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- Title
Truth and Reconciliation: Reflections on the Fortieth Anniversary of the LDS Church's Lifting the Priesthood and Temple Restrictions for Black Mormons of African Descent.
- Authors
Rees, Robert A.
- Abstract
What we didn't realize at the time was that that day need not have been either long I or i awaited, since Black people had always been entitled to the full blessings and privileges available to all God's children, as acknowledged by the Church decades later.[44] As welcome as it was, then, President Kimball's 1978 announcement of a policy change was not entirely satisfying because the justification for the practice was still firmly entrenched in Latter-day Saint folk doctrine and culture. I believe the essay needs to be brought to center stage with an acknowledgement of the emotional as well as spiritual wounds suffered by Black Latter-day Saints, in addition to the harm done to those Saints who suffered institutional disapproval, censure, and punishment for challenging the Church and championing the cause of their Black brothers and sisters. Were the Church to seek for truth and reconciliation with its Black members and with Black investigators who found the ban an impediment to their joining the Church, it would take a major step toward healing what is not yet fully healed in the hearts of all members - and won't be healed until it is faced. In large part as a consequence of such inherited Black prejudice that was then amplified under the leadership of Brigham Young, the Latter-day Saints - without revelation from above - conformed their theology to a general belief that Black people were inferior humans.[8] The Saints developed a folk mythology based on the conviction that certain premortal spirits (those destined to inherit black bodies) were morally flawed because they were less valiant than others.[9] This noxious fiction became deeply fixed within Mormon/Latter-day Saint consciousness and subconsciousness during the nineteenth century, continued into much of the twentieth century, and even now is still embedded in the hearts and minds of the majority of Latter-day Saints.
- Subjects
CHURCH of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; BLACK Africans; INTERRACIAL marriage; PRIESTHOOD; RACISM; VERBAL behavior; RACE relations
- Publication
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 2023, Vol 56, Issue 2, p55
- ISSN
0012-2157
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5406/15549399.56.2.05