Posted on 01/02/2014 9:42:29 AM PST by Anton.Rutter
The Mormon Church has officially renounced the belief that dark skin is a sign of disfavor, or curse.
On the official website for The Mormon Church, www.lds.org, a statement has been posted titled "Race and the Priesthood," where blame for the belief that dark skinned people were inferior to whites is placed on the establishment of the church coming in 1830, a time of great racism in the United States.
The Church points out how previous leaders, most notably President Brigham Young, restricted Blacks from priesthood in the Church, receiving the temple endowment, or allowing them to be married in the temple. Theories to explain why the restrictions existed have been developed over time, but according to "Race and the Priesthood," "None of these explanations is accepted today as the official doctrine of the Church."
AlterNet points out that the biblical text, The Book of Mormon, teaches that "dark skin is a sign of God’s curse, while white skin is a sign of his blessing." With 15,000,000 members worldwide, the teachings of such racism and segregation from inception into the Church strikes a sour chord with modern belief systems of equality amongst all people. It has been a struggle to overcome this part of their heritage for the Mormon Church, according to AlterNet.
The Mormon Church acknowledges in "Race and the Priesthood" the origin stories of said belief in their scripture, but concludes that the Church today "disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form."
The decision to abandon the beliefs of inferiority for those with dark skin to white is a large step forward for The Mormon Church, and as Margaret Blair Young, an adjunct professor at Brigham Young University who has focused her documentary work on profiling the untold stories of Black Mormons, told The Guardian it is "a miracle."
evolving?
It must have been that Coppertone investment the Church made.
Does that mean Smith and Young were false prophets?
Can’t have it both ways.
The church’s teachings are malleable. Soon, they’ll fully accept gays and women in leadership.
So are the verses in the Book of Mormon on which this belief was based still there?
You want to bet that the rest of the christian churches will do it first. Some already have. Hello, Catholic.
How in the world was this thinking included in the first place?
I have a circa 1878 history book from the area where Mormonism was born. It says Mormonism (a false Religion) will soon vanish.
The old denominations went all liberal already. The LDS church is just following along. Politics is just more high school, after all.
So the lds god says “black skin is a curse” and then after social pressure says “black skin is aok with me”.
Must be very confusing to belong to a group that has a god who changes his mind quite frequently.
15 mill world wide
5-6 mill in the US, most converts are overseas
The book was a history of Ontario County. The writer would be shocked.
I'm delighted by the announcement, but confused. Which rules? A declaration signed by the First Presidency or an unsigned posting on the web stating the priesthood ban was never doctrine?
By the way, on the day of the posting, the 1949 statement was "black-holed" and removed from the lds.org website.
I respect the rights of FReepers and others to their religious beliefs. As a student of Mormon history, I simply get frustrated when documents that become inconvenient disappear.
A miracle? Ha!
We have to keep in mind that the Book of Mormon, unlike the constitution, is a living, breathing instrument. Smith covered everything when he wrote at the end “More will be revealed later.”
A prophet who is wrong on such a fundamental level is no prophet.
I thought they denounced this in the late 1970’s?
I recall my dad coming back from a business trip to Salt Lake saying that was all the big news out there.
Some, but changes made in 1981 and 2010 to the Book of Mormon removed much of the language regard black or white skin.
2 Nephi 30:6 once read:
[T]heir scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a white and a delightsome people.
In 1981 that verse was changed to read, in pertinent part:
a pure and a delightsome people
The words "skin of blackness" were removed from the introductory italicized summary in 2 Nephi, Chapter 5 in the online version of the Book of Mormon in December 2010.
Several other changes were made to footnotes and chapter summaries online.
So the Mormon church has finally renounced Joseph Smith as a prophet???
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.