Like many predominantly white Christian churches, the Church has held controversial positions on the issue of race, and the Church had a policy of racial exclusion from their priesthood from 1849 to 1978, long after most religions in the United States had abandoned official policies of racial discrimination. This policy was unofficially known as the "Negro doctrine."

Table of contents
1 Blacks in the early Latter Day Saint movement
2 Adoption of an Exclusionary Policy
3 Other early Latter-day Saint views on race
4 The Church's Modern Renunciation of Racial Exclusion
5 Related articles
6 External reference

Blacks in the early Latter Day Saint movement

Some early Latter Day Saints, including Joseph Smith, Jr, believed that black people were the descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham, upon whom Noah put a curse because Canaan laughed at Noah while Noah was intoxicated and naked. See Genesis 9:25, 26. At other times, early Latter Day Saints stated a common American belief at the time that blacks were descendents from Cain, the son of Adam, who was cursed by committing the first murder, and marked in all perpetuity with a sign of his sin. See Messenger and Advocate (1835) (stating that black skin may come upon members of any race as a mark of sinfulness); Moses chapter 7; Abraham 1.

In line with the popular belief that black skin color was a curse from God, The Book of Mormon, published in 1830, used a dark-skin motif as a sign of the cursed, sinful state of the Lamanites (considered by some Mormons to be ancestors of the Native Americans), whom God cursed because of rebellion:

"And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them." (2 Nephi 5:21).

Later, the book explained, "And this was done that their seed might be distinguished from the seed of their brethren, that thereby the Lord God might preserve his people, that they might not mix and believe in incorrect traditions which would prove their destruction." (Alma 3:6-8).

From the beginning of the Latter Day Saint movement, there was never a restriction on membership based solely on race; and indeed several black men had been ordained to the priesthood. The first known black Latter Day Saint was named Black Pete, who joined the Church in Kirtland, Ohio. At least two African Americans (Elijah Abel in 1836 and Walker Lewis in 1844) were ordained to the Priesthood during the time of Joseph Smith, Jr. In later years, William McCary (later excommunicated), would be ordained in 1846, and at least two of the descendents of Elijah Abel were also ordained as Elders, and two other black men, Samuel Chambers and Edward Leggroan, were ordained as Deacons.

In 1833 in Independence, Missouri, W.W. Phelps, the editor of the Mormon Evening and Morning Star, published a controversial article that was interpreted by angry Missourians as "inviting free Negroes and mulattoes from other states to become 'Mormons,' and remove and settle among us". The Church officially assured Missourians that it had no intention to invite African Americans to settle in Missouri, and in 1835, the Church issues a revelation stating it was not the policy of the Church to "interfere with bond-servants, neither preach the gospel to, nor baptize them contrary to the will and wish of their masters, nor to meddle with or influence them in the least to cause them to be dissatisfied with their situations in this life, thereby jeopardizing the lives of men". (D&C 135:12). Despite these reassurances, however, the racial issue was one of the many factors that eventially led to the Mormon expulsion from Missouri.

Moreover, early blacks in the Church were admitted to the temple in Kirtland, Ohio, where Elijah Abel received the ordinance of washing and anointing. (See Journal of Zebedee Coltrin). Abel also participated in at least two baptisms for the dead in Nauvoo, Illinois.

By 1839, there were about a dozen blacks in the church. (Late Persecution of the Church of Latter-day Saints, 1840). Nauvoo, Illinois was reported to have 22 blacks, including free and slave between 1839-1843.

Beginning in 1842, Joseph Smith, Jr adopted an increasingly strong position of anti-slavery. In March 1842, Smith began studying some abolitionist literature, and stated "it makes my blood boil within me to reflect upon the injustice, cruelty, and oppression of the rulers of the people. When will these things cease to be, and the Constitution and the laws again bear rule?" (History of the Church, 4:544). In 1844, Joseph Smith, Jr ran for President of the United States on an anti-slavery platform aimed at ending all slavery by the year 1850 by having the government buy the freedom of slaves using money from the sale of public lands.

Adoption of an Exclusionary Policy

After the assassination of Joseph Smith in 1844, remaining leaders of the Church initially continued to condone the ordination of blacks to the Priesthood, although the tenor of church dialog on the subject began to change slightly. In April 1845, an article appeared in Times and Seasons (edited by John Taylor) stating, "The descendants of Ham, besides a black skin which has ever been a curse that has followed an apostate of the holy priesthood, as well as a black heart, have been servants to both Shem and Japheth, and the abolitionists are trying to make void the curse of God, but it will require more power than man possesses to counteract the decrees of eternal wisdom." (6 Times and Seasons 857).

On April 27, 1845, Orson Hyde taught the doctrine that blacks were cursed with servility because of their actions in the preexistence. ("Speech Delivered Before the High Priests Quorum in Nauvoo", MS in Utah State Historical Society).

The eventual ban on ordination of blacks to the priesthood was largely due to the acts of one William McCary, a black Native American. Baptized and ordained to the priesthood in October 1846, In April 1847, he soon began acting eratically. On March 26, 1847, Brigham Young confronted McCary about his behavior, and stated, "its nothing to do with the blood for of one blood has God made all flesh, we have to repent (and) regain what we av [sic] lost--we av [sic] one of the best Elders an African in Lowell [i.e., Walker Lewis]."

In April 1847, however, Apostle Parley P. Pratt first questioned McCary's right to hold the priesthood: "This black man has got the blood of Ham in him which linege [sic] was cursed as regards to the Priesthood". In Fall 1847, McCary seduced several Mormon women into his own unsanctioned polygamous marriages, for which he was excommunicated. Likely in response to the acts of McCary, Brigham Young declared blacks ineligible to participate in certain ordinances in LDS temples.

On February 1849, Brigham Young announced the policy that blacks couls no longer be ordained to the priesthood "because Cain cut off the lives [sic] of Abel...the Lord cursed Cain's seed and prohibited them from the Priesthood". There is some dispute as to whether this change was doctrinal or whether it merely reflected the personal bias Brigham Young and other early Latter-day Saint leaders.

Other early Latter-day Saint views on race

Brigham Young also taught that interracial relationships would be punished by God. In Journal of Discourses Vol. 7, pg 290-291, he says:

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African Race? If the White man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.

Whether one interprets this as the promise of an immediate act by God, a call for the immediate death penalty or a 'death' in a spiritual sense, it's a harsh condemnation of interracial couples. It's important to note that the Journal of Discourses is not accepted as an official source of church doctrine, and that this statement has never been recognized as the stance of the church.

It's also significant that the church always allowed black membership in all its congregations, and taught that they were entitled to the same blessings in heaven as all people. Technically, the preisthood ban typically applied to men of African descent regardless of skin color, although it occasionally applied to other races or lineages (including some caucasians). Dark-skinned South Pacific Islanders were ordained to the priesthood for example, while light-skinned Africans were not.

A relatively modern Prophet, Spencer W. Kimball, believed that after accepting the Gospel, dark-skinned people would gradually be made white, a process that would take place over a number of generations. After visiting a mission site in South America, he said in his General Conference Report of October, 1960 (quite a number of years before he became the president of the church), which was published in Improvement Era, December 1960, pp 922-923:

I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today.... The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos, five were darker but equally delightsome The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation.

At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl--sixteen--sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents--on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather....These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.

Some modern Latter-day Saint apologists make the argument that the priesthood ban was exclusive of those whose patriarchal blessing did not place them within the tribe of Ephriam, one of the Tribes of Israel (some apologists include Judah, Manasseh and Levi). Mormons believe that it is the primary responsibility of the tribe of Ephriam to share the Gospel to the world in this dispensation or time of the earth's history. Therefore, if a man was a descendant of any other tribe, he would not automatically receive the priesthood like a descendant of Ephriam would.

The Church's Modern Renunciation of Racial Exclusion

By the late 1960s, the Church had expanded into Brazil, the Carribean, and the nations of Africa, and the Church was suffering criticism for its policy of racial discrimination. In 1969, during the administration of David O. McKay, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and First Presidency had voted to end the policy of discrimination; however, McKay was absent because of age-related disability and First Counselor Harold B. Lee was traveling on Church business. When President Lee returned, he called for another vote on the issue, and this time it was defeated, upon Lee's belief that such a large change in Church policy should originate in revelation. (Edwin B. Firmage, ed., The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown, "Editor's Afterward." Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988.)

Hugh B. Brown, then President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the person who had proposed the vote, later stated:

"A serious problem that has confronted us, especially during the past few decades has been our denying the priesthood to the Negro. Personally, I doubt if we can maintain or sustain ourselves in the position we have adopted but which has no justification in the scriptures, as far as I know. The president says it can only come by revelation. If that is true, then change will come in due course. It seems to me that if we had admitted the Negro to the church as a full member, at the time of Joseph Smith, we would have had more trouble with the government than we then had. Holding ourselves aloof from that until after the Civil war gave us the opportunity to establish the church without that question coming to the front. It was, in other words, a policy, not necessarily a doctrine" (Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown at 129.)

In 1978, however, under the administration of Spencer W. Kimball, the Church renounced its policy of discrimination (See Doctrine and Covenants, OD-2), and began ordaining all 'worthy' (meaning they keep basic commandments) men to the priesthood regardless of race, color or lineage, citing a revelation from God received by the same Spencer Kimball, who was by then President of the church.

Related articles

External reference

  • Bush, "Mormonism's Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview," 8(1) Dialog.