Quote:
Originally Posted by Tex
I'm not losing a lot of sleep worrying about what SeattleUte thinks of me, but for the benefit of anyone else who might be reading this thread:
1. I am glad the priesthood ban is behind us. It was a grevious burden to be borne by the church and by blacks. It is so nice to no longer have to (actively) deal with that difficult question.
2. I made no defense of the ban, not once. I merely insisted that God cannot be factored out of the discussion.
3. I am under no false impression that my skin color makes me de facto superior to anyone else. I've had the opportunity to work with black folks professionally and serve with them in church callings, and frankly, I dislike referring to them as "black folks." I didn't think of them that way. They were just, simply, my colleagues and my fellow servants.
Lastly, let me say that myboynoah gave a wonderfully fair summary of my position on the matter in this thread. Thanks.
http://cougarguard.com/forum/showpos...5&postcount=25 |
The truth is that most if not virtually all Mormons have never cared whether there were black preisthood holders per se. There have been virtually no black members in the Mormon heartland. This is only partially because of the priesthood ban. There simply aren't many blacks in the Mormon heartland. Anyway, Jim Crow was never part of the culture in the mountain west states. I submit that as an abstract concept it just wasn't that important to virtually all Mormons in the Mormon heartland whether a black man passed the sacrament or even presided over a sacrament meeting. The proof of this is that repeal of the ban was accepted by the rank and file without nary a whimper. There was a lot more celebration expressed than shock or objection. The real practical impact was felt in places like Brazil, where there was relatively strong growth and most converts were at least suspect being part black.
I submit that the real reason the ban arose and lasted as long as it did was a desire among those Mormon leaders who developed it and expounded it (admittedly, they were not great in number) to prevent interracial marriage by LDS members. This seems self-evident to me, but I realize that I have lived through some epochs of the LDS Church that are a distant memory to some here or occurred a while before some here were even born. As a lad I heard many times that there was nothing wrong with marrying a black (back then Mormons said "negro") except that if you were a girl your husband wouldn't be a priesthood holder and if you were a boy or a girl none of your sons or grandsons or great grandsons and on and on for eons would be priesthood holders. And then there was the doctrinal explanation to add a further chilling aspect....