people of college age and younger Latter Day Saints who find things on the Internet about, you know, plural marriage or race and priesthood that they get upset by. And the idea would be they can go to the Gospel topics essays to get clarity. So. Yeah, go ahead.
John Dehlin [02:55:17] Yeah, fascinating. And I guess, I guess the essay, in a way, you know, chapter 10 kind of ends, at least in my notes, talking about the essay. And in a way, it kind of is a, you know, sort of sort of ends the saga that begins, really, with Brigham Young. And it kind of is a way to kind of end, in some ways, the narrative. Although next episode we're still going to cover sort of an afterward. But, you know, what reflections do you have on the momentousness of the Gospel Topics essay being released? Matt?
Matt Harris [02:55:58] Yeah. So one of the things that it doesn't do is apologize. And I mean, it repudiates, but it doesn't. That's not the same as apologizing. And so we're going to talk about in our final episode that covers the epilogue, essentially where the church is at today, which goes from 2013 to 2023, where I finished the book. Literally, I finished the book the minute that I had to turn in the manuscript. And so the Race and priesthood essay doesn't apologize and it doesn't deal with some other difficult teachings like race and Scripture doesn't deal with that. The Brethren preferred to let that one slide. But yet, as I mentioned that 2013 was an easy way for me to end this book because I really, really wanted to bookend it here. And even though it's not a perfect document, I think we have to be responsible and fair and acknowledge that it is an extraordinary statement that the the Brethren would renounce or repudiate is a better word. The church's teachings they had taught as doctors doctrine for so many years, and they didn't mention Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkey by name. They didn't have to. But anyone who's a student of modern church history will know that those are the two church officers that they have in mind, because those are the two who produced the most literature in defending and affirming the ban as doctrine. And now they're going after it. I wish just one little quibble. I wish they would have not called them theories in the Race and Priesthood essay or the Church's pr. And it's bothersome to me because one, they were not taught as theories, so that's difficult. And two, why didn't they call them doctrine? They know it's doctrine. And the answer is because some Church apostles, including the late Boyd K. Packer, taught that doctrines don't change, policies and practices do. And the key word I use is some apostles because other apostles did not agree with that doctrines do. Change. And as I've said publicly before, that acknowledge it as a doctrine and acknowledge the importance of modern day revelation, which is what the church teaches, that if you have a new church president or a new church prophet, they're not beholden to what predicted previous presidents had taught us doctrine. They can change the doctrine, alter it or get rid of it altogether. And we've seen that with Russell Nelson that I know we'll get into in his administration the next episode. But so call it a doctrine in spite of what Elder Packer said, call it a doctrine and just claim that it can be changed because of the church's belief in modern revelation.
John Dehlin [02:58:50] Right. All right. Well, what an amazing final chapter to the book or penultimate chapter to the book. And what a great journey you've taken us on, Matt. And if that weren't enough, we still have one more episode to go. So I'm really excited for that. Any final words you want to say? It looks like we lost Gerardo and Julia. So it's just us, Matt. Just.
Reflecting on What Latter-day Saints Should Take Away
Matt Harris [02:59:20] No, I don't think so. It has been a journey and I want Latter Day Saints to get the full scope of this important story. And I know that we've been talking about recent things that a number of your listeners will have lived through. And when we get to the epilogue, it's going to be even more pronounced. And I'm hoping that they don't just see an uncomfortable history here. And the church was once racist and this and that, and the leaders were this and that. Yes, you're going to see that. But I'm also hoping that the church can move forward and begin to heal from these very deep racial lines that are divides that have been in place for so many decades. I mean, that really is my hope that people can see a sense of healing in this in the churches, even though it's moving slowly, that they're trying to move towards a racial reconciliation towards black and biracial Latter Day Saints.
John Dehlin [03:00:20] Well, in my view, it's pretty clear they are. It's pretty clear the church is condemning. I mean, your book doesn't cover it, but more statements have been made condemning racism since the time of your book ending, if I'm not mistaken.
Matt Harris [03:00:36] And the last. Yeah, we'll get that. We'll get to that in the epilogue.
Guest [03:00:40] I do.
Matt Harris [03:00:41] Like I said, unless there's something after 2023, I've been following it very closely. And yeah, yeah, they, I, I cover everything up until the time I turn this manuscript in with what the church said about race.
John Dehlin [03:00:53] Yeah, I certainly don't feel like I. I don't perceive the church as being racist today. Certainly not like it was before, so. All right, well, we're gonna have. Next episode, we're gonna have Nate Bird join us because he is one of the black menaces. And he. He was at BYU when some rough things happened when Brad Wilcox caused a major problem on the Internet. And I haven't read the. The epilogue. Is that what it's called? I haven't read that yet, but I'm. Does it mention Brad Wilcox there?
Closing Thoughts and Acknowledgments
Matt Harris [03:01:30] No, I chose not to include him because, frankly, he's just a little flick in the big picture of things.
John Dehlin [03:01:37] Except he's in the young men's first presidency. Other than that.
Matt Harris [03:01:41] Yeah. No, actually, you know, the truth is, I. That's a fair. That's a fair comment, John. I. That's a very fair comment. I. I already had this written by then, honestly.
John Dehlin [03:01:52] Yeah, no, it's good. All right, well, thanks, Matt. It's been wonderful, and I look forward to our final episode. Thank you so much.
Matt Harris [03:01:59] Thank you, John.
John Dehlin [03:02:01] And thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Again, the book is Second Class Saints Matthew Harris. Let's give it a second, third, fourth, fifth, and tenth printing. Let's make it an international bestseller. Let's get this book a Pulitzer Prize. Matt, what is that the highest honor you think you can achieve?
Matt Harris [03:02:22] I'm not going to be getting a Pulitzer Prize, but that. Thanks for the vote of confidence. Yes.
John Dehlin [03:02:29] New York Times bestseller. Please buy it. Please share. And most importantly, also, let's pay Matt for his work today. We've got about a hundred donations in. If you really value Matt's work and you want to pay him a little something to thank him for his. What he's taught you, and for this contribution, you can go to donorbox.org Matt Harris, and 100% of your donations there will go directly to Matt. So please support it. Please share and like these episodes. Please subscribe to the YouTube channel and. And we just want to thank all the Mormon Stories podcast donors who underwrite, you know, this series and Mormon Stories Podcast. We couldn't do it without you. That's really who makes all this possible. So thank you. And if you want to become a donor to Mormon Stories podcast, you can go to mormonstories. Org, click on the donate button and become a monthly donor. All right, Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care, everybody.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
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Thumbnail Credits: Main image of President Hinckley from the Associated Press; Background image of the Salt Lake Temple from East Elevation (public domain)
One Response
I have no illusion that my comments will be posted. As much as John chides the Mormon church about censorship, John and his team are equally guilty when it comes to censorship. The difference is that John and his team believe their moral compass is superior, and they often view opposing viewpoints as “hate speech.” From my perspective, hate speech and non-faith-promoting speech are the same: censorship.
First, I’m not Mormon, and I agree with Mr. Harris that the Mormon church should specifically condemn their historical teachings about black individuals. In 2013, the Mormon church stated in their essays, “Church leaders and members advanced many theories to explain the priesthood and temple restrictions. None of these explanations is accepted today as the official doctrine of the Church.” This is as close as we will get for the time being. I wish they would remove the passages in the Book of Mormon about dark skin being a curse. For me, this is the origin of their historical racial teachings.
My concerns about this episode are that Mr. Harris, with respect, is a race hustler. He seems to see Mormonism through a lens of racism. He uses stories and implies that racism is systemic in the Mormon church; however, he doesn’t provide any positive stories on the subject. I don’t believe it would take him long to find positive stories from black members, but it appears he is too devoted to his narrative (that sounds familiar). In addition, Mr. Harris doesn’t provide any empirical evidence that aligns with his racial views on Mormonism. It is interesting that he doesn’t even mention that more than half of the Church’s membership is outside the US. He also fails to mention anything about the positive growth trends of the Mormon Church in Africa. Mr. Harris should know that anecdotal evidence isn’t evidence. Many of the stories he mentions, some third-hand, are hard to believe, specifically the story about Mr. Hickley pacing the floor concerned about racism in the church.
I found it hard to take Mr. Harris seriously after he mentioned “Black Lives Matter.” I’m sorry, Mr. Harris, but ALL LIVES MATTER. The fact that he believes a racial group should be sheltered more than other racial groups exposes his racial animus. Mr. Harris doesn’t seem to catch the racism in the BLM movement. There are over 18,000 police departments in the US. It takes magical thinking to believe all of these police departments are systematically out to harm black Americans. This same magical thinking applies to those who believe the Mormon Book is historical. If you look at the racial makeup of those who encounter law enforcement versus those shot by law enforcement, you will find European Americans are disproportionately shot and killed by law enforcement. It is this type of critical thinking that is needed when addressing racial issues in America. I would encourage everyone to read and listen to Coleman Hughes if you want to know more about racism.
John, I’ve said this before: it appears you have traded your Mormon lies for Leftist lies. I wish this episode was more balanced. Perhaps if you provide more balance in your episodes, more people would be willing to donate.