Introduction and Guest Welcome

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's November 24th. We're now in the afternoon following up with the second part of my interview with scholar Matt Harris. You guys will know Matt Harris because he did that epic series with me a month or two ago about Ezra Tap Benson. And then just this morning we did a whole episode, several hours on this amazing book. The book is the LDS Gospel Topic series, A Scholarly Engagement, published by Signature Books. It's edited by Matt Harris and Newell Bringhurst. I want to encourage everybody right now as we're beginning to go to Amazon and buy this book. I want Signature Books to be heavily rewarded for this amazing book which talks about the LDS Church's gospel topics essays. It does an in depth dive into each of the main gospel topics essays. We're talking Book of Abraham, you know, polygamy, Mountain Meadows Massacre and Violence. You know, each of those essays is covered here. In the morning interview that I did with Matt, we talked about the history that led to the creation of the essays and the process of the creation of the essays and the reception of the essays and the quality of the essays. And that was all really important. I'm really glad we spent that time this afternoon. What we're going to be covering is chapter 10 from this amazing book. The chapter is called Whiteness Theology and the Evolution of Mormon Racial Teachings. And it's an essay written by Matt Harris, who is a professor of history at Colorado State University, Pueblo. And he's amazing historian and he's also, not only has he authored several books, but he's actually writing several books. And one of them, I believe is going to be an in depth dive on blacks in the priesthood and its entire history of race and Mormonism. Matt Harris, welcome back to Mormon Stories. It's so good to have you.

Matt Harris [00:02:02] Thanks, John. I appreciate it.

John Dehlin [00:02:06] Oh, go ahead.

Matt Harris [00:02:07] Yeah, no, I just, I'm happy to be here. I've enjoyed our conversations and I appreciate the questions and the comments that you, that you bring to the table and I appreciate your listeners being patient and tuning in.

John Dehlin [00:02:19] Yeah, well, my listeners love you. So they're like, we need to get Matt back on. So I'm worried about when we're going to have you on next. So I'll be trying to figure that out. But we will be interviewing several other authors of the various chapters in this book. But please go buy this book right now. Tell all your friends this book is amazing. This chapter in and of itself that we're about to cover is worth the price of the entire book. Again, it's called Whiteness Theology in the Evolution of Mormon Racial Teachings. So many of our listeners will have already just listened to our morning presentation, but for those. Let's just say someone just drops in on this episode, doesn't really know about the black priesthood ban, doesn't know about the gospel topics essays. Do two minutes on that before we dive into the chapter. Is that okay?

Matt Harris [00:03:09] Yeah. So just a quick overview. The the LDS Church had implemented a ban priesthood and temple ban on black Latter day Saints in 1852. This was during the administration of Mormonism's second prophet president, a guy named Brigham Young. And then the ban was lifted 126 years later in 1978 by a church president named Spencer W. Kimball. And the church created this interesting rationale for the priesthood ban. They followed uncritically some of the conventions of the day, mostly from Protestants, that black people bore the mark of a divine curse. And then by the latter part of the 19th century, just after the American Civil War, Latter Day Saints added their own unique twist to all of this, which is that black people were less valiant in this pre earth life. That is, they didn't make good decisions in this life before they came to planet Earth, if you will. And that was a unique Mormon contribution to all of this. And then from well through the 20th century, particularly by the time of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, actually 50s, by the 1950s and then into the 60s, the church comes under heavy fire for these racist teachings. And a lot of churches at the time were not friendly towards blacks, Protestants, Catholics. And the difference is, is that by the 1960s, most of these, especially Southern Baptist churches, they start to integrate black people into their worship services. And Mormons, however, takes them another whole decade after that to really make a nod towards racial equality. And then finally after the revelation, the priesthood revelation that Spencer W. Kimball experiences in 1978, after that is announced, which allows black people to hold the priesthood and attend the faith temples, then the church has this unique challenge of dealing with this racial residue, if you will, that still exists after the revelation. And by residue I mean that the curse and the less valiant position. The church doesn't deal with any of this past theology. And so it continues to linger in Mormon discourse. And it's deeply problematic for the church because it's trying to globalize. And it's really hard to go into black African nations, for example, or Latin America or the Caribbean with this racial baggage that once taught that black people bore this Divine curse. And so this leads me to 2013, that when the Church produced these gospel topics essays, one of them was dealing with race and priesthood. And for the first time in LDS Church history, the Church acknowledges something that's quite extraordinary. They acknowledge that the curse and less valiant positions they had once taught all these years were no longer the teachings of the Church. That's really a monumental moment. Church also talks about that interracial marriage is not a sin, which is a dramatic departure from previous teachings from various leaders. And finally, the Church acknowledges that Joseph Smith had ordained a handful of black men to the priesthood. And that was really never overtly known before, at least acknowledged before among the high church leadership. And so the Race and Priesthood essay marks a series of firsts that's really important in this step forward towards not just more transparency, but really a more honest history about the Church's past.

Overview of the Race and Priesthood Essay

John Dehlin [00:06:59] I love it. Thanks for that overview. And I just want to say for people that, that don't want to, you know, acknowledge or that are hesitant to believe this, this sort of story, because in 2020, it almost sounds outrageous. I'm 51 years old. I grew up in the 70s and 80s as a devout orthodox Mormon. I had a copy of Mormon Doctrine, a first edition that taught that blacks were black because they were less value in the pre existence. I was taught in my seminary between 1984 and 1987 that blacks were fence sitters in the pre existence and that the reason that they had dark skin was to set them apart as a curse. And this was all part of my upbringing. So here I am growing up in Katy, Texas, a suburb of Houston with, you know, black friends and in a, you know, in a farming town where there used to be slaves. And I'm thinking, oh, I know why you're black, you know, but I'm not going to tell you because that's kind of offensive. And this was, this was my upbringing. And so, but at the same time, I was never comfortable with it. And I always wanted to see a change. And I was alive in 1978 and I was nine years old. And I remember when the change happened and that was an amazing change. But we all were left wondering, but did it really change? Like what about the doctrine? What about the theology? And so it really, it wasn't for another several decades that the Church decided to really address this. And so yeah, as the Church releases these gospel topics essays in 2013. Right. That's when they first came out, the first one. What, what month did the the Race and the Priesthood essay come out?

Matt Harris [00:08:48] Good question. I think it was December.

John Dehlin [00:08:50] So was it the first or among the first?

Matt Harris [00:08:53] Oh boy. I think it was.

John Dehlin [00:08:55] I'm, I'm putting you on the spot there.

Matt Harris [00:08:56] That's okay. I think, I think it was. I'm going to check into that. I, I knew this at once upon a time might have slipped my memory, but I think it came out in December of 2013. There might have been one that came out in November of 2013, but I think that my memory is that Race and Priesthood came out in December of 2013. What I don't remember is was there one out in November. But I do know it was. If it wasn't the first one that came out, it was probably the second one. It was among the earliest ones.

John Dehlin [00:09:23] Right. And for those, those who are asking, yes, the essay is available online. I've already shared a link to it. So scroll up on either YouTube or Facebook and you can actually see a link. It's, you can just Google race and the priesthood and it'll come right up on, on the ChurchOfJesusChrist.org website. The essay is still there and available. So your wonderful essay that again is worth the price of the entire book, begins by mentioning what the essay does say. And you, you gave us an overview just now and of course we want to get to what it doesn't say. But is there anything else you want to say about what it does say and why it was important?

What the Essay Acknowledges and Omits

Matt Harris [00:10:13] Yeah, so, yeah, a couple things. So it says, as I mentioned, it acknowledges that, that Joseph Smith was the that or they had ordained black people to the priesthood. And it acknowledges that the band began in 1852 with Brigham Young. And the reason why that's really important is because the church is having to address issues in its narrative that were not there before. So, for example, Joseph Filling Smith and others had always taught emphatically in Bruce McConkey, the band began with the prophet Joseph Smith. And here you have a document saying that's not true. It began with Brigham Young. You also had a church that, that didn't want to acknowledge that black people were ordained to the priesthood. And Elijah Abel is the earliest black Latter Day Saint, the first black Latter Day Saint to be ordained to the priesthood. And that was kind of an open secret throughout much of the 20th century. And the reason why Latter Day Saints knew about this, if they knew about it at all, is, is because assistant church historian, a guy named Andrew Jensen, who lived around the turn of the century, early 20th century, he wrote a four volume LDS encyclopedia. I think it's online now so people can track it down. But it's a biographical encyclopedia and he has an entry on Elijah Abel and

John Dehlin [00:11:39] what year was that released about?

Matt Harris [00:11:41] This would have been a run in the early 20th century. So the teens into the early 1920s, I believe so.

John Dehlin [00:11:49] B H Roberts time.

Matt Harris [00:11:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:11:51] Okay.

Matt Harris [00:11:52] And so here you have assistant church historian Andrew Jensen acknowledging for the first time publicly in this writing, this four volume series, that a black man held the priesthood. And that just sent shock waves throughout the church. And so in the 1930s and 40s, Latter Day Saints were reading this because it's, it's, it's, it's open, you can buy it and own it. And they write the church authorities, they write David O. McKay, they write J. Reuben Clark, they write Joseph Fielding Smith, who was then the church historian. And they ask him a direct question. How is it that Brother Jensen says that this guy named Abel held the priesthood and oh my goodness, they're not happy with these kinds of questions because it doesn't really fit with this narrative that the band began with Joseph Smith and that God wanted it that way. And there's a lot I could say about this, but I'm going to keep it easy. I know Paul Reeve has talked a little bit about this. He's done some good work with Elijah Abels and also some other scholars. But anyway, in the, the mid 20th century, the apostles address these questions in different ways. David O. McKay writes a concerned church member. And he says, yes, it's true he held the priesthood, but this was an exception, not the rule. So he owns up to it, acknowledges it. Joseph Fielding Smith one time says something that's classic, I mean classic Joseph feeling. I like the guy, he's really kind of comical. But he writes back to the sister from Logan, Utah, dear Sister priests. Yes, it's true there was an Elijah Abel in Nauvoo who held the priesthood, but there were two Elijah Abels. It's the white guy who held them.

John Dehlin [00:13:29] Oh my gosh. Did he make that up or was he bs?

Matt Harris [00:13:33] It's complete bs and because there's, he's stuck in a narrative. I like Joseph Fielding, but you know, this wasn't his best moment. And he wrote back a different latter day saying I think the following year. And he acknowledges it. So he says something the exact opposite. He says that yes, there was Elijah Abel, yes, they held the priesthood, but it was a mistake. And so the point of all of this is. And Reuben Clark said something entirely different. Reuben Clark went on record, he was going to give a General Conference address. This is 1954, so the timing is crucial here. This is just after the historic Brown vs. The Board Supreme Court case that desegregated public schools. So Mormons and Americans in general are thinking about racial issues. And so Reuben Clark has this big General Conference address that's geared up for 1954, and he goes through three drafts with it. He writes a draft, he sends it to Spencer Kimball, he sends it to Markey Peterson, he sends it to David O. McKay, the church president goes through a couple more drafts. In one of the drafts, he acknowledges that there were two, he called them colored. Two colored men in the early church who held the priesthood. That was interesting because that's the first time publicly that a high ranking church leader will acknowledge this. And two, that it wasn't just Elijah Abel, which is all Jensen said. It's actually a second person. He doesn't say who it is. It could have been Walker Lewis or Joseph Ball, we don't know. And most likely Elijah Abel. But Anyway, David O. McKay said, you can't give this. And without giving a reason, he wouldn't let Reuben Clark give this, this address. I have all three drafts of the, the sermon, so it's kind of interesting. And Clearly David O. McKay, President McKay didn't want him to give the address because the civil Rights movement and the Brethren didn't support it and they didn't want to be talking about these issues that would bring attention to the church's stand on civil rights. Anyway, so go back just for a moment. So the Race and Priesthood essay acknowledges that black men held the priesthood, whereas it had been a thorny issue for much of the 20th century.

John Dehlin [00:15:43] Can I ask you to just fill our listeners in on, on one really important point? You know, later. The whole black priesthood ban in the essay and in some of the rhetoric leading up to it is going to be to say it was policy, not doctrine, but there are first presidency statements declaring it as doctrine. Am I right?

Matt Harris [00:16:02] Oh, my gosh, yeah. That's just so, you know, we've talked about in prior podcasts, John, about the need for transparency and honesty and how I think people are forgiving. You know, yes, my church once taught this. No, they don't teach it today. I'm so sorry this happened. Let's, you know, try to move forward and heal together. And unfortunately, that kind of mea culpa is not forthcoming and it causes more damage, in my humble opinion, than not. And this is one of those instances where calling it a policy and not a doctrine is complete nonsense. And it's not sustainable by the, by the strictures of the Church. And by that I mean the Church has made it very clear in the mid 20th century about what doctrine is and how it's constituted. And if I can take your listeners through a very crude, quick version of LDS doctrine that I think this might be helpful. In the 19th century, Brigham Young and Joseph Smith, when they gave sermons, they would, you know, in the name of the Lord Jesus, that would be the doctrine. And Brigham Young was very loose with this. He would say often that there's nothing I've never said to the children of men that cannot be construed over this pulpit as doctrine. He would say stuff like this. Well, one can imagine Russell Nelson standing up today and saying something similar that what I speak, it's doctrine. And this whole nonsense that, you know, he was speaking as a man versus a prophet, that, that is about the most ridiculous, dishonest statement. I'm going to be just blunt. It's not helpful and it's not sustainable because it puts the onus on the members to decide what's doctrine and what's not. Why not just be clear about what the doctrine is rather than leaving people guessing? Right. We wouldn't have these, these ridiculous conversations about, you know, can people drink caffeine, soda? The stuff that I grew up with hearing about, it's like, there's an easy way to resolve this. What does the prophet say? Or what does the president say? But yet people were kept guessing anyway. So the, the church president, the 19th century, when he spoke, it was doctrine. And by the 20th century, for a variety of reasons, the church adopts this practice a bit, and they try to implement a series of checks and controls. And so by the 1940s, around World War II, the church issues a statement about how we know what's doctrine. And it becomes the authoritative statement of the church president, the prophet, and also his two counselors, when they speak in unison in a prophetic pronouncement. Well, this might actually have been a little earlier than World War II, probably stretches back in the early 20th century. But when they, when they release a statement with the prophet's name and signature and his counselors, then that becomes the authoritative, binding doctrine for the church. And by the 20th century, this sort of evolves. There was a serum General Conference talk given by, I think, Todd Christopherson, oh, seven or eight years ago. And when he talked, he added a layer to this evolution. He said that doctrine is created not just at the providence of the first presidency, but also through the collective Voice of the twelve. And that never used to be the case. It was always the providence of the church president first, then the first presidency. Now it's sort of evolved to the 12. And some of the greatest rifts in LDS Church history have been wrought over that very issue about doctrine, how it's disseminated and who gets to say it. Does the 12 have a say? And, and all of that? So, but that's how it is today. It's, it's the first presidency and the 12 that produced doctrine for the church. And so having said that, there was no doctrine, LDS racial doctrine up until this is what my next book talks about in great detail. There was no LDS racial doctrine up until 1949. Before that, it was just a patchwork of theories of racial theories and a patchwork of practices. Right. People are cursed or black people are cursed or this less valiant stuff. Well, you said something earlier, John, that you grew up in Katy, Texas with this notion that blacks were fence sitters. Well, that was a teaching that was often talked about in the church, but that wasn't, that wasn't commonplace. There are some people who said, apostles who said explicitly that wait a minute, black people were not fence sitters. They just told chose Satan's plan in the pre existence. And the other half said no, no, no, no, no, they, they were on the fence. They weren't quite sure. And nonetheless, the result was still the same. Whether they were fence sitters or chose Satan's plan, God cursed them and they couldn't hold the priesthood. But, but there are nuances and differences among the high church leadership. And this whole idea of being a fence sitter, that was not always the accepted theory. But anyway, so we have all of these racial theories going on. And the LDS Race and Priesthood essay that I critiqued in this book quotes a interesting passage from Joseph Fielding Smith when he was the assistant church historian. So this is 1906. This is four years before his call into the Quorum of the Twelve. He's a young man, he's in his early 30s, and he wrote a member that the essay quotes. They quote from this letter at the church archives. Assistant church historian Joseph Fielding Smith writes a letter to a member and basically calls LDS racial teachings theories and opinions. That's really interesting, the theories and opinions. And it's a snapshot in time where there is no settled doctrine quite yet. There's a practice, but there's no doctrine. And that's really an important distinction. And to speed this up, there's a lot I could say in the Interim here. It causes a lot of trouble with the church and also among the high church leadership to have these different racial theories out there about black people being cursed, about being less valiant. Not everybody believes this stuff. For example, David O. McKay does not believe black people are cursed. John Widtso does not believe black people are cursed. Marion Hanks doesn't believe black people are cursed. Spencer Kimball does not believe black people are cursed. They all believe in various forms of the less valiant stuff, except for Hanks and Hugh Brown. But there's. There's a wide array of latitude. And furthermore, what's challenging is by the time of World War II, when the church starts to globalize and missionize, when they start to expand their missionary operations in Brazil, for example, and when they start to move into South Africa to two countries that give the church the biggest fits with the priesthood ban is these two countries that have a long history of race mixing. They have a long history of slavery, and they can't figure out who's got black blood and who doesn't. And so they start to get. The church starts to get criticized by their own members by the 1940s. And there's a former BYU professor, he taught Ezra Benson at BYU in the 1920s. Incidentally, his name is Lowry Nelson. And Lowry Nelson has this epic letter exchange with the First Presidency over the race issue. He had heard that the church was trying to missionize in Cuba, and they wanted. They reached out to him through an intermediary who's the president of the Cuban mission, or would have been. Guy named Heber Meeks. And Meeks and Nelson knew each other back from their chumhood days in Farren, Utah. And Meeks told Professor Nelson, he said, look, I'm president of the Southern States Mission. The brethren want me to check out the feasibility of going into Cuba. And I know that you've been to Cuba as a scholar of sociology, you've done some field work there. Can you tell me where we should go where we could avoid blacks? In other words, just teach white people. And that's what they tried in Brazil. They wanted to avoid populations that had black folk and just hit those Europeans who'd migrated to Brazil who didn't have the cursed ancestry. So anyway, Nelson writes him, his friend back. He said, meeks, dear Heber, what are you talking about? You're gonna go to Cuba and open up a mission in Cuba when there's. There's black and biracial blood everywhere? That's crazy. And he was really put off by this. And that's what leads him to write the First Presidency? And he wanted to know. He said, I've heard all this stuff about our racial teachings growing up, but is this the doctrine of the church? And that's what he. That's what he says. I've heard all this stuff growing up. Is it the doctrine of the Church? And the First Presidency writes back, it's the doctrine. And they sign their names. And this becomes the first public statement in LDS Church history which codifies all of these theories that Joseph Feeling Smith and other apostles had been talking. Orson Hyde, Melvin Ballard, how they've been talking about these racial theories for years. And now the Church is on record saying it is not just a theory, it's a doctrine of the Church that was taught from the foundation of the world. And they lead one to believe that. That it was by divine revelation that this came about. And the irony of all of this is there was never a revelation. They couldn't find one. They had looked and looked and looked. And of course, the Brethren, you know, had lots of revelations they wrote down. We've got tons of them in the Doctrine and Covenants, of course, and some that were not canonized. But they couldn't find a revelation. And they looked, they talked about it. I mean, Joseph F. Smith, Joseph Feeling Smith, they wanted to find a revelation that tied the priesthood band to Joseph Smith. And even though they couldn't find one, they still said in this 1949 authoritative first presidency statement that Joseph Smith was behind the ban. And that's deeply problematic because they don't have any evidence for this. But by 1949, the church has codified its racial theories and put it into doctrine. And so from 1949, it goes forward as doctrine. And every general authority in their dog talks about it as doctrine. And obviously, you know, when people say that it's. It's an opinion or a theory which is completely bogus, one can just remind them that, you know, there are two books by the church's foremost theologians of the 20th century, Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce McConkey. Both books have the word doctrine in the title. So to say that, you know, they were theories and, well, Mormon doctrine. That's interesting. He talks about this being a doctrine, you know, the race issue. And then of course, every other general authority talk about it as a doctrine. And what's interesting is the Latter Day Saints see it as a doctrine. It's both a practice and a doctrine. It's both a policy and a doctrine. And it's funny when you, when you look at BYU, religion professors in the 1950s and 60s, when they exchange letters and memos, they always call it the Negro doctrine. And by 1969, the second time in LDS Church history, the Church will go on record with a, with a public statement. They produce a second statement in 1969, and of course it's construed as doctrine. So there's two public statements. And then the third statement that the Church makes about race and its history, meaning that it bears the imprimata of the high church leadership, is the race and priesthood document. And so there are three statements on race in LDS Church history. There's 1949, which establishes it as doctrine, canonizes as doctrine, and then 1969 and then finally in 2013. So you can see the book end nicely in 1949. In 2013. I want to say something that I think is fascinating. Years ago I gave a paper at a conference and it was about this very issue, right? It's just unsustainable to call it a policy or an opinion of a few leaders because really the vast, vast majority of Latter Day Saint apostles taught it as doctrine. There's a few that, you know, Hugh Brown was one of them that didn't. But anyway, I was talking to a. After my paper, a man who works for the church approached me. And I didn't, never met him before, he was a nice, nice man. He worked for the correlation department. And he just wanted to follow up with me on some things that I said about doctrine and practice. And I said to him, I said, he said, well, some of us brethren want to call it a practice and a policy. And I said, you can call it a practice in a policy, but do not call it folklore. That's a disingenuous way to not own your past. Because it's not folklore. And don't do that. It's disingenuous. That's what I said to him. Don't call it folklore like some people were doing. It's just folklore. And then the second thing is I said the problem with just calling it a policy and a practice, which it was, but the problem with just stopping there and not acknowledging it as a doctrine is that 1949 statement. And he looked at me and he said, oh, you know, just looked at me and he said, yeah, that's a hard one to get around. So he acknowledged the 49 statement. He was aware of it. And I said that that 49 statements out there in which it explicitly calls it doctrine and the 1969 statement does not call it doctrine for a lot of reasons. They're trying to move away from some of the racial teachings at that point because of the civil rights movement. So, and then just finally here, I'll end here, that in the early 20th century, this is where you start to get some private letters from the church PR people. They're calling it folklore, they're calling it a policy theories, you know, the theories of a few general authorities. And that's the bind that the church is in the early 21st century is they, they're just not ready to own up to it as doctrine yet. And they're not ready to, much less to change it, which is what they do in 2013, to say it's no longer doctrine. And that was the biggest implication about calling it doctrine is that some people in the high church leadership think that if you call it doctrine, you shouldn't, because doctrines don't change. And then there are other apostles who argue that's not true. Doctrines change all the time. That's the beauty of modern day revelation. So that was really the impetus for not owning up to it as doctrine is, is that they didn't want to get in the business of saying that the doctrine had changed. Boyd Packer was one here who argued that doctrines don't change, policies do, but not doctrines. So that's, that's really the, the main motive for calling it a doctrine or a policy, not a doctrine.

John Dehlin [00:30:27] Right. Yeah. No, that's great. That's a really crucial background for, for then exploring what the essay does and doesn't acknowledge. And so what tell us again what the essay tries to suggest around doctrine versus policy?

Matt Harris [00:30:45] Well, one of the critiques that I make is, is that the, the essay, it gives a false impression that these were just the LDS racial teachings were just theories. And they quote that 1906 letter from Joseph Fielding Smith, which is deeply problematic because for two reasons. One, it gives the false impression that Joseph Fielding Smith was an apostle at that time when he wasn't. And two, they just sort of cherry picked the letter to justify the narrative they were trying to create that it wasn't doctrine. And what's ironic about this 1906 letter from Joseph Fielding Smith, who was then the assistant church historian. What's ironic about it is Joseph Fielding Smith goes on to become an apostle four years later. And he, more than anybody else, creates the theological scaffolding for black priests of denial. And he writes a book in, publishes a book in 1930 called the Way to Perfection. And it's really the first systematic attempt to make sense of the priesthood ban. And he's Kind of a interesting fellow. He doesn't have much of a formal education and went to a couple of years of high school. He's Mormons don't use the word fundamentalist because that's what evangelicals do, right? You can say that people are. Evangelicals are fundamentals. Mormons are not fundamentalists by and large. Meaning that we, we believe in evolution, we believe in various other elements that might not make us, you know, fall into that fundamentalist line. But Joseph Feeling Smith and Bruce McConkey, if there is a Mormon fundamentalism, it's them. And Joseph Fielding was very literal in, in his reading of the Bible. He didn't have a lot of flexibility intellectually for nuance. And if the Bible said that there was a guy in the belly of a fish for a few days, hey, that's what happened. And of course some of the folks with PhDs like John Widzo and James Talons, they thought that was nonsense. It's okay to take some of this as figurative language, but Joseph Feeling wouldn't have any of that anyway. But Joseph Feeling Smith is on a one man mission to codify the Church's racial teachings. And the Church will use the Way to Perfection in lesson manuals. They'll. When anyone asked the first presidency in the 1930s and 40s about LDS racial teachings, they would say, have you seen chapters 15 and 16 of the way to Perfection? Yeah, you need to read Brother Smith's book that has all the answers. So that's how influential this book was. And it went through multiple iterations. Well, 1986 is when it was finally taken out of print because it was controversial. And then the, the Kindle of It edition wasn't removed until I think 2018 because one of my friends had complained about it and wrote the Church Leaders anyway, so it's the Way to Perfection, Joseph Fielding Smith's book the Way to Perfection that becomes the basis of that important 1949 first presidency statement that J. Reuben Clark, who was one of the First Presidency counselors, who writes most of these pronouncements under the signatory of Heber J. Grant when he was in Grant's administration, George Albert Smith and then eventually David O. McKay, it was mostly these first prescription announcements are written by Clark. So he writes this. And Joseph Hilling Smith's book influences him heavily as he creates this narrative about the band beginning with Joseph Smith founded on Revelation and that was codified into doctrine with that important statement.

John Dehlin [00:34:21] Got it. Okay. So in terms of kind of going through again just what you have on 248. It. There's a couple interesting things, and you highlight some of these things. It seems like the essay tries to say that it was Brigham Young. It kind of seems to throw Brigham Young under the bus. And it kind of also wants to say it's human error. It kind of wants to say that, you know, they were all products of their time, but it also kind of wants to throw God under the bus. What are you seeing the essay try to do in terms of responsibility for. For what gets said? Does that. Does that make sense?

Church Leadership and the Priesthood Ban

Matt Harris [00:35:05] Well, yes. It's a hard question to answer because I think there are a lot of opinions about this, John, all the way up to the very top of the church about how do we do this? Is God responsible for this racism, or is Brigham Young responsible for it? How do we tell this story? And on our last segment, I mentioned that this was. This was not good language. It was. They obfuscated a lot of this and they purposely made it vague so people could find what they wanted to find into it. And I shared the story with my brother, who read it and who didn't see what I saw in it, which was that the church is trying to say that. That slavery began or the priesthood ban began during Brigham Young's day because of the cultural conditions in which the ban emerged. This is slaveholding America. Mormons are. And Americans are racist. Right. And that's not what my brother read into it. But I can tell you, having talked to people who wrote this and participated in drafting it, that was the intent that wanted to. That they wanted to convey. And one of my friends, Darius Gray, who participated into this, for some of your listeners who might not know him, Darius Gray is an African American and joined the church in 1964 in Colorado Springs, not too far from where I live in southern Colorado. And Darius did what most good Mormons do, they go to byu. And so Dryas went to byu. He was one of two or three African Americans at BYU at the time. And which is another whole story about how he was treated as a black man and the difficult circumstance that Dryas was in, as well as the two other African Americans who were told, of course, not to date white people. White. White girls. And so. But the dilemma, of course, is I can't date any white girls here, but who do I date and who am I to marry? There are so few African American Latter Day Saints. So it was really a perplexing situation. They're taught to marry in the church, but they're also taught to marry within their own race. And that becomes this interesting conundrum. And for Darius, he gets really, really upset. And I talked totally. I feel it, I hear it. When Latter Day Saints would give a justification on the priesthood ban, imputing that it was God's doing. And that the Joseph feeling Smith response, this is the one that I learned growing up. As I talked to my father, who was a bishop, I said, well, what is it about? Why? Why can't black people hold the priesthood? What is it about that? And this would have been the 80s, so it would have been why couldn't they? I guess. And his response was the typical biblical response. Well, God had selected certain groups of people for the priesthood back in the Old Testament times. And so it was with modern times in the church. And so really what you're saying is you're pinning the ban on God. And Darius, when he hears that stuff, he gets really upset or he's sensitive to it because he participated in the construction of this essay. And that was really important to both him and others, that God is not responsible for this, that it simply began by a church president who had some harsh and demeaning things to say about black people. And, you know, that shouldn't be any Latter Day Saint who hears this. This should not be some kind of faith crisis, in my humble opinion. Because in the 19th century, I don't know too many people who were not racist. Even Abraham Lincoln, the wonderful emancipator, had some very strong views about black people. He didn't like slavery, but he didn't believe in racial equality either. He was very clear on that. And somehow we think that he's some progressive person with race when Lincoln, when he. When he wasn't. Anyway, so. So Brigham Young is definitely a product of his time. There's no question Young says some things that his contemporaries wouldn't believe when he talks about interracial marriage. And if a black and a white person marry, there shall be death on the spot. I'm paraphrasing a quote. I mean, that's a harsh thing to swallow. There's not a lot of 19th century theologians who are going, as far as Young talking about that an interracial marriage should result in death to one or both of the participants. I mean, that's really going a step above and beyond. Most theologians from the Protestant tradition would argue against interracial marriage because they believed in pure white bloodstreams. But as far as I know, they didn't advocate for the taking of one's life. So Young was definitely cut from a different cloth from some of his contemporaries. And that's, you know, a lot of this stuff should not be really radical. And why some of the brethren didn't want to make it more clear that the band began with Young, just simply out of the racist culture of his day. I don't find that problematic at all. Maybe I'm desensitized to it. I've been studying this stuff as a historian, as a teacher, as a researcher, But I do think that people could grasp that, they can understand that. And to suggest that God is still responsible or to leave that possibility open in this essay, it just doesn't do the church any good. And I know that some of the people, again, who worked on this, they wanted to make it more clear, but I think it got watered down the higher up it went.

John Dehlin [00:40:24] Right, the essay itself, yeah.

Matt Harris [00:40:26] Itself, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:28] Okay. A couple other things that you. In your restatement of what the essay says, you talk about how the church had historically had a ban on mixed race marriage. And. And the essay deals with that, right?

Racial Segregation and Lineage Teachings

Matt Harris [00:40:45] Yes, briefly.

John Dehlin [00:40:48] What is it? What does it basically say?

Matt Harris [00:40:50] It says that. I'm going to paraphrase here, I don't have the essay in front of me, but it basically says that it's not a sin to. To be involved in interracial marriages. And if I could just say a quick word about that, John, if that's all right. So this is kind of interesting. So in the 19th century, of course, Latin Day Saints are not unusual. The vast, vast, vast majority of people in the United States, since Brigham Young, Joseph Smith's day, well into the 20th century, they do not support interracial marriage. And in fact, just a little history here, it's in the 1850s when Americans in general try to create some kind of a nomenclature or a yardstick, if you will, to determine who's black and who's not. And this is really the first time in the American lexicon that I can find in the 1850s where they come up with this so called one drop rule that if you have one drop of Negro ancestry, as they called it, that somehow you were classified as being black. Now just process that for a moment that you have one drop of African blood in you. You could look perfectly white, but yet if your grandpa was black, then somehow you're deemed black. And the reason why they came up with a one drop rule in the 1850s, it's quite simple. They wanted to keep black and white people, slaves and whites from having sex. That's what it was. And that's how you could police those racial markers is by coming up with this, this completely arbitrary racial designation. And then after the American Civil War, when the south has been defeated, that there are a number of states that try to codify into legislation about how they delineate a black person. Because now they start to segregate society. They don't want blacks and whites to mix and mingle. Why? Because they're afraid of interracial marriage. If they work together, they go to school together, they live in the same neighborhoods together, then somehow that'll create a fraternity and ultimately lead in marriage. That's what Americans want to avoid. And so they start to codify a lot of this stuff in the late 19th century and into the early 20th century. And they go through these ridiculous fractions. You know, if you lived in one state, if you were 1 32nd African American, you were considered black. The next state over, if you were 1/4 or 1/8, I mean, it's crazy. You could be designated black in one state and go to the next state and not be designated black. And the church, I think it's 1930 that the federal laws start to buy into some of this nonsense. They come up with the 1930 census. I think they classify anyone black with one quarter or one drop. Actually, it's one drop. Well, the church follows the one drop rule, which is the, it's the most draconian way to measure ancestry. Because one drop means that anywhere in your ancestry, decades back, generations back, you could be considered black. And once again, I want to add that this deals not with your skin color, but it deals with your ancestral line. So you could have a very, very dark skinned Tongan who could hold the priesthood because he doesn't have any African lineage. Then you could have some white dude with blonde hair and blue eyes who had a great grandpa who was from Africa and from black Africa and they would have the curse. And that really was shocking to a lot of people both in and out of the church. That a dark skinned Tongan could have the priesthood, but yet some dude with light skin, blonde hair, blue eyes would be shut off. And this is a larger issue in American society about how to detect race and how to deal with race. And in the church it was really a fascinating topic because there were a lot of people in the church who were, who were passing below the color line, that is that they were pretending to be white when they, when they had this African ancestry. There were people in South Africa, as I write about in my book, who would leave South Africa because it was known that they had a cursed ancestry. They didn't look black, but they had a cursed ancestry. They would leave South Africa and they would travel to Salt Lake and they would show up and they would interview with their bishop and their stake president and they would be given temple recommends and they'd be ordained to the priesthood just because they didn't look black. And Darius Gray was told by Eldridge G. Smith back in the 60s, Elder G. Smith withheld lineage from Darius, didn't give him a lineage, recognizing that pronouncing the curse of Cain on black people would be deeply problematic. Not theologically because Smith believed in all that nonsense, but just that it wouldn't, it wouldn't help the person receiving the blessing. And obviously to receive a patriarchal blessing. This is a special moment in the life of the Latter Day Saint. It's supposed to give you a road map to your future, your eternal salvation. And to be told that you're a curse from this biblical counterfeiter is deeply unsettling. Anyway, so Elder C. Smith withheld lineage from Darius and he told it said something interesting to dry us. He said, he said, you know, if you weren't here in the United States and you went to. I think he's, I think he said Tonga. He said if you went to Tonga, they wouldn't even question you. They would ordain you to the priesthood because everybody with dark skin and Tonga held the priesthood and you'd fit right in there. And that's, that was, that was something that was unsettling to him to hear that because obviously there were some, there was an inequity among these racial practices at the time. So anyway, the church is following this one drop rule and the church, so they don't like interracial marriage. And for the people who were light skinned and deemed cursed, that was a challenge because here you have. I'm thinking of examples in my research that I'm going to talk about my next book. You've got. I'm thinking of a guy from Utah who's got light skin, he's blonde hair and blue eyes. That's what David O. McKay says about him when he interviewed him. He's got blonde hair and blue eyes and this poor kid. He said to the church president and also Joseph Feeling Smith, he interviewed with two apostles. He said, what am I to do? I mean, I'm not going to marry a black person because I'm not black. I don't identify as African American. But on the other hand, you're telling me I can't marry a white girl because I can't take her to the temple. I'm cursed. What do I do? He's in racial no man's land. And what was interesting about this is that David O. McKay, who, most people don't know this, but he tended to be liberal about these kinds of things. He's like, oh yeah, we're going to ordain you and put you on a mission. This is ridiculous. And Joseph Fielding Smith, of course, when he interviewed the same, same kid, he just said, I'm so sorry, I've got nothing for you, I don't have any counsel for you. Which is really shocking because Joseph Fielding Smith had counsel about a lot of things. And for him to tell this young kid that he didn't have any counsel for him, what was he supposed to say? And so this was going on, they were, they were ordaining people, at least some of the apostles, like David O. Was ordaining people to the priesthood when he knew that they had cursed ancestry. And also too, there are no ways to determine or to detect these bloodlines. That's, there's no scientific proof in these days to figure out who's got the curse or the blood, that's what they call it, the blood. And they would look at genealogy. They would try to determine through genealogy. They would, they would put the onus on these beleaguered patriarchs. You know, let the patriarchs figure it out. And if they feel inspired during the blessing to bless them with Cain, the curse of the lineage of Cain, then that means they're cursed. But that becomes problematic when you get a darker skinned person in there and they bless them with the blessings of Ephraim, the lineage of Ephraim and the lineage of Ephraim. For your listeners who may not know this lineage theology, Latter Day Saints would designate lineage through one of the 12 tribes of Israel. And through that lineage bore certain responsibilities for the church. So for example, if you were from the lineage of Aaron, that you had a right to the Aaronic priesthood, if you were from the lineage of Ephraim, your responsibility was to bless and preside over the church. And that's code word for lead the church, hold the priesthood, lead the church. And then if you're a black person, you were deemed outside of the house of Israel altogether from a, an extra lineage, a cursed lineage. And that would be that of Cain and Ham and so in Canaan. And so Mormons were into this lineage in the 20th century and they put the onus on patriarchs in some cases to determine lineage. And a lot of patriarchs felt deeply apprehensive about this because they recognized that a person's fate was in their hands, whether he could serve a mission, marry in the temple, and otherwise be a full equal in the church. And so there was a lot of anxiety among the church patriarchs when they had to give a blessing to someone who looked black. Anyway, so back to the race and priesthood essay with interracial marriage. They acknowledged that interracial marriage is no longer a sin. It had never been codified as a doctrine. You never saw it anywhere in the church handbook. But clearly the leaders had talked about it in their sermons over the years about interracial marriage and how it would pollute the purity of the bloodstreams. That's what J. Reuben Clark said at one point. And by the 1960s, you get a little bit of a different shift from that. I mean, when you say pollute the purity of the bloodstreams, I mean, that just sounds horrible. It sounds like Nazi Germany in many ways, this pure Aryan race. But by the 1950s into the 60s, you get a sort of a different strand of this, which is Spencer Kimball. He's reading marital prescriptive literature which suggests that the most happy marriages during this is a World War II sort of generation, thought that the most happy marriages are ones where people marry within their faith, within their race, and within their socioeconomic background. So if you're a good Catholic, marry good Catholic. If you're middle class, marry middle class. If you're an Asian, marry an Asian. And what happens is that after the war is over, World War II is over, these American GIs from Utah, they're coming back with Asian wives, and they're violating the interracial statutes of Utah that were put in place just after the American Civil war and in 1963. So this is at the height of the civil rights movement. Something interesting happened. There were some state lawmakers who came into David O. McKay's office and they said, what do we do with this? We've got people who are coming, Latter Day Saint gis who are coming back from the war with their Asian brides, and they're, they're, they're breaking the law. What do we do? And David O. Says, I guess we have to, we have to lift this to change this interracial statute. We've got to get rid of it. And of course, some of the state lawmakers, one of whom was some Penguich, he gives this oration on the day they were supposed to lift, lift it. He says, I'm worried that this will open up the floodgates for blacks and whites, that blacks or that Negroes, as he said, and white people will, will marry. And that can't happen. And David O. McKay was worried about that too. But they lifted the interracial statute in 1963, not because anyone was promoting interracial marriage. It's because they wanted to. They didn't want to criminalize latter day Saint GI's marrying Asians and bringing them back from the war. And then by 1967, the US Supreme Court will strike down interracial marriage statutes throughout the country in a famous case called Loving v. Virginia. So let me end the story here with one last thing about interracial marriage. Interracial marriage, black sexuality is. It really looms over everything with this entire discussion. And it's the reason why many of the apostles don't support civil rights. If you break down protections and housing and jobs, that means that blacks and whites can live among each other and work among each other other, and that's what they don't want. And the brethren are reading literature that talks about how the races will become mongrelized, which is a horrible term that, that the clan would use mongrel, meaning a lesser breed dogs, you know, rather than purebred dogs. This would be a dog breeding with a lower bread. And the implication is obvious. White people be breeding with lower breed black people. So they're reading stuff. It talks about mongrelization. And a lot of people are reading this crap in the 50s and 60s. And anyway, so by the 1970s. Let me end the story here because there's a lot we can say about this. But in the 1970s, when the priesthood revelation is issued, one of the apostles insists that there ought to be a proviso in the Deseret News right alongside of the priesthood revelation or the manifesto as it was called, that that still said that interracial marriage was wrong. And it quoted Spencer Kimball and this, this Spencer Kimball quote that was republished in the deseret news on June 9, 1978. It was the same one that was still in LDS manuals, well, up until, I think a year or two ago. And so the church has always been concerned about interracial marriage. And when the priesthood revelation came, a lot of black Latter Day Saints, they approached the brethren and they said, why are we still getting pushback on interracial marriage? We understood why before we couldn't take our brides to the temple. But that is no longer the case. It's a moot point. Why the hold up now? And it really put the Church in a difficult theological position. You get people like Marion Hanks, who is wonderful. He would counsel interracial couples at byu. He would say, oh, I think you could break down so many racial barriers. This is such a tremendous blessing both for you and the church. So he's giving him his word and warm encouragement. Then you get the late Boyd Packer, just the exact opposite. Don't do it. You've got a mission in life. And then Spencer Kimball, they would turn to President Kimball to mediate these differences between Packer and Hanks and Kimball. At least a few occasions that I know of. I'm sure there are more, but at least on three occasions that I have documentation for. President Kimball met with a black woman at byu and she asked him, she said, I've heard from two apostles, my stake president, my bishop, that I shouldn't marry this guy, this white guy that I'm engaged to, and I need to know. I'm getting all of these conflicting voices. I love this man. I have nobody else to marry. I mean, there's no other black men at BYU at the time, at least that she was possible suitors. And President Kimball, he just. He was very honest with him. Truly an admirable moment. He said, you know, we teach that the races ought to marry within themselves. And so he's harking back to this prescriptive literature that he had been influenced by from the World War II generation. But he said, in terms of being the doctrine of the church, it is not. You have my blessing. And he hugs the woman. They both weep, they embrace, and she goes out, you know, electrified that the church president has now blessed her union with this white man and they marry. And so the interracial marriage, oh, boy. It still has an interesting issue today in the church. Certainly, it's. It's. It's commonplace. It's. It's known. It's out there. But there are still some people in the church who, who don't agree with it. Boyd Packer, I'm told the day he died, did not support interracial marriage. No surprise there. David Bednar, just two years before he became an apostle, gave a devotional address at BYU Idaho, in which he cautioned against interracial marriage. I mean, that. That's amazing to me. That's. This is the 21st century. You'd think it was in Alabama, 1930. And I know this because I've gone through the Genesis files and some of their records and the Genesis group leadership. It's a black Latter Day Saint support group that meets in Salt Lake. And they have different branches throughout the the country. The United States, they won in LA and Oakland and back east anyway. But the Genesis where it all started was in Salt Lake. And the Genesis branch president, the time received, I don't know, a lot of different inquiries, phone calls and emails from BYU Idaho students in interracial relationships and marriages. And they called and they said, what is going on here? The BYU Idaho president and future apostle. Apostle, which of course they didn't know at the time, but he's just cautioned against interracial marriage. And it wasn't Bednar's finest moment. It was creating a problem where a problem did need to occur. So the interracial marriages, for the church to acknowledge that it's okay and it's not a sin. That again, is one of those things that the church had been preaching about most emphatically for decades. And in 2013, the church says, if okay, it's. You're not in trouble with the church.

Interracial Marriage and Church Policy

John Dehlin [00:57:56] What a relief.

Matt Harris [00:58:00] I know, it's crazy.

John Dehlin [00:58:02] Really quick. There are a lot of. There have always been rumors. I heard this in 1987, 88, as a BYU freshman, that that one of the main reasons the 78 revelation came is because the church's tax exempt status was being threatened. This is not related to your s. To the essays, but do you have any information on that that you want to share now versus not?

Matt Harris [00:58:28] Yeah, yeah. So that's. I write about this in my book. That's complete bs. So I've written about this elsewhere too. What happens is, is I don't want to go into too much detail here because I go into a lot of detail about the government goes after the church in BYU hardcore. And I'll just give you, your listeners, a teaser. I deal with this in over a hundred pages with great detail. It's really interesting story.

Internal Church Debates Before 1978

John Dehlin [00:58:57] The.

Matt Harris [00:58:58] The church goes after BYU in the late 60s for violating the Civil Rights act of 1964. You know, when you only have a couple of three black people at BYU, you know, geez, H, we've got a problem. So. And clearly there was a problem. And BYU didn't have this policy to turn black people away. They weren't that stupid to write it in their, you know, catalog. Everybody else is accepted here except black people. But they, they went to extraordinary lengths to discourage them from coming. They would send them this letter, you know, hey, if you come here, we can't keep you. But you should know that you can't date white girls and that you won't find a community Here because we, we don't have any Negroes in Provo, Utah County. So really they, they tried to discourage them. And again, interracial marriage, that's. What's this idea of black sexuality. So the government's on to them. They don't have any black faculty either. And then another issue is with women, which I don't want to talk about right now today. That's good.

John Dehlin [00:59:56] No, don't.

Matt Harris [00:59:57] But they go after, but they go after women too. Black faculty and women. And the church runs afoul the federal government and the law school is in jeopardy of not being accredited. And so the government's coming after him hardcore. And the Nixon administration has made it very clear that they're going to target educational institutions, even private ones, who have these racist policies. So the church is really worried about this, this and the Jimmy Carter administration. So obviously he's a couple of presidents later after Nixon. But Jimmy Carter sends a message that he too wants to sharpen to tighten up on this. And the government, they do go after a place called a university called Bob Jones in South Carolina. And Bob Jones, unlike byu, they were not smart. They put on their, their catalog, you know, Negroes are not welcome here. And they just didn't want Negroes, as they said, to use their language. And so what happened was the, the U.S. government, the IRS, stripped Bob Jones of their tax exemption status. And Carter upheld this, his administration upheld it. It started with Nixon and it continued on. And so Mormons are following this case very carefully. You can see the implications of all of this stuff, right, that if they go after Bob Jones, they can go after BYU and they can go after, you know, women in the priesthood. They can go after any number of things. And anyway, so I wrote Jimmy Carter a note a long time ago, 2013. And I said, you know, I've read on the Internet, I read everywhere else that you're, that you targeted Mormons and that you use the IRS to threaten them to change their race policy. And also ERA The Carter administration was not happy with the Mormons for the, their opposition to era And Carter wrote me back a really nice note. He just said, I don't have any recollection of doing any of that stuff. However, I did reach out to the Mormons on their missionary program. I was really interested in that. And I'd gone through the Jimmy Carter papers in Atlanta and I family there. So it kind of nice to go see my family and also spend some lovely time at the Jimmy Carter library. And I found some great stuff on his views towards Mormons in the church that I'm going to write about, but nothing with the irs. And so to answer your question, John, that's a bunch of smoke and mirrors. There is one part to the story that your listeners should know is that In June of 1978, the LDS Church historian Leonard Arrington writes in a letter to his children. And he also writes this in his diary. He says that the church that I learned from talking to legal counsel. So Arrington had been talking to the church's legal counsel. I can't remember the guy's name at the moment. He's dead now. Tried to interview him. But anyway, Arrington had talked to the church's legal counsel. And the legal counsel said to Arrington, who then said to his children in the form of this letter and also wrote it in his journal that the. The IRS was going after the church in Wisconsin. And there was one other state, Wisconsin, I can't remember the other state. And then there was. They're possibly looking into Hawaii. And so that was interesting. And he. But Arrington speculated this may have had something to do with the revelation. So maybe Arrington plants this little seed. But after contacting the IRS division in Wisconsin, and I can't remember if it was Pennsylvania, I did this so many years ago, like seven years ago. Anyway, they didn't find anything that the IRS had done to the LDS Church there in a decentralized fashion. And I can tell you, after having gone through Spencer Kimball's diaries on more than one occasion, his private papers and other issues, the IRS is not a factor in his determination to lift the ban. The real issue, if I had to just be brief about this, the real issue is, is a couple of things. One is Kimball has this universalist vision to spread Mormonism. And he recognizes intuitively that you know every member of Missionary John. You heard that growing up. I heard that. And lengthen your stride. So he wants to globalize the church and bring the church into India, into Russia. This was during the Cold War and other places. And Kimball recognizes intuitively that you can't do this if you. If you can't get into black Africa and some other places. So. So that the ban conflicts with his universalist vision. That's the first point. The second point is, is that they're. They're ordaining black people to the priesthood. They know it and they don't know what to do about it. They don't have any foolproof way to determine who has the cursed lineage. So they know this is going on all over the place. That's the second thing that goes on. And then thirdly, they're building temples everywhere, including Brazil. And the LDS Gospel topics essay talks about this, that the Brazil temple plays a pivotal role in the lifting of the priesthood ban. And what the essay doesn't say, because I don't think know about this, this is a big part of my next book, is that Kimball has to convince the hardliners to lift the ban. He knows it needs to be done for the good of the church, but he has a bunch of people who don't want to lift the ban. And the genius of President Kimball is he finds a way to get them on board. And he uses the Brazil temple as sort of a cudgel to do that. He goes to the apostles one by one and also collectively. And he says, we're building this temple in Brazil. You and I both know that it's got such a long history of mixed race marriages. And I have no idea how we'll grant these people a temple recommend because we all know they probably have the curse. And I need your help. What do we do? And moreover, these people have been donating their time and their talents to build this temple. They were, I mean, really, one woman, Helvetio Martins, the first black General Authority. He's from Brazil. He's called, as in the second quorum of the 70 in 1990 by none other than Ezra Benson, which is ironic. And Elder Martins was a. He was a hometown hero. James Faust and Spencer Kimball and Bruce McConkey too. They knew about this man's dedication to the church even though he couldn't hold the priesthood. His wife had sold her jewelry. Helvecchio himself was raising money, doing what he could to get other Brazilian Latter Day Saints to donate and sacrifice for this, this temple. And this just crushed Kimball that this would go on and that yet this beautiful family would not be able to enjoy the privileges of the temple. And that more than anything else, tugged at Kimball's heartstrings. And the IRS and all that stuff is just sort of ancillary. And yeah, this church was getting sued all over the place, by the way, but that there is absolutely no evidence that this was, that lawsuits were part of it. They were just sort of a, you know, an annoyance, if you will, just sort of a bur into your saddle. The church has been sued before all over the place. And so it's, it was really annoying, but really, it conflicted with his universalist vision. They were already ordaining black men to the priesthood unwittingly and then finally he recognized the sacrifices of these Latter Day Saints in building a temple they wouldn't be permitted to enter. And the genius of Kimball, as I explained in my book, is that he has to convince the bigots and the 12 to come on board. And that's no easy thing. These people that have been ingrained in these racial practices for so long and how he does it with Bruce McConkey and some others is really nothing short of amazing.

John Dehlin [01:07:38] That's Markey Peterson, Ezra Tough Benson. Right? Bruce McConkey.

Matt Harris [01:07:43] Yeah. If I were to ask your readers who the biggest hold ups were, they would probably say Bruce McConkey and. But they'd be wrong. Bruce McConkey is one of the first people who comes around to the priesthood band in a year before the revelation in 1977. Elder McConkey. Kimball convinces him that he needs to, that the band needs to be lifted. And Kimball of course, recognizes a centrality in Elder McConkey. Elder McConkey is huge. And one of the things that Kimball does as I talk about the book is he dispatches Kimball to Brazil. He's on this recon mission to check out the Brazilian Latter Day Saints to see if they have the leadership capacity for the priesthood. And there's more I'll say about that in my book. I've got some great sources on all of this stuff. But anyway, so he wins McConkey over and the people that are the hold up so is there's no question Markey Peterson, Ezra Tap Benson and Delbert Stapley.

John Dehlin [01:08:40] That's right, yeah, Stapley.

Matt Harris [01:08:42] And there's a reason why that Mark E. Peterson's in South America the time of the Revelation, he is not on record supporting it. Whereas when they went to the temple during their typical apostle and first presidency meeting on Thursday, I think it's the first, third Thursday, whatever it is Thursday during the month. It's like the first or third or something when they go to their typical meeting on June 1st. This is the day of the Revelation. Mark Peterson's not there and that's not by happenstance. And Del Staple's in the hospital sick and he'll die in August, just two months later. But anyway, it's, it's really about how President Kimball wins these folks over. And he never would have gone and done what he did on June 1, 1978, had he not thought that he had the buy in from the court.

Weaknesses of the Race and Priesthood Essay

John Dehlin [01:09:29] Right, okay, thank you for answering that. I think we cover most of the things that you lay out in the overview. Should we go to the Weaknesses and just kind of touch on them one by one. You kind of have them numbered. Is there anything else you want to say about. About kind of that overview before we jump to the weaknesses or exclusions? I know you talked a bit about those already, but.

Matt Harris [01:09:53] Yeah, I don't think so. I would just say one. One thing that the Church emphasizes in the essay a lot, that it's this. The Book of Mormon verse in second Nephi, I think chapter 26, that all are likened to God.

John Dehlin [01:10:04] Right.

Matt Harris [01:10:05] And this would be an interesting study for somebody else to do, which is to look at how Latter Day Saints have looked at that verse during the long history of the band. Because you can't look at somebody in the face and say, all are like unto God, and then cling to this ban, because that's clearly not the case. Right. And some Latter Day Saint apostles caught the incongruity of that Book of Mormon verse that all are like unto God, mostly except for black people, because they were cursed. And they caught that theological tension there. And certainly black people caught it. And in the 1940s and 50s, when black latter Day Saints from all over the country and all over the world are writing in the First Presidency asking about the ban, they're talking about that scripture. How do you deal with this? How do you justify this? You can't tell us that all are like unto God, but then keep us out of the liturgical rights of the Church. That doesn't sound like all are a like unto God. We're treated differently. Why? And that's deeply problematic. And after the revelation in 1978, Bruce McConkey gives a famous address on the revelation called all are alike unto God. And then a year later, Howard W. Hunter also gives an address, this time at byu, and his is also titled all are like unto God. So they're trying to put flesh and muscle to this Book of Mormon verse that had eluded them for all these years. Yeah, that's emphasized in this.

John Dehlin [01:11:32] Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

Matt Harris [01:11:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:36] Okay. So let's just go through some of the weaknesses or exclusions that you. That you note that are missing from the essay. And the first you mentioned is that there's no apology. Do you want to talk about that?

The Case for a Church Apology

Matt Harris [01:11:48] Yeah, it's. I don't have a lot to say about this other than. I guess the question is, why won't the Church apologize? And if you talk to some black Latter Day Saints in the church, I think there's a variety of opinions on that. I mean, some black Latter Day Saints would argue. I don't need an apology. I just want to go forward. And let's just go forward. And then there are some other black Latter Day Saints who argue that we can't truly heal until we have an apology. The question then remains, why can't the Church apologize? And probably the most satisfactory answer I could give is the churches, they're very protective, the apostles, about, about what's the right word? About undoing teachings of their predecessors to, to correct them, to reprove them. They're very careful about that. They don't want to get in the business of reproving their own. And if you apologize for something, you're admitting error. And that's really the logical extension of this. If you apologize for something that happened for 126 years, that's a huge issue. It's no small thing because so many people were robbed of the rituals of the Church which bind families together for eternity. These are no small things. And so to apologize suggests that somehow the leaders had misled the church. And for a number of years, Even to the 21st century, there's still this idea that the Brethren cannot lead the church astray. And I think that's, that's problematic because it really sets, it sets the apostles up for failure, really, in this case. Clearly the Brethren had led the church astray with some of these race teachings. And I just, just, I know I'm a broken record, but people are mature enough to handle this. Yes, we said some things that were harmful. We deeply apologize. We want to move forward and make it right. And so what the Church does, rather than apologize, what they do is they do a series of PR moves which, which is not going to understate the importance of that. And one of the things they'll do is they'll work with the naacp, which is, which is huge, which is great. That's their way of atoning for the past. We're going to work with black organizations. We're going to work with the Wyoming 14. It's been in the Utah newspapers. We're going to donate food to. The Wyoming 14 is a group of football players at the University of Wyoming in 1969 that were going to protest playing against the BYU football team because of the LDS Church's racial policies. And the long story short is the Wyoming coach kicked off the team, these players, for protesting. This is not a place to protest. So he kicks them off the team and essentially cripples their college career and ruins some of their NFL prospects. And anyway, so it's a lot of bitter and acrimony with this. So in the interim period, the church is sort of, at least through emissaries, has sort of reached out to these people. There have been some reconciliation moments. The stake president, Wyoming was part of this. Darius Gray at one point was part of this. And just recently one of the Wyoming 14 reach out reached out to Gifford Nielsen, who was an LDS General Authority today, but also an all American quarterback at BYU back in the 70s and also an all pro quarterback in the National Football League. So they worked that football connection and Gifford Nielsen took it to his superiors and said, look, some of these guys in Wyoming that we played against years ago, they have this food pantry and they're raising food for disadvantaged families in Wyoming and also the communities in which the Wyoming 14 live. So it was all around the country, it wasn't just Wyoming. And we want the LDS Church to contribute. Will you contribute? And through Gifford Nielsen's work with some of the Wyoming 14 members, the church donated a big truckload of goods, I mean worth, you know, tens of thousands of dollars. So they're doing great things like that. And there, there are, there is outreach going on into black communities. And so that's what the church is trying to do to atone for the past is to work with these black organizations without making an apology.

John Dehlin [01:15:59] I always assumed also that, you know, we obviously have a lot of lawyers running the church and isn't it just standard legal wisdom that a corporate apology can then, you know, invite litigation and even requests for reparations and so it's a way to make sure you never have any financial responsibility for anything that goes on. Is that, do you think that is at all influencing Delaney chokes his statement just kind of his training as a

Matt Harris [01:16:33] lawyer with Mountain Meadows Massacre, Definitely yes. With the Wyoming 14, no, there was no statute being broken. It was just good old fashioned racism. And, and I think it for Oaks is again, Mountain Meadows is different, right, because people lost their lives. This is a different situation. And I think in Oaks's case, he just, he doesn't want to apologize because he, he said, quote, the church neither seeks nor gives apologies and they don't want to get in the business of telling the saints that their predecessors were wrong, that they, they said wrong things or produced policies and doctrines that were hurtful or harmful. They just don't want to go that route. They want to protect their own. And I think that that's deeply, deeply problematic in the church and the source of unnecessary people pain. To think that you couldn't apologize legally. I guess that's a whole different thing. Right. You're protecting yourself from any kind of financial culpability. But to. To not do it in the Wyoming or the race issue is, you know, it's really the best way to heal some of the wounds in the church with the black community. And, and the church won't do it. And maybe one day they will with the right leader. I don't know if there's enough pressure. We'll see. The church is always governed by pressure points. And this is something Mike Otterson told me years ago. He said, if enough people in the right places put pressure on, they do listen. And I thought that was really interesting. There was a black Latter Day Saint, a very open, very. What's the right word? A very outspoken black Latter Day Saint man. He was in the Genesis Group leadership for a while. And when they had an opening in 2015 in the Quorum of the Twelve, I guess that was the summer when what, El Tom Perry died, Boyd Packer and Richard Scott, they all died in succession over a period of a few months. So they had openings in the 12. And this, this, this member of the Genesis Group, he. He saw Jeff Holland in the hardware store, I think, and he approached Elder Holland, and Elder Holland knew who he was, and he certainly knew who Elder Holland was. And without a filter, he just said, when are you going to put a black person in the quorum of the 12? And Holland didn't give him any, you know, BS. Oh, when the Lord tells us, you know, none of that stuff. Holland gave a very frank response. He said, when we have a bigger black population in the church, we'll consider it. And, and of course, that wasn't satisfactory to this, this Latter Day Saint man because his point was, we're losing our black youth and they need something they can hold on to, somebody in a position of leadership with for whom they can look up. And in Holland, though, was just the other way around. We'll give you some or we'll consider it, at least when we get enough black folk in this black letter. And Saint was saying, well, help us get more black folk by having a black apostle. So the two are speaking past each other. But anyway, these are still sensitive issues today, even as we speak.

John Dehlin [01:19:30] Sure. So the second thing you mentioned as being missing, besides an apology, is no recognition of the pain. And you mentioned, you know, people like Darren Smith and Juliana Villegas Haas and others. There are a lot of black Latter Day Saints or ex Latter Day Saints that are like, you gotta apologize and you gotta recognize the harm and the pain that's been done Right, Yeah, yeah.

Matt Harris [01:19:56] I mean, Darren is a good friend of mine. He certainly doesn't speak for lot of black Latter Day Saints, but he's been calling for an apology for a long, long time. And he has as both a black scholar and a black activist. He was friends with a couple of the general authorities. He taught at BYU for a short period, long time ago. So he had a pretty good pedigree. And Darren just pushed a little bit too much for the liking of some in Salt Lake. And he ran afoul that a little bit. And he also, when he was, he and his wife were at church, they, they got into trouble with some of their local leaders. I don't think that Darren would mind me saying this because I know he said it publicly, so it's not privileged information, but they pushed back on some of these nonsensical racial issues. He and his white wife, then, wife, who's white, and they were in an interracial marriage and they said some crazy things about, about interracial marriage in a priesthood Relief Society meeting. And Darren and his wife would just speak up and say, look, that's crazy, that's not true. And then the local leadership would push back and Darren just recognized it as good old fashioned racism. But the leaders would say, look, show me where this is wrong. And the leader had a point at that point. This is in the early 2000s. There was nothing in the church literature that said interracial marriage was okay. And that, that didn't happen until 2013 when the document, the race and priesthood essay that we're talking about came out and denounced it. But that's the first time that any authoritative document had denounced interracial marriage. And if we were to push, rewind, and Darren was in that same church meeting, he could say, bishop, you're wrong. Here's the document. But he didn't have that at the time. He just had his gut and his common sense. And that wasn't good enough for the bishop, who is probably, you know, quoting from Bruce McConkey or some other work that was still extant on LDS bookshelves.

John Dehlin [01:21:51] Yeah, yeah. And this always brings back, you know, what people just so often say about this and other issues is the church taught us all what the steps of repentance were. It's to, you know, forsake the sin, to apologize, to feel remorse, to make reparations. And I think you're, you're first two points are basically just that the church isn't following, doesn't follow its own recommended steps for repentance is that fair to say that's true.

Matt Harris [01:22:19] But let me add one more quick nuance to it. So I was talking to a former BYU religion dean a few years ago and who's friends with at least half the quorum of the 12. And I asked this religion dean very, just point blank, I said, why don't they apologize? What's going on? And clearly there's racism all over the place in the church today. And he said, some of the brethren don't think there is. And I said, who? And he said, dallin Oaks and Boyd Packer. And I. All I said was, that is. That is terribly disappointing because if. If somehow word is not getting back to them. Well, I don't know, maybe it is. And they're just like this. But it's possible that they're just not hearing the stories that's going on at the local level because there is a disconnect sometimes between church headquarters and what's going on in the units of the church. This is one of the reasons why they have a Genesis group. It really is a black support group. And so when they have issues of race around the country, people would contact the Genesis leadership in Salt Lake. And there is a general authority that at the lower level, usually it's a 70 that oversees the Genesis group. And clearly that 70 would know about these racial tensions. But whether that makes it up to the channels to someone like Boyd Packer, a senior apostle, I mean, I don't know. But. But that's what the religion dean said. He said, I've talked to Packer about this. I've talked to Oaks about this. They don't see that there's a problem. And if there's not a problem, why do you apologize?

John Dehlin [01:23:57] Right. Okay. A third thing that you mentioned is that it doesn't acknowledge, you know, the. The doctrinal status of these positions. Historically, I think we've talked about that quite a bit. Is there anything else you want to say about that or.

How the Church Has Framed Its Racial History Over Time

Matt Harris [01:24:13] I don't think so. Well, one quick thing, that there. There's a trajectory about how the church has characterized its racial teachings over time. And I did a book in 2015 that talks about this in great detail. Blacks and Mormons. I did it with Newell Bringhurst, and we talked about in this book how it became, you know, the doctrine of the church. Then it moved into. We don't know why this is in 1969. We don't know why the ban occurred, which is a terrible decision. You know, it's. The context is important. It's a civil rights movement. They're trying to get people off their backs. We don't know why. Right. Well, Bruce McConkey would never agree with that. Right. We do know why. Read Mormon doctrine. It tells you why blacks can't have the priesthood. So this whole we don't know why position was really nonsensical. So it goes from doctrine to we don't know why. And then in the early 20 for late 1990s, early 21st century, you again get a new position, which is, it's the opinions of just earlier leaders. They were just speaking on their own, just a few of them. You get that line. And then fourthly and final, you get folklore. It's folklore. And so there's this evolutionary view of how the church has characterized its racial teachings over time. And then I guess, I guess to bookend it here, the fifth position would be with in 2013, where they denounce all of this stuff. And which is, which is good. But it takes, it's a process that they have to arrive at to get there. And they didn't want to create these essays overnight. I mean, you and I spent a long time this morning talking about the genesis of these LDS gospel topics essays. But each of the essays can be said to have its own life. And the black and priesthood essay. One of the major impetuses of this essay was two things. One long term, one short term. The long term was you get black Latter Day Saints writing in. They're struggling with LDS racial teachings and they want to know that they're not cursed. And the brethren right back. Gordon Hinckley writes back to a brother and black brother in California. He says we're not racist. And he writes back, that's, that's not what I'm asking. What I'm at, what I'm asking is denounce the curse, denounces less valiant stuff. And Hinckley won't do it. He just wants to focus on the church doesn't believe in racism. And so President Hinckley is moving the goalposts on this guy. He's, he recognizes it. He's upset. Anyway, so this is all done in private. And then the short term thing that leads to the race and priesthood essay is, is of course the Randy Bot debacle. A BYU religion professor who gave this explosive interview with Washington, Washington Post reporter Jason Horowitz in 2012 during the midst of the Mitt Romney campaign. And the church was all presidential campaign and the church was already on high alert that the media, the national media was going to come after the church on Race and polygamy. And they were ready for it. They produced some promotional videos. They had Darius Gray do a promotional video as a black Latter Day Saint bearing his testimony about the church. And so they're trying to put it all in the best possible light. And here you have a. A BYU professor who undermines all of this by giving this, this interview. And in the. Horowitz was there just to get an interview about some of the church's teachings, and he was just trying to find anybody who would talk to him and. Have I talked to you about this, John, before?

John Dehlin [01:27:45] No, go ahead.

Matt Harris [01:27:46] Okay. I don't want to repeat it if I have, but I know in another podcast, one of the. I've done a lot of podcasts, but I've explained this on another podcast. But. So Horowitz is in town. I interviewed Horowitz, and so I've gotten his version of all of this. And so Horowitz is in town Provo. And he doesn't go through the administration like he. I think he didn't know that he had to. He just started going over to the religion building and knocking on doors. And every door that he opened, the professor would say. He would say, I'm Jason Horowitz, Washington Post. I want to do a story on Mitt Romney. And just. Can you answer some questions about the church and the byu, the religion professors? No, no, we're not authorized to do this. You haven't gone through the channels. Okay. Keeps knocking. And so they know that this is all on high alert. The BYU professors have been told, do not reach out to the media unless it's been approved by us. We just have to very be very careful about this. Anyway, after the umpteenth door, Horowitz knocks on old Randy Bot opens up and, oh, come on in. I guess he missed the memo that he shouldn't have done that, but he did that. And they were talking just nonchalantly about the church's teachings, just from a variety of issues they covered. And then it got to race, and Bot just started talking about that black people were cursed and they couldn't hold the priesthood because they were less valiant. And it was like given the keys to a little child. You wouldn't give the keys to a child to drive a car because they're a child. It's the same with the priesthood. Why would you allow blacks to the priesthood? They're like children. I mean, it was the most insulting, demeaning thing. And I asked Horowitz, I said, when you heard this, what did you think? He's like, oh my God, I knew I had a story. And so he recognized intuitively that, wow, there's a story here. But that wasn't what he was asking for. He wasn't seeking that. He knew very little about Mormon racial teachings. And he didn't even know enough to ask about the ban. He didn't know there was a ban. And so Bot just talked freely and frankly with the Post reporter. And of course Horowitz is good at what he does. And he recognized, oh, wow, my readers are going to want to hear this. So the very next day, boom, the story breaks. And it's, it's, it's, it focuses on the race stuff. Not exclusively, but, but it does talk about race. And the church, of course, is now in full damage control. They've worked so hard to cultivate a relationship with the media for Mitt Romney, this high profile Latter Day Saint, and now it's being undermined by a BYU religion professor. And so the church produced two statements denouncing the BYU professor. I mean, this is extraordinary. They say his name in the statement, BYU professor does not speak, speak for the church. And they give the implication that old Randy Bot has gone rogue. Which really kind of upsets me a little bit, actually a lot. And far be it for me to defend Randy Bot because I never defend the racist stuff that he, this he spewed that day. But basically they give the impression that he's gone rogue. And just think about that for a moment. It doesn't pass the smell test. You've got a BYU religion professor going rogue.

John Dehlin [01:31:05] Really?

Matt Harris [01:31:06] No, not even close. What he's doing is he's just promoting teachings that he thought were normal and orthodox. The church had never repudiated any of this stuff. And so he just simply thought that he was quoting from the 1969 statement, the 1949 statement, Bruce McConkie and all these other things where he read about and learned about the race teachings, the race doctrine. And then I'm sure I don't know this because I haven't interviewed Bob, but I'm sure the guy must have had a heart attack when the church threw him under a bus because here he thought he was teaching the doctrines of the Church. And really, in effect, what these two PR releases said was, you're teaching false doctrine. And that was really, really terribly unfair to Randy Bott to make a spectacle of him regarding that when they hadn't gone on record prior to that to denounce the ban. Now, if this happened after 2013 when the relation Priesthood essay was released in which it categorically denounces or condemns the curse and the less valiant stuff. And he continued to teach it. Now he's going rogue, or he's ignorant, but that didn't happen. And there's some more I can say about this, but there's I box. Bot said he was misquoted. The Washington Post misquoted him. Unfortunately, that's just not true. Horowitz tape recorded the whole thing. And also I found on Bot's webpage a screenshot where he taught the same things in. In CES seminars and his BYU classes. So there's plenty of evidence. And then finally, the BYU religion dean with whom I mentioned a minute, referred to a minute ago, I asked him about bot, too. And he said, oh, we knew this is a problem. Problem. We told Randy to tone it down. That's what he said, tone it down. And Randy didn't tone it down. And so it cost him big time. And obviously, when that broke in the spring of 2012, Bot went into immediate retirement. And as a PR move, you know, his retirement was planned. I don't know if anyone on planet Earth believes that.

John Dehlin [01:33:10] So it's like, Paulie's done. I mean, yeah, we know how that works.

Matt Harris [01:33:15] So he went into immediate retirement. They sent him on a mission to Iran. No, just kidding.

John Dehlin [01:33:24] You talk about Joseph Fielding Smith, and you've already mentioned the Way to Perfection, by the way. So I read doctrines of salvation 1, 2, and 3 on my mission. You know, obviously I grew up with Mormon doctrine. I've never heard of the Way to Perfection. And I was just stunned at this quote that comes, you know, at the bottom of your paragraph on page 251, you said, he declares that Cain. Do you want me to read it?

Matt Harris [01:33:53] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:33:55] He declares, this is Joseph E. Link. Smith declares that Cain quote became the father of an inferior race. Those are pretty harsh words from. From a prophet, seer and revelator. Right. I don't know if he was a prophet apostle at the time he wrote

Matt Harris [01:34:12] that, but he was.

John Dehlin [01:34:14] Yeah. He's referring to the people of color as an inferior race. That's. That's language I wasn't familiar with. That's kind of hardcore.

Matt Harris [01:34:24] Well, if you continue reading. Let's see, later in the essay, he says that he never said that. And I write this in the. Where is it? It's somewhere here. He talks about them in 1930. He writes that black people are. There are an inferior race. And then, let's see.

John Dehlin [01:34:47] And there's also the quote, emblemat Emblematical of eternal darkness.

Matt Harris [01:34:52] They're emblematical of eternal darkness. Yeah. And then. Awful. Oh, it's. It really. It's tough. On 252, the very next page, he writes in the Doctrines of Salvation, that the Latter Day Saints have no animosity towards the Negro, which is very nice.

John Dehlin [01:35:11] Isn't that very nice?

Matt Harris [01:35:12] Neither have they described him as belonging to an inferior race. Now, all right, let's just pause for a moment. So in 1930, Joseph Fielding Smith, Apostle Smith, says that black people are emblematical of eternal darkness, and they are the father of an inferior race. And. And then that's in the. That's in the 1930 book the Way to Perfection, and then in the Doctrines of salvation in the 1950s. So two decades later, he says, no, we've never said that. Well, the problem is, you did. And it's written down and published. Now, why would he do that? And, you know, this is the importance of history, I think, is the context. And when he wrote the Doctrines of Salvation, the church is coming under heavy fire for its racial teachings during the Civil rights movement. And he says this in Doctrines of Salvation, he'll deny that he ever said that black people were an inferior race or from an inferior race. And then he'll say it again in 1962, that black. That. I've never said that. And in 1962, George Romney's running for the presidency, or at least he's considering it. And so of course, people are. They're. They're critics, journalists and others are looking at the church's racial teachings. And George Romney, how could you belong to a church that's racist? And. And all of this stuff? And, and anyway, so that's the context in which Joseph Feeling Smith denies it, you see, said, I've never said that because he's backtracking. Well, the problem is he said it. And I know this sounds harsh to readers, but in the 1920s and 30s, this was. This wouldn't have turned heads. I mean, there were a lot of people who really thought that black people were from a different species. It's crazy to think about this, and this is radical stuff, but this is a generation of Americans who believe in eugenics, who. This is a generation of Americans who are promoting these interracial marriage laws so that you wouldn't pollute the bloodstreams. This is a generation of Americans who are lynching black people on the tune of like 2,000 people a week for decades. It's. So even the church itself participates in this terrible discourse. If you look at the improvement era from the 1910s until 20s. I have a whole chapter on this in my book. And some of the stuff that they're publishing in the improvement era is just, it really is, it's beyond the pale. But, but it reminds me of the generation in which this is occurring. They're talking about. I didn't want to say it, but they're publishing poems using the N word. The N baby, the N word. And they're making fun of black people, Uncle Sam and, and black people are, they don't wear shoes and they smell and they eat chicken all the time. I mean, they're playing off of these, these racial tropes that you would see in the motion picture industry and also in magazines. And so Mormons are following lock, stock and barrel the broader American society and making fun of black culture and black people. And they're telling racist jokes all over the place in the improvement era. There's a little segment in the improvement improvement era. This is the church magazine before the Ensign. And the Improvement era had a section they ran for a number of years called the Funny Bone. And in the Funny Bone they had a series of, of just jokes that they would tell. And a number of those jokes dealt with people of color making fun of their skin color, making fun of them, their, their facial features and all of that stuff. And so the Church is participating in this harmful discourse. So it doesn't surprise me in the least bit that just Joseph Feelings doing this in 1930. And nor does it surprise me that by the 40, by the 50s and 60s, he's completely backing off of this stuff because it's so terribly offensive. And the Civil rights movement and some of these provocateurs in the movement are pointing this out to the Church. And let me say one last thing about this. There's a couple of instances, there's actually several instances where the Church knows that it's coming under assault for its racial teachings. Let me just give you a few. One is in the 1960s there is a BYU professor named James Clark who publishes a multi volume account called messages of the first presidency. And he wants to include the 1949 first parentheses statement on race in this, this volume he's doing. He's gotten permission from the apostles to do this. But Joseph Feeling Smith, of all people, tells him, no, don't include that one, don't do that, leave that one out. And this is in the 1965. And so even Joseph Feeling Smith was very aware that if you put this obscure 1949 statement in your book Latter Day Saints will be able to read this and therefore other people outside of the church will be able to read it. We don't want that. Also, they published the Way to Perfection. They went through multiple editions. It was really one of the best selling books in one Mormonism. And it was part of a lesson manual series in the 30s and 40s. So it was really a popular book. And in Brazil, when they translated into Portuguese, they had omitted the two chapters that deal with race. I mean, this is the emblem medical of Eternal Darkness, chapter the Black People are the Father of an Inferior race, chapter chapters 15 and 16. They left those out. They purposely did not translate those into Portuguese. This is in the mid-60s again, because they were afraid of the effect that it would have on Brazilian Latter Day Saints. And then finally in 1968, at the apex of the civil rights movement, the first presidency, they had this meeting in April of 1968. And in the meeting, David O. McKay is there and his counselors, they decide that they shouldn't talk about black people being cursed or less valiant in public discourse. And the reason is they said, whenever we talk about black people, let's make it, quote, clear, positive and brief, end quote. And the reason why they wanted a clear, positive and brief is because it wasn't doing them any good to try to explain to an outsider why they thought black people were less valiant or cursed. It just made no sense. It made it worse. So let's just sort of sidestep it. And then it's about that time where you get this silly notion that we don't know why they couldn't hold the priesthood. And so it was all a direct response to some of the context of the time. And I'll say one last thing is that I mentioned in the Ezra Taft Benson podcast, but it bears repeating that Benson in the mid-60s, tries to run for the US presidency with two extremely controversial men, the first of whom was Strom Thurmond, a segregationist senator from South Carolina, and the second of whom was a segregationist governor from Alabama, a guy named George Wallace. And David O. McKay, having a high a senior apostle run as a presidential platform with two of the most high profile segregationists of the day. That wasn't going to be a good look for the church. And President McKay said something very clear. He said, we've been taking constant potshots from our own people. That's his language. Constant potshots from our own people over race. This is in the 1960s. And if we have Benson run with Wallace or Thurman it'll even be more so. And with Wallace in particular, the Ku Klux Klan, the White Citizens Council, and of course the John Birch Society were the supporters. And so to have an LDS apostle run on a presidential ticket that was supported by the Klan and also the White Citizens Council and equally white supremacist group, that would be deeply problematic for the church's racial teachings. So anyway, they're well aware of the 1960s, of what's going on. And this is where you get the 1960s, John, where you get the church backtracking quite a bit from its previous racial teachings. And you'll find that the way to perfection is starting to sort of be de emphasized. It wasn't the go to book on race that it once was in the 30s, 40s and 50s. By the 1960s, it was sort of the book that nobody wanted to talk about. And then of course, you know, Mormon doctrine then replaces it and carries on this anti black view.

John Dehlin [01:43:41] Right. That's fascinating history. Thank you for sharing. And if I had to summarize what I think you're saying, both by mentioning Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkey on page 253, you seem to be saying that the essay doesn't. The, the, the Race in the Priesthood essay doesn't accurately take responsibility and treat prior statements by both Joseph Ewling Smith and Bruce R. McConkie. Is that a fair summary?

Matt Harris [01:44:09] Yeah, there's no question that they, it's. It really just cherry picks about this message. It's trying to send a message that all are inclusive, all are likened to God. And it's problematic when you've got Mormon doctrine and some of the writings that are still on LDS bookshelves. The, the time even to this day Doctrines of Salvation is still in print. And excuse me, why that's the case is just I. Anyway, it's still in print and it shouldn't be, but it is. And I know that there are some good Latter Day Saints who've been working diligently for a long time to remove racist books from the bookshelves sold at Desert Book. And they were successful. There was a bunch of people who lobbied for Mormon doctrine to end this is part of the story I can't share. At least I'm not authorized to publicly. But there was a backstory to Mormon doctrine. There's a backstory to the weight of Perfection getting pulled in 1986. There was a backstory to the Kindle version getting pulled in 2018. And I know firsthand that there's a backstory to get Doctrines of Salvation out of print, off the shelves. And as far as I know, it's still in print. So clearly it hasn't been successful yet. But you know, if you're a Latter Day Saint, and especially if you're new in the church, you can go to an LDS bookstore and you can buy Doctrines of Salvation or order it online, Amazon, and you can get it at home. And you think that it's authorized because the Church still prints it. And then of course, you go to this stuff and you start learning about the curse and Cain and all that nonsense and you think that if you didn't know better, you'd still think it's the teaching of the Church, when obviously it's not. So there's still that racial residue that's still there. And also some manuals, church manuals, especially some manuals from the early ages 80s, deal with this idea of, of priesthood hierarchies, that certain people got the priesthood at certain times. You get that implication and of course the implication that black people had to wait their time and that stuff needs to be cleaned up. It might already be cleaned up, but as of a couple of years ago, they were still using some of this old stuff. And I was told, I've asked for several, several occasions, why is the church still have this stuff? This is really, you know, and they just said, you know, I got a very honest response. It just takes time, you know, it takes time to put these things together and have people rewrite these manuals. And then some people on the Church Correlation Committee who do work on these manuals, they're, they're tone deaf. I mean, they don't understand how problematic some of this is. And we saw this a year or two ago when they promoted a lesson plan or published a lesson, and they were using stuff from Joseph Fielding Smith, who in some of his book Stuff from the Way to Perfection and the Doctrines of Salvation, they were using this in this new LDS lesson manual and it dealt with race. Oh my goodness. Really? Of all the people you're going to quote on race, it's going to be Joseph Fielding Smith? Well, one of the apostles apologized about it publicly to the naacp, of all places, to apologize to it. He didn't have to do it there. And I'm sure the NAACP had no idea what's going on, you know, but that was the backstory that people had complained about. This new manual that was quoting Joseph Fielding Smith and the apostle can't remember who it was, might have been Quentin Cook. I don't recall but the apostle went on record and apologized to the naacp. This is just a couple years ago. So there are some people in the high church leadership who just don't have a, you know, a sensitivity to some of this. This challenge. And if they haven't dealt with it directly, they might not know about it.

John Dehlin [01:47:40] Right. Okay, really quickly, one of our listeners, Mike Anderson, asks, did Matt teach political Science at Dixie 15 years ago? Was that you?

Matt Harris [01:47:52] Yes, that was me. Were you in my class?

John Dehlin [01:47:55] It must have been 20 years. Mike Anderson, same guy. He says you were great.

Matt Harris [01:47:59] Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. I taught American history. American Civilizations, it was called. And also I taught a couple of sections of American government.

John Dehlin [01:48:10] Nice. All right, well, shout out to Matt and Mike and thanks for your donation, Mike, you guys, on YouTube, there's a feature for you guys to be able to donate to the podcast. And Mike, Mike donated to be able to have his question be prioritized. Thanks, Mike, for that support.

Matt Harris [01:48:25] Right on.

Race in Founding Scriptures and the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [01:48:26] All right, Matt, the next major problem that you talk about in with the Race in the Priesthood essay is the fact that the founding scripture that provides much of the basis for Mormon racist teachings around skin color and worthiness and all that remains unchanged to this day. And I'm specifically speaking about both the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price, which includes both the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham. Do you want to just give us a quick primer on how the scriptures remain super racist?

Matt Harris [01:49:03] All right, so here's the big elephant in the room, right? We haven't talked about. This is like the drum roll. This is the. The essence of my essay, really, which is this is the elephant in the room that the Race and Priesthood essay didn't talk about is the racialist implications of Mormon scripture, both in the Book of Mormon and in the Pearl of Great Prayer. Christ in particular, the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon is an interesting text. It's produced by Joseph Smith in 1830, and it certainly there's been a lot of scholarship on the historicity of the Book of Mormon, whether you're a believer or not. If you're a believer, of course, it's an ancient text that was revealed to the prophet through angels. And if you're not a believer, but yet you still find the book is a wonderful expression of Christology, then you can think that it's a 19th century frontier text that has much good in it, but you reject the divine authenticity of it. And if you're a real skeptic like Mark Twain, it was just chloroform and print didn't really have much good to say about anything. It was poorly written, it was poorly constructed. It was a poor man's version of the Bible. And I think in recent years, Latter Day Saints have, I shouldn't say in recent years, but for a long time, Latter Day Saint scholars have been in, really engaged in, in heavy debate about the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. And do we have to say it was an ancient text? Come on, Hugh Nibley. We can, we can still move the church forward, not believe that an angel gave this book to a, you know, farmer, farmer's son in upstate New York. We can still work without that. That's just a narrative that's not sustainable. And of course, Nibley didn't believe that and spent his entire career trying to locate this scripture in its ancient, authentic background, whereas linguists and others are trying to place it in its 19th century cultural milieu. Well, having said that, there's a lot of stuff going on in the 19th century with Protestants, and there's been lots written about how Protestant theology has influenced the Book of Mormon. One of my great teachers at BYU back in the day was a guy named Tom Alexander who wrote a wonderful essay for Sunstone in 1980, a long time ago, in which he talked about the Protestant influence on Mormon theology. And what he meant by that was that a lot of these Latter Day Saints are, are coming to the church. They're, they're converting to the church and they're bringing their Protestant backgrounds with them. I mean, not surprisingly. And so there's this eclectic mix of Protestant theology with this new revealed theology from the prophet Joseph Smith. Anyway, part of this is race, that Mormons have inherited these notions of race, and particularly that somehow, through righteous living and moral property and accepting Jesus's divine grace as, to borrow a Protestant term, that your skin color could eventually lighten and ultimately fade away. And what that means is it's obviously, it means there's a racial fluidity that you were white at one point, that somehow you've done something to merit God's disfavor. So he cursed you with a black or brown skin. But you could remove that curse if you found God's light. And that is very much a Protestant trope. And Mormons will accept this trope uncritically. And it finds its way into the Book of Mormon and it deals with Native Americans. And I'm sure most of your readers know these passages of scripture throughout the Book of Mormon, in which the Lamanites bear the mark of a curse and through they become exceedingly white and delightsome as they repent of their sins. And the churches, for a long time, or at least some of the apologists in the church is taught that this is all figurative speaking. It means your soul, your spirit and all of that stuff. And that's fine. I mean, if you want to read that into that, that's just fine. But there's a reader reception theory out there that suggests that that's not how Latter Day Saints interpreted this stuff. Both black and brown people well into the 20th century, they didn't believe any of that stuff, that it just meant your soul. That's not how they interpreted it. And they were deeply bothered by this, that if you were black and brown, somebody of color and you, you bore a curse, if you will, which is what your church taught, that somehow that curse could be removed. And the apostles couldn't decide for themselves. At least the ones who bought into this. Not all of them did, by the way, but the ones who did, they couldn't decide if the curse would be removed completely in mortality or if it would be removed ultimately in the resurrection. There was, there was some discussion about this in 1944, a latter day Saint wrote about this. He wrote to the First Presidency and he wanted to know what color will black people, Negroes be in the resurrection? What's the church doctrine on this? And I talk about this in my book, the Church, the First Presidency, wrote him back and they said, we have no official doctrine on this. And so. But you do have these racial, these lingering racial tropes from the 19th century that dealt with Native Americans. But black people, black Latter Day Saints will read into those racial tropes as they investigate the church. And they want to know how these, these, these racialist verses apply to them. It's very real to them. And I might add that in LDS literature well into the 20th century, probably into the 1930s, as I document in my book, there are all kinds of articles that are being written in the improvement era, in other church sponsored literature, talking about experiences that general authorities had with Native Americans or Lamanites on reservations and converting them to the gospel. And their skin color was turning lighter where the ones who didn't convert, they still had dark skin. I mean, you're getting this all over the place. And, and Protestants believe this too. So it's not just a Mormon thing. And so by the 1950s and 60s. Well, let me back up. They don't talk about, in the Ensign or other places, the improvement era, how that applies to black people, people, because they're already under fire by the civil rights movement for some of their teachings about blacks. So the black stuff is just subterranean. It's just, it's, it's, it's talked about only in private. And there's a, there's a group of church education system teachers. And they met up with Joseph Fielding Smith, the church's chief doctrinal expositor at the time and also a senior apostle. They met up with Joseph Fielding Smith and Mark E. Peterson after Markey Peterson had given this very controversial address on race at BYU. This is in the August of 1954, and this is just a few months after the historic Brown vs. The Board Supreme Court decision. And so these educators had questions about Elder Peterson's address and they asked about segregation. They asked about all kinds of things. Well, this is off the record and Hugh Nibley's there, Sidney Sperry's there, Lowell Bennion's there, Paul Dunn's there. It's the who's who of the church education system in 1954. A guy named T.E. edgar Lyons there, George Boyd is there, the brother in law to Spencer W. Kimball who teaches in the CS system. So anyway, they're all there. And Sidney Sperry, the so called Old Testament scholar at byu, taught there for a number of years until he retired I think in the early 1970s. But he, he asked Joseph Fielding Smith, he said, tell us about black people in the curse. Is it true that black people, they didn't use black, it was, it was Negro. Is it true that Negroes would lose their skin color over time? And Joseph Fielding Smith looked at Sydney Sperry and he said, quote, we have actual examples of Negro skin color turning after they converted. So I don't know how you interpret that. Figuratively, we have actual examples. And so he didn't talk about, you know, those examples and who he met. It would have been interesting if Barry would have asked a follow up. Hey, tell me who you're talking about. I want to see the before and after pictures. But anyway, he didn't do that. And, and so that's, but that's not surprising because Joseph Hilling Smith had been talking in his writings for a number of years about the dark skin of Lamanites, the cursed skin of Lamanites turning lighter over time. And clearly I want to emphasize to your listeners that just as black people have been offended with this sort of racialized discourse, our brothers and sisters of Native American ancestry have also been deeply affected by this. And Native American Latter Day Saints growing up thinking that they too have experienced a racial fluidity, and if they were only more righteous, their skin color would turn lighter. I mean, how deeply offensive that is. So, but this was done sub rosa, mostly in the 50s and 60s with black people. And if you talk to any black or brown Latter Day Saint who's been in the church for a number of years, they will tell you that they have heard this many times over the years. That, and of course, you know, they laugh it off. Some of them do, and some of them just like roll their eyebrows and, and don't want to talk about it. But this kind of discourse goes on well into the early 21st century, and it's not something you're hearing in General Conference. These are sort of, you know, shards of, of Joseph Fielding Smith's generation that keeps, you know, going forward. And, and I want to be clear, I think people who know me now know that I don't treat general authorities as a monolith. Spencer Kimball would never, ever think this about black people. He did about Native Americans, but he never said that about black people. They would lose their curse or skin. There's no evidence for it. It, even though he said it about Native Americans. David O. McKay didn't believe this stuff, but certainly Bruce McConkey did, certainly Joseph Feeling Smith did. And there were some other, you know, hardline general authorities who did. But not all of the general authorities believe this. And by 1978, when the revelation occurred, just after the revelation occurred, lifting the priesthood ban, Joseph Spencer Kimball told the apostles, he said, make sure we're not teaching this. This. We don't, we don't want to teach this, that your skin color will turn lighter over time. So this is one of those really embarrassing teachings that the church had inherited from Protestant theology, Protestant theologians, and they never had really examined this, you know, critically and unfortunately, people like Randy Bot and some other. I'm going to be very careful on this. People like Randy Bot and a couple of other hardliners who taught at the BYU Religion Department. Not all, certainly not all, but they were teaching some of this stuff well into the 21st century. And I've documented all of that in this book. But this is, this is going on in Mormon circles for a long time. And the reason why the church didn't address this in the Raised and Priesthood essay is because it's problematic. There are people today who are calling for these racialist verses in the Book of Mormon or the Book of Abraham to be expunged, to be purged. And Spencer Kimball's been a little bit about it in the essay I talk about how in 1978 they get rid of some of the language in the Book of Mormon, they tone it down. They do it again in the 21st century when they produce a commercialized version of the Book of Mormon for Doubleday, a significant publishing house. Commercial publishing house. So they have, there have been, you know, attempts to deal with these racial trusts, hopes in the temple. In 1969, they had sought a, a dark skinned Tongan to play the devil in the temple ceremony. And obviously dark skin representing sin. And as a proud Tongan, when this person recognized that he was being recruited to play the devil in a temple ceremony because of his dark skin, he was mortified. He's like, ow, I'm not doing this. And of course they wanted a Caucasian to play Jesus. And let's not lose sight of the fact what these racial tropes represent. And so the Tongan was upset and they settled on a. To play Satan. They settled on a BYU religion professor named Spencer Palmer who taught world religions at BYU for a number of years. And he's the one that talked about how he got that role of playing Satan. The temple ceremony. Ceremony. And for your listeners, I don't want to go deeply in the temple ceremony because it's, it's kind of sacred to Latter Day Saints. But Latter Day Saints had what are called live endowment sessions in the temple in which they recreate the Genesis story in the Bible and Adam and Eve for example. And so today it's all digitized, you can watch it on film and all that stuff. But back in those days they had live actors playing Adam and Eve and Satan. And so that's why they chose someone with dark skin, this Tongan, to play Satan in 1969. And when he found out why they chose him, he was upset and that they chose Spencer Palmer, the BYU religion professor who's very light skinned and, and so he played Satan. So in, by 1990, the church had changed its temple ceremony and they didn't want to give the impression that Satan was sort of black skinned because that had just these terrible connotations about what Blackskin meant, that it's somehow aligned with Satan. And that's. So the church has done made some inroads with these kinds of things over the years. But unfortunately they didn't take that last final step and address this in, in 2013 because the book of Mormon, it's really, it's got a bifurcated message, if you will, for people of color. On the one hand, you've got these horrible racial, racial tropes about curses and racial fluidity. And on the other hand you've got this remarkable verse that talks about racial inclusivity that all are alike unto God. And these two racial tropes from different ends of the spectrum, they're at odds with each other. And in an ideal world the church would go through, in my view, in an ideal world they would expurgate these racist verses and get rid of them and make the scriptures a little bit more modern for the 21st century. And if they couldn't do that because they had to get rid of quite a few, it's not just a few things here and there, it's pretty significant. But in the absence of doing that, at least contextualize the verses and talk about what they mean. The Latter Day Saints and church leaders have unfortunately been offended by these verses and how they receive these verses and how they were taught. But we, we just don't have that, that discourse because unfortunately the church leaders don't want to go there. Oh, you're on you.

John Dehlin [02:04:11] My first response was going to be yeah, because they can't change scripture because that's scripture. But then there, there, there was, they did update the Book of Mormon as you write, and they took out some of the white and delightsome language, but not all of it. And so I guess that begs two questions. If they were going to go to the trouble of cleaning out some of that white and delightsome language in the Book of Mormon, why didn't they go all the way? And then secondly, if they can make that change then, then I guess they could make that change now. Well, what am I missing?

Matt Harris [02:04:44] That would be a logical response, you know, from, from maybe our sensibilities, John, and that of others listening and elsewhere in the church make the scriptures inviting for the 21st century. And there's in my opinion there's always going to be an issue with race in the church as long as those verses remain. I mean it's a shibboleth. They need to go and they're a hold up. I can't tell you how many black Latter Day Saints I've talked to and also read about that when they're investigating the church and they're reading the Book of Mormon, which is what of course the missionaries want them to do. They come across these racialized verses and you know, I had one letter to Saint Tell me, one letter scholar for whom I respect but well that just applies to Native Americans. And I'm thinking, think about this, what you're saying for a moment. Yes, it does you're right, it doesn't mention people of black African ancestry anywhere in the Book of Mormon. But, but think about this. Black people are reading this. Don't you think they're going to, to ask how it applies to them? And they do. And that's in this essay that I wrote. I've got just example after example after example of Latter Day Saints in the 40s, 50s and 60s who are black Latter Day Saints who are extremely upset with the way the church has racialized them through scripture and, and how Latter Day Saints have racialized themselves. And so it's, you know, I guess it's one thing to make some changes at the margins in the Book of Mormon and it's quite another to really, to take out wholesale verses. And that's what would have to happen, just to be honest, if they were to remove these. I haven't counted them up, but there's quite a few of them. And President Kimball, when he made some of his changes or authorized these changes in the 1981 edition of the Scriptures, you know, one of the changes they made was they changed, they went from they took out white and delights into pure and delightsome. And they had a rationale for it. The rationale was that the original edition of the Book of Mormon said pure and delightsome and somehow white delights them got worked into it. So they wanted to revert back to the original translation from 1830. And Royal Scouse and a BYU linguistics professor has done some great work with some of the early texts of the Book of Mormon. And anyway, so that was the rationale for that. But the other stuff, it really cuts at the, the heart of the narrative of the Book of Mormon because it's really a story about redemption. And part of that redemption is racial redemption. In order to be saved you've got to shed your curse, your skin and then God will find favor with you again by blessing you with whiteness. And I don't know how you deal with that without really altering some of the foundation of the Book of Mormon. And I think that's, that's why they didn't address it. The race and priesthood essay, it's really hard to deal with. And that's why some of the church apologists who worked for farms, for example, all these years, they would address these issues in their writings and they would always talk about, well, it meant the spiritual implications of your soul and this is, and they would find some far fetched connection to the ancient world, just as they did in ancient Rome. So would they would do well that's fine. Maybe that's true. Maybe there were some spiritual ramifications for, for skin and curses back in the day. But it doesn't change the fact that, that church leaders in Latter Day Saints had interpreted these in a very literal fashion. They taught them in literal fashion. And a story, a quick story. Years ago, I was interviewing Ed Kimball, President Kimball's son, and I was interviewing him because I wanted to get access to his father's papers. So in, in preparation for the book I'm doing now. And I asked Ed about this. I said, I said, your father gave this very controversial General Conference talk in, I think 1960s when it was. And it was about Lamanites. And he basically said that, I'm going to paraphrase, but he said that we. And this is also in my book here, but he said that I said, your father, I would imagine he received a lot of pushback for this. And the talk was about how Spencer Kimball taught. He was part of the apostle who was responsible for the Indian placement program. And Lamanites, or Native Americans had a special place in Elder Kimball's heart. And he wanted to get some of these folks off of the reservations and into Latter day state homes where they could receive better nurturing in the gospel, where they could receive better educational opportunities. And in that controversial 1960 General Conference talk, Elder Kimball held up a picture, literally a picture he showed the saints who were listening and watching that these are the Latter Day Saints who have left the reservation and are living in Latter Day Saint Holmes. You can see how their skin is lighter. Then he showed a picture of some of the ones who remain behind on the reservations and their skin was darker. I mean, he's calling out this just a position here in conference. It's really an extraordinary moment. And Ed Kimball told me that his father was embarrassed by that, didn't expect the, the feedback. I mean, Latter Day Saints are not a quiet group in those days. They didn't have email, of course, but they just write letters. And they wrote him letters. And some, some were merely quizzical, you know, what did you mean by that? That just seems awkward that you would lose your skin color, color your pigment when you, you left a geographic area and went somewhere else. That just seems bizarre. And then of course, the other side of the coin was, that's just crazy talk. Come on, Elder Kimball. And he wasn't prepared for the harsh letters. And Elder Kimball was a very sensitive man, and so stuff like that bothered him deeply. But this is the, this is the. Some of the rhetoric that not just Kimball, but others had inherited and been talking about throughout, throughout the 20th century. And it becomes a problem for the church because now we have scriptures that are at the heart of this problem. And quite frankly the, the brother in salt don't know what to do about this.

Racial Teachings of Mid-Twentieth Century Leaders

John Dehlin [02:10:55] Yeah, one of the, one of the quotes that, that was just. And that, that's one of the things that was just so shocking kind of pages. I don't know, 254 to 259. There's that quote about still having copper patches. Do you want to read that or do you want me to?

Matt Harris [02:11:15] Sure. Well, why don't you go ahead if you don't mind.

John Dehlin [02:11:21] So another LDS periodical, the Improvement Era, published a pair of stories in the 1920s illustrating the effect of conversion on native peoples. One focused on Louis Armel, a Winnebago Indian who quote is said to be the object of scientific observation because for many years his skin has gradually been turning white. He is now 54 years old. The improvement error explained he still has copper patches, but physicians believe that if he lives a few more years he will become entirely white. I have never heard that before.

Matt Harris [02:11:56] Yeah, yeah. You get a lot of this stuff John, in, in these magazines. And what I found that was interesting on page 260 where this, these racial teachings, this whiteness theology as I call it, it works its way into LDS popular culture not surprisingly. And I have to give a shout out to my wife on this. Somehow she came across this. But she alerted me to a popular LDS quiz game called Seek S E

John Dehlin [02:12:29] E K. It's like Trivial Pursuit for Mormons.

Matt Harris [02:12:32] Basically it's like Trivial Pursuit for Mormons. It was published in 1958 and one of the questions is this true or false? The Lamanites are promised that if they repent and accept the gospel their skin color will eventually become white again. This is a trivial game in 1958. And then there are some other things going on but the. The Book of Mormon musical the Broadway which is really interesting if some of your listeners may have have seen it. I've seen it. It's. The music is fantastic. Anyway. Trace Parker and Matt Stone in the Book of Mormon Broadway musical they depict two naive and unsuspecting white missionaries sharing the white and delight some scriptures with dark skinned Ugandans embroiled in war. The scripture was supposed to comfort them but the opposite occurred. And the missionary in the musical gives this very dark skinned Ugandan a passage of scripture to sort of comfort him as he's embroiled in War. And it's about, it's second Nephi 30 chapter, excuse me, chapter 30, verse 6, where it talks about black people being cursed. And the Ugandan looks at this verse and he exclaims how is this supposed to make things better for us? How's this book supposed to comfort us in war when you're telling us that God has cursed us? And the Book of Mormon. Parker and Stone of course are just making fun of racialized teachings, but this stuff is, it's everywhere throughout the 20th century. And there was even a politician that I quote, quote, it's worth noting a couple of interesting things. Let's see. So one example is Time magazine picks up on how Mormons racialize themselves. And this is in 1959. And they comment about Mormons think that black people could be white again. And they're obviously mocking this. Claire Booth Loose, a nationally syndicated journalist and also a former politician. She was a diplomat and she wrote this really harsh story about George Romney as he was thinking about a presidential run in 1963 and a do good or Latter Day Saint. It was a missionary actually from Florida. He saw the article and he was upset by it. He didn't like the idea that Lou said that Mormonism holds the dignity of the Negroes in low self esteem. So he didn't like what she said about the Mormons and the brethren didn't like it either by the way. And he wrote back and he said that it is our understanding that the Negro. This is the missionary writing to Color boost. It is our understanding that the Negro will in due time of the Lord have his dark skin coloring taken from him. That in keeping with God's divine justice, his limitations will be removed. He's trying to make things better, but I don't think he realizes this is only making it worse. And then finally there's a politician, a white politician in Utah who's courting the black vote. So this would be voters in parts of Salt Lake and mostly Ogden. He's running for political office. He's courting the black vote by informing them that their curse will be removed in time because God was going to turn them white, white again. And, and then lastly, I'll just say, I guess one last thing. In the 1960s there was a, a BYU, a couple of BYU students, they were doing a research project for their English class and they were, they had heard that the church taught that black people would re lose their curse one day. Now let me just pause for a quick moment. The Native American stuff is all over the church magazines Literature, So that wasn't in dispute. But the black issue, Blacks were not part of this trope, at least publicly. But privately, it was talked about a lot. And then certainly black people read themselves into the Book of Mormon verses. Well, anyway, these BYU students, they interviewed dozens of students for a research project. And they wanted to ask these students, what do you think about this whiteness theology? And this is what one of the students said. Quote, I've heard it said. I don't recall where or from whom. One respondent noted that the Negro joins the church. His skin. His skin will gradually become more light in color, the curse of Cain becoming less strong upon him. I've never seen a Negro to whom this has happened, so I don't know if it's true or not. Then another respondent explained, the motif of the Indian or Negro skin lightning in color upon joining the Mormon church is not uncommon in this author's experience. This is. This is in 1969, when these two students are doing this research. So I want to go full forward, just for a moment, that you get this stuff well into the 21st century. I mentioned a minute ago, there's a BYU religion professor who was talking about this in his religion class, but. And I don't know if it was bought in this case.

John Dehlin [02:17:43] Okay, yeah.

Matt Harris [02:17:44] And the reason why I know this, it's a letter to the editor. This is 2008. Okay, 2008, not too long ago. And the student writes in to the letter to the editor, the Daily Universe, which is the campus newspaper. And basically the student decries the notion that she had just been to a BYU religion class. And his religion teacher uttered all of these horrible racial things about black people losing their skin color in the resurrection and all of this stuff. And she was just mortified by this. She didn't identify the teacher could have been bought, but could have been somebody else. And then another story is a BYU student who went home one day. This white girl who went home one day, and she was preparing lunch. And then a little while later, her black roommate came home. And as the black girl came through the door, the white girl just stared at her, just gave her this really weird stare. And her black roommate said, what are you staring at? And the white girl said, I want to see if I'll be able to recognize you in the resurrection when you're white. And of course, the black girl was deeply offended by this, thinking that somehow that she wasn't good enough, that she would have to lose her skin pigment in order to qualify for the celestial kingdom. And so it's that kind of racial insensitivity that both BYU and other members of the church at large have been uttering. It's not surprising. This happened in the 40s, 50s, and perhaps into the 60s. But the fact that there are pockets of this stuff going on well into the 21st century is. It's really. It's not good.

John Dehlin [02:19:29] Yeah. And for me, if I'm in a kind of situation, I tried to kind of summarize, you know, and this. This kind of applies to the LGBT stuff as well as it applies to probably polygamy, as well as it probably applies to the church. On blacks in the priesthood, there's kind of this pattern. They don't apologize. They're slow to make changes. They make the changes in piecemeal. They focus on the new emphasis, but not on any denunciations of the past. They claim that some revelation happened. So it's like a double miracle. It's like it was a miracle then, but it's a miracle now. God's speaking to us, and somehow it comes off as this positive thing when really they're just changing an old policy that was really dysfunctional, but it's spun as a double miracle. A double revelation. Right. There's no fanfare. They try and keep it on the down low. They don't touch the scriptures. Maybe they'll tweak the headings a little bit. They try and get apologists to come out and make explanations for it. They often get members of the marginalized community to become the spokesman people, you know, for the apologetics. And then they don't give credit to the real scholars or the real activists that actually were instrumental in the changes getting placed. And in many instances, they excommunicate them. At worst, and at best, they just completely ignore those scholars. And I think Lester Bush and Armand Moss and others, you know, you may want to speak to that here. And then if they just wait long enough, literally within one generation, everybody forgets. And it's as if we were always good. We never practiced polygamy. We're always good with black people. We love the gays now. Because if you just wait generation, and if one generation, and if you handle it in this sort of piecemeal, don't apologize. Just focus on the future, Emphasize different things, call it a revelation, you know, that then all of a sudden it goes down the memory hole and it's as if this thing never happened. And this happens generation after generation after generation. Now, tell me if I've got the. If I've. If I'VE got the pattern somewhat accurate there.

Revelation, the 1978 Ban Lift, and Apologetics

Matt Harris [02:21:43] Well, no, I don't, I don't disagree with that. Just, just I want to remind your listeners what revelation is in the church. They're just, they don't talk about it is openly. They need to, in my opinion. But revelation is just sitting around the table, the apostles talking about something, debating it, as Hugh Brown said. Then they pray and then the church president makes the decision and that's the revelation. So there's, I think it's, it's led to believe that there's more of this sort of burning bush mentality, that God is speaking to them just as he spoke to Moses. And that's, it's, it's really, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to be critical and jump into their minds and you know, God this or God that and God may have influenced them or God didn't. I don't want to go there, but I just want to say that it's, it's a little bit more mundane, this idea of revelation than people think. And it's not just praying and praying and praying and God, what do you say? What do you say? It's actually meeting with people. This is what I think we ought to do. Brother Elder Jones, what do you think? And they debate it and they talk about it and they, there is prayer involved, of course, but, but then at the end of the day, the revelation is just the church president who said, okay, this is what we're going to do. And so I hope that that doesn't sound so grading on perhaps even some of your listeners who may be believers. But that's really what it is. And I see this time and again in the documents that I read their minutes, their memos, their journals. That's what revelation is. Let me share a quick story and I, I share your passion over this, John. I do a quick story. That's that really I thought about often this, this guy is not known to the church. His name is John Fitzgerald. He's, he's dead now. Died, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago. Anyway, he, he was a one time LDS seminary teacher and he first wrote David O. McKay who was then in the first presidency. Actually he was then the church president. I'm sorry. He wrote David O. McKay a letter in 1959. He said this guy's a seminary teacher and he would later leave the seminary and become a high school or middle school principal in the Salt Lake area. Anyway, but he went to President McKay, wrote him a note or letter and he said, I'm struggling with the priesthood issue. This is a church that's supposed to be no respecter of persons. And God is supposed to bring the gospel to every kindred nation, tongue and people. And how could we have this ban? I'm really struggling. It wasn't, you know, accusatory. It wasn't. Change it now. He was just trying to have the church president deal with this, this issue. And over the years, he had written several letters to all the general authorities. He was so anguished over this. Well into the 60s, he's writing letters to the general authorities. And most of the general authorities would ignore him. And there are two people that didn't ignore him. David O. McKay would. Would usually write back through his. Sometimes personally and other times through his secretary. So David O. Did respond to him. He had the graciousness to do that. But as he got older and more feeble, I think that made it impossible to do. But anyway, Fitzgerald wrote the general authorities and only two people responded to him. One was a guy named Hardman Rector Jr. And the other one was Marion D. Hanks. And I have to tell his story. I've shared the story with Elder Hanks's son. It really. It's a meaningful story to me. Hartman Rector Jr. Wrote the most nasty and vicious letter back to this guy who's anguished over the band. Just absolutely anguished. And it was vicious and it was nasty. Your eternal jeopardies and souls at stake. And how could you dare not follow the brethren? This is a man who's just searching for answers. That's all it was. And Rector Jr wrote this nasty note back, which is probably more of a commentary on him than anything else. And by contrast, Marion Hanks wrote the most beautiful, inspiring, moving letter back to this man. I share your pain. I share your anguish. I too wish the results were different. I wish. I too wish we could see a different outcome for our brothers and sisters of color. I mean, it was really this beautifully well written letter. And it was on a Sunday afternoon when Hanks had been to church and he was looking out in his window at his home in the Salt Lake area, and he was looking at the mountains and just sort of gazing at the majesty of the mountains and reflecting on this man's pain and anger or frustration. And anyway, so the church did make the change and this man became just really upset and just to the point where he was demoralized over the ban. And by 1972, he crossed a Rubicon. He started writing publishing letters to the editor of The Salt Tribune, he and a couple of his friends. And now this time it turned accusatory and calling the brother and racist and all of that. And he, they, they excommunicated him. And he was just so pain. The church that he loved, they cut him off. And he appealed his excommunication to the First Presidency and Enelden Tanner upheld it. This is in 1973. And some of the people that he thought were his friends would have come to his aid, didn't give him the defense that he needed. Some people did, like Sterling McMurran, but McMurray was sort of out of the church. Wasn't sort of. He was out of the church and didn't have the weight. But he was disappointed in little Bennion, who he thought was a fellow kindred. And what he didn't understand was Lil Bennion, who worked for the church for a long time and himself had been fired over this very issue in 1962, that Bennion worked from the inside. And Bennion recognized that if you start putting pressure from the. On the brethren externally, that is the quickest way to shut it all down. So Bennion didn't do that. And. But John Fitzgerald was upset that Bennion didn't come to his defense like he thought he should. Well, anyway, so a couple last thoughts on the story. So he gets excommunicated and Ellen Tanner upholds the excommunication over the ban issue. That's all it was. A good, faithful Latter Day Saint lost his membership over the ban. And by 1978, when I was, I was in the Carter papers and I saw this man's letters to President Carter, he turned bitter. He said, you've gotta, you've got a Dear President Carter, you've got to investigate the Mormons. They're racists. They're this, they're that. And he started sharing things from the writings of Joseph Fielding Smith, saying that Negroes were the inferior race. And he would xerox passages from, from Joseph Fielding Smith book so that when Mormons would publicly say we're not racist, he would then write, yes, we are. And look, here's the evidence. This is during the Stanford protests against BYU in 1969. When that became public, he would write the Stanford people letters. And he went to Stanford too, for a graduate degree, degrees. So he had a connection there. But anyway, so John Fitzgerald was deeply hurt by this. He wrote President Carter asking them to investigate the Mormon Church. And then after the revelation's over, he writes President Kimball a note. And I Found this note in the, the archives and the letters that I. I've seen in president's papers. And he congratulates him for having the courage to, to do this, into lifting the ban and making it right. And he, he bears his soul once again, just as he did earlier, decade earlier with Marin Hanks. He said, I lost my membership in this church that I loved and over this very issue. Where does this leave me in God's eyes now that the band's done? And unfortunately, I don't have a response letter. I wish maybe there is and I just haven't seen it. But anyway, so to your point, John, about these things, they hurt real people. And it's one thing to say, oh, I hate the church, I'm out, you know, but this guy is not in that camp. And to think that he went to his grave being marginalized in the church that he loved is, is tough. And, and I know both of us know, and others in your listening audience know people who love the church. They want to remain in the church, but they, they can't remain in the church who doesn't love them back. And that's where the, that pain exists.

John Dehlin [02:29:54] Absolutely. We should have covered this when we were talking about the scriptures, but I wanted to come back to it. You wanted to make sure we covered this is some of the classic apologetic tropes or responses regarding race and the priesthood and specifically with the Book of Mormon. What I hear, and I still hear this now, I think even Kwaku, a prominent African American Mormon apologist on YouTube, makes this argument that the Book of Mormon talks about a curse and then the mark of the curse and how somehow they're different. And there's been a misperception that the mark of the curse was the skin, but really the mark of the curse was the spirit and their countenance. And that we've got it all wrong, that the Book of Mormon never talked about race and dark skin and a curse, that we've just interpreted it wrong. I've heard that. I've heard that the Book of Mormon historical characters were racist and that the only reason racism is in the Book of Mormon is because Alma and Helaman and Benjamin, I guess there were products of their time. And so there's racism in it because they were racist. You know, I've heard different attempts at progress providing apologetics for some of this racist teachings. Can you give us a highlight of the. Of the apologetic responses that you're most familiar with and your reactions to each one?

Matt Harris [02:31:26] Well, my reactions are simple. It's I'm, I'm going to reveal my bias. I don't have much patience for apologetics. I, I think that apologetics is, it's a, a defense of the faith and it's the modus operandi of apologists. The way they operate is we have our conclusions, which is the Church is true, and we're going to go back retroactively or retrospectively and find evidences that it is true. And if you're involved in honest scholarship, that's not, not the way it works. You simply have a hypothesis, an educated guess about where you think the evidence takes you, and hopefully you have the nimbleness and the flexibility to change your hypothesis as the evidence dictates and you go where the, where it takes you. And as historians, we have an obligation to, to be balanced and fair in our treatment of others. Hopefully we follow the golden rule. This is what I try to do. I try to write about people that, in a way that I would want people to write about me. I mean, if somebody, not that I'm important, but if somebody were to write about my life, I would understand that they'd have to write about some of my blemishes and some of the poor decisions perhaps that I've made. That's part of our humanness and that's so necessary and, and so for apologists to have conclusions that the church is true and they work backwards. I just, that's just not, that's not good. And this isn't to say that you can't write something that's faith promoting or that makes your, your historical subject look good. I'm going to be honest. I mean, in my book that I'm working on now, I think President Kimball's a hero in the priesthood revelation. If, when you realize what he has to overcome, he's got all these bigots in the 12, and he's got to work with these guys to get them to understand that this is how we have to move the Church forward. We've got to get rid of this odious ban. And really, the way that he does it, it's a profile in courage and it's an exercise in effective management by working with them both collectively and individually. I really think he's a hero of the moment and it's not lost on the other things that he's taught about our gay brothers and sisters. That pains me, actually, but when it comes to the race issue, President Kimball is courageous. He's able to do what David O. McKay can't do. And in order to to be fair to David O. McKay, David O. McKay was, you know, two decades earlier, which did matter, right. The civil rights movement. So Kimball had time on his hands or in his. His corner. But anyway, so I don't like apologetics because sometimes I just find it terribly dishonest. And the best apologetics that I've seen in the church take the most charitable view of something, which is okay, that's okay. But when that charitable view moves into a. A corner of disingenuousness, I think that's when you're running up against some challenging things. And I've seen that happen with farms over and over and over again. And with the race issue, we've seen a spate of things about garments and race, and we've seen distinctions between curses and markings. And, you know, for your listener on the podcast, I'm not familiar with that podcast referred to, but that's not a. That's. There's nothing new in any of that stuff. General authorities, for years, some of them have made distinctions between the mark and the curse. And Marion Hanks is a great example of this. He never thought that black people were cursed, but that there was some. Or actually that there was a mark that designated God's disfavor. The. The curse would have been, of course, their spiritual souls. And that was something that Hanks had worked out himself, but that wasn't the teaching of the church. And Spencer Kimball grappled with this. I've seen his scriptures from 1954. I've held them. I've taken pictures of what he wrote in the margins of his scriptures. That's a really interesting thing because it gives you a snapshot in time how they're looking at some of these racialized verses. And he too, was working through these markings and cursings and all of that stuff. But that's not the prevailing notion of the church. The Joseph Fielding Smith wing of the church wins out for much of the 20th century. And when the scriptures say that black people are cursed or Lamanite people are cursed, they're cursed. It means what it says it means. He takes this very fundamentalist, literalist view. And so we get these farms, people today that are making all kinds of connections to the ancient world and they're trying to put this positive spin on it. And I, quite frankly, don't even engage in that nonsense, because what I look at as a historian is how did the people at the time interpret these verses? Not how farms people at BYU pay to defend the church, deal with it,

John Dehlin [02:36:28] or Maxwell Institute or Fair Maxwell or

Matt Harris [02:36:30] anybody that is so inconsequential to me. What I'm looking at as a historian is what did leaders say in the moment? What did their flock think when they heard their leaders utter this? And so if I were to debate a Maxwell person or a Farms person, I know farms is. I always say farms. They're no longer. But anyway, if I were to debate a church apologist today and they want to get into the ancient world, I'm like, who cares? I don't care. I would focus on how a black person in Illinois, when he read the Book of Mormon for the first time, what he thought about it. I would look at a Native American. That's what I've done in this essay. I'm using the words of people themselves. And so for anyone on their high horse today, an apologist, to tell me it's all metaphorical, I would simply say, that's fine, you're entitled to believe that. But that's not what Latter Day Saints of color interpretation it as. And that is certainly not what Joseph Fielding Smith and some of the other hardliners meant it as. So you know, the greatest line from this essay is Joseph Fielding Smith, when he meets with these religious educators, as I mentioned, in the fall of 1954, they have questions about this. Actually, it's August of 1954, and he says, quote, we have actual real life or we have actual tangible examples of, of the skin color of Negroes turning lighter. I don't know how you interpret that metaphorically, and it's quite frankly, it's disingenuous to suggest otherwise. And I'm not usually this dogmatic or emphatic about things like this because people can disagree, of course, respectfully, but this is pretty darn clear. And it's consistent with what Joseph Fielding Smith has said in his other writings and in other sermons. And so it's this reader reception theory that how people the time interpret these texts and these sermons. And it's clear that people of color are interpreting it the way for which it was meant to be interpreted, that there is something going on with your skin color. If you behave in a certain way, you keep the commandments and you accept God's grace. And so I hope that answers your question. I think apologetics. I know there's a lot of discussion in the church about apologetics, John. Some people are into it. There's good apologetics, there's bad apologetics. I've heard we use that term a lot. I've heard Richard Bushman's an apologist. I don't see that, that he's an apologist. We've heard, I don't know, I've heard other LDS scholars that I wouldn't agree are apologists, but there are certainly people who are apologists and they have devoted their entire career to apologetics and they feel like it's the God's called them to defend the church. When I say defend the church, I'm talking about defend the church at all costs. And even if it means moving into that corner of disingenuousness. And so that's not healthy for the church. And that's one of the reasons that the church shut down farms and because they were just taking this to the umph degree and they were causing more harm than good. So for a scholar like me, but I wanted to just be clear on my bias that, that I want to write as full and as accurate a history as I can. And that means telling the good, the bad and the ugly. And when I was writing my Benson book, he's a right wing extremist, I don't know how else to say it. And I really desperately wanted to find stuff that would soften him because I want to capture people in their full complexity and the different shades of their, their life. And just to sort of create Benson or turn somebody like Benson into a one dimensional figure, I think for me personally is deeply problematic. And so I strive to find different things. And one of the things in the priesthood revelation that I write about is, that's interesting is each of the apostles that, that talk about the revelation. Some don't. Benson's one of them does not talk about it hardly anywhere, although you see shades of it in other people's journals. But in terms of his direct voice, you don't see it at least that I, that I found. But anyway, all the apostles to a man talked about this revelation being one of the most intense, sublime experiences of their life. And in some instances I'll let them speak for themselves about what they thought it meant and how it happened. And, but I also talk about some of the downsides to it that after the revelation's over that Bruce McConkey and Boyd Packer, they have a fanciful imagination. They talk about angels being there and church presidents and even Jesus himself was there. Boyd Packer said and that got back to Spencer Kimball and he wasn't happy about that. He said he cautioned them, don't say that, that's not true and quit, quit talking about, you know, the, all these angelic beings being there. That's just Simply not a route we want to go. And as a historian, you know, I have to ask myself a simple question. Why would they do this? They've had this intense moment, this, this really wonderful experience with each other, this camaraderie that they felt. Why would they feel the need to such. To embellish it so drastically? And that's something that I'm writing about now, is this. This idea of why McConkey and. And Packer would do that when the other apostles didn't do that, that. But these two did.

John Dehlin [02:41:49] And for me, that's one of the great arguments for this book is because, you know, this book has footnotes, it has citations. And if anybody's going to try and claim that when they said skin, they didn't mean skin, or when they said a curse, it didn't apply to the skin. Whatever backflip, somersault, apologetic you want to use, just grab this book, turn to chapter 11. Is that what it is? Chapter 10? And you could just read them citation after citation. You can't change people's mind, but at least you can provide evidence. And this is pretty much. This is pretty much conclusive evidence as far as I'm concerned. Really quickly, as we're kind of wrapping up here, I want to make sure we cover anything else you want to cover, but do you mind just paying a quick tribute to both Lester Bush and Armand Moss and their role in all of this? Because I think those are at least two unsung heroes.

Scholars Who Shaped Mormon Racial History Research

Matt Harris [02:42:47] Yeah. Now at a third person, my good friend Newell Bringhurst. I think.

John Dehlin [02:42:51] Yeah, I agree. And Newell.

Matt Harris [02:42:53] Yeah, I think that my friend Paul Reeve and myself and other scholars today who. Of a younger generation who write about the church and race. I mean, I don't want to speak for Paul, but I think he would feel comfortable with what I'm about to say is we stand on the shoulders of Newell Bringhurst, Armin Moss, and Lester Bush. And it's those three guys who really paved the way, just briefly about their careers. Lester Bush wrote this pathbreaking article in 1973. I go into great length about why this is so influential in my. In the book that I'm working on now. Lester had access to first pregnancy in quorum of the 12 minutes that anyway, that nobody had seen before. And so his, His. His work is revolutionary and it's published in dialogue in 1973, and it's probably to this day the most important essay that Dialogue has ever published. I think Deborah Anderson, my friend Deborah at Signature, would agree with that. He's written about dialogue over the years. Anyway, so this, this wonderful 1973 article in which he argues that the band began with Brigham Young, not with Joseph Smith. And that's. He's the first person that goes on record to, to say that. That's really an extraordinary claim at the time because everybody had thought in the church that it was Joseph Smith's thing. And Lester's saying that's not the case. Secondly, Armin Moss, really quick, didn't.

John Dehlin [02:44:20] Didn't Lester Bush get punished by the church for, for his scholarship? Wasn't he marginalized or.

Matt Harris [02:44:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:44:30] Formally or informally?

Matt Harris [02:44:32] He was, yeah, in. So his. Just a quick backstory about Lester. So he, he, he was a practicing Latter Day Saint. He got, he's a medical doctor by profession, got involved in sort of a peripheral way on the race issue as a Latter Day saying he just was interested in it, so started researching it. I'm going to skip a lot of the details, but his brother was at byu and his brother alerted him one day and he said, hey Lester. So Lester was working as a medical doctor, so would have been his younger brother. He said, there's this, there's this great collection of apostles and first prince minutes on the Negro issue. And I know that you have an interest in that and it's at BYU and, and you should see it. And so Lester, on his next trip to Utah, he went and he saw it in a librarian named Chad Flake at home, hooked him up. And Chad Flake probably was doing something on the margins, but he had. Flake knew about this very valuable collection on, on blacks in the priesthood. And it was, it was from the private papers of Apostle Adam Bennion that his family had donated after Apostle Bennion died in 1958. And collections of this nature are supposed to go to the church archives where they're locked away and they're in a vault. And instead the family, for whatever reason, donated them to the BYU library. And in theory, when that happens, unless designated otherwise, they're supposed to be open. So Chad Flake knew about this valuable collection. Somehow the word got out. A couple of BYU students had somehow got access to it. And that angered the brethren when they found out. And then Lester Bush got access and he made a massive copy of all of it. And, and so I have his copy. This is one of the things that I work from and some of the minutes that I use in my own work. So anyway, Lester Bush has access to this stuff and he makes this 400 page compilation on the Negro, as he calls it. It's just a privately done thing in 1972. He gives copies to a few people, including Boyd Packer of the council of the 12, which was a big mistake, as opposed to other people who might have been more generous or liberal with it. But Packer was probably the wrong person to give it to. And that was Marion Hanks's own words, by the way. So he gave it to a few of his friends. So the Brethren are angry that somehow these private and confidential minutes are being seen by a Latter Day Saint. And Dallin Oaks, who's then the President, this new president, byu. Spencer Kimmel wrote him a credit Frank note. He said, what is going on? I heard that this librarian, Flake is giving this stuff out. And anyway, Oakes just said, I've instructed Flake to put this under lock and key. And furthermore, Elder Kimball, we should just remove this stuff altogether and put it to Salt Lake. And so it was Oakes's idea to remove it from BYU and move it to Salt Lake so it wouldn't be available to people anyway from that massive 400 page compilation, which is mostly from the meeting minutes of the Apostle Bennion Papers. It also deals with some additional research that, that Lester Bush had done in the George Albert Smith Papers of the University of Utah and also a few things that were made available to him at the Church History archives. So it's this remarkable collection. And from this 400 page document Lester writes this very detailed article in which he completely revises the whole priesthood narrative. There is no revelation. It's not in all these minutes. So that's a. That's quite a revelation. And that there was nothing inspired about any of this stuff. It begins with Brigham Young. And so this is deeply problematic. And he's trying to help the Church. You know, he wasn't a. He wasn't an activist. He wasn't trying to say, aha, my research is going to force the Brethren to rethink the ban. It was really a policy more than anything. It wasn't a doctrinal practice. But that wasn't what he's trying to do. He just thought it would help the church. And anyway, so it turns out that some of the Brethren were angry. I mean, Apostle McConkey denounced it as, quote, crap. And Mark Peterson's angry. And by 1983, so just a handful of years after the Revelation, Mark Peterson instructed J. Willard Marriott, Lester Bush's stake president in the Washington D.C. area, to call him in for an interview. And the implication was take his membership. And by that point Bush had written some Other things, something on the Word of Wisdom. And he had been the editor of Dialogue, which the Brethren hated. They hated Dialogue. They thought it was like Satan's Journal. And Hugh Brown didn't feel that way, but some of the conservative general authorities did, so they hated Dialogue already. He was the editor of Dialogue. Anyway, so Bill Marriott called him in, and Marriott, he. He interviewed Lester Bush, and he didn't do what Elder Peterson wanted him to do. He. Lester's a good man. We're gonna leave him alone. And Lester eventually drifted away from the church. I'm not sharing anything that I shouldn't reveal, by the way. This is. Lester's shared this story in public, and it's been published in the Journal of Mormon History, I think a lot of this. So anyway, so unfortunately, he went after him. Armin Moshe is another scholar who is. He wrote an influential essay in dialogue in 1981 called Fading the Pharaoh's Curse. Really a nice piece of work for the time. And then Armand's magnum opus was a book that was published in 2003 that he'd been working on for a number of years called All Abraham's Children. And basically it's about changing conceptions of Mormons and lineage and race. And so it's really a wonderful piece of scholarship. And. And then the Brethren had. Mark Peterson had pestered Armand over the years, and Armin, unlike Lester, though, stayed with the church and worked out his differences. But certainly Armin had been on the margins on the church for a long time, meaning not. Not his testimony necessarily, but just the margins with church officials in Salt Lake. And depending on the time and the general authority, he had moments where he was in their favor and could do special assignments for them and other times where he was just a little bit too liberal, a little bit too open for them. But Armin died last summer, and he was. He remained active and a believer to the very end. And he was in good. The good graces of most of the general authorities, but he definitely had his licks over the years. And then finally, my. My close friend, Newell Bringhurst. We've been close friends for a number of years. We talk often on the phone. We exchange emails frequently. He reads everything I wrote. I write about race, as did Arman, and I'm sad to say that that's not the case anymore since he's gone. But anyway, Newell wrote a dissertation at the University of California, Davis, in the early 1970s on Mormons and race. And Newell was influenced by Lester Bush's pathbreaking work. Newell got a copy of the 400 page compilation on the Negro as Lester called it. And that influenced Newell's work. And by 1981, Newell wrote the first monograph. Well, I shouldn't say the first. There was a, another book that was written in 1969 that it really wasn't well written or well researched. But anyway, Newell wrote a book called Saint Slaves and Blacks that came out in 1981. And what was really interesting about the book is Newell is one of the first scholars to really talk about the Mormon racial story using to also talk about the scriptures. That's something that, that New and Arman at the time did not do. And in fact they even criticized Newell a little bit saying, you know, leave that out, that's different, that's separate. And Newell was the first scholar to really talk about the Mormon racial narrative using the scriptures. That there's something we've. In order to understand Joseph Smith's views on race, we've got to look at the scriptures he produced. I mean that sounds, doesn't sound, you know, far fetched today, but it was then at least to Lester and Armand and Paul Reeve and, and Max Mueller who's written along with Paul, they've both written splendid books on Mormons and race from the 19th century and they, they look at Mormon scripture quite a bit and well, it's Newell that really made that central and I think Armin and Paul would, or Armin, excuse me, Newell and Max would both agree to that. Anyway, so Newell wrote his book in 1981 and it, it had some bumps in this Mormon scholarly community. People just were not ready in 1981 to deal with this story with the difficulty of Mormons in scripture and race with this, this whole idea about curses and this is in 81, a few years after the revelation. And so he got some harsh reviews from some Latter Day Saint scholars. But now there's, the book has been republished by Not Benchmark Books, Covered Books and Paul Reeve wrote a nice blurb for the book and it's, you know, it's been widely praised and deservedly so. So Newell Bringhurst, Lester Bush and and Armin Moss are the three pioneers in Mormons and race. And I, I think that that's, you know, we can't praise them enough for their, their path breaking work.

John Dehlin [02:53:50] And now you're carrying the torch a little bit.

Matt Harris [02:53:53] A little bit, yeah. I think one of the things that I have, Noel and I talk about this often because we're such close friends and I also, Armin, I used to talk to Armin about this often. That, that I have an advantage over those guys in that I've been able to see collections that they haven't, they couldn't see. And, and that obviously enriches the story. And so one of the things I share, even as we speak, I share my drafts in progress with Newell, and I'll share them with a bunch of other people when it gets further along. But Newell will read some of the early drafts. And I just wrote this detailed chapter on the Genesis group, the origins of the Genesis Group, which is really fascinating. But anyway, Newell reads this stuff and he's like, it makes me happy when he writes back, wow, I didn't know any of this stuff. I mean, who spent his entire adult life writing about Mormons and race. And he doesn't know any of this stuff that I'm writing about. And the reason is, is because, as we both like to talk about, I've had access to collections that he hasn't seen in restricted collections. And these are, I should tell your listeners how this happens. I'm privileged to, I work with people to win their trust, and that's why I'm extremely guarded about when people ask me for things. I, sorry, I can't give it to you because I was, this was given to me to write about and only me. And if, and occasionally I'll ask the people who donated the papers to me, I'll say, you know, so and so wants to look at this. Are you okay? And I've had a few times where they said, okay, that's fine. Just that person, thanks for asking. Because that's always the agreement. I'll never share this unless I get permission. And then I've had a couple of times where, no, this is just for you. And I have to honor that. And I do honor that. And so I've been privileged to see stuff at the LDS Church history archives, BYU has. I've seen a ton of restricted collections there. And then lastly, I've worked with the children of general authorities who've been so gracious in sharing their fathers, their late father, the general authorities diaries with me in private papers. And I've gone this route many times where I have to interview them, and they, they want to know where my heart is and where I stand with this or that. And, and, you know, I've passed the interviews and they, they give me access to this material. And this is the stuff that I have to create, the work that I create.

John Dehlin [02:56:20] I love it. Well, I've said it before, I'll say it again. You're a blessing to our people. Matt Harris. And so is Signature Books. And so is this book, the LDS Gospel Topic Series. Please go buy it now. Support Mormon history and Mormon scholarship. We, we hope to have other authors from the chapters in this book on, including Newell. Is there anything else you want to say in closing about your chapter in this book or. Or about this book?

Matt Harris [02:56:52] I think, I think that I. No, I think I've said what I need to say, but just, I guess one thing on the race and priesthood. It's. It's a great document to where Latter Day Saints can say, you know what, Brother Jones, don't say that black people are cursed. That is offensive. And the church no longer teaches that. And here's the document on, on LDS.org or whatever the website is now. And that really cannot be underemphasized. I mean, it gives people an authoritative document to appeal to when they hear racism. And it behooves Latter Day Saints to continue to share these essays with their friends. There are deficiencies, there are problems. There's no question. But I hope it's clear from our discussion today, and I hope it's clear from subsequent contributors that, that there are a lot of positives, certainly more positives than negatives, and these. The best thing we can say about these essays is they need wide circulation. And I'm excited that you're going to have some of the contributors on really, really good scholars. The tone, the language, the scholarship was impeccable. And Noel and I really scratched our heads and thought a lot about who we wanted to participate. And we really found a nice group of people and so we're pleased with the final outcome.

Upcoming Books and Closing Remarks

John Dehlin [02:58:15] All right, tell us really quickly what books you're working on that you can tell us about.

Matt Harris [02:58:19] Well, the Black and Mormon book is, is definitely. That's, that's the one I'm actively working on now. It's about 85% of the way through the second book. Next up in the queue is wait

John Dehlin [02:58:29] and that'll come out approximately when. Black and Mormon.

Matt Harris [02:58:32] Good question. Probably. It's probably a year, year and a half out.

John Dehlin [02:58:35] Okay.

Matt Harris [02:58:36] So, yeah, I still have to finish. I'm 85% through. And then I'm going to send it to some of my friends to critique and then I'll send it to a press and then the next project is called. It's a biography that I'm proud to say that Signature Books will publish. They're wonderful press. My friends there do great work. It's called Hubie Brown, Mormonism's Progressive Apostle. So for Some of your younger listeners, they might not know Hubie Brown, but he was. He was the person that liberals in the church loved. He was a voice of fresh air amidst some of the fundamentalists. And so I've been privileged to see his papers and work with some of his family members. And that's the next book in the queue. And then I'm scheduled to write two other biographies, one on J. Reuben Clark for a special series at the University of Illinois Press, a short biography series on influential Mormon leaders. So I was asked by a couple of professors who edited it to contribute a book on J. Reuben Clark. And then finally, I'm contracted to do a book on Henry D. Moyle, who was an important financier of the church. This is a member of the first presidency in the 50s and early 60s who was responsible for. For expanding the church's portfolio. If you want to understand why the LDS Church owns 3/4 of Florida today, the answer is Henry D. Moyle. And wait, it was.

John Dehlin [03:00:03] It's like 3, 2 or 3% of Florida, right?

Matt Harris [03:00:06] No, I'm exaggerating.

John Dehlin [03:00:07] Yeah. Okay.

Matt Harris [03:00:08] Yeah, yeah. It's been a long day. No, yeah, they don't own most of Florida, but yeah, you're right, they own 2%.

John Dehlin [03:00:16] 2% of Florida is a lot.

Matt Harris [03:00:18] 2% of Florida, Lord, is a lot. And it's Henry Moyle, Henry Dinwiddie Moyle, who is responsible for this. And just to give a teaser about Henry Moyle, his He overextended the church's finances and it left him out in the cold in the early 60s, just before he died, the first Presley had shut him off. They were upset with. He was overextending the church's credit and they. They cut him out of everything. And he died. A brokenhearted man died in Florida and it crushed this widow and she eventually drifted away from the church because of the treatment of her late husband. Sad story, really.

John Dehlin [03:00:54] Well, those are all super important books, so I'm super excited that you're working on those. I'll try and be patient.

Matt Harris [03:01:02] Yeah, I get sleep once in a while, but you're dead. Sleeping's overrated.

John Dehlin [03:01:08] All right. The book is the Gospel Topic series of Scholarly Engagement by Matt Harris Newell Bringhurst, edited by them. And lots of authors go signature books. Please buy this book. I will take you out to lunch or dinner or have a party once Covid's over if you buy this book or the last Desert Tap Benson book. Matt, you take care. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll have you on anytime all right. Will you come back?

Matt Harris [03:01:38] Sure. Of course.

John Dehlin [03:01:39] All right. And listeners, I just want to thank everyone so much for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Thanks for your comments and questions. Thanks to everyone who donates. If you want to see programs like this continue, less than one out of a thousand of you are donating. So if you could just go right now to mormonstories.org click on the donate button at the top of the page. Become a monthly donor at whatever amount you can afford to will keep existing and we'll keep Mormon Stories going for another decade or two. For as long as you'll support us. We'll keep going, but we need your support. So please donate to Open Storage Foundation. It's tax deductible in the US we're transparent in our finances, and we'll keep bringing you great content. Thank you so much to everyone, please. We've got lots of great stuff coming, so stay tuned, stay in touch, don't be a stranger. Reach out if you have questions or need support and we'll keep doing great work for you. Thanks, everybody. You guys take care and we'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Bye Bye.

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