Introduction to the Series and Today's Episode

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hi everyone. 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. 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 mormorstories.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 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 the 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's 7-11-2024 and today we are going to be talking about the aftermath of of the Mormon Church's lifting of the priesthood and temple ban on black members of the church, or Negroes as they called them. We are going to be talking about how Bruce R. McConkie and others embellished the experiences that the quorum of the 12 and the First Presidency had in 1978 when they made the decision to lift the bands. We're also going to be talking about the the Church's multiple efforts to engage in damage control when people started asking questions about what the implications of the lifting of the ban, the bans actually were as it related to worthiness in the pre existence and the curse of Cain and lineage and all of those sorts of things. Of course, this is, I believe, episode 13 in our series on this very important book, Second Class Saints, Black Mormons and the Struggle for racial equality by Dr. Matthew Harris. This series is best enjoyed in sequence. So we encourage you, if you haven't watched or listened to the first 12 episodes to pause, go back and watch them in order and then you'll get more out of today. We'll also just remind you that this series you can find is a standalone series on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, and has its own playlist on the Mormon Stories podcast channel on YouTube. And then finally, we've only had about 60 people financially step up to support this series. We are paying Matt and we are asking for those who, who want to support Matt in his work and in his research to please step up and become a donor. If just, you know, 50 of you became weekly or monthly donors, we would be able to finish paying off Matt. We've already committed as the Open Stories foundation to half of of the total commitment to Matt. But we need some of you to step up and support this. And since we know tens of thousands of you are watching or listening to this, we would really appreciate it if just another 50 of you would become donors. So you can do that by going to donorbox.org math Harris 100% of your donations to Matt will go to Matt. We skim nothing off for overhead or anything. We're giving him full transparency into those donations. So please go to donorbox.org and donate to Matt and we'll be able to finish this important series. So all right, without any further ado, we're really excited to have Matt back. Hey Matt, thanks for joining us.

Matt Harris [00:05:18] Hey John, thanks for having me back.

John Dehlin [00:05:20] And we have Gerardo with us again. Gerardo, I hope the antibiotics are kicking in yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:05:26] Yeah, they are.

John Dehlin [00:05:27] Yeah. Sorry you couldn't join us last time.

Gerardo Sumano [00:05:29] That's okay. Well, I'm excited to be here today.

John Dehlin [00:05:32] Yeah, absolutely. And, Gerardo, Julia did such a good job as always that we had to have her back. So here she is.

Matt Harris [00:05:39] That's awesome.

John Dehlin [00:05:40] Thanks for joining us, Julia.

Julia [00:05:41] Yeah, of course.

John Dehlin [00:05:43] All right, well, we did, like, three and a half hours last time, and I think we're going to try and not ever do that again. It's fitting that the longest episode is the one covering the actual lifting of the ban, but we are. We are covering chapter eight in this book, but we're only going to be covering part of it. There's a whole section on interracial marriage and the brethren's real concern that white Mormons would. Would marry and have sex with black Mormons. We're going to save that sort of topic that comes out of chapter eight for its own standalone series. So look forward to that in the future. But, Matt, take it away. Where should we go to today?

Chapter Eight: Debris in the Streets

Matt Harris [00:06:28] So chapter eight is. Is going to be our topic of a discussion today, and I've titled it Debris in the Streets.

John Dehlin [00:06:36] Debris in the streets, 1978 to 1980 to 1985. Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:06:41] Yeah. And I want to give a shout out to the person that coined this term. He's a black Latter Day Saint man named Marvin Perkins. And he had used that term in a newspaper or that phrase in a newspaper interview that he gave years ago. And he. He just said, you know, when the ban was lifted in 1978. That's wonderful. We in the black community applaud that. But there was debris in the streets afterwards. In other words, they didn't clean up the doctrine that had sustained the ban for so many years. And so when I read that line, I thought, oh, I'm going to name a chapter Debris in the Streets because it really does accurately depict what's going on in the 1980s.

John Dehlin [00:07:21] Absolutely. Well, I do. Could I ask. So this chapter. We didn't even mention this, but this chapter does touch on the IRS stuff. And just because we talked a little bit about that last episode. Matt, do you mind if we just talk quickly about just a couple IRS issues before we jump into the embellishment part? Is that okay?

Matt Harris [00:07:44] Sure, sure.

John Dehlin [00:07:45] Okay. So, you know, you did talk about the IRS stuff quite extensively last time. I think it's worth. Julia. And Julia, you mentioned a few questions that you had about it. What else do we want to say? Just to kind of close off, you know, the topic of the IRS and the lifting of the ban. And then I have a final question, question about that before we move on. Matt, do you want to touch on anything about IRS that you didn't touch on last time?

The IRS and the Priesthood Ban

Matt Harris [00:08:14] I don't think so. I'll just reiterate something that's important. There's a lot of critics of the church that want to relegate everything to the IRS pushing Kimball. And, you know, those critics have not read my book, and I think they need to grapple with the evidence I lay out in the book. And they're critics in the sense that they don't want to give any other reasons for the lifting of the ban. And, you know, I think your listeners know me by now. Read my past work. I'm, I'm not an apologist for the church, nor am I a critic. I just, I don't write with faith commitments in mind. I write where the data takes me. And I had an open mind going into the IRS question because I've seen it circulated on the church on various websites for a long time. There's just simply no evidence that, that the, the IRS forced the church or Kimball to lift the ban. I mean, it was certainly there. It was certainly part of the larger American culture that the government was targeting certain institutions like Bob Jones University, where they stripped them of their tax exemption status. And so I'm not saying that it wasn't on the minds of the church leaders, because it was. But did it directly lead to the lifting of the ban in 78? Was it the most important factor? And I argue no, because there's just simply not the evidence. And as I pointed out in the last episode, I was incredibly thorough in my research, writing President Carter, contacting IRS officials, going through the diaries of church leaders. So anyway, you go where the evidence takes you. And that's, you know, so for me, the more interesting part was how did it begin? And as I mentioned in our previous episode, Gerald and Sandra Tanner had published it in one of their newsletters because they had been hearing from an LDS church attorney that the church was poised to lose its tax exemption. But as I noted in the last episode, that law was just being talked about at that point. It wasn't a reality until 1981. So certainly it was in the air, but it really wasn't a direct cause.

John Dehlin [00:10:17] And the point that I wanted to make, and I kind of made this last time, but I just want to make it again. I, I think it's tricky to talk about what were the biggest factors, what were the most immediate factors? And I think that's where you want to make your point, Matt, that you're not finding data that the IRS concerns were immediately pressing or the most important factors. But there's always the question of what information we don't have, which, of course, you can't speculate on. But I, I read your book feeling like there's no question that they knew where the winds were blowing and that they knew that there were risks. We, we. You talk about Hawaii. Hawaii and Wisconsin. Do you want to just remind our viewers and listeners about that in. Before I make my final.

Matt Harris [00:11:13] Yeah. The evidence that we have comes from Leonard Arrington's diary, who is the, the church historian. Arrington died in 1988. 89. Excuse me. 1998. 1999. I think it was 99. And so he had heard it from a church attorney that the church was worried about what was going on in Wisconsin and what was possibly going to happen in Hawaii. So he mentions those two states and John, you're absolutely right that this is in the air. They're not immune to this sort of thing. They're watching it as they had always been watching Legal matters since the 1960s. But we don't have any direct evidence. And I'm going to correct you on something. I do know there's evidence out there, but because I've reached out to tax lawyers and I said, how do I get access to the IRS records? I want to know if the government's putting pressure on the church. He said, you and a million other people. Those records are not available. And so there might be records, but I don't have them. I do know that there's a lawyer in Salt Lake. He's an older man today, I think in his 70s, and he worked in. I don't know what his position was, but he was a lawyer who knew two IRS personnel. And to this day he claims that these two lawyers who work for the IRS were part of this idea to strip the church of its tax exemption status. And, you know, that may be true. I just don't have the evidence for it. And like I said, after I contacted IRS officials in Wisconsin, they told me that the law didn't take effect until 1981. And so what I conclude in my book is that the church leaders knew about the law and realized that it would be, you know, it was there, but it certainly wasn't the most direct and pressing thing because it didn't take effect until three years after the revelation.

John Dehlin [00:13:10] And what would have happened in Wisconsin, Johnson and Hawaii? What were those laws hoping to do?

Matt Harris [00:13:16] Yeah, so the laws would have stripped the church or any other religious institution that had discriminatory policies would have stripped them of their tax exemption in those particular states.

John Dehlin [00:13:28] And what, in what years were those being discussed and known about?

Matt Harris [00:13:33] Those would have been discussed in the late 70s. They really took off in earnest in 1979, and it took him a couple of years at the state legislature in Wisconsin to get the bill passed. But so really what I did do said, I'm open to change my position. I want. This is what an open mind should do, and this is what scholarship should do. You know, when we get better evidence, we reassess our conclusions. But in it's possible that the church attorneys. Myron Sorensen is one that Leonard Arrington identifies as the lawyer who spoke to his group, and Sandra Tanner, with whom I spoke, I asked her, was it Miles Sorensen who spoke to you and your late husband, and she couldn't remember. It probably was. If I'm a betting guy, I would say it's probably Miles Sorensen. And sadly, Sorensen passed away a few years ago, so I couldn't interview him. But it's possible that, you know, Sorensen probably knew that they were talking about this in Wisconsin and just feared the worst. So that's what I conclude in the book, that it was in the air, they knew about it and they were worried about it, but that was still off into the future a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:14:43] Yeah. And my only point, reading your book, where I don't know if I disagreed with you, but I worried that some of your statements, trying to not associate IRS concerns with the lifting of the band would give people the wrong impression, that you were trying to say that it had either nothing to do with it or little to do with it. And I can there. I think there's enough evidence between what the Tanners have said, what Arrington said, the pressures in 68 with the IRS, with what was going on at universities like Bob Jones University and Hawaii and Wisconsin, clearly the brethren would have been talking about it, been concerned about it, and would have known where the winds were blowing. So I think at best we could just say we don't have the strong or the direct evidence to really make that clear association. But I wouldn't want to err on the other side and say it had little to nothing to do with it. I think that's also going beyond what we know.

Matt Harris [00:15:52] Yeah, no, I, I don't. Yeah, I don't say that in the book. I. I don't say that it had little to do with it or Nothing to do with it. I mean, my goodness, when the government stripped Bob Jones University of its tax exemption status because of the racist policies, the LDS Church, through their law firm, Curtin McConkey, they wrote a friend of the court brief. So clearly they're thinking about these things. And they're giving sermons. Spencer Kimball is writing letters to church leaders, and Dallin Oaks is giving addresses at BYU in which they're trying to separate the entanglements of civil rights and the First Amendment. You know, letting us as a church, let us practice what we want to practice, you know, let us discriminate, because that has nothing to do with civil rights. So, which is kind of ironic, but they're trying to draw these firm lines between civil rights and racial theology, and the government's saying, no, you can't, because they're intertwined. And so it's there. But there is. There are so many. This is. You know, one of my jobs as a historian is I evaluate the evidence, and there are far more pressing things on Kimball's mind, according to the evidence leading up to the lifting of the ban, than the irs. It is certainly there. It's in the room. But as we rank order the most important and effective motives for Kimball, I wouldn't put that up there with his vision to globalize the church. I wouldn't put it up there with. His brethren are baptizing, conferring people with mixed ancestry, and they know it. I wouldn't put it up there with. They realize that it's impossible to police racial boundaries. I mean, there's so many other things. But. But, yeah, I. I would agree with what you said. It's. It's in the room, and they know about it. They talk about it, they're concerned about it, but it's not really, you know, the top 1% of reasons why they're lifting the ban. In my opinion, if there's new evidence that comes to light, I would be the first to reconsider.

John Dehlin [00:17:40] Now that I'm actually finding the page. On page 243, you write, the Brethren denied all of this. Okay, so you write. One account even states that Carter discussed the ban with Kimball on June 1, only hours prior to the revelation. The brethren denied all of this, as well they should. There was no truth to any of it.

Matt Harris [00:18:03] Well, let me. Let me give some background to that. Let me give some background to that. Because, you know, like I said, you know, with all risk due respect to the critics, I've just researched the hell out of this. And if you look at the Carter Diaries. Carter met with President Kimball and he kept good diaries. He kept private diaries. And he kept, of course, White House diaries that are public. And so you can see who President Carter is entertaining at the White House. You can see where he's going to visit religious leaders like Spencer Kimball. So we've got a record of this. And so what one of the critics did was they drew this preposterous conclusion that because President Carter had met with Kimball a few weeks before. I don't remember the exact time, so don't quote me on that, but it was within a month or two before the revelation was lifted. They drew a conclusion that at that meeting that Carter was telling Kimball, lift that ban, you racist. There is no evidence for that. I have a transcript. They talked about, you know, Carter's love of the LDS missionary program. And how do you get these 19 and 20 and 21 year old men and women to go out and at that young age and give their time and service to your church? We would love to do that in the Baptist tradition. Tell me more. And then of course, Carter had an intense interest in Mormon genealogy. So I had the transcript of these meetings. They're not talking about race issues at all. If they did, it's off the record. So that's the issue is that we're getting these conspiratorial machinations that somehow something sinister is going on. And there's always people in the room. When you have the President of the United States meeting with a church present, there's always other people in the room. And I've seen some of those accounts. And they all say the same thing in the way that Carter recorded it. They're just talking about missionary issues in genealogy. Now, I've said in this book that Carter knows what's going on. John Fitzgerald, the former CES person, is writing him letters. He's saying these guys are racist. And as I also point out, there's a person named Jack Carlson who's in the Ford administration. So he's a Republican. And he had been telling government leaders, you know that, or he'd been telling President Kimball. He said, you know, that there are government leaders who don't like us for our position on ERA and race, the ban. So Kimball knows all of this, but Carter. There's no evidence that Carter's putting pressure. And I cited in my book that Jimmy Carter wrote me back. I wrote a letter to him in 2013 and I said, hey, look, there are lots of rumors that you and the Justice Department, that you use the Justice Department to put the squeeze on the church. Is that true? And he wrote me back a nice note. And he said, you know, dear Matt, he said, I made my views known to the church leaders, but I didn't pressure them. Sincerely, Jimmy C. And, you know, I'm going to just follow the evidence on this. So that's where we're at. There's no evidence that he pressured them, but he certainly made his views known. And what's interesting is I wanted to write him back and say, you know, in what format did you make your views known? When did you do it? Who did you talk to? I didn't do that because the man's in his 90s. And.

Jimmy Carter and Church Leadership Meetings

John Dehlin [00:21:20] Yeah, you know, I guess the, you know. And again, at the. At the top of page 244, you write in the book, his diaries reveal this is Jimmy Carter's that he met with. And I think it's extraordinary you're having access to Jimmy Carter's diaries related to Mormon stuff. But Jimmy Carter's diaries revealed that he met with Mormon leaders to discuss the LDS Church's missionary program, which he had long admired. Years later, Carter flatly denied that he meddled with Mormon racial teachings. Quote, we never threatened them, he insisted. But I expressed my opinion to LDS leaders. Matt, I'm sure you would agree that if the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, expresses his opinions directly to LDS leaders, that that likely is going to have an influence, even if it's not. I mean, these diplomats don't often force people. I mean, that's just not smart. That's not strategic. But you have to acknowledge that when the president expresses his views to Spencer BE Kimball, that's likely going to have influence. Right.

Matt Harris [00:22:29] Well, I don't disagree with that. I mean, I'm torn with that statement because on the one hand, you know, these are the brother, and they do what they do. You know, they sort of seem immune to a lot of things a lot of times.

John Dehlin [00:22:41] Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:22:42] But on the other hand, keep in mind, John, that Kimball wants to lift the band. So Carter's saying, hey, look, we don't like your church. It's racist. I mean, you know, Kimball already wants to lift the band by this point. This is in the spring of 1978, and I've made it very clear on this podcast and also in my book.

John Dehlin [00:22:56] Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:22:57] That it's just a matter of getting some of the hardliners on board. And. And so, you know, when Kimball expresses his views through intermediaries and also to Kimball, Irwin Carter expresses his views to LDS intermediaries people who work in the government, and also church leaders. I mean, I don't see that impacting Kimball because he already wants to lift it. He knows it's bad for the church. And did Carter make it go faster? No, he still has the holdouts.

John Dehlin [00:23:28] Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:23:29] And my God, if they're willing to hold out until 1978, I think they're okay with holding it a little bit longer, you know, because the important thing is, is that President Kimball wants to get this right. And in order to get it right, you've got to get that consensus. And that was, as we learned last episode, it took. He had to send people out of the country to get the consensus. So I don't see that there's a cause and effect because he already had his mind made up.

John Dehlin [00:23:52] Yeah, I guess there's wanting to lift the ban and really, really, really wanting to lift the ban. And I know that the church cares about pr, but I also know it cares about its pocketbook. And, you know, and so knowing that there were states about to move to remove the church's tax exempt status and that there were lawyers saying that there were discussions about how concerned they were, I think sometimes threatening the church's pocketbook can be a very, very strong motivator, even if there aren't necessarily documents to really substantiate that. So I just want to leave that. I'm not advocating for conspiracy theories. I want to advocate for leaving there to be a question mark there about how much the IRS and financial concerns influenced the church leaders, because it may be that there was more influence than the documents allow.

Matt Harris [00:24:49] Maybe so. Maybe so, John. I would. I would say, too, as a historian, and I teach legal stuff, I teach legal history, I teach the Constitution. And so knowing what I know and where the winds are shifting nationally in the late 70s and into the 80s, frankly, it's absolutely unfathomable to me to think that the Brethren can hold out on the band beyond 1978.

John Dehlin [00:25:14] Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:25:15] And I mean, it's just. It's just not doable for a lot of different reasons, not just legally, but also when they feel the need to globalize the church, and they've recognized they can't do that unless they can get into sub Saharan Africa. They've had issues at byu, and when the rest of the world is becoming more racially progressive and you're sort of behind standing still as the world passes you by, that's not a good position to be in. And that's where the. Some of the brethren recognize this. But so again, you know, and they also recognize that if. If President Kimball doesn't lift the ban. You've got Elder Peterson up next and Elder Benson up next.

John Dehlin [00:25:54] Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:25:54] And now those guys were just like Harold Lee and Joseph Ealing Smith. They were not even willing to talk about it, Much less considerate.

John Dehlin [00:26:00] Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:26:01] So that's where we're at here. I think a lot of people recognize, just like they did with Hugh Brown did David O. McKay, if this ban is going to be lifted, it has to be under Kimball's watch.

John Dehlin [00:26:10] Yeah. Gerardo, Julie, anything else about IRS before we move on or if we.

Lifting the Black Priesthood Ban

Julia [00:26:14] I just was thinking, do we know when Peterson was sent to Ecuador? Because maybe the timing of that could speak to the meeting with Carter. I don't know if that does it says anything.

Matt Harris [00:26:23] No, again, I mean, Benson had. Or President Kimball had been trying to lift the ban for the previous two years, and he really kicked it in the high gear the spring of 78. He tried in March. I mean, he came to the temple in March and said, guys, let's let the band. Nope. Get holdouts.

Gerardo Sumano [00:26:39] Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:26:39] And anyway, and then. So he got tired of waiting and finally he just threw up his arms and we're do this. And that's when they got rid of. They sent Elder Peterson to Ecuador. And it had nothing to do with the irs. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the reasons, in my opinion, why President Kimball's leadership is so remarkable. I mean, the guy got things done.

John Dehlin [00:26:59] Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:26:59] We can't underestimate how difficult it was to lift the ban with these hardliners.

John Dehlin [00:27:03] Oh, yeah, for sure.

Matt Harris [00:27:05] And so it's really, really interesting to me that the first black people who were called when the ban was lifted were some of the people who incurred a lot of wounds in the Genesis Group. Ruffin Bridgeforth, the president, he saw members of the Genesis Group, this black support group we talked about in earlier episodes. He had witnessed firsthand a schism within the Genesis group. Half the group of the men in particular wanted the priesthood, and they were willing to lobby for it and pressure the brethren for it. And the other half said, we can't do that. And so he witnessed this schism where a lot of people end up leaving the church. Some of them moved to Canada, and so they called members of the Genesis Group first, the ones who stayed faithful, and they said, we lifted the ban. And the people that called were the Genesis Group advisors, including Tom Monson. So Monson called Monroe Fleming, who was the guy they had targeted to give the priesthood in the fall of 1969. Hugh Brown led that crusade along with the McKay sons. Harold Lee got word of it and put a stop to it. Well, they called Monroe Fleming first, who is now 78 years of age. And Fleming rejoiced. And he said, this policy change means that I will no longer feel like I'm a guest in my father's house. He'd been in the church for nearly three decades, and now, during the very final stint of his life, he's able to hold the priesthood. I think, if I recall, Fleming dies three years later in 81. So he hasn't. He's not a priesthood holder very long before mortality claims him. They call Ruffin Bridgeforth, the president, the Genesis group. This is Monson. And Monson tells him that he lifted the ban. And Bridgeforth starts to weep. He says, I knew if the priesthood was to come in my lifetime, it would come under President Kimball. And it has. This is really interesting. He said, we are getting close to the end times, the latter days, because I think that perhaps we have reached a state of brotherhood. So Bridgeforth is tying the lifting of the band into the end times, the second coming of Jesus, which I think is really fascinating. And then Darius Gray, a friend of mine, learned about the news. He closed his eyes and took a big, deep breath, and he said, quote, God is good. And when somebody had told him that the ban was lifted, he refused to believe it at first. He said, that's not funny. And they said, no, I'm not joking. The ban has been lifted. And then Darius Gray called his former associate at byu, a guy named Heber Woolsey, who was the PR guy at byu. And some of your listeners may recall that it was Woolsey and Gray who went to the University of Washington in 1970 to sort of smooth over some of the members of the black community who were pestering the school and also the church over its racism. So they sent Gray and Woolsey there. So they knew each other. And Gray called Woolsey, who is now the top PR guy for the church and also a close friend of Spencer Kimball's. So he left byu. Now he's working for the LDS Church. Gray called Woolsey and said, is it true? And Woolsey said, it's true. The band's been lifted. And then overseas, and with maybe a couple more instances overseas, Helvecchio Martins returns home from work. His wife greets him at the door on June 9th. This is the big day. It's been announced. And she said, I have amazing news. I have amazing news. The first presidency just announced the prophet's revelation, the priesthood will now be given to all men, regardless of race. Helvecchio, you will hold the priesthood. And then they retreated to their rooms, and they said a prayer, and they wept. And then, as I noted, a year later, when they were sealed in the temple, they wept again. It's really interesting. On their marriage ceiling that I have in my possession from the church archives, it says, on their church ceiling, they wept when they were sealed.

Julia [00:31:14] Wait, can I ask a question about that? Do you know why there was a year between when he gets the priesthood and then when they get sealed?

Matt Harris [00:31:21] Good question. I don't know the answer to that. I think it's probably just born out of policy, Julia.

Julia [00:31:25] Okay.

Matt Harris [00:31:26] That you can hold the priesthood. It's always about proving yourself. Right.

Julia [00:31:30] Okay. So having to hold it for a year.

Matt Harris [00:31:32] Yeah, I think so. I. I don't have a good answer for that.

Julia [00:31:35] Okay.

Matt Harris [00:31:35] But my guess would be that there was a year wait period, much as you would see later. Right. With young missionaries, if you committed a sin, you got to wait a year or something like that. I'm not saying they committed a sin. I don't believe that. But I just think there's a year waiting period to. To prove yourself.

Julia [00:31:51] Okay.

Matt Harris [00:31:53] And then Grant Banger, who was the. The president of the International Mission, called a special meeting with all the mission presidents in Brazil, and he broke the news. That was really emotional. The woman that I interviewed, Catherine Buler, her husband came home from that meeting when the news was broken, and he said, quote, he read the first pregnancy statement to his wife. They both began to weep. As Roger read the letter to me, Catherine writes, he started crying, and I started crying. What did the revelation mean? She asked in her diary. It means the Lord loves us. It means he answers prayers. Then I write in my book that this has special meaning for the Brazilian saints simply because they can now go to the temple. Of course, this beautiful edifice. They were. They had donated so much to give, but also it meant that they could donate or they could. They can throw those demeaning lineage lessons away in the garbage can, consign them to the dustbin of history where they belong. These are the lineage lessons that they were asked to use in their missions to determine who had, quote, Negro blood. And anyway, so they were able to get rid of those. President Kimball himself is thrilled about all of the good publicity. He writes to some of his associates. He says, we're getting. Every newspaper in the country is covering us on their front page. Newsweek and Time ran feature stories about us. And he and Heber Woolsey as close friend, they gloat. Woolsey tells them that during the athletic protest, the church took a lot of bad pr. He said, now we're getting the best priority. And he estimates this is. Woolsey estimates to President Kimball that the revelation has led to 2 to 3 million dollars worth of publicity. And it's all good, he says. And before we go on, I want to just share something about some characters that I've talked about in this book. So I wanted to sort of bookend these characters that were so prominent in the early part of the book. I wanted to write about. How did Lil Bennion think about the band? This is a man who got fired for it. For activate. For pressuring the Brethren to lift the band. And when Lil Bennion heard about the band being lifted, his son said, dad was not an emotional man, but after hearing the news. Dad was not an emotional man, but after hearing the news, he said, that was the one time there was emotion in his voice. This is his son speaking. Fawn Brody, The David O. McKay's critic or niece who turned critic. She said that the band, she called it once the ugliest thesis in Mormon existing theology. But when the Brethren lifted the band, she was pleased. And I was especially worried about this old curmudgeon, Lowry Nelson, who was always lecturing the Brethren. What did he think about it? Did he have any superlatives to say about the band? This is what he said. He said that in his diary. He said that the revelation was long overdue. That was the best that he could muster. I write so, you know, he could even praise Kimmel for lifting the band. Sterling McMurran wrote Kimball a very warm letter, and he praised President Kimball for producing a revelation. He called it a gracious, compassionate, courageous and humane act which lifted a tremendous burden from the conscience of the members of the church. So McMurran, who is friends with some of the Brethren, wants to make it right with them. Hugh Brown's family. There are three apostles who reached out to his family. They recognized how bitter he was when he died over the ban and also having been dropped from the First Presidency. And I write in my book that the revelation was an opportunity to heal old wounds and repair old relationships. And Eldon Tanner, Gordon Hinckley and James Faust called up Hugh Brown's grandson, Ed Furmage, who was a law professor for many years at the University of Utah and a close confidant of his father, grandfather. And these three apostles called up Ed Furmage. And they said Quote, you, grandfather would have loved to have seen this day. And in private, Hugh Brown's daughter Mary, Ed's mother, wrote in her diary that my father had something to do with this day. He is. How did she word it? He is on the other side of the veil. This is a Mormon term that separates mortality from immortality. He is on the other term of the veil, rejoicing. And so Mary Farmage gives her father, her late father, credit, and Ed Firmage gives his grandfather credit for this band. So they recognized the pain that it had caused the Brown family. And these three apostles reached out in three separate phone calls, each of them tearfully explaining how much Hugh Brown would have loved to have seen this day. Black Latter Day Saints, of course, what does this mean for them? They can go to the temple, and if they're a male and they are found worthy, they can hold the priesthood, and they want their lineages declared. A lot of them had not been given lineage declarations, and this for the simple reason that patriarchs did not want to tell them that they derived from a cursed lineage, that of Cain or Ham or Canaan. And so they just simply didn't give the lineage. Which is weird because that's the purpose of a patriarchal blessing, is to pronounce lineage, one of the purposes. So that's the first thing a lot of these black Saints did, including Darius Gray and Eugene Orr, early members of the Genesis Group presidency. They went and they had their lineage declared when it was omitted from them back in the 60s when they were given their blessings. The NAACP. This is conspiratorial, John, so this will be a fun one, but it's not conspiratorial. But In March of 78, the NAACP leaders meet with President Kimball and they talk about their concerns. And they basically say to President Kimball, you know, we don't really care about your theology. We're not Mormons, so we don't care about that. But it's a problem for civil rights in Utah. If your people and the people that control the legislature think that black people are cursed, you can imagine that that would be an obstacle both in hiring practices and in renting home price locations. And so can you please lift the ban, make this all go away? That's in March of 78. And so in June of 78, one of the leaders of the NAACP, after the revelation's been publicized, he tells his associates at the naacp, he said, I think I had a lot to do with lifting the band. I think that's great. I think that's great. You Know, he gives himself credit for, you know, the church leaders lifting the band, not realizing, of course, it was well into the works by March of 78. So anyway, there's a lot going on. Another black Utahn, guy named Marvin Davis, who was a Utah University of Utah professor, also member of the naacp, when they asked him, New York Times reporter asked him, you know, what do you think about the ban? And he said, quote, don't expect me to thank Spencer Kimball. I'll thank Spencer Kimball when he announces that he's had a revelation that Mormons will not practice racial hiring. Then I'll be elated. So there are different, you know, reactions to the ban. There are women who write in. This is during the Equal Rights Amendment when Utah is playing a pivotal moment. There were women who write into President Kimball. I saw his archive. I saw these letters. I was thrilled to read them. And the letters would say, you know, they would say, dear President Kimball, thank you for your act addressing racial equality. Now will you please address gender equality and give women the priesthood? And some of these letters were signed individually by the women themselves. Others were signed by a woman and her husband. And so this is what's going on. I have a friend who sent me a letter that he had from President Monson. And it was a letter that Thomas S. Monson wrote in 1981 when asked about giving women the priesthood. And, excuse me, it's an Eldon Tanner. And Tanner wrote the person back, and First Presidency Councilor Tanner wrote the member back, and he said, we're not currently considering or praying about giving women the priesthood. So, you know, that's a private letter to a Latter Day Saint in California. So anyway, they're getting responses about gender equality, and President Kimball himself will address that to the press. He'll say, we're not going to give women the priesthood. We have no intention of doing that. So some women are upset. There are some Latter Day Saints who don't like the band and some critics outside of the church who don't like the band. And they write Kimball a whole stack of really angry letters. One of them calls Kimball a senile old bastard, a stupid fool who would destroy our church. And then basically, you're saying they.

Gerardo Sumano [00:41:10] They didn't like the.

Matt Harris [00:41:11] The band, like the band being lifted.

Gerardo Sumano [00:41:14] Okay?

Matt Harris [00:41:14] I mean, incredibly racist Latter Day Saints. So they're calling the church president, quote, a senile old bastard and a stupid fool who will destroy the church. This is a Latter Day Saint. I can't imagine that. The bishop re upped their temple recommend after that. All Right, I digress. But they're doing this in private and there are Lutherans and Presbyterians. They're writing them, you know, nasty letters saying, you know, we thought you were one of us and, oh, that you're one of us, that you're a racist, basically. But now you're showing that you're not. You've got white supremacy groups writing him. That was interesting. And obviously you can imagine what white supremacy groups have to say about Kimball lifting the ban. They're not happy. And as I write my book, Kimball takes all of these letters in stride, just sort of shrugs them off because he's got other things to worry about. And I'm often asked, you know, do you think most Latter Day Saints appreciated the lifting of the band? And we don't know. We can't quantify this. But my, from my research and from my gut feeling and some other pieces of perhaps evidence is that most Latter Day Saints supported it. Because they supported their church leader doesn't mean they're not racist, but they supported their church leader. And I think the bigger question that was on everybody's mind is, you know, how will black people fit into the church? And another question that was on a lot of Latter Day Saints minds are what does the church still teach about the pre existence and about the curse of Cain and about interracial marriage? Because the official declaration number two, the document the church released to the public indicating that the ban had been lifted, it doesn't address any of that racial scaffolding that had fueled the ban for so many years. And so a lot of Latter Day Saints want to know, are black people still cursed? Can white and black people marry with the church's blessing? And the church remains silent? And that was by design. The reason why it was by design is because they didn't want to get asked specific questions about the Revelation. Did Jesus appear to you that some of the apostles had been saying, and we'll talk about that in just a second. They didn't want to be asked that. They didn't want to be asked in particular, do you still believe in Bruce McConkie's views in Mormon doctrine or that of his father in law, Joseph Fielding Smith? They didn't want to get into the business of repudiating for former current church leaders. And also, as I note in this book, there were still a number of members, number of the quorum of the 12, who still have racist views. And so. And I'm happy to talk about that. So just because I lift the band doesn't mean the Racism suddenly goes away. And so. All right, so they don't lift the ban, they lift the band. They don't give reasons, you know, for the doctrine.

Racist Teachings and Interracial Marriage Policies

Gerardo Sumano [00:44:17] Matt, when you say. You're saying that other. There were church leaders who had racist views.

Matt Harris [00:44:24] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:44:25] Do you want to talk about. What do you mean by that? And. And. And if you know, who maintained their racist views even after the ban was lifted.

Matt Harris [00:44:34] Yeah. So we're going to talk about in our next episode, as John mentioned at the onset, interracial marriage. And this is just fueled by racism. And there's a number of them. We'll talk specific names when we get to the interracial marriage part. But also, the racism didn't just deal with marriage, Gerardo. It also dealt with the idea that black people were cursed. Their dark skin was a sign of divine disfavor. I mean, there are apostles who still believe that. And so what they would argue with the lifting of the ban was that black people were cursed, but that God had lifted that curse in 1978 and allowed them to be adopted into the House of Israel where they could enjoy all the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Those are the covenant blessings that allows one to experience the priesthood and also enjoy the salvific rituals of Mormon temples. So, you know, that's something that black people in the church will be told when well into the future, into the 21st century and arguably even today, that, hey, brother, you're cursed, but God lifted it, so don't worry about it. And of course, that's so offensive because black people and brown people don't ever want to think of their beautiful skin as being a sign of a curse. So there's a lot of that going on. And I'm happy to talk about when we finish this book about where I think the church is today with the leaders and their views on race. That's for another episode. But in 1978, I mean, most of the Quorum of the Twelve would be considered racist by anybody's standards for having taught and defended these teachings for so many years. So I think that's instructive to know is that somehow they're not magically, you know, unracist when they lift the ban. Those racist impulses are still very much embedded in church culture. And the fact that they allow these racist books to continue to circulate probably teaches us all that we need to know about it.

Gerardo Sumano [00:46:34] And isn't it. Would it be fair to say that. That, you know, they lifted the band, but they also had they. They have to still explain why the band existed in the first place. So it would be kind of hard to just stop believing or on the, on the racist teachings about curse lineages and, and pre existence and all that stuff, because they still had to explain why it existed on the first place. Right. It was not something that they could just come out and say it was a mistake. In fact, I don't think they've ever done that.

Matt Harris [00:47:13] Well, that's something that Dogs President Kimball, Gerardo is. And before we get to Elder McConkey, Elder Packer embellishing the revelation, let's talk about that question, because it's a good question. And so President Kimball, he wants to look forward. And looking forward means establishing missions in previously majority black countries the church didn't have a presence in, whether it's Haiti, whether it's parts of Brazil, whether it's parts of Africa. And so he's not interested in looking backwards about past teachings, but he can't outrun them. There are journalists and members who are asking. They're writing letters to the First Presidency, you know, tell us about the, the priesthood doctrine or are black people still cursed and can, you know, all of that stuff. And he doesn't want to deal with them. It's easy to, to deal with the members writing you letters. Just don't answer the letters. But when you're interviewing with a journalist, you don't have that luxury. And so there was a journalist named John Dart who wrote for the LA Times. And he met with President Kimball in 1979. And Dart had done his homework. He read President Kimball's or Elder Kimball's 1960 sermon in general Conference. And in this sermon he's talking about Lamanites or Native Americans, the church calls them Lamanites. And in this General conference sermon in 1960, Elder Kimball said that those who left the reservations, these are Indian reservations, and they came to live in the homes. These are youth, LDS youth on lda, on Indian reservations. So Indian kids were Mormons. They would leave their reservations and they would live in the homes. They would leave the reservation and live in the homes of white Latter Day Saints where they could go to school with those white Latter Day Saints kids and they would be nurtured in Mormonism and they would do it for the school year and then go back to the reservation. And Kimball argued or claimed that the kids who left the reservations were nurtured in Mormon teachings and their skin turned lighter because they were living in the home of these white Latter Day Saints. And he held up a picture or pictures in General Conference in which he showed how the kids living in the homes of white Latter Day Saints were, were turning white and delightsome. And their parents who remained on the reservations, their skin remained dark. And other kids who didn't for whatever reason make the leap to go to the homes to live with white Latter Day Saints, they stayed behind and their skin too was dark. So he's drawing this very strong distinction between the white and delightsome Lamanites who left the reservations and those who stayed behind and had dark skinned. And I interviewed his son Edward, and that's one of the first things I wanted to ask was I said, ed, that's crazy. Your father's standing up in Conference in 1960 telling the saints that drawing distinctions between family members that are light skinned. I said, that's crazy. He said, I know. I said, how'd your father. What happened? Because the saints, I mean, I'm a scholar. I've been in so many different archives, I read what people think. And I said to him, I'm. This is before I saw the, the archive when I was interviewing with Ed. I said, ed, I'm sure the saints wrote in saying what's going on here? And he said they did, hundreds of them. They flooded my. Off my, my father's mailbox at church headquarters with letters about skin color turning white. Is that really the doctrine of the church? And Ed said something covered his eyes up over his, his hand over his eyes. And he said, oh, that sermon caused my father more fits and he regretted giving it. And so back to John Dart, 1979. Dart read the 1960 sermon in which the brown skin would slowly disappear when these Lamanites moved into the. Off the reservation. And he asked President Kimball, he said, can you give me scientific examples where this happens, that your skin color turns white? And President Kimball said, I guess scientifically you would have to prove it, but I don't have any evidence. And so he's embarrassed by these teachings. And another journalist will ask him in a separate interview, different interview, he said, does the church still teach the pre existence theory? And this is Richard Osling, another famous reporter, he's a religion reporter. And Kimmel responds, the church no longer holds to that theory. I mean, that's astonishing. He admits this to. He's asked a point blank question. And President Kimball gave him a point blank answer. And Legrand Richards, as I write in my book, Apostle Richards gave a different response when a reporter asked him, do you still believe in the pre existence theory? And he said, President Kimball said we shouldn't teach this publicly. And that's far different than saying what Kimball said. He's just saying we shouldn't talk about it publicly, which is to say people still believe it.

John Dehlin [00:52:24] Right.

Matt Harris [00:52:24] It's just, you know, long past the hour to talk about those things in public. So what happens from that? 1979.

John Dehlin [00:52:31] Can I just validate that? When I went to Utah State to get my First Master's In 2004, Mark McConkey, the grandson of Bruce R. McConkie, was a fellow grad student with me. I think his dad was also Mark McConkey in Colorado. But he basically said to me, you know, it's well known within the McConkey family that just because the church stopped teaching many of the things my grandpa taught doesn't mean they stopped believing them. They just decided that it wasn't prudent to talk about them publicly. And this was in the mid 2000s. But it's very clear that many, many Mormon church leaders continued believing all of this racist garbage well into this decade. And there's no evidence to believe they didn't.

Matt Harris [00:53:22] You know, I, I've heard that, too, for whatever it's worth, John from McConkey people that I know, they said that the family still believes in Elder McConkey, his son Joseph feeling they believe that to the day that Bruce died in 1985, and Joseph feeling his son and confident, passed in 2013, and he believed it, too. So what you just said doesn't surprise me the least.

John Dehlin [00:53:47] Yeah.

Matt Harris [00:53:48] So they're recognizing the church is recognizing that there has to be more finesse in public with the church's racial teachings. They didn't realize this back in the 60s even, and. But they're realizing it more than ever after the ban's been lifted. But they're going to learn that they can't run from this because people want to know that, you know, does this mean that the church no longer believes in the curse and the pre existence? And that's not what it means. It just means that we're not going to talk about it publicly anyway. So just to finish up my thread with John Dart. So after President Kimball has asked these very difficult questions during this interview about skin color turning white and having scientific evidence to prove it, President Kimball instructs the apostles to tone down some of those teachings in the Book of Mormon. This is in 1981, so, you know, a little bit after a year and a half after his interview with Dart. And so what they do is they take passages in the Book of Mormon and they soften some of the most Intense racial passages like skins of blackness, and they change white and delights into pure and delights. And they're trying to get away from whiteness because that's what John Dart was doing. He was criticizing the church for its white centered theology. And so President Kimball's trying to, you know, they're trying to move away from that. And the church apologists will argue that in the original Book of Mormon manuscript from 1830, it says Pure and delightsome, and at some point thereafter, it was changed to white and delightsome. So they're just saying, you know, we're just kind of changing it back. And, you know, when I read this sort of thing, I'm like, right, you're just doing it, you know, without any context. Sure. I mean, they're trying to get away from this whiteness stuff, which critics called an embarrassment to the church. And so that's what they do. They tone down some of the racial stuff in the Book of Mormon. But Elder McConkie, Elder Packer, and Elder Monson, they work with a handful of BYU professors, one or two of whom were my old professors. So I know a little bit about it from them when I was a student there, including McConkie's close friend Robert J. Matthews, who was the dean of BYU Religious Education. And so three apostles work with a handful of BYU religion professors to cross reference the scriptures and to write chapter headings. And, and what they had done is they had softened the whiteness stuff, White and delights and appear and delightsome, but they cross referenced the curses with black skin. So they're still drawing that distinction between black people and a divine curse. And that's from the 1981 version of the standard works that I have, that I use as a missionary, that I use, that most of us use. The Church uses a different version today. They've gone through other iterations to soften some of those racist subheadings that McConkie had included. But that's what they did in 1981, because they're very, very conscious of reporters and journalists asking them about the Church's erstwhile race teachings. And they want to move beyond that.

Whiteness and Changes to the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [00:56:58] I thought that was super important for you to provide the likely context that led to those changes to the Book of Mormon, because that's fascinating that the Church wants so desperately to never give the impression that they're acting in response to social pressure, political pressure, but they clearly do.

Matt Harris [00:57:20] Oh, they do. And, you know, I'm going to say a quick word before we get to Makaki and Packer is that in the late 70s, there is an apologetic group that emerges in California, I believe, and it would become known as the foundation of Ancient Research in Mormon Studies, or short for farms. And so it's, it's. For years, it had been the church's most important apologetic group. And what that means is they're going to defend the church's narrative at all costs. So what they would do is one of the things that they really. That sort of gave them a lot of street cred and helped to build their organization was they really, really went after critics who talked about, you know, whiteness theology meant a literal skin change. They said, that's not true. It meant your soul. So it's. The Scriptures are speaking metaphorically, nothing to do with skin change. And, you know, whether these folks are just dishonest or ignorant or both, I don't know. But I'll take them at their word that maybe they're ignorant or uninformed, let's say. I want to be charitable here, but I will say that this is not even worth discussing and debating because for a couple of reasons. Number one, scores of general authority sermons and writings talk about literal skin changes that any reasonable person would read. So they're not talking about metaphorical repenting, and your soul turns white when you repent, and your soul is dark when you sin. And these apologists look at Western tropes from the ancient world to prove their point, drawing these tenuous connections, none of that stuff. So they ignore the scores of general authority writings about these whiteness tropes. And they're everywhere, not just in the writings. They're in the improvement era. I've written about this in several places outside of this book focus. And so they're all over church literature, they're in popular culture. And so that's the first point I would make, is the apologists miss all of that and ignore it. And then let me just give you one example. When Joseph Fielding smith talked to BYU religion instructors and CES instructors in 1954, after Mark Peterson's speech that he gave at BYU, that racist speech he gave, Hugh Nibley asked him, you know, is it true that people's skin turned white? And Joseph feeling McConkey, or excuse me, Joseph Feeling Smith, he said that quote, we have actual examples of one, a Negro skin has changed. I mean, that's not metaphorical. We have actual examples where their skin color changes. So that's the first point. The second point I would make is in the literary world, there's something called reception history, which is, how do People create meaning from a text. How do they interpret it? And if you talk to any black or brown Latter Day Saint over the years, they will tell you, I'm telling you this, you can ask any of them. They will tell you that they've heard most of them. All of them that I've heard of will tell you that they've all been told that their black or brown skin will turn whiter pending their worthiness. I mean, so incredibly offensive. This is stuff that goes on into the 21st century. And so that's the reception, history. Whatever dubious connections an apologist wants to make to the ancient world, it is wholly irrelevant to the lived experience of marginalized communities in the church. And so these marginalized communities will tell you that I've heard it over and over and over again. They've shared that with me, including Darren Smith, a good friend of mine that you've had on your podcast. He's been told that. And so anyway, it's really offensive. And the apologists just don't want to deal with that. And so this is what President Kimball is trying to move away from, because obviously it's not a good look for the church to be arguing that somebody with dark skin, you know, it's a sign of a curse and that if they're worthy and they repent of their sins, God will bless them with white skin. I mean, it's just nonsense.

John Dehlin [01:01:40] All right, so I just have to say one thing that just is really confusing to me, because if you look at the current Book of Mormon, and I'm just going to read 2nd Nephi 5. 21, it says, and he, meaning God or Jesus, caused the cursing to come upon them, meaning the Lamanites, yea, even a sore cursing because of their iniquity. For behold, they'd harden their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint. Wherefore, as they were white and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people, the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them. Here is my question. If they're going to change and fix the Book of Mormon, why did they leave that still in? It's still there. It's absolutely 100% still there. Why would they change it in one place and then leave it here? Does anybody have an answer for me? Because I'm befuddled.

Julia [01:02:40] Well, it reminds me of the, the. The. When there's all gods are the same. What is that called? Trinity, where that's still kind of present in the Book of Mormon. As well. So clearly they're not doing a very thorough job of. But Matt, did you have something to add to that?

Matt Harris [01:02:54] Well, I was just asked this question, John, last week when I gave a talk at Benchmark Books, there were, I don't know, 80 people there and anyway, I was giving a book talk about second class Saints and somebody asked that question about the racism in scriptures and what would I do if I were the church president and had to laugh and collect myself? So, but if I rule the world for one day, what would I do? And you know, you can't take this stuff out. I don't, I don't know. I just don't. That's a problem. I guess you can soften some of it, but if you start taking it out, then it loses its historical significance. So I don't know if I'm a fan of censoring a third of the Book of Mormon. Maybe, you know, a little bit, but, but not a ton. What I would say is to you today, and also what I said at Benchmark is that you just contextualize it. This is the racism and this is the prism through which they viewed scriptures back in the day. And this is not how they do it today. The church leaders don't do this today. At least the ones that I know of don't do it. This is a problem at byu. I don't want to tackle this today because we're going to do this later. But this is an issue when racism emerges at BYU in the 21st century. Black and brown kids at BYU are being told this, what you just said, John, skins of blackness. And obviously these microaggressions are insufferable. So it is a problem in the church today. But I would just simply contextualize it and give strict instructions that doesn't matter how Apostle so and so viewed these scriptures back in the day. This is what we do today. And the people who teach the Book of Mormon don't teach that your skin color is a sign of a divine curse. That's nonsense. We don't teach that today and just move on. But that's just me. I know there are some people that just want to take a big hatchet to the parts of the Book of Mormon. But I just think it loses its vitality if you do that.

John Dehlin [01:04:49] Well, still, like somebody had to have been in this conversation where it's like, okay, let's fix, we gotta fix, you know, second Nephi 30, you know, and again, share it here. So, second Nephi 30 chapter. Sorry, second Nephi 36 it says, and they shall rejoice, for they shall know that it is a blessing unto them from the hand of God. And their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes, and many generations shall not pass away among them say they shall be a pure and a delights in people. So that's the scripture that was changed from. I don't know why that screen just got changed, but that's the scripture that was changed from white and delights him to pure and delights him. And I'm just trying to imagine the conversation where it's like we gotta change second Nephi 36. And then somebody saying, yeah, but what about second Nephi 521 or Jacob 3, 5 and 8? They're just as bad, if not way worse. And it's like, no, no, no, let's make the bold change, but only change one of three super racist ones and let's leave the other two. Somebody had to have had that conversation. And I'm just dying to know.

Gerardo Sumano [01:06:05] I have an answer.

John Dehlin [01:06:07] Give us the answer.

Gerardo Sumano [01:06:09] And well, this is based on fair for fair Mormon. And I've known this for, for a bit. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but I haven't seen being rebuted by, by critics. So I would imagine he has some, some water to it. But basically what they say is that the changes made in the 1981 edition where they take out white and the lightsum and change it for pure and the lightsum, they those changes that were made were specifically made Based on the 1840 edition of the Book of Mormon. And according to fair Latter Day Saints, it, they believe that it was Joseph Smith who made those changes himself just on those two passages or, or that one passage specifically. And it says that what they say is the change was originally made in the 1840 edition lost and then restored again in the 1981 edition. So I mean, that could explain why it would be in some places and not not in others. Because the changes that they were kind of brave enough in 1981 to make, they were only willing to make them because they were based on an earlier version.

John Dehlin [01:07:24] Got it.

Gerardo Sumano [01:07:25] Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:07:26] Got it.

Matt Harris [01:07:26] Well, so Gerardo, that's what I meant when I said a minute ago they're going to say it harkens back to an earlier version. I'm telling you that that's true. That's. But that's not what's driving this, right? That's not what's driving this. And so let me say a couple things. One is by 1978-79, the brethren are well aware of the racist racism in the scriptures because recall in 1970 when the university of Washington was trying to get out of their contract from playing BYU and they had to prove that BYU and its sponsoring institution were racist, at least byu, not the LDS Church, they went after the scriptures. They said, every BYU kid has to take a Book of Mormon class. And have you seen those racist scriptures? And sadly, one of the things that got cut out of my book was the report that the religion dean had made to the Ernest Wilkinson, in which he spells out all of these Book of Mormon verses that could be construed as racist that would get them in trouble with the law. And they're not unknown to your listeners. It's. It's the ones that we all think of when we think about racism. And you just put one of them up there, John. So they're aware of this, that, that people are viewing Mormon scriptures as racist. And I seriously doubt before 1970, other than Hughes, Hugh Brown, and maybe Marion Hanks, most of them didn't never occurred to them because this is just the prison by which they see the world. And so, but they're told in 1970, there are people who think that these scriptures are racist, and this is a problem. And so they're using the 1840 Book of Mormon text as a pretext to go back to the, you know, to the earlier version, to soften things. And, you know, there's always a context. They didn't just wake up one day and say, hmm, let's overhaul the scriptures and bring them back to 1840. The context is President Kimball and other apostles are getting hammered with questions about Mormon whiteness teachings. And so let me add another little wrinkle to this. So by 2004, Doubleday Press, this large commercial press in the United States, they reached out to the, to Gordon Hinckley and his administration, and they said, hey, we want to publish a copy of the Book of Mormon. We're not out to make money on it. And, well, that's not true. They want to make money on it. I'll correct myself. But. But we obviously need your permission to publish this. And will you work with us on this? And of course, President Hinckley and his associates, they see this as a prime opportunity to flood the earth of the Book of Mormon through a commercial press. It gives it legitimacy. Why not? And they further soften some of the racism. When they turn the manuscript over to Doubleday, they take out the racist subheadings of Bruce McConkey. And I don't, I Don't have the. All of the verses in front of me at the moment, but I have in my research file all the verses. I quote a few of them, actually in my book. But they soften the skins of blackness and some other things to make it more racially inclusive. But if you look at the version on the LDS Church webpage today, there are still some racist verses on there. It is far different than what it once was. So there's still more work to be done. But my sense is, John, I don't have any proof for this, so I want to be clear. But my sense is that these things are often the result of compromises. And I can see in my mind's eye the Brethren sitting around a large conference table debating and discussing which verses ought to be softened. And I can see, you know, one or two of the apostles would say something like, you know, all right, all right, we made enough concessions, enough. Let's move on. So we didn't get rid of all the racist scriptures, but we've. We've done enough. It's time to move on. And I think that happens a lot. And that's probably what happened with Doubleday in 2004, and it's probably what happened in 1981.

John Dehlin [01:11:21] All right, well, so fascinating what this book reveals, Matt. All right, so should we now talk to. Should we remind our listeners and viewers what did happen in terms of the, you know, the meeting that led to the change and then the embellishments that followed? Should we go there?

The Brethren's Concerns and the 1978 Revelation

Matt Harris [01:11:44] Yes, let's go there. So this is really one of the hallmarks of this chapter, is that the Brethren had been worried for a long time, especially President Kimball, about how the Saints would accept the lifting of the band, particularly the Saints in the South. And so he decides to move forward with it. This is a concern that President McKay had worried about back in the 50s and 60s. If we lift the ban, then what will the Saints in the south think? This is, of course, the foundation of segregation and racism in the South. Not to say that it just happened there in the south, because that's not true. The north had plenty of racism, as did the west, but the south is really where much of the civil rights movement is concentrated. Elder McConkie, he also was worried about the south and Elder Packer, and so they feel the need to have to embellish it. And somehow if you embellish the revelation, then people will be more likely to believe it.

John Dehlin [01:12:52] So remind us what did happen so that then we can know what the embellishments were.

Matt Harris [01:12:57] Yeah, let's get right into the guts of it. So Elder McConkie, in two weeks after the revelation occurred, it was announced. Elder McConkie, the end of June 78, spoke to his family, and he said that there were other worldly figures at the revelation. And his sister May asks him about it. I mean, this is a whole family gathering of McConkeys. And you can imagine that he's in TR. They're intrigued. And May brings out her notebook. Her name is Margaret, but she goes by May. So Bruce's sister May gets out her notebook and she said, tell me the angels who were there.

John Dehlin [01:13:35] And by the way, this is Margaret Pope, who was a professor of religion at BYU when I was there and was semi influential. So this isn't just some random person. This is somebody who taught on the religion faculty at byu. Okay, go ahead.

Matt Harris [01:13:50] Yeah, so Margaret Pope is there. She's asking her brother questions. And she said, you know, who are the angels? She's there, she's ready to write him down. And he tells Bruce, says that I'm not going to tell you, but I will just tell you. It was just like at Kirtland. Then she would ask another question, which she would say, were there angelic choirs? And he would say, just like at Kirtland, did Jesus appear? Just like at Kirtland. But May, I'm not telling you.

John Dehlin [01:14:26] And can we tell our viewers and listeners what happened in Kirtland?

Matt Harris [01:14:29] So, yeah, I'm leading to that.

John Dehlin [01:14:30] I'm leading how McCunk was dog whistling a little bit or whatever.

Matt Harris [01:14:34] I'm leading to that. So at Kirtland in 1836, Latter Day Saints will. Will know this. This is a foundational story that every Latter Day Saint will learn. The time of their child all the way up to their adult years, and that is that when Joseph Smith, the founding prophet, dedicated the Kirtland Temple, that it was this magnificent, epiphanous moment where a number of angels had appeared. These are angels from heaven, if you will, or the other world, as I put it. And Joseph Smith writes in the Doctrine and Covenants, he talks about this vision that he had. And he says that Moses appeared at the Kirtland Temple in 1836. He said, Elijah appeared, Elias appeared. Elias is synonymous with Noah for Mormons. And then there were a host of other angelic beings who appeared. But most dramatically, Smith says that he saw Jesus. And in the Doctrine and Covenants, he describes what Jesus looks like. He says, quote, he's white. Like, let's see, his hair is white, like the pure Snow. His countenance shone above the brightness of the sun, and his voice as the sound of the rushing of great waters. That's a quote. So when he's telling his sister May, just like a kirtland, I mean, what do you think she's thinking about? She's thinking about all the angels who appear in Jesus Christ himself. And so, you know, he's not even trying to be subtle about it. I'm not even certain why he just wasn't more, you know, graphic. But anyway, so she writes all of this stuff down and. And she can't sleep that night. She is just revved up. So she can't sleep that night. And she stays up till two in the morning writing all of the things that her brother had told her at the family gathering the previous day. On Saturday, and with Elder McConkie's permission, Bill Pope, May's husband, who's the stake president of one of the BYU wards, with Elder McConkie's permission, the brother in law, Bill Pope, gives a sermon in a state conference at byu. So the timing is kind of impeccable. Gives a sermon the next day at BYU on a Sunday. There are hundreds of people in this big state conference. And he recounts all of the things that Elder McCockey had told the family from the previous day, using the notes that May had typed up. That's really critical. It's also critical that he has Elder McConkie's permission to tell this story. So the following week, Bill Pope goes to his home ward in Provo and he recounts the events there in Provo. And there's a woman in the congregation named Annie Whitten. And Annie Whitten, like the other congregants, are blown away by the detail where they're told that the brethren heard the voice of God. They saw Jesus and the twelve apostles and church presidents had appeared to them and told that it was time to lift the, quote, Negro doctrine. And Annie Whitten is taking notes fast and furious. And so she's so blown away by this, she, when the services are concluded, she goes to May Pope and she says, look, can you help fill in some gaps? I want to make sure I got the story right. I didn't miss any details. And so May Pope works with Sister Whitten to make sure that the details of what Elder McConkie had said were accurate, at least as conveyed through Bill Pope. So Annie Whitten's doing due diligence, and she's so thrilled by this testimony building experience that she sends out her account of all these notes she took with May Pope's input, she sends them out to her two kids, one of whom was on a mission, one of whom was somewhere as a young married couple. And then she sends them to other family members with the caveat, you know, this is what's going on. This is exciting. There was a BYU religion professor named George Pace who was in the congregation. He basically took. He didn't have May Pope confirm the details, but he got the details right, because George Pace's accounting of Bill Pope's sermon in that Provo ward matched that of Annie Whitten. And then in the meantime, McConkie's relatives, of course, are going off into their respective wards and talking about the ban being lifted. And presidents of the church, past presidents, had appeared there.

Julia [01:19:05] Wait, Matt, wait. Can you talk about Henry Taylor and how he was talking about the oil paintings? Because I think that helps with the embellishment.

Matt Harris [01:19:12] So Henry Taylor is also. So the McConkey start to spread this out to the church. It starts with them, but when it starts to spread out through the church, needless to say, other leaders, including lower level general authorities, hear it, including this guy named Henry Taylor who's a member of the first or the first quorum of the 70. And so he gives a sermon to the. When he hears about it himself the following week, I have to get my.

Julia [01:19:46] Was he not. Was he not in attendance during that. During the meeting?

Matt Harris [01:19:49] No. So Henry Taylor is not an apostle, so he wasn't there during the actual event, but he hears from some of the apostles, probably McConkey. I can't pinpoint it to McConkey, but maybe Bakonki or Packer, because it's those two that are pressing this narrative. But Henry Taylor of the first Quorum of the Seventy hears from two apostles that. That there were church presidents there. And so he starts to talk about it as well. So just working off of what Elder McConkie had been saying and Elder Packer in the meantime, the same thing happens at the missionary training center we call the MTC today. I guess it's called the LTC in those days, a language training center. But it's the same thing as the MTC today. It's where missionaries get trained prior to their service around the world. And then the. The mission president was. Or the LTC president was a guy by the name of Max Pinniger, and his brother Rex was a. A member of the first quorum of the 70. And so Rex was swept up in some of this grandiose language as well. Of past presidents appearing and all of that. And so Max shares this with the missionaries of the ltc. And one of the people in attendance is one of my good friends, Gary Bergera. He works at the LTC as a missionary instructor, and he's hearing this stuff. So now we have two instances going on. We hear it being taught to missionaries. The General Authority 70s are teaching it, and then we have at least two apostles that are teaching it. So just to sort of give you a balance of where we're at with this. All right, so this gets. This spreads like wildfire throughout the church. I'm a young kid in the 1980s growing up. I live in Maine, and I hear about the brethren's experiences in the temple, about angels appearing. I mean, this is the sort of. This is how it's given to me as a kid. And, you know, as a teenager, all I cared about was basketball. So it, you know, I didn't really stop and process what was going on in Salt Lake, but I did hear about it. And when I served my LDS Church mission in the late 80s and early 90s in Idaho, I heard about it in my mission in Idaho. And I paid more attention, of course, on my mission about it, but I did, you know, probe it or pursue it. And so anyway, it's going around the church, everywhere. Leonard Arrington, the church pres. Or church historian at the time, he talks about receiving letters and inquiries from various Latter Day Saints around the country, asking Leonard, you know, is it true where they're divine personages at the revelation. So Arrington starts to research and interview people, general authorities and the McConkeys. And so he writes about all of this extensively in his diary. And he talks about. Leonard Arrington talks about going to a ward where Elder Packer addressed the revelation. And Packer talks about Jesus appearing and telling them to change their Negro doctrine. And so this is everywhere in Arrington's diary because he's not only hearing it himself firsthand, but he's also interviewing people who are hearing this from Packer and McConkey. Well, guess who also hears it. It's the church president. And he's furious because the church president not only hears it, but three of the apostles that I can document, maybe more, but I can document three. Three of the apostles approach President Kimball, including the. The most junior member of the quorum of the 12, David B. Haight. And he says, why is Elder McConkey saying that? We heard the voice of God during the revelation. That didn't happen. I didn't hear a voice And Gordon Hinckley in 1988. Timing's critical on this Gordon Hinckley, who's now in the First Presidency. So this is 88. This is three years after President Kimball's dead, also three years after Ella McConkey's dead, because Hinckley never would have said this if McConkey were alive. And that is in 1988. He said, we didn't hear a voice. The revelation came about by the still, small voice. And that is exactly how Kimball had wanted the revelation to be told all along. He told the brethren, he told BYU religion people, CES people, anyone with an earshot. If the press asks you, tell them that it was just a feeling of the Holy Spirit. He instructed the church PR people that when the New York Times comes calling or the Washington Post or whatever, tell them that it came about by the still small voice, which is usually how Mormon revelation is characterized. So McConkey and Packer are subverting that narrative, and the President is angry. And so he writes Elder McConkie a letter, and he said, can you please tell me what you've been telling your family or what you told your family and what you've been telling the saints about the revelation? And I write in my book that McConkey wisely leaves out a lot of the details. So he doesn't mention, you know, Jesus appearing and the 12 appearing and all of that stuff. And he just focuses on. He does claim that it was like the Pentecostal movement at Kirtland when they, you know, they felt a great outpouring of the Spirit. Right. He focuses on that. And so basically, it's pretty innocuous to sort of get the President off his back. And in the meantime, I mean, this stuff, again, is circulating like wildfire throughout the church. And so McConkey's been rebuked by the church president. Do not tell people we heard a voice. Do not tell people we heard or saw personages from the other world. That's not true. Don't say it now. McConkey is in damage control. He goes to Annie Whitten, Sister Whitten, in his sister's ward. He writes her a letter, and he says, please don't teach this. It's false doctrine. Now, any witness now having this existential moment? She's been reproved by a church apostle for teaching false doctrine. For your listeners who are not lds, this is a serious charge. False doctrine in Mormon parlance means you're leading people aside astray. It's a big taboo. And Annie Whitten is Crushed. She's been accused by this respected apostle of teaching false doctrine. And she writes him back and she said, how could I be teaching false doctrine? Elder McConkey, your sister is the one that helped me create the narrative. Now, Elder McConkey didn't have the chutzpah to tell her that he had been reproved by the church president. And so he wrote her back a follow up letter recognizing that he had crushed her. And he just said, he said, the fault lies not with you, Sister Whitten, but with May. He throws his sister under a bus. And later on, Joseph Fieldy McConkey, his son, would tell a third party guy by the name of David Berger, he would say, may has never told a true story in her life. She always embellishes. So Elder McConkie and his son Joseph, they, they throw Aunt May and Sister May under the bus. And that's what happens. They make her the scapegoat. But Elder McConkey doesn't have the guts to say, look, I screwed up, I got rebuked. Here's where we're at. And this happens again to another person who writes in Burger, who writes in, um, he's a convert to the church, and he's in his early to mid-20s in the 1970s. And as a convert, he was drawn in by the Mormon esoteric teachings of visions, of miraculous healings. I mean, this is where his mind wanders. And then he hears, like everybody else, all of these miraculous things happening at the revelation. So more than anybody else, Berger starts to collate the different accounts that are circulating. He reaches out to Joseph filling McConkey, he interviews Joseph Philly McConkey. He reaches out to Gary Bergera, who was at that meeting at the ltc. He reaches out to Bill and May Pulp and some other people, and he collates the different versions that were circulating that by now were in written form. And he sends them to Elder McConkey and he said, can you, can you verify all of this? And McConkey writes it back, this Curt letter, none of this is true. Please don't teach it. And of course, Berger's a little flummox too, because he's like, wait a minute, I mean, your own kids, your own family's teaching this stuff and you're just summarily denying it. And again, he didn't want to say that he had been rebuked. And so that's what's going on here. And the Popes, Elder McConkey asked the Popes to repudiate the talk that President Bill Pope had given to the State Conference. They published a mea culpa in the Daily Universe. This is Brigham Young University's sponsored newspaper. There's a little mea culpa from August of 1978 in which the Popes basically say, you know, state Conference. We gave a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Elder McConkie's account of the revelation. It's not true. I'm just like, I mean, talk about embarrassing for the Popes. So this is just. They're doing damage control. And so President Kimball is just furious with all of this. He's not happy. And all of this would have been swept under the rug or at least it would have been sort of forgotten about. Maybe if Richard Osling, the journalist to whom I referred a minute ago. Interviewing. Perhaps President Kimball interviewed him again and he said, president Kimball, tell me about the priesthood revelation. And then he wanted to know about, quote, a visitation from Joseph Smith, the Prophet of Palmyra. In other words, he wanted to know about Joseph Smith visiting the Brethren.

Behind the Scenes of the Revelation Announcement

Julia [01:30:18] Right.

Matt Harris [01:30:19] Kim was furious. Like, Joseph Smith did not appear to the Brethren on June 1, 1978 in the Salt Lake Temple. But yet that's what McConkie had been saying and others. And so it gets back to Richard Ostling. And so he writes about it in his piece that Joseph Smith allegedly appeared to them and he wanted the church president to corroborate that. And so what they do was, what they do is that Spencer Kimball turned to his son, Edward Kimball, and. And he said, son, can you write a rebuttal to Osling? So he writes a rebuttal and he basically says in the rebuttal it's soft. But basically what he said was, that's not true. That's not true. It came about by the Holy Spirit. So it's kind of a soft rebuttal. And then they circulate it with Kimball's counselors and Eldon Tanner and Marian Romney, and they review what Ed had written that would be submitted to Time as a rebuttal to the article. And they just said, no, our counsel to you, President, is not to publish this. Why bring more attention to it? Just let the story fade. And that's what he decided to do. And so anyway, let me say just one, two more important things about this story. So McConkey's done some damage and now he has to do damage control. Part of that damage control is he needs to address this to the church education system. Folks, these are the folks, in my humble opinion, who tell the most faith promoting stories in the LDS Church without ever vetting them. I mean, anyone who's been in the church can tell you the stories, the outlandish stories that we hear from our seminary and maybe institute teachers that we've heard over the years. You know, I heard a whole bunch on my mission. I heard, you know, 9, 11, when the twin Towers came down, the missionaries were supposed to be there in a certain, certain missionary meeting that day. But somehow the mission president counseled at the last moment because if they went, they would have been killed. I mean, that's just crazy talk. The World Trade center for their meetings. I mean, but that just one of many, you know, mythologies circulating. Well, so Elder McConkey was asked to give an address at BYU in August of 1978. This is right around the time the Time magazine thing was published with Joseph Smith allegedly appearing to the Brethren, right around the time where the Popes were in damage control with their talk at byu. And also right around the time with Annie Whitten in the skirmish that she was having with Elder McConkie. And Joe Christiansen, the CES director who would later become a general authority, he asked Elder McConkie the day of. He said, you know, I asked you to speak about topic X. Can you just table that for, for now and talk about the priesthood revelation? And McConkie, you know, recognized that this is a moment that he needed to seize to set the record straight before a group that faithful that usually told faith promoting stories without vetting them. And so he spoke extemporaneously about the lifting of the ban. It's the most detailed account from a church apostle to this day about the ban. And that he did it extemporaneously is, in my opinion, pretty impressive. And he called the talk, all are alike unto God. And almost immediately he went right after the elephant in the room. And he said that the Lord could have sent messengers from the other side to deliver the news of the priesthood band being lifted, but he did not. Some Latter day Saints, Elder McConkie said, would like to believe that the Lord himself was there or that the prophet Joseph Smith came to deliver the revelation. Well, these things did not happen. The stories that go around to the contrary are not factual or realistic or true. And you, as teachers of the church education system, will be in a position to explain and to tell your students that this thing came by the power of the Holy Ghost. So one of the things that most Latter Day Saints think about when they hear that important talk is a quote that Elder McConkie made in the talk that has been so misunderstood. And I want to correct the record here today. I'll give you the quote first, and I want to correct the record. So the quote that Elder McConkie said in the seminal talk called All Are like unto God, he said, quote, forget everything I have said or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomever has said in the days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world. It doesn't make a particle of difference what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June of this year, 1978. It is a new day and a new arrangement. And the Lord now has given the revelation that sheds light out into the world on this subject. And the way that people teach this in the church, including general authorities, including religion professors at byu, the church education system, and just rank and file Latter Day Saints, is they see this as a mea culpa that Elder McConkie said, forget everything I've said. And the mea culpa is, of course, that the church no longer teaches that black people are cursed. There was a pre existence that mattered, the interracial marriage, all the things that Elder McConkey had once said that was problematic. He's now apologizing and moving on. That is so not true. What he refers to is the timing of the ban being lifted. He was frequently talking about in his life that the ban would never be lifted in mortality, at least during his lifetime. And so when he said, forget about everything, I said, he's talking about the timing that clearly I was wrong. But it doesn't refer to the racist teachings that he had taught for so many decades, because he still taught them after the revelation the following year in 1979, when Mormon doctrine, his magnum opus, was republished. All of the racist stuff is still there. And there's a little segment about the revelation that he included. But the rationales for the ban still exist. By 1980, Elder McConkie gave a sermon in General Conference in which he referred openly before millions of people around the world. He called black people the sons of Cain. And he's still talking about this idea of divinely sanctioned lineages in his writings, including a big book that he published or that was published after he died in the spring of 1985. It was his last book he published called the New Articles or New Witness for the Articles of Faith, in which he talks about that God had favored lineages. So he's not repudiating the racial theology that he had once taught. He is just simply talking about the timing of it. And that is really, really critical. And I try to explain that to people, because if you believe that somebody's repudiating something that didn't actually happen, you don't feel the need to do it in the future. And so that detail is not insignificant. All right, so we've got the seminal address. And in the address, Elder McConi now speaking. Remind your listeners this is an extemporaneous address at BYU in August of 1978. There are hundreds of people there. I've interviewed some CES people who were in attendance that day, and they're. They're mesmerized by it. But in. So what Elder McConkey does is he republishes the address, and it's published in 1981. So three years after he gives it extemporaneously, calling it all are alike unto God. And when he republishes it in a collection of general authority essays in a book titled Priesthood, he changed the title, calling it the New Revelation on Priesthood. Most of the core of that revised essay remains intact, but he does change some things. And in that 1981 revised version, that desert book will publish, in this book called Priesthood, he talks about that they heard the voice of God at the revelation. So he basically ignores some of the advice he gave to the CES people by saying, yeah, don't talk about we saw, taught visions and heard things and did this. So he ignores his own advice. And he also ignores the wishes of the church president when he said, please don't teach that we heard a voice, because we did not. And. But that's what he does. And so I want to share a story that's really fascinating about all of this. And this comes from Ed Kimball's diary that. That his family had so generously shared with me. And Ed would have shared it if he were alive. He shared so many things with me, including the basis for much of this chapter from documents, that he didn't feel like he could share with the church archives. So he shared it with me that he wanted told, and he wanted him to be told sensitive. Sensitively. Ed was a believer, and he was very careful to, you know, ask me how I would share this story. He said, I want it. I want it shared in your book, but please be sensitive with it. And I said, course I will. Anyway, so Ed's family gave me his diaries. Ed was always so open and gracious, and in the diaries, it talks about his father. So Spencer Kimball reading the Revised version that Elder McConkie had published in 1981. And Ed Kimball talks about going to the. The house that day. And when he went to his. I'm finding it in my book here. When he went to his father's house, he saw his mother camilla reading Elder McConkie's essay from this newly published book to her husband. And it was really, really a tough thing because it upset Elder. I'm finding it here. It upset Elder Ed Kimball, or excuse me, except upset President Kimball a lot. Let me. Let me read what he experiences, he said. Edward Kimball found his elderly father, then in declining health, agitated and angry. This is when he came to his parents home. Edward's mother, Camilla, had been reading the new revelation of the priesthood to her husband, and the President became visibly upset when she read the words, quote, we all heard the same voice and received the same message, close quote. The President, too feeble to summon McConkey to a meeting to approve him, asked Edward to have McConkey remove the phrase, stating that all the brethren heard the same voice audibly. The President couldn't let the matter go. Two weeks later, he had his home nurse read McConkey's address to him, and he burst out, this is all bunk. That didn't happen. It's an exact quote from Ed Kimball's diary. Spencer's outburst shocked Camilla, who thought this meant that the revelation was bunk. She was devastated upon hearing this. This would be tragic misinformation if it got out, she reasoned, Trying to calm herself down. Edward quickly intervened to assure his distraught mother that his father simply meant that the brethren didn't hear the voice of God during the revelation, not that the revelation itself was bunk. The feeble Mormon prophet confirmed this, and all was well. Meanwhile, Edward had the unpleasant task of meeting with President Apostle McConkie. It wasn't a meeting that Edward relished. It must have been awkward having the son of a church president relay an uncomfortable message to a respected church apostle. But it needed to be done so just to summarize what's going on here. President Kimball's upset that Elder McConkie did not adhere to his counsel to remove all of the fanciful language out of his account, including that they heard the voice of God and he got upset as he was reading it from hearing it from his wife. Read it to him and then his home nurse two weeks later. And then he asks his son, hey, can you go rebuke Elder McConkey and tell him I want this out? And I asked Ed Kimball when I interviewed him, I Said, how did that make you feel? And he said, what do you mean, how did it make me feel? How do you think it made me feel? I'm being asked to go reprove the church's most respected theologian. And I'm just a lowly son. I love the humanity of all of this. I mean, it's really. It's just something. And. And Ed Kimball just said, I felt inadequate, of course.

Gerardo Sumano [01:43:02] And so basically, the reason the prophet wouldn't do it himself was because of his health.

Matt Harris [01:43:09] He's sick. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:43:10] Okay.

Matt Harris [01:43:11] He's homebound. He's got a home nurse over it to his house. This is an 83. And if you study elder or President Kimball's life, he's on his last legs.

Gerardo Sumano [01:43:20] Yeah.

Matt Harris [01:43:21] I want to just break for a moment, and I say this with all compassion and respect. President Kimball in the last part of his life was like a lot of folks who, you know, they suffer from intense pain and they have cognitive issues. They can't remember things they once remembered. They're in discomfort, they're jacked up on meds. And sadly, and I say this respectfully because I think we all know people like this in our own lives, that when they get to that age, they're. They're not the same person they once were. And, you know, they're not the kind, loving, gentle person. Maybe they take on a different sort of Persona. That's what happens with President Kimball. He's, you know, he's mean to some people around him that he shouldn't be mean to, including his wife. And I suspect that Camilla knows that that's not her husband. It's just his, you know, the frailty of mortality bearing on him. But anyway, so when he yells at his wife, that's all bunk. I mean, this is the state of mind that he's in. And anyway, so he's too frail to go rebuke the church apostle, so he has his son do his dirty work. And so Edward Kimball shows up at McConkie's office in May of 1982. And he walked in, and there was Elder McConkie and Arthur Haycock, President Kimball's secretary, was there. And Ed knew that it was going to be a tough. A tough thing from the get go because Arthur Haycock did something that he didn't have permission to do, and that is he shared a draft in progress of Ed Kimball's of his father's presidency, in which he writes about the revelation. So Ed Kimball published a book on his father's presidency, his first book, in 1977. And it's a wonderful book, really, I think. But obviously something happened the next year that would make the story incomplete, which is the van being lifted. So he decided to write a second book on his father's presidency, and this one, of course, the central feature of it would be the ban. And so he had written a draft in the early 80s. He had interviewed, with his father's father, full support. He'd interviewed his father. He interviewed the counselors, apostles, and including even McConkey. And they were all very circumspect in what they told him about the band. They didn't talk about angels appearing, none of that stuff. They're keeping this from them because they know it's probably controversial. And so. So Edward Kimball is close with his father. So he learns a lot of things off the record from his father about the revelation. There were no voices, you know, all of that. He learned who the holdouts were. Peterson, Stapley, Benson, as we've noted in previous episodes. So he's a confidant of his grandfather, and that's not atypical of general authorities. They usually will share things with certain confidence in the family. And that's. So that. That happens a lot. Anyway, so he writes a draft in the early 80s and he circulates it to his father. He said, dad, here's what I've done. And they shared it with Marion Romney and Eldon Tanner, the two counselors, and Arthur Haycock. So it's just a draft, you know, give me input. And so Haycock shared the draft with Elder McConkie without Ed's permission. And Ed had no idea. He's walking to this meeting blindsided. And so the first thing Elder McConkie wants to know is he starts to pepper him with questions about the draft that he had written of his father's presidency, specifically parts that dealt with the revelation. And this is. Let me read you one passage that. This is what really irked McConkie. McConkie winced when he read Edwards claim that the apostle, meaning McConkie, exaggerated the details of the revelation because he wanted to say something dramatic. I mean, wow, that's intense. And so Ed wasn't prepared for this. He was just there to simply say, hey, look, can you take that part about hearing the voice of God out of your. The next iteration of your essay, if it gets republished, can you just take that out? My dad wants it out, and all of a sudden he's going to get, you know, bombarded with 50 questions about all of the things he said. And I asked Ed when I interviewed him. I said, ed, how did you. How did you defend yourself? And he said, well, laughingly. Now, this is years after the fact, right? He can say it laughingly, but he wasn't laughing at the time. Stressful, he said laughingly. I pulled authority on him. I said, what does that mean? He said, I told him my father read this chapter and loved it. He said, my father told me we should tell this story, warts and all. We should be honest. We should be transparent. And, you know, what's Elder McConkey going to say? His father is the church president who likes the way his son is telling the story. Well, you can understand why Elder McConkey wouldn't like it because he's the target of criticism. I mean, I'm going to read that again. The apostle exaggerated the details of the revelation because he wanted to say something dramatic. I mean, that's not very flattering. And by the way, this manuscript that was constructed in the early 80s, I have it and I have the two other iterations of it that would. That. That were published. The first was by desert book in 2005, and the second was by Benchmark Books, the uncut version from 2009. And let's just say that that did not make it into the published. Either of the published versions. So anyway, Edward's blood language put McConkey on the defensive throughout the meeting. And they quibbled. This is really interesting. They quibbled over this audible voice. And Elder McConkey said that no rational person could think that we heard an audible voice. And he's. He's appealing to the Doctrine and Covenants. My. How does it. Word in the Doctrine and Covenants, Something about my. My Doctrine and my. Truth is, I. I can't remember. But he's appealing.

Julia [01:49:36] He's.

Matt Harris [01:49:36] He's appealing to coverage for the Doctrine and Covenants, But Ed just says, look, come on, if you took any average person off the street and they write what you wrote, they're gonna. They're gonna think you heard a voice. And, you know, McConkey's annoyed. And he said, finally he backs down. He said, okay, when this gets republished, I'll. I'll take it out. McConkey never takes it out.

John Dehlin [01:50:00] Never takes it out.

Matt Harris [01:50:02] He's his own man.

John Dehlin [01:50:03] Never takes it out.

Matt Harris [01:50:04] He's his own man.

John Dehlin [01:50:07] He's his own man. Well, I, you know, I don't. I know you don't always. This is always a tricky thing to navigate because it's probably never constructive to call someone a liar, and certainly it's dangerous to criticize church leaders. But, you know, I. I think I have a sense for what's going on here, at least personally. Like when. When Bruce was dying, I was. I was. Is. My memory is. Is that I was in seminary in the 80s, you know, as a high school student. And he makes this famous testimony that ends up, you know, being passed around everywhere where he has cancer. The members of the church know it. They kind of know that this is probably going to be his last talk. And he says something to the effect of, in the coming days, I shall kneel at the Savior's feet and feel the nail prints in his hands and in his feet. But even then, I will not know any more then than I already know now that he lives. And basically what he's telling everyone is, I've already seen Jesus. So when I actually go die and, like, kneel at his feet, it won't be any different. I won't be any more sure then than I already am, because I've already seen him. And, you know, members are thirsty to hear that there is actual divine intervention and divine witnesses. And this goes back. Julianne Gerardo, you'll remember when we talked about the three witnesses and the eight witnesses, did they really hold gold plates? Did they really see gold plates? Did angels really appear? Or as many of them later testified, did they see the plates or see the angels with their spiritual eyes? And it's a big deal relating to the credibility of the three and the eight witnesses of the Book of Mormon, and I don't know how else to interpret this personally, is that Bruce R. McConkey is intentionally embellishing and misleading members because he wants them to believe, you know, that this change was of God. Now, there's another. There's another possibility, which is that he, in his mind, experienced something that the rest of them didn't experience, or that he just grows to believe the story is bigger than it was. And he's not lying, but he's genuinely morphing his memory, as is natural for all humans. So, Matt, is there any way with the documents to know which or all or none of those possibilities are in terms of Bruce Armaconke's motives? Or can we just never get there?

Apostles, Fabricated Miracle Stories, and Private Writings

Matt Harris [01:53:04] I don't. I mean, I don't think we can get there. I. I've seen a lot of his private writings, and, you know, sometimes you just want a smoking gun, right? Other times you have to connect the dots, make inferences, and the inferences have to be justified by the evidence. And the inference that I would make with Elder McConkey is, I think I would make a couple of inferences. One would be that again, they're worried about the saints in the South. Are they going to accept this? So we have to sort of embellish it and make it otherworldly to get them to accept it. President Kimball didn't believe that and the other apostles didn't believe that, but certainly McConkey and Packard did. So I think there's that. And I think secondly, if you look at this, I mean, this has been an issue that was dividing the church and the Quorum for a long time. They were getting hammered in the press and hammered among their own members and by critics on the outside about this racist ban. And you know, they, they dropped a proud and effective church leader from the governing first presidency over it. And he died a crushed and heartbroken man. Hugh Brown. So they've been bruising and scraping over this for a very long time. The Genesis group, the black members, the issues overseas in Brazil and elsewhere about template tenants for black and biracial people and racial boundaries. So this has been such an issue. And so I think the second part of your question, John, would be that when they finally reached that consensus, when they won over Benson, this anti communist conspiratorial apostle, when they won him over and President Kimball prayed, I mean, there was a tremendous sense of unity and they felt it and they each talk about it. You know, this is one of the most intense spiritual experience of my life. I can imagine there would be. When you've been fighting over an issue for decades and you've drawn blood and now you've able to, you're able to overcome those differences and come together to lift this band. I mean, you're feeling good about it. And I think that's, that's what's going on here with Elder McConkey.

John Dehlin [01:55:13] Well, it's, it's also probably worth mentioning that his father in law was Joseph Fielding Smith. And Joseph Fielding Smith is the same guy who, when he stumbles upon the 1832 version of Joseph Smith's first vision because it's inconvenient and a different version than the official version that the church ended up adopting, which I believe is the 1838 version, Joseph Fielding Smith rips the account out of the journal and hides it for a couple decades until the Tanners sort of column on it. And he's also the same one. Joseph Ealing Smith is the same one who came up with the, to Elijah Abel's theory and also neglected to mention Elijah Abel anywhere in the way to perfection. And, and I, I'm only just saying that Joseph Fielding Smith seems to be willing to not tell the truth or deceive members when he's afraid that it could weaken faith. And If Bruce R. McConkie was doing the same thing here, strengthen or preserve member faith by any means necessary, he would have come by it honestly by learning how to do that directly from his father in law.

Matt Harris [01:56:30] I'm not going to respond to that. I mean, I don't think you're wrong. I have nothing to say. I mean, clearly they're trying to create a narrative and clearly they think that protecting the good name of the church weighs being honest and transparent. And obviously, I just want your listeners to know and everybody with an earshot that there are a lot of people in the church leadership who do not feel that way. President Kimball is one of them. We should tell the story, warts and all, because if we don't tell it from our own people, other people will tell it. And so, you know, one of the things I hear all the time that drives me crazy is that all the brethren think this. All the brethren feel that. Holy cow. And I've been telling people, yeah, it is far better to protect the good name of the church if you're transparent. Because if you open up some of their meeting minutes, you can see they disagree. You can see how they come to a consensus. It's in some instances, and in my opinion, maybe I'm jaded because I've read hundreds of pages of meeting minutes and diaries from the brethren, but in my opinion, it would only strengthen faith because it lets you know that they are human. It's when you sort of hide things and you rip first vision accounts out of books and the critics of the church write about it, or when you obfuscate, that's where it makes it worse. So just be honest. And I think it's going to redound to the Church's favor. Much better if you're honest and transparent. Anytime I'm around anybody within earshot who I think has influence in the church, that's the first thing I always say. Don't cover things up. Be honest, be transparent. It'll work for the betterment of the Church in the long run.

John Dehlin [01:58:16] Before I ask you about Boyd K. Packer, Gerardo Giulia, do you all want to add anything or questions or comments about shenanigans?

Julia [01:58:24] I just think it's interesting that he. I can kind of see why he would embellish in the first place to like make this more faith promoting or whatever reason. But like to the, his insistence on keeping in that we, they heard the voice of the Lord, Just, just maybe he's just trying to keep that. And he's just really stubborn against Kimball. It's just really interesting that he continued to keep that story, that part of the story.

Gerardo Sumano [01:58:46] Also, I will add that, I mean, he is one of, one of the foremost people to, to oppose, you know, the bat, the band ever being lifted. I mean, he said he believed strongly that it was never going to be lifted on his, in his lifetime. And then it was. So I think he, it was on his best interest as well to make this change as big and spiritual responsible. Because you don't want to, you know, you don't, you don't want to say, oh, I changed my mind. You want to blame it on, on, on God who changed his mind. And, and what better way to do it than saying that it was God himself who came and told you that he changed his mind.

John Dehlin [01:59:33] Absolutely. Absolutely. Gerardo. And I'm just going to add, I was, you know, we all, Everyone loves Dice Gray, who's met him. And, you know, it's probably a third rail in Mormon scholarship to ever say anything negative about Darius, and I won't. But what I read in your book, Darius reaction to the bands being lifted, that God is good. I'm like, really, Darius? Is that what you're taking away from this disaster? That, I mean, because if God lifts the ban, God must have implemented the ban to begin with.

Matt Harris [02:00:08] Well, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let's be clear on this. I've had too many hours. I've had several hours with Darius interviewing him. And so, I mean, allow people to grow. John so in the late 1970s, Darius had slipped away from the church, and he was a younger man, and certainly he thought the racism was tough. He loved the church, but he didn't like the racism. He didn't like the fact that the ban wasn't being lifted. So he left the church.

John Dehlin [02:00:35] Church.

Matt Harris [02:00:35] It's not something he talks about often, but he was out of the church for a while. And so when he heard, you know, that the band had been lifted, God is good. Because he had really reasoned through the theological implications of the ban at that point. Much later, as he comes back into the church and as he becomes the, the Brother in column to be the Genesis Group president In the late 1990s, he, at some point in the 90s, maybe earlier, I don't know, Darius would have to answer this, but probably the 90s in my reading, he starts to take a different view of the band. And he's bothered by it. He's bothered by the racism. He's bothered by all the Church's teachings, the racial scaffolding that the brethren had used to justify this ban. And he comes up with. He has this dream in 1998, I think, and in the dream he's woken up and clearly he's bothered by the bad. So he's praying, asking God, why did this happen? You know, all this in this dream he shared with me that he said a bucket of knowledge was just poured into his brain as he was reading the scriptures, you know, at 2 in the morning or something. And so God speaking to him, Darius claimed. And what God told him was that the band was not of God, but was of man. And God allowed the band to happen, to see how people would treat each other. So Dryas has this epiphanous moment, feels like God is talking to him. And he felt so moved by this experience that he contacted President Hinckley and he said, look, present, this is what happened to me, and I want your permission to share this with the church. Yeah, I think President Hinckley, if I recall, told him, you know, you can not. You can share it, but not as doctrine. But you. You can say that you have my permission to share your dream. Now, that's really a really fundamental moment because it contradicts what the Church is teaching, that the ban is of God. It contradicts everything that every apostle had been saying about the ban. And if you think about just one thing, here's a question, here's something that Darius gets really irked by. And he shared this with me on more than one occasion. He gets irked when he goes to an LDS chapel or a sacrament meeting, and somebody, you know, speaking about the band, they'll say something like, that God had. God was responsible for the band. There were certain people who just didn't enjoy the privileges of the church. And you look at the Bible times when the Apostle Paul brought the gospel to the Jews first and then the Gentiles, they were privileging groups then. And that's how it is today with blacks in the church. And Darius gets really angry at that, because when you use that line, that biblical defense, what you're really saying is God's responsible for the ban. And that's a line that Joseph Fielding Smith and others had used through the years. And that's a line that. That my friend Paul Reeve, in his wonderful little book on the priesthood band that desert book published last year, he tackled that line and just said, you know, he just sort of dissected that biblical line and said, this is wrong. And the fact that Desert Book allowed him to publish it is extraordinary. So that's Darius Gray, that God is not responsible for this ban. This is in the 90s, what he thought about as a younger man in the 70s, two different things, but that's what he had matured or evolved into. And one of the things I write in my book is in my view, and I haven't talked to Darius about this, and I hope he's not mad at me for saying this, but Draius was so concerned about the ban because the answers he was receiving from the church wasn't good enough. And at the time, the line of the church was, if anybody asked about the ban, just say, we don't know why it happened. That's to the public. We don't know why. Right. But in private, you would say, you would appeal to the Bible. You know, that God always had certain privileges or privileged people that he would bestow his blessings to. And so it was with black people today in the modern era. So, so, so the we don't know line meant that people like Darius could move into this giant gaping gap and create, you know, his own experiences. I'm not saying they're not authentic. Don't, please don't misunderstand this. People listening. I want to. I always let religious people speak for themselves. And I'm not here to judge the rightness or wrongness of Darius Gray, a very good man in his view, his. His spiritual experience. The listeners and readers can judge whatever they want to judge. But what's interesting is about a week after I interviewed Darius, I interviewed the first. I guess he's given credit as the first black bishop in the church. I think that's right. Keith Hamilton's his name. He's not only the first black bishop in the church, he's also the first black BYU law grad. And Keith Hamilton wrote a book about his experiences that he self published. And he said the exact opposite is Darius. He said, God revealed to me that the band began with him, that God was responsible for it. And again, I'm not judging the accuracy of Hamilton versus Great. I'm just simply saying that because the church did not address this narrative, these faithful black Latter Day Saint men moved into the gaps and they, you know, devised their own narratives. And that's how it is. I don't know if, you know, Keith Hamilton would keep to his view today. I interviewed him in 2014. Maybe he still believes the way he believes. But anyway, lots transpired since I interviewed both those men on these particular issues.

John Dehlin [02:06:01] That makes sense.

Matt Harris [02:06:03] So, anyway, I hope that helps.

John Dehlin [02:06:04] Yeah, that helps. I. And, you know, we all. We all who know Darius, love him. Should we also talk about Boyd K. Packer perpetuating the embellishments as well? Is that worth covering?

Boyd K. Packer and President Kimball's Role

Matt Harris [02:06:16] Well, you know, one of the things I. I don't have a lot to say beyond what I said in the book is because I wish I knew. I'm certain that President Kimball contacted Elder Packer just like he contacted Elder McConkey and said, Please don't say this, but I don't have any evidence for that because the Packer papers at the church archives would be closed off. And so, but anyway, let me just say a word to your listeners about why I have stuff in McConkey and not Packer, maybe. And so when I interviewed with Ed Kimball years ago, you know, the purpose of the interview was, I want to see your father's papers. I'm a scholar. I'm writing this book. We had numerous phone conversations. First, you know, you can't just call somebody up and say, hey, my name is Matt Harris. Give me your. Your father's diaries. I want to learn all the family secrets. I mean, you know, give me a break. I wouldn't give anybody my diaries. So, anyway, he interviewed me on the phone two or three or four times and then finally invited me to his house in Provo. And so I spent. I don't know. I didn't have any expectations about what would happen other than he's just going to interview me. He wants to know if he can entrust me with his family jewels. And this is not the first interview I'd had with the kids of general authorities. I'd interviewed a lot at that point, and I'd always passed every interview. I always got what I needed after I formed a relationship and place pledge that I would never share these private documents with anybody. And I maintain that pledge to this day. And so. But with Ed Kimball, it was different. It wasn't your typical general authority interview, because Ed was not only the son of the church president, but he was the biographer as well. And Ed is not a historian. He's a legal scholar. And Ed would be the first person to tell you that he's not a historian. Doesn't describe himself as an historian, but he did have access to his father's diaries when he wrote his version. And he quotes from the diaries, but he doesn't quote from first pregnancy meeting minutes. He doesn't quote from the quorum of the 12 meeting minutes. He didn't scour the country looking for letters that his father had written people in various archives. So he wasn't thorough and meticulous that way, although what he wrote for the time was really, really important. And I give him credit for that. So anyway, we had this shared interest in this story. And so when I went to interview with him, he told me that he had donated the papers to the church history library a few years ago. I didn't know that. I thought that the diaries and the papers were still at his house in his care. And so I said, well, okay, can you make arrangements for me at the church archives to see that collection? It's a closed collection. And he said, yes, I'll make sure that you get what you need. And so he did. And before I left, before we had dinner together, it's just a lovely day, his daughter was there with us, participating the discussion. It was just really an enjoyable experience. And before we left, he looked down at me and he said, or he looked down at the ground. And he picked up a stack of papers from his study. So he had him photocopied in advance. And he didn't let me see them during our seven or eight hour discussion. But at the end, he reached under his briefcase or wherever they were hiding, and he said, I've got something I want you to have that I did not donate to the church history library when I donated my father's papers. And I never asked him why he didn't donate these. I think I was just so thrilled at the excitement of it all. But he said, I want you to have them and I want you to use them in your book. And I said, thank you. What are the documents about? He said, well, they're really sensitive, so please, please, please use them with care and don't share them with anybody. I said, I won't. And they dealt with Elder McConkie's rebuke to Annie Whitten and her exchange and her bearing, her soul. They deal with some other matters, with the president rebuking Elder McConkie about embellishing. And because they dealt with Elder McConkey, because it dealt with Ed Kimmel's ward. I should tell you, Ed Kimball was in Annie Whitten's ward and George Pace's ward. So he knew these people personally. He home taught Annie Whitten. And that's how he got. Ed got the letters from Elder McConkey was from through Sister Whitten. So anyway, I. That's the, that's how I got the record I got with. With McConkey and Spencer Kimball and Annie Whitten and all of that. And there's more to the story in my book. You'll see that I got from different archives, but I didn't get anything other than with Boyd Packer, other than what I got from a few other sources that were outside of Ed Kimball.

John Dehlin [02:10:54] Okay, well, that's a. That's a great story. I love the stories that you're sharing. I just want. I just. I do want to go ahead and, and just note for those who are listening, what you did write about Packer in the book, and I'll just read it really quickly. Apostle Boyd K. Packer, McConkey's confidant and close friend, contributed to the embellishment. According to one account, he declared in a church testimony meeting that, quote, jesus himself had appeared at the June 1 meeting and he could now testify that Jesus was a person of body parts and passions, a person of flesh and blood. Packer said that Jesus appeared to the 12 and the first president to express his desire to have them accept the blacks into the priesthood. And again, this stood in mark, contrast to the more sober account Packer had given to Kimball's son Edward, whom he told that the brethren met with portraits of the presidents on the walls and said one could almost sense the prophet giving their approval. I mean, this is. It's hard not to re.

Julia [02:11:58] Hard.

John Dehlin [02:12:00] It's hard not to read this as deception because he's basically saying, now, as a special witness of Christ and as an apostle, now I can testify that Jesus is a person of body parts and passions. And it's that meeting in 1978 with the First Presidency of the Quorum of the Twelve, upon which I'm basing that testimony when. And. And that all the other men there saw it, too, when, when he knew that they all said that they didn't have that experience. I don't like. It's hard not to get angry at this stuff that you're sharing. And I know that it's the type of anger or emotion that historians need to check and, and that it's always dangerous to criticize the brethren, but, like, it's hard not to get upset when I read this. Matt.

Matt Harris [02:12:59] Well, John, you know, people process history in different ways. I'm pretty calm when I write this stuff. I don't have the visceral reactions to some of this that Latter Day Saints have. And I guess maybe I've just been into it for so long, and I try to put on my scholar hat as I do this. I leave any kind of faith issues at the door. That's just not what I. I follow the President Kimmel mode of historical writing. I think that's clear to your listeners and anyone who knows my work. I believe in telling the story responsibly, sensitively, and warts and all, as President Kimmel wanted it told. So, I mean, clearly they're embellishing. I don't know what else to say that that is true. And for a person who looks at this through this scholarship of mine, this book of mine, this history of mine through a faith lens, I suppose that could be. That could be, you know, problematic. But I don't write this through a faith lens. I've said this before on this show and elsewhere, that I don't write with faith commitments. When I write my scholarship, if I did, Oxford University Press, one of the best presses in the world, would never publish it. And so I think people are going to find what they want to find in this book. They're going to get angry at Elder Packer or Elder McConkey, and they're going to hopefully love Spencer Kimball and some other folks in the story who do the right thing. But, you know, I don't know Elder Packer. Elder Packer, I don't want to go off on a tangent here, but he's a hard one to like. And in Eller McConkey, too. And the reason why those two are hard to like is because they're authoritarians and they often shout over people in the room. They often, I hate to say this, that both of them are vindictive. And, you know, my father, who loves Elder Packer, he would frequently say stuff to me that, you know, maybe a conference sermon that Elder Packer has given, that move. My dad and I would listen to him, you know, politely and respectfully, and he would say, well, what do you think? And I would say, dad, I'm probably not the best person, person to give commentary on Elder Packer. Why? And I said, because I've read too many things about him. He's harmed people. I've read diary entries. I've read letters and journals. And so whenever you mention his name, I'm just being honest with you. I'm jaded. I think about all the things I've read and the people that I've talked to who have been at the brunt of his vindictiveness. And so when you've had a spiritual moment with Elder Packer, I mean, good on you, but that's just not been my experience because I've been around the block too many times with him and he is, he's just been really one of the church's more difficult general authorities.

John Dehlin [02:15:46] Well, I appreciate that insight, Matt, and I'm not even going to push this farther or argue with you. I just want to say expecting leaders of super powerful organizations that expect so much from their members and have the capacity to do so much harm, it's not a faith issue to be concerned about their honesty or dishonesty. I think it's just, it's a moral issue. And I'll. None of us are perfect. We all fall short. And so it's important to temper the fact that none of us, we all live in glass houses. Including myself, especially myself. Having said that, I think the more powerful the organization, the more wealthy the organization, the more people are potentially impacted or harmed. Even if we have no faith at all or all the faith in the world. I think it's a moral question and an ethical question, not a faith question, to feel high expectations and, or outrage when those leaders say or do dishonest or harmful things. Things.

Matt Harris [02:16:54] I. Yes, yes. I mean, you expect more of people. And let me. You reference Elder McConkey's final testimony. Let me give you a little context to that. The context is, is that before Elder McConkey died of cancer in the spring of 1985. Oh, I don't know what, two years earlier. I think in 83. Someone can fact check me on that. I think it was 83. But anyway, Elder McConkey had given this really abrasive devotional address at BYU in which he humiliated one of the most popular religious professors. Religion professors on the faculty, guy named George Pace. And when I say popular, I think I read and heard from his colleagues that his classes, George Pace's religion classes at Brigham Young University were the most well attended among the student body. I mean, people were lining up outside his doors to take his classes. Apparently he was that effective as a teacher. I never had him when I was there. I certainly knew of him. And he wrote a book, George Pace. And I forget the title of the book, but it was about having a personal relationship with Jesus christ. And Elder McConkie didn't agree with that. And he argued that our relationship with Jesus Christ is not direct directly through the Son, but it's through the Father. And so he gave this devotional address in which he humiliated George Pace in front of thousands of people. He didn't mention George Pace by name. But everybody knew within earshot who he was talking about, because this book had just been published and it was making the rounds. So he humiliates him. And I don't want to go into details. I know a little bit about the story, and I can't betray confidences. But I will tell you that some of Elder McConkie's colleagues went to him and including Spencer Kimball, and rebuked him for a number of reasons. One, you harmed a good man. And number two, what? We don't have a relationship through Jesus Christ. What are you teaching? And, you know, this is the same guy that wrote I Believe in Christ in the LDS Church hymnal. And so, you know, there's been stories written about George Pace. Your listeners can go online and Google his name. His son wrote how it devastated their family. And anyway, so McConkie's own leaders or colleagues rebuke him, and the church president rebukes him. And then the rumor starts. McConkie starts getting filling letters from members. You know, what do you mean, we don't have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Isn't that what we're about? And so his final testimony in 1985 is a way to set the context straight that he believes in Jesus Christ. We should have this personal relationship. That's how I read that final sermon. But that's the context of that sermon, I'm told, is that he's trying to make up for his mistake in repudiating a good man over a core doctrinal teaching.

Gerardo Sumano [02:20:06] Wow.

Matt Harris [02:20:10] Yeah. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:20:11] That's hard.

Matt Harris [02:20:13] Yeah. One of his. One of his colleagues, who will rename Nameless, but one of his colleagues, this hit the newspapers, you know, whenever this hits the newspapers, you know, my goodness, it's a story. Right. The newspapers want to publish things that have public interest. And so when you're rebuking a BYU religion professor in front of thousands of people, it's a. It's a human interest story. So the newspapers write about it. And One of Elder McConkey's colleagues, after the newspaper was published, he took a copy of it. He went right into Elder McConkey's office at church headquarters, slammed it down, and he said, bruce, how could you? That's what he said to him. So that's all I know about that story. And I do know that George Pace was damaged goods. Some of his kids left the church over this. At least his son did, who talks about this in great detail online. It's a tragic story. And so Elder McConkie and Elder Packer they're authoritarians this way. And I always look at theology as the theology has to be. It has to bring people together. It has to promote unity, promote tolerance. And you know that it's not a good theology if it's divisive. And sadly, Elder McConkie and Elder Packer taught a theology that was divisive. And sadly, they used, they abused their authority to bring in people like George Pace to conformity when they didn't even have the approval of the church president. And that's why those two are very controversial figures among those who work with them. Let me just tell you one story and I can share this because it's public. I was just reading Mike Quinn's excellent memoir that Signature Books published. So if your listeners want a rip roaring, good read, go buy Mike Quinn's memoir that was published a couple of months ago by Signature Books. Well, anyway, in the memoir, Quinn, Quinn, who's a friend of mine, Quinn talks about a story that he had heard. So it's secondhand. I have no reason to doubt it. But the story dealt with a friend of Quinn's who, who knew Howard Hunter, this mild, gentle apostle who was the church president when Nezertab Benson died. Hunter was only the president for a year and a half or so before he died, or maybe less than a year, and he wasn't present very long. And then Gordon Hinckley took over. But anyway, in my Quinn's memoir, he tells an interesting story about Howard Hunter. How Hunter told his close family friend who told Quinn that there was only one person he didn't like in the world. That was Bruce McConkey or, excuse me, Boyd Packer. There's only one person he didn't like in the world, that was Boyd Packer. And he said, every time I'm in the temple and we're in a prayer circle, we're supposed to be, you know, in a moment of harmony. He said, every time I'm in the, the prayer circle, I'm praying to myself silently, you know, dear God, please help me like him. And, you know, that pretty much says it all. He's a elder. Packer was a cantankerous personality. And, you know, like McConkey, he sort of wanted to define the rules, even though there were people his senior that should have been doing the defining, but that was the role that he had assumed for himself.

John Dehlin [02:23:33] Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for entertaining those things. I know they're tough to talk about in this culture. It's tough to talk about church leaders and even to criticize them. So thanks for at least entertaining the questions. You handle everything so professionally and I'm glad you do. All right, so what else do we want to mention this episode? We're two, almost 222 in. We talked about the, I think we talked about last episode, the apologetic article that was written that, that Durham was involved with. I, I think that's, I think, you know, that's covered in chapter eight. But to me it felt kind of slimy the fact that the church had that article written and tried to influence opinions about whether Brigham or Joseph, you know, were the, were the true originators of the band. Do we want to touch on that today and, or cover anything that we didn't mention last time about it or do you think we covered that?

Racial Dynamics in Global Church Membership

Matt Harris [02:24:44] I think we've done pretty well with that. I think probably since our time's running late, John, maybe we should talk about as we end today, make this our last thing that we talk about the, how the, the ban affects growth in Brazil and Africa.

John Dehlin [02:25:01] Okay.

Matt Harris [02:25:02] I think that's really critical to the story because, you know, the brethren had been predicting that now the gospel will be able to be preached to every kindred nation, tongue and people and places that the church had wanted to go into but couldn't because of the ban. They're now there. They established a mission in Puerto Rico. This is in 1979. The Dominican Republic in 1981, the West Indies in 83, Haiti in 84, Jamaica in 85. And what you see almost instantaneously is you see a hole crop of faith promoting books pop up like the one I'm showing in the screen here. This one's called All Are Alike Unto Fascinating Conversion Stories of African Saints. And it was written by a mission president there named Del Lebaron. And also he was on the religion faculty at byu. And so there's this sort of literature that pops up the Desert Book and some private people are publishing, talking about the growth is electronic, terrifying. People are coming to the church in droves. And I have no doubt that's probably true in certain regions in Sub Saharan Africa and elsewhere that there are, you know, they had exceptional growth rate in certain regions. But the truth is that's not true everywhere. In fact, it was profoundly disappointing, the growth rate there in the least in the immediate years after their ban was lifted. And the reason is for two reasons. One is that the rlds, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, they're called the Community of Christ today. But the RLDS Church in Independence Missouri, who was founded by their first founding prophet, Joseph Smith III. So Joseph Smith Jr. S son. They had been there much longer, and so they had an established presence. The evangelicals had been there much longer. Pentecostals had been there much longer. So those groups in the late 70s into the early 80s are seeing really amazing growth rates, whereas the LDS Church is not, because they didn't have a presence there for a long period of time. And the other thing that is instructive to this story is that the LDS Church will try to regulate these African branches from Salt Lake, imposing Western values on them, whereas other religions, Protestant and otherwise, who had been there for a while, they sort of adopted some of the local customs and worked them into their. Their theological practices, whereas the Latter Day Saints didn't in Salt Lake. And so there was opposition to that. Now, I want to just say I don't normally do this when I talk. Talk. I know this is when a break in the story for a quick minute. That's changed a lot today. I think the church, LDS Church in Salt Lake, they've learned a lot about dictating Western value cultures. You know, from Salt Lake, they've sort of been a little bit more easygoing on that sort of thing over the years. And I think if some people who know more about this topic than I do, they'd probably tell you, yes, we've made progress, but we've got a long way to go. That's probably accurate. In fact, those are some of the most fascinating panels I go to at church history conferences is I learn about the international church and how Utah values govern those distant wards and branches around the world. So anyway, they've been there longer. The church does not have this growing presence that one would imagine. In spite of all of the hagiography that we're seeing from Deseret book, it's profoundly disappointing. The growth rate just simply is not there for the reasons I just mentioned. One of the things that in my book that would be considered controversial, but I want to share it, is a quote on page 256 that relates to Brazil and William Grant Bangerter, who is the international mission president at the time. As I noted earlier, he received a phone call from President Kimball and he said that he's explaining the instructions that he had received from the church president to the mission presidents in Brazil. And so Bangerter said that President Kimball hoped that we would not fill the church up with black people. And that's pretty astonishing. One of the women who heard him say this was there with her husband, who was the mission president. And she sent me her diary on this. She was reluctant to, at first, didn't want to send it to me, sent me other material from her diary, but held off on this. And about three weeks later, she said, you know, I'm going to send you something sensitive and controversial. You should have this. I don't want to hold back. This is not right to hold back. You should have this. Treat it with care. Said I would. So she said that she gave me the diary in which she recounts hearing what Bangerter had said. So the part I just read to you was in Bangiter's own words describing what President Kimball told him to say, that we hope that we would not fill up the church with black people. That's Bangerter's words. Here are Kathryn Buetler, who heard him speak. She wrote in her diary that Bangoter said, don't go baptize a lot of Negroes. We will turn. We will turn into the assembly of God church. We want leaders. We want the church to be a white church. That's what she heard him say. That's really an extraordinary statement. When the church president has worked so long, so hard for so long to lift the ban, and all of a sudden he's saying, hey, we want this to be a white church. Well, the context of this statement is critical. And what he was telling them was, look, we haven't. We've been in Brazil since 1929, and we focused on the southern part of the country because that's where all the Europeans resided, whose racial boundaries were certain, and they stayed away from the northern part of Brazil because it was majority black. And what he was saying was, you know, Bangerter told. Kimball told Bangerter, don't go into the north part and put all your eggs there and concentrate all the missionaries there. Yes, you'll have success, but what. What will happen is you'll baptize hundreds, if not thousands of black Brazilians, and we'll have no churches for them. We won't have the leadership to guide them and to nurture them. Now, I don't want you to think for a moment that somehow President Kimball is the most racially progressive guy. I don't think. I think there's some racism involved in this. I do. He's a man of his generation. He was born in 1899. And Kimball's come a long way with. With his views on race. So I do think there's, you know, there's. There's a tinge of, you know, racial thought going on here, but for the most part it was just a, it was a, it was a practical statement and trying to be very judicious about how far they spread the church to these majority black populations. Now, why do I say this? Because this had been on Kimball's mind for a very long time. We've got to have the infrastructure. If we bring black and biracial people into the church, they have to be able to run their own churches. That's what's going on here. It's a very pragmatic concern.

Gerardo Sumano [02:32:37] But I mean, growing up in the church in Mexico, there is this prevalent idea that the white Latter Day Saints in Utah and you know, the apostles and, and the 70, because of their race, because of their favorite lineage, they have some kind of like, special mantle or calling to be the ones guiding and leading the church. And there's this idea that they kind of supersede any Mexican or Hispanic or Latino leader leadership. I, I know today, you know, like, general authorities would be a little bit more diverse. And I said a little bit because either primarily white, but, but especially at the time, you know, I think most, most of the general authorities would have been, would, would have been white. And this just, this quote reminds me of a, of a scholar, the name of Jason Palmer. He just recently published a book called Forever Families Race, Gender and Indigenity Improve Informalism. And he did a lot of work and in Peru. And I was on the phone with him a few months ago about his research. And one of the things that he found interesting is how when white, not only church leaders but, but even church employees go to Peru, they always see Peruvians as kind of like, oh, they don't understand the doctrine. They don't really know. They can't really run themselves. They, they, they're not as smart or as intelligent to be able to understand doctrinal matters. And so there's this idea that, that being white and being American and being Mormon has like, some kind of puts you like, in another level, in a different level than a Hispanic or Latino. And I wonder if there was some of those connotations on that, on that quote from Spencer Kimball. Do you have any, any thoughts on that?

Julia [02:35:00] Can I add to that really fast?

Gerardo Sumano [02:35:01] Yeah.

Julia [02:35:02] Because I think there weren't there also some Jim Crow laws against blacks, that there was such thing called thinking positions. And that's what came to my mind too, is that like maybe he, maybe Bangerter was thinking similarly according to, and also what Gerardo was saying.

Matt Harris [02:35:18] Yeah, you guys, you guys are Both putting your finger on an important topic. I think there is some, there's some paternalism going on here. That's what we would say. You know, just to give your listeners a quick history overview, paternalism was a term used on 19th century slave plantations in which the masters would know best for their slaves and they would know what's better for their slaves better than the slaves themselves would know about themselves. So that's the paternalism part. And I think that there's no question that the general authorities in Salt Lake, there's a sense of paternalism going on, you know, that black and brown people, you know, they don't know what they're doing and they may not be as intelligent as some people and therefore they need extra guidance. And so I think a lot of racism is just a function of your inexperience with the other, as we'd like to say in the academic world, people you're not familiar with, whether it's race or sexuality or whatever. And your, your views often change when you form relationships with the other people that have a different experience from you in life. They walk in different shoes, grew up in different neighborhoods, or as one of my friends once put it, you know, across the railroad tracks. And so the brethren, I mean, they have, we've talked about this. They don't have a lot of experience with black people. They just don't. Brown people, they have more experience with because, you know, they've been to South America for a long time. Spencer Kimball was an apostle in South America, the 1960s. So it wasn't though he didn't have an experience with, you know, brown people. But there's no question that this is a, you know, it's a white centered theology. And when you have a white centered theology, I mean, you can only imagine how it affects how you view people of color. And I like to give people the room to change. And I think one of the things about Kimball is you read his diaries, you can see him evolving towards his views on race. I'm not again here to say that he's racially progressive, because he's not. I don't think he is for a minute. But yet I see him evolving as a person. I even see Joseph Fielding Smith, one of the biggest racist curmudgeons the church has had. I see him evolving as a person. Person that by the time he died in the early 70s, he was different than the man who wrote the Way to perfection in 1931. So people do evolve and change. And the Brethren, they're having to work through all of this. And this is one of the reasons why they did recon missions in the days and months leading up to the revelation. They sent people to Nigeria, they sent people to Brazil, general authorities to Nigeria and Brazil. And they were secret recon missions. They're interviewing people. They want to figure out if they've got the chops to run churches and count ties and. And do pastoral advisement with their parishioners. These are the kinds of things that are skills that one has to have to run a church or a branch. And Kimball knows this. And that's why they're doing all these recon and, you know, interviewing people. There's even a time in the 60s where they bring people to BYU from Africa, you know, so anyway, I hope that answers it, you guys. Your instincts are right.

Gerardo Sumano [02:38:29] Yeah,

John Dehlin [02:38:32] thanks, Matt.

Matt Harris [02:38:33] I suspect we still see this in the church today. And I suspect. I just want to be careful. I suspect that depending on the leader, the general authority, there might. There's. I'm sure there's paternalism just like anywhere else. And I also suspect that there are people in the general authority ranks who are trying to break down those patients. Paternalist ideologies. I think you'll see a bit of both.

Gerardo Sumano [02:38:58] Yeah, I agree.

John Dehlin [02:39:03] All right, Matt, anything else we should cover today that we don't save for future episodes? This is so fascinating. I. This. This chapter really boiled my blood. And I was like, this can't. I told you, Matt. After last episode, I was like, I can't imagine me being more interested in this book beyond chapter seven. And you're like, wait till chapter eight. And you were right, man. I was flipping tables metaphorically. What else should we cover today? Because we're still going to cover interracial marriage and some other topics from chapter 8 in a future episode.

Ezra Taft Benson and Lingering Race Teachings

Matt Harris [02:39:45] So where we left it was that. So President Kimball has made modest attempts to soften the Church's race teachings. The Church is taking a lot of heat from it. From reporters about the Church's teachings on whiteness. Do you still believe in the curse, the less valiant stuff? And they have the. They try to soften it by taking out white and delightsome. We've talked about this. Well, the key word, or the key word is modest. And when President Kimball died in 1985, the task of dealing with all of this residual. These residual racist teachings, or what I call debris in the streets, it now falls to Ezra Taft Benson. And anyone who knows Ezra Taft Benson knows him as a person who is not a fan of black people or civil rights. And so the saints are really, really worried that he's not going to continue the outreach to the black community like Spencer Kimball once did. And this is the same guy called Dr. King a communist, the same guy called the NAACP a communist front group. The same guy that. That spoke at segregationist rallies back in the 60s. The same guy that frequently called black people the curse of the seat of Cain. The same guy that read hardcore racist literature that the country was going to. White people would lose their presence in society because everybody would turn to mongrels. They would intermarry anyway. That's the guy that's taking up the realm, the strings of the church in 1985, when he's the church president. And, and, but believe it or not, as is always the case, the narrative is not as clear cut as one might imagine. There's a lot of things that go on under Benson's watch that will actually improve the church's relationship with black people. Because what happens under Benson's watch is we start to see for the first time where there are general authorities who are very quietly and subtly pushing back on Bruce R. McConkey and Joseph Fielding Smith's racist teachings. They're going to do it in general conference, they'll do it in church magazines, and they'll do it in their own published books. And that's something that we'll take up in a future episode.

John Dehlin [02:42:11] All right, Gerardo, any final thoughts or comments you want to make? And Julia, you too.

Gerardo Sumano [02:42:18] No, I. I don't. I don't really have any comments. I think I. I disagree with you, John, that this. This chapter is definitely interesting and frustrating. Just to understand more about how some of the brethren conduct themselves and for the kind of the parts pretty far from where I think most of the membership would believe an apostle should behave or, or act, but definitely really interesting. And I'm. I'm so glad that this is coming out.

John Dehlin [02:42:55] Absolutely no one should think that because they listen to these podcasts that they pretty much have read the book. The book has four times Much, much more information than these podcasts will, in spite of the length. Julia, final comments or thoughts?

Julia [02:43:10] Yeah, again, this is a really good chapter, and I. I just want to say I look forward to the discussion about interracial marriage because there were so many stories, really good stories and things covering that, that I look forward to covering later.

Closing Reflections and Book Recommendation

John Dehlin [02:43:22] All right. All right. Well, well, Matt, thank you so much for your ongoing willingness to do this series, for your scholarship. It's. It's been fun. Thanks for today.

Matt Harris [02:43:34] Yeah, as always, guys. You guys ask great questions and it's always good to get pushback. I'm. I'm good with that. I got thick skin.

John Dehlin [02:43:41] All right, well, I'll just remind everyone. Please go buy this book for yourself, for all of your loved ones and even people you don't like. Second Class Saints. Black Mormons of the Struggle for racial equality by Dr. Matthew Harris. Please buy it now. Lots of copies. Let's keep it on the best selling list for Mormonism for all of 2024. Let's make this Mormonism's book of the year for 2024. Please donate to this series. Tens of thousands of you are watching these episodes and 60 of you have contributed to help compensate Matt for his time. Please go to donorbox.org Matt Harris and make a one time or a weekly or a monthly contribution at least until the series was over. And we'll raise the remainder of funds that we need to pay Matt what he has, what he's worth, although we couldn't pay him for what it's worth. But we'll do our best. Please contribute and we love your comments. We love your questions. Please feel free to email us@mormonstoriesmail.com we also will continue to have our panel of black Mormons and ex Mormons, including Nate Byrd, Summer Rain and Darren. We're going to have them back every three or so episodes to provide their commentary as well. We look forward to that and we even may have one or more of them on in a couple future episodes with Matt when it makes sense. But we're making sure to bring on black voices all along the way because that's super important. That's all for today. Please know that you can check out these episodes in a series on Spotify as it's standalone podcast on Apple Podcasts and there's a standalone playlist on YouTube on the Mormon Stories podcast channel where you consume these episodes in sequence because they're best consumed in sequence. Thanks so much. Take care. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Bye, everybody.

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