Historian Matthew Harris discusses his new book, “Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality.”
The book carefully details the church’s ban on ordaining Black men to the priesthood and prohibiting Black men and women from temple ordinances, including interracial marriages. The ban,, defined much of the 20th-century history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Because Harris had access to letters, diaries and meeting minutes from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles — some of which he was the first historian to see — many stories in the book have never been told before.
Most particularly, they were worried that the movement toward racial equality would compromise the church’s teachings on interracial marriage. Lowell Bennion, who was a liberal in the Church Educational System, asked Elder Petersen if he felt good about teaching that the ban was the result of choices Black people had made in the preexistence. How is that good theology? Aren’t we supposed to be punished for our own transgressions and not for those of our ancestors? If Black people did something wrong in the premortal life, can they repent? Because what you’re saying is they can’t repent.
Hugh B. Brown is a great example. He certainly made his views known in private about the need to lift the ban. He said it was incompatible with Scripture; that there was nothing in church records that tied the ban to the; that it was a policy, not a doctrine. And if it was a policy, that meant it could be lifted at the president’s discretion.
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