Chapter 3: Disavowment Part 2

| Part 1: My Analogy | Part 2: My Reality |

Selma

“Might be a coward but I’ve never been tested,
I’d like to think that if I was I would pass.
It makes me wonder if I better knock on wood,
…which makes me wonder if I could.”
– Adapted from the Bosstones
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Years before the Northern Ireland massacre that U2 memorialized in their song Sunday Bloody Sunday, America had its own “Bloody Sunday” in Alabama. Just hours after the violent suppression of the first Selma to Montgomery march on Sunday March 7, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. issued a desperate plea for help. In a blitz of telegrams and public statements, he sent out an appeal that night ‘‘calling on religious leaders from all over the nation to join us on Tuesday in our peaceful, non-violent march for freedom.’’

I don’t know if the call for help was received at LDS Church headquarters in Salt Lake City; then-President David O. McKay was certainly no friend of the civil rights movement, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he had deliberately been left off of Dr. King’s recipient list. But even if the message was indeed received by LDS leaders, it seems to have been largely ignored. Mobilizing a substantial number of cross-country marchers in that short a timeframe may have been a bit challenging, but perhaps possible. Unfortunately, we’ll never know since the call never went out publicly in Utah; the local rallies of support that had been organized in other western states were conspicuously absent in the Beehive State.

Less than 40 hours after the media appeal, the Alabama marchers set off from Selma once more – this time joined by several notable white preachers who had responded to the call; but yet again, they had to stop short of their goal of reaching Montgomery.

After the beating death that night of one of the white preachers who had stood arm in arm with them, the leaders of the movement decided to regroup. They scheduled the third attempt for a few weeks later; the additional time allowed even more marchers to answer the call for help, many of them galvanized by news of the deaths of both black and white activists who were uniting for the same cause.

Perhaps everyday Utahns can be excused for sitting out the first two marches given the timeframes and general lack of publicity in the Utah press. There was no ignoring the media storm around the third march, however, and the date would have allowed plenty of preparation time for any supporters of the cause in Utah to make their way to Alabama. Perhaps a few responded, but apparently not enough to make the news reports. What did make the news reports, however, was a march to be held on the same day as the third Selma march in Salt Lake City itself.

The local march would allow supporters in the mountain west to demonstrate their solidarity with the movement without having to travel to the other end of the country. While the marchers in Montgomery made their final push to the Alabama State Capitol, a small group of marchers in Salt Lake gathered with their own destination in sight.

What is unique about the Utah march – in contrast to other coincident marches being held across the country as a show of support for the Southern marchers – is that the march in Salt Lake City was not aimed at the government. The marchers did not set out for Capitol Hill; instead, the Salt Lake march was aimed against the Mormon Church and their refusal to support civil rights. The destination was not a government building, but rather the Church Office Building that was still under construction next to Temple Square.

The marchers had selected their destination recognizing that the politics of the state were driven by the LDS Church. Press coverage, though, was also largely controlled by the LDS Church, and the marchers were generally shunned and ignored by the local media. One national magazine, however, did pick up on the march. Jet, a national magazine that was marketed toward African-American readers, published the following article on March 25, 1965:

One of Martin Luther King’s most famous speeches was delivered that night after 25,000 marchers reached Montgomery. Knowing there was still a long and painful battle ahead, he asked over and over again in his speech, “How long?”

The answer to that question lay in the hearts of everyday Americans and their willingness to support or oppose the cause.

If you were alive at the time, where did you stand? Or if it was before your time, where did your parents stand? And where do you think you would you have stood had you heard Dr. King’s passionate speech that day? Recognizing that my own kids will look back on the pivotal moments that occurred during my lifetime and wonder where I stood, I recently asked my own parents – who were both BYU students at the time – whether the marches made the student news. Neither could remember specifically.

So what about me? Since the Selma marches were before my time, my exposure to the events comes only from books and movies. If I take a movie like Selma, I have to ask myself which character would I have been:

I’d like to think I would have dropped everything on hearing MLK’s initial plea, and that I would have joined the marchers, holding fast to the “iron road” while enduring the mockery of the great and spacious crowds – to put a spin on some Mormon imagery. In hindsight, I think we all wish we were that valiant. In reality, though, most people tend to just follow orders and traditions, and unfortunately for many Mormons of the day, that included sustaining the bigotry rather than fighting it.

In response to the momentum of Dr. King’s rallies, in fact, LDS leaders dug in their heels even further in opposition to the movement.

Effectively silencing a few notable exceptions within their own ranks, LDS apostle Ezra Taft Benson took to the pulpit during an ensuing general conference of the Church to warn the world of the danger posed by what he referred to as the “so-called civil rights movement.” In his eyes, and in the words of his general conference address, the marchers and other activists were part of a devious political plot devised by Satan himself to destroy society. Reports of injustice and police brutality were “manufactured false stories” – fake news – and should be dismissed.

Elder Benson’s words were canonized into LDS doctrine and spoken “in the name of Jesus Christ”. During that conference, it is reported that all Mormons in attendance – which would have also included my own parents – unanimously put their hands to the square, confirming their adherence to his prophetic words and his role as a mouthpiece of God on earth. When he closed his speech with an “Amen?” the audience answered aloud, “Amen!”

Whether or not every-day Mormons actually bought into these malicious ideas being preached from the pulpit, I guess I’ll never know. But if the sustaining vote was unanimous, can they be excused for their tacit complicity in the promotion of biased remarks? And with my own answer to that question resting on the tip of my tongue, before I lash out and point fingers, can I be excused for my own inaction against current discriminatory policies practiced by the LDS Church?

I was born into a church that would not allow black members to participate in ordinances that according to the Church were required for salvation. I was only seven years old when that policy was reversed, but can I honestly say at what point I would have openly opposed the policy had it stood in place through my teens, twenties, thirties, or beyond?

The 1978 reversal of the policy is seen as a watershed moment in the Church. But it fell tremendously short with its ambiguity. Although the “Official Declaration #2” that was read into scripture reversed specific practices, it included no explanation or reversal of the doctrine behind it. Most Mormons believed that the priesthood ban had been the will of God, but nobody seemed to know why it had been implemented in the first place. And for the next 35 years, Mormons were left guessing, guided by over a century of very embarrassing explanations by a string of Church leaders.

Finally on December 6^th, 2013 what in my eyes is an even more significant declaration was issued in the form of an online essay published by the LDS Church. Although the essay carried huge implications for the church, it seemed to get largely ignored, and as far as I could tell, most church members never read it. Although I never heard the landmark position even mentioned in church, in my case it marked one of the major turning points for my own adherence to Mormonism, leading toward my eventual departure.

The essay answered all of the mystery surrounding the reasons behind the promotion of racism in the past. The lengthy explanations that had been offered over the years were all dismissed. Those who had promoted racist ideas – even when spoken by the President of the Church in the supposed name of Jesus Christ – had been incorrect. They were just plain wrong!

Of course! At heart it is so obvious, but somehow I had deluded myself into thinking that there was some other reasoning at work. But no – according to the essay, Church leaders had simply been incorrectly swayed by the culture and customs of the day. Their words had nothing to do with God in this instance; in fact, these words countered God’s will, leading those who accepted them away – or astray if you will – from truly Christian teachings.

For me, the emancipation that ran through my soul on reading this admission was like a chain of dominoes that toppled every other Mormon practice that had made me uncomfortable over the years. I know others understood it differently, but the message I took from the essay was that anything preached from the pulpit today can be reversed by tomorrow’s Official Declaration #3.

Policies, doctrines, and practices that discriminate against women, LGBTQ members, truth-seekers, or anybody else, for example, may be rescinded with a single, official blog post. The threat posed by these groups – just like Elder Benson’s misguided admonitions against the civil rights movement – may have simply been fabricated by the internal fears of church leaders rather than inspired by a loving God. To me, that’s what they were saying with this essay – without actually saying it…or admitting any wrong-doing.

Will there be a future online essay condemning the policy that excludes children in same sex households from participation in church ordinances and activities? Will we be told that exclusion of women from church administration was simply due to the ideas of men – having nothing whatsoever to do with God? Will the strict adherence to the historicity of LDS scriptures be dismissed, allowing doubters to worship with their families with an absence of hypocrisy or hostility? If so, will those who adhered to these policies or silently and reluctantly supported them be forced to come up with their own excuses for having been deceived or for having held their tongues?

The LDS apostle Bruce R. McConkie – whose own racist ideas continue to be mistaken for Mormon Doctrine around the world thanks to his admittedly misnamed book – is cited in the essay as claiming that “new light and knowledge” can always erase previous “limited understanding.” Well that’s one process I can agree with and that I expect to continue: Previous changes now help me view current practices – and those who take a hard-line stance on them – with reserved scepticism. To me, the 2013 essay validates the expectation that further change will continue and invalidates those who make claims concerning the eternal effectiveness of ill-conceived policies, concocting makeshift excuses for their implementation. Sometimes there simply is no excuse!

My take on this particular essay is that Mormons can claim the right to question everything, even if it has been said from the pulpit. Bottom line: Follow your conscience first!

While the essay was illuminating and emancipating for me, however, it was frustrating at the same time in that it fell tremendously short of taking any sort of responsibility for the promotion and implementation of racist ideology in the past. The essay effectively condemns certain, previously promoted ideas, but leaves other intact. If we were wrong as a church, shouldn’t we go further?

Basically, the essay said, “We don’t understand why God wanted us to withhold the full rights of Church membership from blacks.”

Say what? So despite all of the concessions about racism being wrong, the essay still shockingly implies that the ban was God’s will, absolving any Mormon who stood behind the ban of any moral responsibility for the resulting discrimination. Since we’ve already gone so far as to say that the opinions and attitudes that preceded and justified the ban had nothing to do with God, why on earth should anyone believe that the ban itself was anything other than misguided?

Oh yes, that would have meant we were “led astray.” And the prophet cannot lead the church astray according to so many direct quotes spoken from the Tabernacle pulpit. So it must have been God’s will rather than each sitting prophet’s narrow-minded bias.

“Now wait a second,” says the apologist, “You can’t just take your ideals today and impose them on people in previous centuries. Things were different back then, and Mormons were just going along with the flow. We were just like everybody else!”

“True,” I would say; in fact, that is one of the main arguments in the essay. It acknowledges that Mormons – unfortunately – were just like everybody else back then. But if we say that, then we can’t claim that Mormon leaders of the day spoke for God. They were…well, just like everybody else!

According to the 2013 essay, church leaders were not doing God’s will with the racist teachings that led up to the ban, but when they proposed, implemented, and sustained it over a century of time, their successors were supposedly doing God’s will…and awaiting an act of God to change course? With the admission that all the reasoning that was used to support it in the first place is false, shouldn’t church leaders have been expected to undo that policy on their own without the need for divine intervention?

It seems very similar to the dilemma faced by German Latter-Day Saints in the 1930’s, who had to argue that “God wanted us to go along with Hitler….that is, until Hitler declared war on the Promised Land, then God expected us to oppose him…but to do so silently and to fight reluctantly in his army, because Mormons are scripturally bound to be patriotic.”

The survival of the church has often been cited as the reason for the German Saints’ complicity with national socialism – under the assumption that overt objection would have led to a crackdown that would have destroyed the church and almost a century of missionary efforts. But in hindsight, instead of excommunicating dissidents like Helmuth Hübener, those truly wishing to do God’s will probably should have stood boldly for the truth all along the way even if that meant being wiped out as a church in German-controlled territory. Now that’s easy enough for me to say from my comfortable, modern-day position; but if I don’t even have the fortitude to publicly take a stand against current discrimination practiced by the LDS Church, can I really claim that I would have stood up for anything at all in Nazi Germany while facing the prospect of a death penalty for sedition?

This all brings me to my eye-opening bottom line, which is that Mormonism is just another religion. If commonality and context are the only factors that excuse the racism of the past, can’t the same concession be made about today’s mistakes? Is that admission really such a huge leap for Mormons? To me it seems a bit like a kid whose parents have told them all along just how special and unique they are…giving them the erroneous impression that they have been the favorite child. When they get the newsflash that their siblings were all told the same thing, is that so startling after all?

For those who think it is pretentious to judge 19^th century people based on 21^st century standards, yes, perhaps that is a bit unfair…so fine, I’ll concede that point. But if you want to use the “historical context” excuse, you’ll also need to admit that you’re just another church. If you are going to claim to be in direct contact with Jesus Christ Himself – and if you’re going to claim to be the only organization authorized to act on His behalf, representing His will on earth – then sorry, you don’t get to use the excuse that everyone else is or was doing it.

There’s an obvious answer here, and the volumes of pretexts that have been published can disappear from significance in an instant with a simple acknowledgment: We’re all in the same boat; nobody has any more or less direct a connection to God than anybody else.

This realization shouldn’t come as any surprise, but just as it shocked me to move around the world in my youth and come to the realization that America was just another country, finding out the same about my religion is likewise liberating and disconcerting at the same time.

We aren’t God’s gift to the world. If we ever were, we’ve blown it with this indiscretion and many more like it. So how do we make things right from here?

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The Seven R’s

If you go back to the Selma trailer and try to choose a character who might best embody the views of the LDS Church at the time, who would it be? I wish I could point to James Reeb or other northern preachers who locked arms with the other marchers, but shamefully in this instance I would have to go with either one of the local cops beating a protester, or a jeering spectator in the crowd shouting their approval of the repression. I wish I could at least point to the neutral bystanders locked inside their houses to avoid potential conflict, but in this particular battle, Temple Square was not Switzerland; LDS leaders picked a side – unfortunately, it was the wrong side.

In this case, active Mormons had essentially been told that joining the marchers constituted joining the legions of Satan. So it is no surprise that neither the marchers in Montgomery nor those in Salt Lake City had much support from local Mormon congregations. A Satanic threat should be actively opposed and not just placidly ignored, after all. Was an active, God-fearing Mormon in 1965 really free to follow their conscience with this sort of rhetoric being preached from the pulpit?

I’d like to think that my parents opposed that dangerous and blatantly biased notion, standing against LDS Church policies where appropriate. Whatever the case, I wish that they and their fellow Mormon students would have heard the call and felt prompted to take a road trip to Selma to join the marchers – whatever the cost! But I can’t answer for them; I can only answer for myself and try to make sure that I am on the right side of the police line now and in the future, recognizing that other political movements are passed off by LDS leadership nowadays as being driven by the dark side of the force.

When it comes to sweeping things under the carpet, I certainly can’t point any fingers at anyone else, because I myself have tried to push the embarrassing issue of race and the priesthood aside. I have to admit that as a missionary, as a teacher, and as a parent, I have tried to dismiss racism and other potentially contentious topics that could be damaging to the reputation of the church, attempting to explain them away and move on to other topics as quickly as possible. I am ashamed at having used that evasive manoeuvre in the past; but that’s exactly what I see the current essay attempting to do.

Simply brushing the issue aside is not disavowment, and I believe there is much, much more to be done in actively disavowing discrimination in all its forms. And today I believe this means standing against some of the current church policies such as the continued insistence on a divinely sanctioned racial ban and abhorrent discrimination against the LGBTQ community – whatever the cost!

Every LDS convert and primary child is supposed to learn about the steps of repentance. Here is one example:

The individual steps vary from lesson to lesson, but any LDS Sunday school or missionary lesson I have ever heard on the topic of repentance points to the idea that cessation of a practice alone is not repentance.

So how many of these steps are embodied in the 2013 LDS essay on race? I find it hard to put my finger on a single one! There is no call to action, and the prevalent racial atmosphere of the United States is provided as an excuse – presenting the Church like an innocent bystander who got sucked into a battle against their will. There is no acknowledgement that the LDS Church was instead actively promoting racist ideas while at the same time claiming to be the sole organization on the planet authorized to act on God’s behalf. There is no apology nor a single admission of wrong-doing at the top; following the chart above, you wouldn’t even be able to start climbing up the ladder without that recognition!

In claiming there is more to be done, I’m only regurgitating what I was taught about the repentance process in my German primary class back in the 1970s. Now the alliteration doesn’t work out quite as conveniently in German, but the ideas behind each step were the same. My scriptures, lesson manuals, teachers, and primary songs called the process “umkehren”, or literally “to turn around.”

Throwing it ahead another decade with the musical soundtrack that pops into my head when I hear the term umkehren, Falco’s 80s hit Der Kommissar included the line “Drah di net um oh oh oh” which was translated to “Don’t turn around, oh oh!” when After the Fire covered it for the U.S. market the next year.

Falco’s version includes the Austrian-dialect, imperative form of the infinitive verb “umdrehen” which is distinctly different from “umkehren”, even though both are German words for turning around. One is just revolving – facing a different direction – while the other involves forward momentum in the opposite direction.

When you’re driving a car, you would use “umdrehen” to describe turning your head around to look behind you. But if you wanted to actually turn your vehicle around and head in the opposite direction, you would use the word “umkehren.” When it comes to the process of repenting and how to actually go about changing the course of your life, the process is rightly called “umkehren”.

The Church essay perhaps got the meanings switched, adopting the alternative term that comprises spinning around in place without charting a new course.

We’re told in the essay that the Church disavows and unequivocally condemns racism in all its forms, past, present, and future. That’s awesome, but what does that actually mean? Does it mean we should deny, avoid, or ignore? Pretend it never happened? Ironically, the essay itself falls short of condemning what it claims to condemn. There is umdrehen without umkehren.

While the previous explanations for the priesthood ban are decried, for example, the official essay offers no alternative theory and avoids condemning the ban itself. So Mormons to this day are still left believing that its implementation was God’s will at the time. In reality, the ban had nothing to do with God and should never have been adopted in the first place. That’s the obvious truth, so why is that so hard to say? Why is that fourth step on the ladder so insurmountable?

The closer a misdeed hits home, the harder each step of the repentance ladder is to climb. In this case, we have to recognize that the essay’s “unequivocal” statement doesn’t just cover the condemnation of ideas promoted in the 19^th century by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young; it includes a chain of succession all the way through to Ezra Taft Benson – the man whose personal signature is inscribed on my mission call to East Germany – along with everyone who ever sustained him as a prophet, seer, and revelator!

Oh wait, that includes me, too!

“Surely not I, Lord!”

During my first seven years on the planet while racial discrimination was officially implemented in the LDS Church, maybe I had the excuse of the ignorance of youth. But if the ban hadn’t been reversed, would I be defending it today and blaming it on God’s will? How will I ever know whether my supposed tolerance today is in fact genuine – as opposed to just going along with the prevailing system of authority that happens to be changing its tune?

Turning once again to the soundtrack in my head, and skipping ahead another decade, sometimes I ask myself the same questions as in this old 90s song:

Have you ever had the odds stacked up so high,
You need a strength most don’t possess?
Or has it ever come down to do or die?
You’ve got to rise above the rest?

I’m not a coward I’ve just never been tested,
I’d like to think that if I was I would pass,
Look at the tested and think I might be a coward,
I’m afraid of what I might find out.

Maybe there’s a battle brewing that will test us all, so maybe I should knock on wood before I open my mouth; but when I watch MLK’s speeches, I wonder when I would have had enough – when I would have stood up and walked out while the presiding authority was telling me to sit down and shut up. How long would I have sustained the leaders with my arm to the square? In a similar way, I can look at Nazi Germany and wonder at what point I would have stood up for what was right even while the Church was telling me to close my eyes, bow my head, and state my affirmation.

Well, I wasn’t around to be tested in the 1930s or in the 1960s, so how will I ever know where I would have stood in that sort of “do-or-die” trial? I guess one way I can know for sure where I would have stood is that I have disagreed with the November Policy for over two years now, and so far I have only complained about it in private. That should tell me plenty about my own character. My complicit association with that policy is embodied in the mere fact that I failed to take a public stand against it.

Today that changes: as I write these words, I am doing so privately, alone at my computer. But if you are now reading these words, they somehow escaped from my private hard drive and made it out into the ether. And hopefully that means that I have managed to reach for the next rung on the repentance ladder.

So what would the next rung be for the LDS Church as a whole? Well, how about this for a start:

“The ban was not inspired.”

Five words! What would that admission cost the organization? Yes, you could use that concession to justify a more liberal interpretation of today’s prophetic advice. Is that what the essay’s authors were afraid of? Would droves leave the Church over it? Or is it simply a fear of losing control over the remaining membership, who would then be free to pick the palatable pieces from the menu and leave the indigestible items in the kitchen – or in the trash bin where they belong?

Isn’t that already the case? Plenty of misguided doctrines have been rescinded in the past; in fact, if the views of previous prophets were still in force today, we would be dismissing every BYU professor in a physical science as a heretic for teaching the current understanding of geology, anthropology, biology, or linguistics. The Church has acknowledged so many other changes – none of which resulted in widespread pandemonium.

So why is this one so different? In my eyes, the price they have chosen to pay for this stubborn refusal to cede their indefensible position is much higher than a white flag would have been: what they have sacrificed in the process is the integrity of millions of church members who have to somehow rationalize the absurdity of an inspired ban, dreaming themselves up an arbitrarily exclusive elasti-God in the process!

The refusal to yield that last patch of ground has only made the steps of the repentance ladder higher, breaking the souls of those affected in the process, as evidenced by the heartbreak and outrage that was expressed when the long-awaited apology was finally issued – but turned out to be a cruel hoax.

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Tapestry

The Church essay focuses on the priesthood ban, but that is only one aspect of racism within Mormonism; perhaps some additional essays will be published in the future to address other racist practices like the opposition to interracial marriage. Under the false assumption that skin pigment somehow automatically reflects cultural conflicts, divergent traditions, or other supposedly insurmountable hurdles for happy unions, incessant advice from the pulpit has steered toward a culture of segregated selection in dating and marriage.

The current essay stays silent on the issue of interracial marriage, other than implying that any opposition to interracial marriage was simply adherence to the laws of the land at the time. In reality, church leaders openly and actively opposed the practice, promoting the protection of those very laws and objecting to their repeal long after the political tide had turned. The continuing failure to address this issue can lead to a belief among Mormons that the prophetic mandates to avoid interracial marriage are still in place. Instead of recognizing that, “the times they are a changing,” it seems the Church has been marching to the drumbeat of another 1960s anthem: “You keep saming when you ought to be changing.”

For many years, practicing, active, temple-attending church members were stripped of their temple recommends if they entered into interracial marriages. Believe it or not, even this was a huge step forward from the supposedly figurative death penalties proclaimed by Brigham Young as punishment for the practice. Of course I disavow those brutal teachings, as does the modern LDS Church. But there has been utter silence concerning the perhaps more benign but equally offensive spiritual threats on the subject issued by Brigham Young’s successors – who likewise claimed to speak for God. Silence is not disavowment! Even if the pre-1978 mandates have since been informally downgraded to mere recommendations or guidance, that advice has never been repealed or formally renounced. The lack of condemnation of previously issued warnings against the practice of interracial marriage suggests that the policies are still actively in place today.

Tony’s hypothetical predicament was complicated by real, segregating statements that we don’t hear much of today. Well, luckily we don’t have to live with 1960s-era biases anymore, so let’s fast forward forty years. Is the LDS Church still promoting the same ideas nowadays?

It sure seems so to me. Current LDS President Russel M. Nelson, for example, has condoned being “color blind” in most aspects of life, but has stated that racial discretion and being “united in ethnic background” is recommended when it comes to marriage. These are statements from the sitting prophet, who has told young single adults to marry into their own race. My kids might think I’m ancient history, but I met this man, and lacking any statements to the contrary, his direction sure feels like the Church’s current view to me. President Nelson filled the apostolic vacancy created by Elder Petersen, who fathered conversion therapy in Church institutions, derided Martin Luther King, Jr., and uttered nonsensical warnings against even the slightest black-and-white social interaction. This from the current prophet’s own predecessor; we are not that far removed from those false ideologies!

If we as a church are truly disgusted with Elder Petersen’s position on these topics, as I believe we should be, let’s embark on a path of true repentance which ought to include actions along a reverse course. Or if President Nelson truly believes that God still condones these restrictions, and that he alone speaks for God, then he should shout his objection to mixed marriages from the rooftops, dealing with any public backlash it may create; if he’s right, wouldn’t he be blessed ten-fold for upholding God’s will in the face of perceived persecution? Instead we are left with silence and its implied endorsement of outdated edicts. Enough already!

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Loving

Now let’s go back to the “Loving” trailer to see the real impacts of the ideas being preached by Elder Petersen and his predecessors.

Of the fifty or so people shown in the trailer, which characters were doing God’s will?

Let’s talk about the cop at 0:45 in particular. How about him? Was he doing God’s will when he broke into Richard and Mildred’s room while they were sleeping and arrested them? This really happened to the very real couple in the middle of the night. If you were a sworn officer, would you have followed the order to arrest them? Perhaps the cop was upholding the law of the land at the time, but was he doing God’s will?

I would have to answer that with a big, fat, resounding, “No!”

But who am I? I certainly don’t speak for God. So let’s look for someone who does. The man who married my great grandmother’s grandmother actually claimed to speak for God. What if we could ask him that same question? That Mormon prophet’s name is on my resume; it goes with me everywhere I go. Every professional proposal I have sent out in the last twenty years has included Brigham Young’s name under my qualifications. It is part of my LinkedIn profile and has formed part of my identity over the years. Now if I were to ask Brigham Young himself whether the cop was doing God’s will, what do you think he would say?

I believe, like me, that he would say “No!” So does that mean we agree on this issue?

Absolutely not!

Why? Because in Brigham Young’s opinion, the cop stopped well short of implementing God’s will. In Brother Brigham’s eyes, the cop actually defied God’s will by simply arresting the Lovings – and by letting them live another day. Brigham Young, the proclaimed mouthpiece of God for the entire planet in his time, believed that interracial couples should be murdered in their sleep to pay for the crime of cohabitation and – God forbid – bringing mixed-race babies into the world!

“Well, of course he didn’t mean that literally,” Brigham Young’s supporters said back in 1866 when Thomas Coleman began to defy that prohibition – and actually was murdered in the same brutal way Brigham Young had dictated. I’m sorry, but even after looking at the lame justifications put forward by FAIRMormon and other apologists, I simply don’t buy any of the excuses; in fact, those pathetic arguments and pompous rationalizations make me feel like I’m dealing with a sleazy lawyer rather than someone who actually wishes to disavow the practice of racism as the modern LDS Church does – albeit indirectly.

I too disavow and condemn Brigham Young’s words on the subject – as well as the systemically racist policies he implemented – directly and absolutely. But is simply stating my disapproval enough to constitute disavowment? The ideas behind the racist policies are now rejected; isn’t that enough? Why stir things up with painful memories of a bygone era? Can’t we just move on and relegate these injustices to the contextual past? Well, if we back up and subject the system to the seven “R’s” of the repentance ladder – and if we can agree that ignorement is not disavowment – some of the most critical rungs of the ladder are just plain missing from the process.

So what should we do about it today to help combat systemic racism and effect a genuine turnaround? Should I be doing more to actively distance myself from the practice of racist policies and from the teaching of racist ideologies that were previously promoted by an institution that forms a large part of my public identity? In the absence of any information to the contrary, many of my personal friends and professional colleagues would assume I would adhere to the official guidance of the Church, come what may. I’m guessing they would see me as a conformist who would put my hand to the square and confirm any policy that comes down the chain. I’ve always known that sort of adherence to be a potential risk – not knowing what might actually come down the chain – but it was a risk that I was willing to take given my faith that Church leaders would do the right thing. I’ve been that guy in the past, and I have gambled away my own integrity on that trust.

The failure to admit that the racist policies of the past were wrong, however, is a breach of that trust. Until that concession is offered, I would like to clearly distance myself from any trace of that sort of stubborn bigotry. Through much of my professional career, I have taken on the standard appearance of a BYU student – modelled after missionary guidelines for dress and grooming. Those who know nothing about me other than the source of my university degree may take my former appearance as a sign that I wish to be a model Mormon. Over the last few years, I have deliberately chosen to avoid that sort of appearance as part of an effort to publicly distance myself from official church stances and to help spark conversations along those lines. People sometimes ask why a BYU graduate like me would have pierced ears, for example, noting the dichotomy. Every alumnus knows that I wouldn’t have been able to take a single exam while wearing earrings, not to mention the beard or the tattoos. Well, in addition to the fact that I feel more comfortable with my appearance, I’ve decided to use these little pin pricks and burn marks as my outward sign that I disavow the previous racist, misogynist, deceptive, and homophobic policies and practices committed by the university’s namesake and by their board over the years. Just as the standard missionary uniform gives missionaries a chance to speak up about their beliefs, I’m using my own new uniform to do the same, helping to trigger conversations and signal to others that I’m no longer on board. You can come up with your own ways of disavowing. This is one of mine.

Now when it comes to Brigham Young, I do feel the need to take it a bit further. The more of Brigham Young’s opinions I run across, the more I’m convinced that someone picked up Donald Trump in a DeLorean, slapped a beard on him, and dropped him off in the crossroads of the Wild West. Everything I dislike about Trump’s politics, demeanor, and leadership style I find in Brigham Young.

The fact that Young is called an “American Moses” in LDS publications is offensive to say the least. Moses was an emancipator of slaves. Brigham Young was no such thing. To dub him with the same name as Harriet Tubman must have her rolling in her grave.

Yes, there are some statements about his opposition to slavery, but much of that opposition was intended to prevent any interaction at all between blacks and whites, especially where illicit relationships might lead to offspring.

It makes my blood boil in any case to think that a man who advocated these sorts of practices – and claimed to be speaking for God in the process – is part of my own professional profile. That leads me to a few ideas about how to implement a process of true disavowment, in ascending order of personal impact:

Stop using Brigham Young’s name on my social media profiles, resumes, and other personal documents.
Encourage others to do the same.
Formally renounce my degree from the university in protest.

I’d actually like to take it a bit further and implement additional steps culminating in renaming the university itself, but that’s obviously out of my control. I doubt there would ever be enough support to push through a new name given the huge expense not to mention any resistance to the idea, but if Russell M. Nelson can dream a dream and then wake up to rebrand the entire Church, why not its university?

Now I understand that this proposal may sound a little extreme, but seriously, I would think that reading the quotes and events associated with Brigham Young in this Wikipedia article would make it hard for anyone who is tied to his name to adopt a personal policy of passive resistance to his mindset.

This is not biased, anti-Mormon rhetoric: both sides are presented without an agenda. Read it and substitute any name you wish for Brigham Young; then ask yourself if you would want to be associated with the name of a person who believed in the sorts of ideas he promoted. Ask yourself whether you’d be comfortable as an alumnus wearing a sweatshirt with “Brigham Young” written across the front when you are invited to dinner at a black friend’s house.

No? Well, if you wouldn’t wear it there, why wear it at all? In fact, as of today, August 1, 2017, I’ll go ahead and take Step #1: I am deleting Brigham Young’s name from my LinkedIn profile and I won’t include it on my resume or on any other professional document I send out in the future. If anyone asks why, I won’t need to point them any further than Wikipedia for the answer.

As for the other steps, I haven’t decided when or even whether to take them. I’d be happy to get involved in a conditional, collective movement of some sort that invokes a change more effectively than my sole, squeaking little voice of protest. I don’t even know if it’s possible to voluntarily renounce a degree; and if so, I’m not sure whether that would automatically invalidate any subsequent degrees that were contingent on my BYU diploma. But what could I put out there as a condition? “I’m going to renounce my degree unless…” Unless what?

Unless the name of the university is changed? If enough people got on board, I guess I would join them in that sort of a demand. Gaining enough momentum for a wholesale name change might take a while, though, so maybe it would be worth starting with a smaller, conciliatory request that could be completed by the BYU webmaster in less than five minutes: How about a statement on the BYU website disavowing their namesake’s racist rants? That might be a step in the right direction, perhaps convincing me to start putting Brigham Young University back on my credentials as the name of the institution while continuing to disavow the man’s misguided opinions. But what would they care whether or not I choose to include the name on my profile? Honestly, I don’t think anyone would; I mean, who am I anyway? Just some anonymous graduate from twenty-five years ago. But what if somebody well known, somebody they love to claim as their own decided to take that step? I do believe that could spark a change or at least enough publicity to make a point and raise awareness of the issue. So that’s my challenge issued to any fellow alumnus with some clout: drop Brigham Young’s name from your profile and see if anyone notices.

In any case, pretending Brigham Young never said these things by suppressing the distribution of his statements is not disavowment. As a university and as a church, we’re still below the bottom rung of the ladder as far as I can tell.

Yes, lots of people were racist at the time, and the essay on the official Church website uses that rationalization again and again. I don’t know if that excuses anyone else, but this man in particular claimed to speak for God on the issue, and I think that puts him in a unique category that can’t be excused by the ambient mindset of the day. And when Brigham Young spoke on the subject of racism, it is clear that many faithful adherents stopped thinking for themselves and used his words to justify their own acquired racism.

I understand that one of his successors, George Albert Smith, wasn’t happy that the quote, “When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done,” appeared in a Church publication on his watch. Despite later retractions due to the uproar, that general attitude was prevalent enough for the quote to have been used by the Church’s presiding bishopric, even if the church president did not condone that viewpoint himself. Regardless of his objection, President Smith certainly went right along with Brigham Young’s racist tenets without thinking them through any further – or apparently asking God for guidance on the matter.

President Smith fell into the direct line of succession of those claiming the authority to convey God’s word to their own generation. In his words – which his followers mistook for God’s word – it wasn’t good enough just to ban interracial marriage: any social interaction at all between the races should be prohibited because of the potential consequences of that contact leading to a date, an engagement, a marriage, or – God-forbid – children who could not be sealed to their parents! Whether or not he officially promoted blind obedience among his followers is irrelevant; over the years he and many other church leaders practiced their own blind obedience by unquestioningly sanctioning policies of segregation, and backing them up with hand-me-down explanations that modern Mormons are now told were utter hogwash – to put it mildly. Today’s dismissals come from current church leaders who claim to be speaking for the same God as their predecessors. Following the precedent of that moving target, what will future leaders say about today’s discriminatory policies and practices?

So when George Albert Smith was presiding over the Quorum of the Twelve that sustained Mark E. Petersen’s appointment to their own ranks, were they admitting a ready-made bigot, or did Elder Petersen merely adopt President Smith’s views as his own during his tenure, assuming the thinking had already been done? Their words on the subject of interracial marriage and related topics are nearly identical and are equally condemned by today’s church leaders; in hindsight, it sure seems more like blind recitation than independent thought or supplication!

My own kids are a product of a long string of interracial and multinational marriages that include Italians, Germans, Prussians, Poles, Hungarians, Britons, Mexicans, Guatemalans, and on and on and on. I have a hard time condemning those unions, and when the LDS Church’s essay says that all racism is to be condemned in “in any form,” I would assume that statement would include a rejection of restrictions on interracial marriages – or any advice that even mentions the made-up notion of race as a factor in any selection process whatsoever, be it personal, professional, or religious.

In the end, I’d like to raise my own kids with more of a focus on falling in love and less attention to skin color and other physical factors in making decisions about commitment.

I have to admit I’d be worried if they brought home someone with strong, exclusive religious views that differed from their own. Perhaps it’s too late to remove that factor for this current generation; but maybe by the time their own kids grow up, exclusive religious views will have been tossed onto the same trash heap as white supremacy, male dominance, conversion therapy, and other lies, leaving religion as significant a barrier to a relationship as whether someone belongs to Costco or Sam’s Club.

Again, wouldn’t it be nice if the additional perspective of mixing up viewpoints gave kids more ability to cope with life and make their own decisions? But unfortunately, adherents of many orthodox religions claim that heaven has no room for those who follow other paths.

Mormons in particular are stuck with scriptural passages claiming that there is “no other way,” excluding those who adhere to any other religion – or even a different form of Christianity – from admittance through the pearly gates. Not just Mormons, but Christians of all denominations are faced with Christ’s direct quote that “no one comes to the Father except through me.” Some biblical passages are subject to interpretation, with meanings that can vary with the selected translation. But for this verse, every one of the hundred or so available English translations includes the exclusive term, “no one.” Exceptions to this restrictive rule are non-existent, and the resulting mentality of entitlement has fueled centuries of ostracism that brought on the crusades, the inquisition, the Lamanite missions, and other misguided quests.

What if the Costco membership contract included the clause, “Thou shalt not shop at Sam’s Club nor do anything like unto it”?

What if they went further and told you not to even drive through a neighborhood with a Sam’s Club or to touch a Sam’s Club catalog? What if Costco’s membership criteria excluded you from applying if you happen to live with anyone who holds a Sam’s Club card?

Absurd? Once you come to the conclusion that claims of Hebrew ancestry for Native Americans – and the accompanying directive to “whiten” them up with Christianity – is as made up as the pseudoscience of eugenics, the exclusivity of Mormon doctrine seems equally preposterous.

It might take a generation or more, but ideas can change: the notion of mixed marriages seemed obscene to the average Mormon just a generation ago, yet here we are today with a growing acceptance of the practice. There is obviously still ground to cover, but the tide has definitely turned. The same process is happening in real time with same-sex marriage. Interfaith marriage is only lagging behind due to outdated clauses in the membership contracts.

Today a child might rightfully say “Mom prefers Sam’s Club and Dad likes Costco; I like them both!” Tomorrow that child might say the same thing about a Catholic mom and a Mormon dad. That scenario is only problematic today because of absurdly arrogant and dogmatically medieval notions about heavenly entry requirements – the same misplaced ideals that inspired the original crusades as well as latter-day crusades like the Indian Placement Program and similar travesties.

What if a child born into a mixed-faith union decides they want both membership cards? Or what if they come to dislike box warehouses altogether and prefer shopping at the local produce market? Should they be barred from ever visiting the membership warehouse again? When it comes to the retail sector, it sounds obvious enough that we should all feel free to shop wherever we’d like. Why should it be any different with religion or culture?

When the movie “Loving” was released, it was accompanied by the #ThankYouLovings Twitter and Facebook campaigns in which interracial couples posted their photos. Going back to the “Interwoven” image in the previous chapter, it was made of randomly placed images repeated from those posts, but I’d like to see it done for real with any of Tony’s charts – whether it’s broken down by race, religion, or nationality – to help promote the validation and acceptance of loving relationships regardless of preconceived restrictions. Yes, the ability to speak the same language without bringing Google Translate in as an extramarital partner is a reasonable criterion in selecting a partner, but as for the color of your passport, we have visas for that! It seems ironic that the group that has historically protested so many types of mixed marriages was at the same time promoting mixed orientation unions, which is the one type of mixed marriage that is arguably the most dangerous to promote! Then again, maybe that shouldn’t come as any surprise since we’re dealing with the same, incarnate irony and hypocrisy with which the group that spent decades pushing for legal acceptance of alternative, non-traditional unions ended up being the prime force behind the lockdown on the legal definition of traditional marriage.

In my opinion, true disavowment of previous policies requires some sort of positive effort to help set things right. To me, this sort of mosaic image showing real, loving couples – people who have often been labeled unacceptable by their own family, friends, or judgmental outsiders – could help positively demonstrate the beautiful, “interwoven” tapestry that is created when they join together – in absolute contrast to LDS statements on the topic issued not just in the pre-emancipation age but during my own lifetime as well. Could a loving God really loathe most of the unions in that mix, accepting only those that fall along that thin, diagonal line? I wholeheartedly disavow that notion!

~~~~~~~~~~

Alternative Essay

My suggestion for an alternative Race and the Priesthood essay wouldn’t need to be any longer than this:

“The priesthood ban was wrong. We are sorry.”

Those two sentences actually say more than the two thousand slick words of the official essay that somehow manage to dodge any accountability or express any regret, while justifying unjustifiable elements of exclusion with excuses draped in historical context.

I guess I could leave it at that, but since the 2013 essay was largely silent on mixed relationships, I might suggest appending a few additional statements in order to help reach another rung on the repentance ladder by acknowledging some complicity in the misguided directions of the past. I’ll limit this one to promoting the acceptance of interracial and international unions, but the same ought to be said for same-sex and interfaith marriages…though that would require a much larger leap based on the current dogma. That said, here’s a suggested addendum to the essay as the first baby steps toward real equality:

“Those who preceded us in our apostolic roles had a special responsibility to preach truth, and we now recognize that some of our predecessors failed to implement Christ’s teachings in policies and practices that continue to have a stigma within the LDS Church because of the misconceptions that were promoted. For that we are deeply sorry. For those who fell in love and had to deny that love or were forced to live in fear or isolation because of misguided policies against mixed marriage, we are truly sorry. While no penance can undo historical wrongs, we endeavour to promote equality in all of our current and future dealings, and we encourage the same for all of our members. Policies against interfaith, international, and interracial relationships were simply based on flawed assumptions that we now know to be unsound.

“We may or may not be right in our beliefs, and we acknowledge that others may or may not be right in their own beliefs. It’s ok to have differing beliefs as long as you can sincerely accept the potential validity of your partner’s beliefs. Please don’t go into a marriage with a presumed knowledge of your own correctness; that will doom your relationship in more ways than one. For those embarking along a path toward marriage, please ignore the color of your fiance’s skin or their nation of origin. If you decide to raise children together, please try to teach them to accept others for who they are without judgment, thereby helping to make statements like this unnecessary for future generations. The most important consideration for anyone seeking a partner is to find a good person whom you truly love and who loves you back.

The 19^th-century tombstones of a Catholic wife and Protestant husband who were not allowed to be buried in the same cemetery may seem absurd to us today. We may ask ourselves how anyone could really have subscribed to that sort of dogmatism. But the fake border between the cemeteries is no less fictitious than the allegedly eternal chasm that threatens those Mormons considering a mixed-faith relationship today, leaving those who embark down such a “tragic” path to believe that they will be eternally locked into those little houses. Come on already!

Here are some closing lyrics to sum it all up:

“’You can’t make yourself stop dreaming who your dreaming of,
So love who you love, who you love.’”

~~~~~~~~~~

2020 Epilogue: Floydian Slip

In the wake of George Floyd’s brutal murder, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had a singular opportunity to atone for its racist past. That chance is slipping away as other topics now dominate the headlines. Will we need to wait another generation to see real change?

I watched the 1992 Los Angeles riots unfold from a safe distance as a missionary in Germany. Being half a world away – and lacking a TV – I didn’t grasp the severity of the unrest, but my companion’s father was serving as an active-duty California cop at the time, and based on the snippets of apocalyptic news that we could gather from shop window television screens, we definitely feared for his life. Luckily, the riots ended up subsiding within a week – which wasn’t even enough time for my companion to get a letter from home about how his family had been affected.

I didn’t really feel like there was anything I could offer to the discussion from where I sat, and life seemed to get back to normal soon enough. In the years following my return to the US, I saw a few systemic changes that occurred as a result of the protests, but eventually – perhaps aided by OJ’s acquittal – suburbanites seem to have convinced themselves that the pendulum had swung far enough in the opposite direction for their comfort. Progress toward improved race relations seemed to stagnate – or at least drop out of the Provo newscasts that I could access at the time.

Now that similar tensions have erupted – and largely subsided again – a full generation later, I find myself wondering whether I could have done more to help combat racism in the meantime. Again, I found myself overseas this time around, watching the 2020 protests unfold from a safe distance an ocean away. And again, I didn’t feel there was much I could do about it other than to watch it all go down on the news. Perhaps that echoes the insulated sentiment of my parents when they watched news footage of the 1960s race riots from their student apartments in Utah Valley, which may as well have been a foreign country at the time!

Given the regular recurrence interval between these three periods of unrest, it sure seems like a pattern that repeats itself with each passing generation. Are we doomed to replicate this scenario another generation from now when a previously obscure name like Rodney King or George Floyd suddenly becomes a catalyst for lighting the fire of pent-up infuriation that has accumulated in the meantime?

I keep reading news reports and social media posts claiming that this time around, things are going to be different – that the sheer magnitude of the ambient energy will spark a real change, breaking the cycle. I really hope that is the case, but the real test, of course, comes after the headlines have dropped to the bottom of the newsfeeds. So how can we collectively make those predictions come true, harnessing the energy of the protests, capturing their momentum, and instigating a real, continuing change rather than stifling, supressing, and bottling up the dissent so that it ignites and explodes again in another generation? How can a single individual help to dismantle institutional racism within the institutions that they belong to?

When the head of the Mormon institution called on all racists to repent in June 2020, I thought that might signal the start of something profound, perhaps inspiring the first step up the stairway to heavenly penance. I was initially hopeful that a real change was coming; but sadly, within the official statements, there wasn’t even a first-rung acknowledgment of the Church’s own racist past nor any apology to those harmed along the way. Still, I followed news stories that seemed to offer hope, including accounts of harmonious meetings between the LDS Church and the NAACP.

The encouraging photos above were accompanied by headlines about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints “locking arms” with the NAACP. Those positive headlines appeared primarily in news outlets controlled by the LDS Church itself.

In reality, the official response to the meetings from an authorized spokesman for the NAACP was that there seems to be “no willingness on the part of the church to do anything material.”

He acknowledged an improving friendliness but stated that the emerging partnership has not borne the fruits that some NAACP leaders had hoped. He added further that the group hasn’t seen very much progress on joint projects.

The handful of collaborations have been “minor efforts,” he said. They “do not befit the stature and magnitude of what the LDS Church can do and should do.” In that light, the NAACP is “looking forward to the church doing more to undo the 150 years of damage they did by how they treated African Americans in the church, by their endorsement of how African Americans were treated throughout the country, including segregation and Jim Crow laws.”

Yes, there were talks and hugs and a photo op with linked arms that made the backdrop for a very believable headline. But the NAACP special counsel said that given the lack of tangible efforts, he can only look forward “to their deeds matching their words,” adding, “It’s time now for more than sweet talk.”

On a daily basis during the peak of the unrest, Mormon social media streams distributed official statements condemning racism, but with no acknowledgment of the pain that the Church’s own discriminatory policies have introduced – not just in the past, but every day that goes by without a real retraction of the historical, racial ban. It seems even the “sweet talk” is a stretch, and if that isn’t even there, how can we move on to the deeds?

There is an obvious discrepancy between the NAACP’s position and the celebratory articles published by Church sources. One of the things that I find bothersome about the diverging story lines is the number of retweets and reposts of the whitewashed, one-sided articles that were sent around without any accompanying calls for further efforts or any recognition of the lack of substance. I never saw a single LDS source cite the NAACP’s version of the meeting minutes.

It’s almost like we’re trying to highlight things that make us feel good about ourselves, hoping to convince our hearts that we are part of an organization that is a force for good. We all want that. We all deserve that. But in this case, in terms of genuine efforts to combat racism, it just isn’t true.

In the height of the June 2020 protests, I ran across an article in my newsfeed that got my attention – and not in a good way! The headline in the June 10 Salt Lake Tribune claimed that Brigham Young’s descendants say, “he was no racist.”

The article featured a group of Brigham Young’s descendants who tried to downplay his racist rhetoric and blame the racist policies he implemented on God’s will. A 2016 survey of over 1,000 self-identified Latter-day Saints found that almost two-thirds of members believe racial ban to be “God’s will,” so perhaps that shouldn’t come as a surprise; but for me, seeing the words “it was God’s will” standing unchallenged in print, highlighted the sad realization that a divinely inspired racial ban is still the belief of many LDS Church members and is, in fact, still the official stance of the LDS Church despite every carefully worded statement decrying the “explanations” for the ban without disavowing its implementation in the first place. I’m sorry, but that is systemic racism by definition, which is exactly what many of the 2020 rallies (and even the First Presidency statements on the subject!) were aimed at combating.

Now this article hit me hard by association; in a way, I could consider myself a descendant of Brigham Young, though he’s not a known blood relative of mine. Now maybe I don’t count because of the missing DNA links, but whether or not I get a place at the table, I was “celestially” sealed to this dispensation’s Prophet #2 through my adopted triple-great grandfather.

Nobody asked for my input on the question of his racism, but if I have any say in it, I would say that only his racist descendants could possibly claim he was no racist. Pushing the blame on God as a convenient scapegoat seems like a low blow, but I guess as long as that ambiguity is allowed from the top, we can all be exonerated for our compliance with systemic racism!

I can’t believe this is actually going on today. This reported denial of Brigham Young’s racism was stated in 2020…right in the middle of the George Floyd uprisings and the snowballing demands for equality. That’s when this group of descendants decided it was time to stand up for Brigham Young and claim that the racial ban he implemented and upheld was God’s will? Seriously?

Well, can you blame them? These particular descendants are loyal Mormons, having vowed their eternal servitude to a system that will not claim otherwise. The absence of just five words, “The ban was not inspired,” tells a very sad tale indeed about the presence of systemic racism. How can we start talking about the deeds the NAACP is asking for when the most crucial, missing words haven’t even been said yet? I’m all for letting the past be the past, as long as the present stance is truthful. But a fake news story about God’s complicity in the ban is still being propagated today. Until that misdeed is officially undone, how can we possibly let the past be the past?

Well what would actually happen if an announcement were made and those missing words were finally to be uttered? Some people – like those quoted in the Tribune article – would need to eat their words. But I’m guessing most younger Mormons (at least those who can’t remember life under the ban) would wonder why the duplicate statement was necessary at all; because they believe the sentiment of that announcement is already contained in apparent apologies (which, incidentally, don’t include any form of the word apology). Those most affected by the statement’s absence, however, realize full well that it has been deliberately and cunningly omitted from all official statements covering racism. And I believe that the change would be welcome to those looking for healing.

Here’s an emotional excerpt from Sistas in Zion’s Zandra Vranes that really captures some of the sentiment around the refusal to admit that the ban was wrong:

“The only thing keeping us here is knowing that the things that are damaging and traumatizing us, God didn’t do it. And if you force people to believe, and if you double down on the idea that these things were of God, you will break us! If you make me believe that God did this to me, I cannot be here anymore. Because why would I stay with a God who thinks this of me? You have to tell people that the things that hurt them and harm them — that God did not do it to them! If you damage people’s relationship with God, you break them, and you cannot put them back together again. The minute someone believes that God is the reason that they are not whole, they are finished. And we, as the body of Christ, have the ability to make sure that no person ever believes that. I cannot stress that enough.”

Another BYU graduate, Melodie Jackson, was quoted in an ABC article about the response to the 2020 protests with these words:

“It was in the manual this past year that the priesthood ban was of God and it wasn’t, it wasn’t, and the Church needs to reckon with that.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Tick-tock

Isn’t it about time for an answer about the ban’s divinity once and for all? Only one man can answer that question with finality for the Church. I happened to meet that man when I was a young missionary in Dresden. I could have asked him anything that day, but here’s what I asked when I shook his hand:

“Would you mind if we took a picture?”

I managed to get a photo op out of it, but looking back on it, there are a whole lot of other questions I wish I had asked him instead. How about this:

“Do you believe the racial ban was inspired by God?”

There are really only three responses to that question other than silence, a refusal to answer, or a convenient change of topic. If he chose to answer the question, I can envisage three options for my own follow-up statement, had I been in my right mind at the time:

His response: Yes My follow-up: “Sorry, not my God, I’m out of here!”
His response: No My follow-up: “Then just say it publicly already!”
His response: I don’t know My follow-up: “You said God inspired the logo change. This seems more important. Please ask.”

Or maybe I should just put this in the form of a meme:

I cannot accept Answer #1, nor do I believe for a second that the brethren in the upper echelons have not formed an opinion that sways their beliefs to one side of the fence or the other; so #3 is out as well. In my eyes, the only realistic, believable answer is #2. And if that’s the truth – that Mormon leaders believe the ban was as off-base as the racist explanations that they vocally dismiss – why won’t they just say it?

Brigham Young, who first enforced the ban, publicly proclaimed the reasons for its divinity “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Retrogression: Brigham Young’s statue being moved back into the Utah State Capitol Building

Those authorized, published, spoken-as-a-prophet-and-not-as-a-man doctrines are now disavowed by the modern Church, but bizarrely, to this day there is still a refusal to admit that the ban itself was just as wrong as its denounced justifications. As far as today’s top LDS leaders, either they believe it was God’s will – and by inference worship a God who is foreign to me – or they believe it was not God’s will but recognize that such an admission ticket to the 21^st century comes with a purchase price that they are simply not willing to pay.

If I had to venture an opinion on the matter – which I think every practicing Mormon is obliged to do – I imagine the deliberate omission of those crucial words arises from a fear of the potential repercussions, measured in terms of the level of commitment to current guidance among Church membership; that concession, after all, would imply that each of the prophets who upheld the ban was simply wrong in their adherence to it – and that any in-tune prayer uttered on any one of the 40,000-odd days that the policy was on the books should have led to Official Declaration #2 that very same day.

There is some debate about whether Brigham Young inherited the idea for the ban from his predecessor, but from the time he openly implemented it until the time it was rescinded under Spencer W. Kimball, nine other prophets of the past had to decide whether to uphold the ban or to renounce it. The presence or absence of the five missing words, “The ban was not inspired,” paints two contrasting pictures of any one of those nine prophets who find themselves squashed between the bookends of Kimball and Young:

The absence of those five words implies the following screenplay that could star any one of those nine interim prophets:

Opening scene, set in a nicely furnished bedroom in the Avenues of pre-1978 Salt Lake City:

Cut to an elderly figure, kneeling at his bed. Deeply concerned about the pain that the priesthood ban is causing among the Latter-day Saints, the kneeling prophet begs God in fervent prayer to reveal His will:

“Please Lord, isn’t it time yet?” the prophet cries, “Thy people are suffering. Haven’t we been tested enough?”

“No, not yet,” comes the answer, perceived through spiritual ears, “but when my people are sufficiently humbled and prepared, equality will come for all men, and you will have cause to rejoice on that blessed day.”

As God’s mouthpiece on earth, the prophet feels duty-bound to proclaim the truth about the ban, so he presses a bit further:

“So how should we explain the inequality in the meantime?” the prophet asks.

“I mean, I really, really wish everyone would stop with their silly explanations,” the Lord responds, “but let’s just let the lies continue, and we’ll clear it up in the future. Remember, I let the wheat and the tares grow together…for a time.”

The prophet holds his hands in the air. He looks heavenward, keeping his physical eyes closed but his spiritual eyes open. Basking in the light of discernment and caught up in the spirit of revelation, he is blessed with a God-granted knowledge of the real reasons for the ban, but he is then told that those reasons are so sacred that they cannot be explained to mere mortals…no matter how pious they may be.

God’s mysterious ways are not yet to be revealed, but through patience, persistence, and humility, the prophet comes to accept the divine timeline, trusting that we’ll get there someday.

In the meantime, Mormons get a free pass for their divinely sanctioned bigotry.

Scene II: Salt Lake Tabernacle, June 1978:

“And there was much rejoicing…yaaaaay!”

Scene III: Provo Temple grounds, June 2020:

Pan to faithful LDS students joining the protest marchers while brandishing iPhones. The students take selfies and cheerfully retweet the Deseret News NAACP article about how awesome the Church is at not being racist these days. They encourage each other to hold to the rod and keep the faith, hoping their participation in the protest will distract non-Mormons – aka potential investigators – from their own belief that God still doesn’t think their parents’ church should have had black leaders. If it wasn’t God’s will in the first place, the prophet would have said so, after all!

The presence of those five missing words would paint a contrasting picture:

Opening scene, set in a nicely furnished bedroom in the Avenues of pre-1978 Salt Lake City:

Cut to an elderly figure, kneeling at his bed. Faced with accusations of racism within the Church, he desires to know God’s will on the subject. Being no more in tune with divinity than any other soul who wanders this planet, though, he is left to decide for himself. Knowing nothing of the future flip flop that would lead to a disavowment of the reasons for the ban, he decides to uphold not just the ban itself, but all the false reasons for it, too. He bases his decision on the warm fuzzies that he feels when he thinks about keeping things as they are, which contrast with the fear that he feels when he thinks about the uproar that such a concession would lead to among the largely segregationist population of the Church.

In an internally concocted vision, which bears no linkage to any natural or supernatural source outside of his own head, he shudders at the potential abomination of a rising generation of mixed-race Mormons. He mistakes the fear that his own indoctrination has fed him for a stupor of thought, taking that sign as a no-action answer to his prayer, which bolsters his support for the status quo of injustice.

He resolves to do nothing and climbs into bed.

Scene II: Salt Lake Tabernacle, June 1978:

“And there was much rejoicing…yaaaaay!”

Scene III: BYU campus, June 2020:

Freed from their own bondage to a 200-year old lie by the unprecedented apology and renouncement of the ban’s divinity, the students can stand with those demanding justice and racial equality without hypocrisy.

Protesters and counter-protesting “peacekeepers” near the Provo Temple, 2020

If people can be coerced into believing that the ban was God’s will, the first image of the prophet patiently awaiting the 1978 “revelation” can stand. By refraining from condemning the ban itself, believing Church members – at least those of a pre-1978 vintage – can keep that pretty picture in their heads, justifying their complicit involvement in systemic racism by deflecting the blame to a higher power.

The current leadership would love to paint that first picture for Church members to digest, but it is utterly false and entirely indigestible. The “good, warm feeling” upon which President Kimball based his “revelation” contrasts with the absence of that feeling as experienced by those who prayed about its validity while the ban was in place. Dallin Oaks, for example, claims to have experienced this phenomenon, professing his inability to confirm the ban’s truth while it was in place. His prayers can “bounce off the ceiling” like the rest of ours, to borrow from a book title that made its rounds in my youth. Perhaps this “stupor of thought” should have served as the scriptural answer to prayer that, in turn, casts a shadow on each prophet who upheld the ban!

If today’s church leaders were to admit that the ban was never God’s will in the first place, it would indicate that a continuous succession of prophets wasn’t listening in the first place…giving current followers the freedom to ignore any other statement issued in the past, present, or future under the guise of inspiration or revelation!

So yes, it’s scary. But it’s the right thing to do!

A 2020 statement about the ban being wrong would expose the principal character in the second play as being no more adept or inept at perceiving God’s will than any one of his followers. If there had been any connection whatsoever to God, He would have immediately called for the ban to be lifted. So either God wasn’t talking, or the professed prophet wasn’t listening, or both. Luckily for Mormons who were caught on the drifting, radio-silent ship, the civil rights movement intervened, and the accumulating pile of lawsuits finally forced a response, breaking the cycle of ignorant apathy – which likely would have continued through passing generations without the tugboat of civil unrest.

In any case, issuing the long-awaited statement condemning the ban would draw the curtain wide open, revealing that the emperor never had any clothes in the first place. It would turn the prophetic succession into a classic case of the blind leading the blind, completely glitching out the Matrix.

Although it is now blatantly obvious to the entire world that the ban was never God’s will in the first place, Character #2 never would have known this, because his proclaimed gift of seership was a mantle of nakedness that would only be fully exposed once the post-mortem, public sentiment caught up with the inaction he promoted while leading the Church.

Sure, there would be widespread implications associated with such an admission, but so what? What would the real, daily impacts be if the ban’s real source was finally admitted as simply originating from the heads and tainted hearts of biased men? How would practicing, believing members of the Church react to the change? Perhaps in the aftermath of such a statement, some church members would be a bit more selective about how unequivocally and unquestioningly the current First Presidency’s advice is accepted, but I suspect most members wouldn’t be phased in the least. Given the reaction to similar backpedaling around doctrine and policy reversals, most Mormons would likely get over it that very same day, supporting the official stance, come what may. They already realize that many former prophets weren’t listening in the first place about a lot of things that believing Mormons now cut them some slack for. Why would this one be received any differently?

I believe the vast majority of practicing Saints would get over this concession in a heartbeat. If historical shake-ups serve as any sort of precedent, a trickle of fence-sitting, quasi-adherents may make a stink, but the masses are not going to just turn their backs on the whole enterprise based on these sorts of admissions. On the contrary, I think more members would simply find the modernized Church to be a more comfortable place to worship, having been relieved of the burden of rationalizing things that many Latter-Day Saints, particularly the younger generation, don’t support anyway.

So just do it already! Say the words!

~~~~~~~~~~~

I thought this might finally be the year. Unfortunately, though, the continuing refusal among the current gerontocracy to admit that the ban was wrong seems likely to remain an ongoing stain on race relations for anyone associated with today’s LDS Church.

So in the meantime, if systemic racism won’t be getting denounced by the system itself, what can individuals do to climb that repentance ladder? I’d like to take some steps of my own and perhaps offer them up as challenges to others, but who am I to comment on the matter at all? I’m just a plain old hetero-white-guy-American-ex-pat-BYU-alum watching recent events unfold from overseas. So what can I possibly offer to this conversation?

I guess the first step is admission. I admit that I myself have been shamefully silent on this issue for many years, believing that my skin color disqualified me from speaking on the matter, and I am truly sorry that I did not speak up earlier.

I find it awfully annoying when white people tell other white people to stop being so racist, like they’re on some high horse of their own. Unspoken advice tends to run through my head when I read posts on the subject of race from those who, like me, are far removed from daily decisions that have anything to do with race: “Show it through example and actions rather than self-righteous words.” I am not putting myself up on any pedestal to try to serve as an example; rather, I am acknowledging that my passive approach to combating racism was woefully inadequate.

My own social settings from elementary school through to high school and college took place in environments that were 99% white. Since then I have been fortunate enough to travel the world, but can I excuse my own, past ignorance based on historical context? My early interactions with anyone of color were very limited. There were a few notable exceptions; for example, I competed on a high school team with a few black wrestlers (one of whom stepped into the ring with Mike Tyson!) and at one point had a black bishop. Although I genuinely liked and admired them and thoroughly enjoyed our relatively brief interactions, I’m sure I’ve said some insensitive, ignorant things and – perhaps more importantly – made some assumptions based on the color of their skin. I hope I have evolved since that time, and I am truly sorry, having no valid excuses to offer for my behavior and for my ignorant mindset.

In the past, my inclination has been to let those who have been affected by racism be heard, feeling that my job was to just listen. As has been pointed out by a flurry of recent memes and protest placards around the world, however, silence is acceptance, and all too often the listen turns to dismissin’ once the fervor subsides.

A more active response is obviously well overdue from every soul on this planet, whether or not we have been directly affected by racism. So what can white people do to break their silence and come to the aid of those who can’t breathe? I’ve seen that question posted all over the internet over the last few months. Well, I do believe there is one white man in Utah who could utter five simple words that would make a difference – maybe not to the rest of the world or to the rest of the country – but certainly to the millions who count his voice as valid as God’s own. But this isn’t about him or about anyone else. I can’t extract those words from his mouth; but I certainly can speak up myself, taking actions of my own that may not have much of an impact on others, but feel like a good starting point nonetheless.

One very simple thing I can do right now is to disavow my association with Brigham Young’s name, because Black Lives Matter.

My engineering diploma includes Brigham Young’s name, but several years ago I deleted BYU from my resumes and social media profiles and replaced it with a fictitious institution named after my favorite mountain that towers over the BYU campus:

Sure, the hypothetical school is made up, but so is the notion that Brigham Young’s racial ban was inspired! Maybe that fake substitution carries some ethical implications with it; plenty of people have been fired or worse for falsifying their degrees, after all – but I was hoping it would spark some conversations that would allow me to state my conviction about racial equality. Since I swapped it out, though, nobody has ever even asked me the first thing about it, so my little protest has stayed silent.

While other monuments were being dismantled by angry crowds during the 2020 unrest, LDS monuments seem to have survived the threat. Somebody spray painted the word “racist” on a Brigham Young statue located on the BYU campus (which happens to be situated against a backdrop of buildings named after slave owners and segregationists.) The vandalism would have gone entirely unnoticed if the photographer had passed by an hour later, since the graffiti was promptly removed by the grounds crew, but the photo was snapped just in time to accompany a newspaper article about the act. The article, in turn, was accompanied by a few online comments debating the merits of renaming the campus.

For years there has been an active petition to rename BYU in light of Brigham Young’s racist views and policies. A few hundred people had signed it before 2020. During the racial strife of 2020, thousands more signed it, perhaps aided by articles like “Time to change the name of BYU,” written by BYU grad Tasi Young and published in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Dropping Brigham Young’s name, given that he was the instigator of the ban, might represent a step in the right direction. In my view, however, the campaign to rename BYU and tear down his statue is a side channel to the more pressing matter of tearing down the ongoing, systematic racism that is packaged up in the myth of divine support for racist practices. Perhaps the mounting pressure to rename the campus can help draw attention to the absence of a statement contrary to the notion of divine bigotry?

I thought there might be some potential, but after this relatively brief flash of momentum, the “Rename BYU” movement died down again, and only a handful of supporters have signed the petition in the last few months. So congratulations to us! Let’s give ourselves a pat on our own backs! We survived this one without being forced to admit the truth and without a single policy change, name change, or dismantled statue. Brigham Young still graces the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall of Fame as the most representative soul to embody Utah’s spirit. No culture was cancelled, and fortunately for the fortune, no expenses were expended on an expensive rebranding effort for his namesake school. We can shout out a cheer that the widow’s mites have been spared [or perhaps redirected toward a more comprehensive rebranding effort for the entire church…] and now that the terrorists and anarchists have all moved to Portland and Seattle, Utah’s Mormons won’t have to face our uncomfortable past again until a new generation makes a stink!

Well, in the meantime, even if BYU’s board of directors wouldn’t consider a new name due to a number of predictable rebuttals – including the massive expense of rebranding – renaming it on your own resume is absolutely free! And how does it feel to take another step up the redemption ladder – with more real action to come? Priceless!

~~~~~~~~~

The LDS Church seems to have dodged another bullet this time around. Similar to the aftermath of the 1992 riots, Mormons are able to breathe a sigh of relief now that the unrest has subsided. The canned First Presidency statements condemning racism seem to have done the trick of deflecting any substantial calls for introspection, and the Church largely avoided having to confront its uncomfortable, racist past.

The 2020 incidents should have provided an ideal catalyst for some real change within the LDS Church, but the fervor around racial equality is now dying down again, at least in Salt Lake City. If history is indeed repetitious, we may need to wait another thirty years for our next chance to instigate real change…unless…unless…

How’s this? Throughout the 2020 episode, thousands of COVID-restricted LDS missionaries, many with nothing in their daily planner besides studying and sending out e-mails, watched the riots play out from the safe distance of their own apartments. Many of those missionaries are still under lockdown orders today. Could those missionaries be doing something more to contribute to the cause of equality and to the fight against injustice? If history does indeed repeat itself once more, we’ll reach another boiling point in the year 2050 – long after today’s missionaries return home to start raising their own families. In that event, perhaps they’ll look back as I am doing now and wonder if there is anything they could have done in the meantime to make a difference.

Well, what about those thousands of missionaries with nothing to do except write letters these days? Hmmm….don’t they deserve to know the official stance on the racial ban, considering these troubled times? When they do start preaching from door to door again, questions about racism will certainly be more prevalent. I would think these missionaries have a right to know whether their commander-in-chief believes that the ban was inspired.

These missionaries have to write their mission president a letter every single week; they are part of a direct chain of command that could pass their questions straight to the very top. I am an outsider with no means of instigating an internal change, but what if the missionaries collectively started sending the request for an answer up the chain from the inside?

It’s a simple question: “Was the priesthood ban inspired?” There are only three answers, and each one comes with a unique call to action. So what’s it going to be?

I should have asked that question as a missionary myself many decades ago; the corresponding call to action – and my own personal willingness to actively combat racism – could have begun much earlier. Today’s missionaries could break that cycle and become part of the movement to help eradicate the false notion of a white supremacist God who arbitrarily enforces his bias while allowing the implementation of his will to be rationalized with outright, pernicious lies. Let’s not wait until 2050 for the next opportunity to correct the record!

To church members: Ask the question already! To church leaders: Answer the question already!

| Next: Chapter 4: Whistleblower |