Why Race Is Still a Problem for Mormons

New York Times ^ | August 18, 2012 | John G Turner

[greyfoxx39]

---

.................In a June 1978 letter, the first presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaimed that “all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color.” Men of African descent could now hold the priesthood....

The revelation may have lifted the ban, but it neither repudiated it nor apologized for it. “It doesn’t make a particle of difference,” proclaimed the Mormon apostle Bruce R. McConkie a few months later, “what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June of this year, 1978.”

McConkie meant such words to encourage Mormons to embrace the new revelation, and he may have solemnly believed that it made the history of the priesthood ban irrelevant. But to many others around the country, statements of former church leaders about “the Negro matter” do, in fact, matter a great deal.

The church would benefit itself and its members — and one member in particular, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — by formally repudiating the priesthood ban and the racist theories that accompanied it.

-SNIP-

The priesthood ban had sweeping ecclesiastical consequences for black Mormons. They could not participate in the sacred ordinances, like the endowment ceremony (which prepares one for the afterlife) and sealings (which formally bind a family together), rites that Smith and Young taught were necessary to obtain celestial glory.

-SNIP-

Most Protestant denominations, however, gradually apologized for their past racism

[Cubs Fan]

Really? You believe that this is going to be mentioned on MSNBCCNNABCCBSNBC? Dream on.

so, is that what you're saying, ALL we should care about, is what is "mentioned" on MSNBCCNNABCCBSNBC?

because that would be really stupid

[VeniVidiVici]

The Civil Rights Act was only signed 14 years prior (1964)to this. It’s my understanding that racism and segregation were quite common up until 1964. Hmmm. Even after this date.

Busing? Forced desegregation? 1972. George Wallace, Democrat Segregationist running for President. 1972.

Let’s see. Fourteen years ago we had Bill Clinton being impeached.

Eleven years ago were the 9/11 attacks.

[Cubs Fan]

I’ll let you in on a little secret smear boy, if the dems keep playing the race card over and over the american people will get very sick of it and it will start showing in the polls against your buddy Obama, that is if it already hasn’t.

[greyfoxx39]

It’s mind-boggling that a FReeper posts an article from the old gray ‘lady’ ... and agrees with it

It's mind-boggling that someone can hide his head in the sand and ignore LDS sourced facts about Mitt....OH....NO....WAIT!....

[yoe]

First of all, consider the source, NYT. That paper has no problem with other religions.....this is not exactly a hit piece but the propaganda resonates that way. The ‘usual crowd’ hates Catholics, ‘Born Again, Most Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Buddhists...and so on....you get the picture. Picking a fight with the Mormon beliefs is the politically correct thing to do during an election for Obamaites and Progressives....Obama was raised by Communists who didn’t like America and believed in a political religion....hummmmmm.

[Servant of the Cross]

Really? You believe that this is going to be mentioned on MSNBCCNNABCCBSNBC?

Nope. But it will be covered on the alternative conservative media ... e.g. Rush: Democrats: The Party of Racism ... and you'd think it would also be what you see on FR?

[greyfoxx39]

They be confused about what God was commanding. He was prohibiting intermarriage with unbelievers, not those of differing ethnicity.

You obviously did not click the link to the Peterson article. I suggest you do so. You will find THIS:

The reason that one would lose his blessings by marrying a Negro is due to the restriction placed upon them. "No person having the least particle of Negro blood can hold the Priesthood" (Brigham Young). It does not matter if they are one-sixth Negro or one-hundred and sixth, the curse of no Priesthood is the same. If an individual who is entitled to the Priesthood marries a Negro, the Lord has decreed that only spirits who are not eligible for the Priesthood will come to that marriage as children. To intermarry with a Negro is to forfeit a "Nation of Priesthood holders"....

Peterson's racist rant

(Try this one, Dengar)

[2ndDivisionVet]

Mr. Obama sat nodding his head to the sermons of Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years and the New York Times is slinging mud at Gov. Mitt Romney? I don't know whether to laugh or cry!!

[mnehring]

Those were cultural beliefs of the time as much as they were part of their church. You can find statements from may American churches just like this; from Baptist to Pentecostal.

Why get into the liberals trick of guilt by association. They have used the same tactic against other Republicans because of past beliefs of their church.

Group damnation is just as much a liberal fallacy as group salvation.

[greyfoxx39]

Why get into the liberals trick of guilt by association. They have used the same tactic against other Republicans because of past beliefs of their church.

Guilt by association??

Mitt has stated his 100% loyalty to his religion. He was an adult when this racist policy was in effect. He associated himself with this policy.

Hmmm...let me see....this article is in the NYT, will be seen by hundreds of thousands, will be picked up by other media...and FR is supposed to just ignore it? That would make you happy?

Got it.

[mnehring]

Not ignore it, debunk the liberal crap. His family’s history fighting for Civil rights is more than enough to debunk this.

When have we just wanted liberal propaganda to pass as fact without taking it apart? No need to hide, we should treat it like anything else from the NYSlimes and debunk it like every other piece of liberal propaganda.

[WatchOutForSnakes]

What would you have him do? Invite a black guy to dinner? Didn’t somebody already do that movie?

[VanDeKoik]

“... and not talk about Romney’s history of racism.”

Well then you go ahead tell us his history of racism.

Everyday you clowns become as damn nuts as the left-wing source material you have to link to in order to back up your assertions.

[VeniVidiVici]

Didn’t somebody already do that movie?

[Cubs Fan]

Mr. Obama sat nodding his head to the sermons of Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years

yep and he did it a lot more recently than 1978

[mnehring]

Really? You believe that this is going to be mentioned on MSNBCCNNABCCBSNBC?

So we should just bow to the talking points of the MSNBCCNNABCCBSNBC instead of debunking them? This is the new media, that is the old media. We should be wrestling the truth from the propaganda of lies that the old media cultivates, not spreading the lies unchecked.

[greyfoxx39]

we should treat it like anything else from the NYSlimes and debunk it like every other piece of liberal propaganda.

Debunk away. Start by providing sources that "debunk" the facts in the article.

I doubt your assertion that "His family’s history fighting for Civil rights is more than enough to debunk this"....just how many media outlets do you honestly believe are going to join you in this "debunking" crusade?

I'm sorry that the facts are not to your liking.

[Altura Ct.]

Why Race Is Still a Problem for Mormons

Oh nooosssssss - quick run around in circles... Who gives a crap? Compared to what or whom?

[mnehring]

Well, for example, the Romney family's own history of fighting for civil rights.

George Romney pushed an aggressive civil rights agenda

::snip::ANN ARBOR, Mich. - In 1963, an explosive year in the quest for civil rights, George Romney appeared unannounced in the mostly white suburb of Grosse Pointe and marched to the front of an anti-segregation demonstration to stand beside black leaders. Letters from startled constituents poured into the office of the first-term Michigan governor, whose son Mitt was then 16. Supporters who had helped him win his narrow victory the previous November said his actions made him "a double-crosser" and a "Judas to the people that voted for you." Their diatribes were sprinkled with warnings that they would work against him: "You are a ’dead duck’ for 1964," one detractor typed above a newspaper photograph of a shirt-sleeved Romney walking shoulder to shoulder with civil rights activists. The elder Romney pressed ahead with an aggressive civil rights agenda that ultimately put him at odds with the leaders of his party. He refused to back Barry Goldwater as the 1964 Republican presidential nominee because, he told Goldwater in a letter, he was alarmed by indications that Goldwater’s strategists "proposed to make an all-out push for the Southern white segregationist vote" and "exploit the so-called ’white backlash’ in the North." George Romney began pushing reforms to end discrimination toward minorities in housing soon after taking office in 1963 - work that would lead to his highly controversial effort to integrate the nation’s white suburbs as President Richard Nixon’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He launched his own 1968 presidential run after a 19-day tour of the ghettos of 17 cities, turning a spotlight on the decay and overcrowding that had contributed to riots in Detroit and elsewhere.

[2ndDivisionVet]

He’d be doing it to this day if they hadn’t taped those sermons.