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Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski
Oops. Or maybe it was.
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What do you think? It looks to me like Apostle Stapely is citing Joseph Smith's sayings as his authority. Contending that all black slaves should be sent back to their ancestral aboriginal villages wasn't exactly the enlightened view leading up to the Civil War, now was it. Moreover, what a curious position for the self-proclaimed prophet of the only true church to take, that all these people should be put our of reach of said church. Face it, JS was a racist as well as a philanderer and molester of under-aged girls.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski
SU, old buddy, sometimes less is more. This letter speaks for itself. You don't need to editorialize or elucidate in order to make a case here. Further, your claim that the letter is evidence of Stapley's intellect really has me scratching my head. Wow.
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I agree the letter speaks for itself. I'm not editorializing or elucidating. I have a simple desire: That the LDS Church forthrightly address this issue, and express genuine regret. Until it does, it hasn't put its racist past behind it. Until it does, it will have no moral authority as far as I'm concerned. Pretending to the rank and file of Mormons that this was a policy maintained by God's elect that was ended by God through a revelation is reprehensible and an outlandish way to avoid moral responsiblity. It's cowardly. They are evincing they lack the courage of their convictions. Do you disagree with me that a forthright acknowledgement such as I have suggested would do wonders in terms of maturing the Church and enlightening its rank and file? But their evasion is worse than if they just made some bald assertion that God was behind the whole thing. Their silence speaks volumes. They're cowards.
As for my saying that Stapely was not a stupid man, bear in mind that my standard was very low. I said his letter was reasonably well written and he understood the arguments pro and con the 1964 Civil Rights Act. What I meant, implicitly, is that the kind of blind faith and crude racism he was expressing, includng stating that the civil rights proponent he knew was drowned by God, was the kind of drivel one would expect from an illiterate hunter gatherer in the bayous. Except for the racist content of his letter, his letter did not seem to be written by an uneducated or uninformed man.
He's your apostle. Why does it make you feel better to dismiss him as an ignoramus? Fawn Brody comments on this. The curious propensity of Mormons to excuse their leaders' bad behavior, particularly Joseph Smith's, or to try to exaggerate their achievements such as writing the Book of Mormon, by highlighting their purported lack of education or intelligence.