Status of Lamanites?
The exchange in the other thread about the arguably misguided good inentions of the Indian Placement Program, and memory of George P. Lee and his image as a Seventy, made me wonder: Is it fair to say the LDS church has for all intents and purposes abandoned the theology that Native Americans are all descendants of Lehi? I'm not being snarky, seriously wondering. It seems to me that if anything part of the apologist strategy is to make greatly less ambitious claims regarding Book of Mormon historicity (FARMS excluded). Do Church leaders ever refer to Native Americans as Lamanites anymore? I bet there's a letter on this somewhere from the First Presidency.
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be.
—Paul Auster
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