Randy Bott and the Priesthood Ban

[Sleeping in EQ]

This issue is a sign of a bigger problem in Mormonism.

There are a lot of problems with the Bible. Myths that ancient people passed around to explain things they didn't have the science or understanding to understand.
Adam and Eve--to explain creation
tower of Babel--to explain dispersion of men, different languages, etc
Noah and the ark
curse of Ham--to explain black skinned Africans (though it's an interpretation of a Bible account)

Then you have the racism, genocide and other horrible/nutty stuff.

There are paths in Christianity that can accept these as myths that came together years after the fact and can easily be rejected or taken as a figurative teaching that might be insightful into nature of man and God.

Progressive Mormons act like they can do the same thing. But it's much more problematic. Tower of Babel is in the Book of Mormon. Joseph taught that Adam-on-di-Ahman was in North America, which means Noah and the ark was literal and Noah went from North America to the Near East in the flood. Joseph revealed that Adam and Eve were real people and identified the exact place they made sacrifices. Joseph translated ancient records which repeated the curse of Ham account, and he and other modern prophets taught it openly. We have modern prophets taking a very direct stand on evolution and Adam and Eve.

I don't know that a progressive Mormon can just dump all this very easily. The progressive Christian just has to dump some scripture that we know wasn't written for thousands of years after the myth was created. Pretty easy. The progressive Mormon has to dump the teachings of modern prophets and modern scripture (it becomes the peeling of an onion--how far can you go with that?). This is dumping the very core of what Mormonism is.

The Community of Christ has experience in this area.

[SeattleUte]

This issue is a sign of a bigger problem in Mormonism.

There are a lot of problems with the Bible. Myths that ancient people passed around to explain things they didn't have the science or understanding to understand.
Adam and Eve--to explain creation
tower of Babel--to explain dispersion of men, different languages, etc
Noah and the ark
curse of Ham--to explain black skinned Africans (though it's an interpretation of a Bible account)

Then you have the racism, genocide and other horrible/nutty stuff.

There are paths in Christianity that can accept these as myths that came together years after the fact and can easily be rejected or taken as a figurative teaching that might be insightful into nature of man and God.

Progressive Mormons act like they can do the same thing. But it's much more problematic. Tower of Babel is in the Book of Mormon. Joseph taught that Adam-on-di-Ahman was in North America, which means Noah and the ark was literal and Noah went from North America to the Near East in the flood. Joseph revealed that Adam and Eve were real people and identified the exact place they made sacrifices. Joseph translated ancient records which repeated the curse of Ham account, and he and other modern prophets taught it openly. We have modern prophets taking a very direct stand on evolution and Adam and Eve.

I don't know that a progressive Mormon can just dump all this very easily. The progressive Christian just has to dump some scripture that we know wasn't written for thousands of years after the myth was created. Pretty easy. The progressive Mormon has to dump the teachings of modern prophets and modern scripture (it becomes the peeling of an onion--how far can you go with that?). This is dumping the very core of what Mormonism is.

The explanation for the priesthood ban was itself pure creationism.

We've debated this of course, but rising from the dead, raising others from the dead, curing lepers by the pass of the hand, are no more scientific or plausible than a 6,000 year old earth. The concepts are equally implausible and it's funny that people make these disnctions. Christ belongs in an ultra-noble place, in the pantheon with Isis, Achilles, etc. He was pivotal in the forging of our society. But that is his pantheon.

[Pheidippides]

This issue is a sign of a bigger problem in Mormonism.

There are a lot of problems with the Bible. Myths that ancient people passed around to explain things they didn't have the science or understanding to understand.
Adam and Eve--to explain creation
tower of Babel--to explain dispersion of men, different languages, etc
Noah and the ark
curse of Ham--to explain black skinned Africans (though it's an interpretation of a Bible account)

Then you have the racism, genocide and other horrible/nutty stuff.

There are paths in Christianity that can accept these as myths that came together years after the fact and can easily be rejected or taken as a figurative teaching that might be insightful into nature of man and God.

Progressive Mormons act like they can do the same thing. But it's much more problematic. Tower of Babel is in the Book of Mormon. Joseph taught that Adam-on-di-Ahman was in North America, which means Noah and the ark was literal and Noah went from North America to the Near East in the flood. Joseph revealed that Adam and Eve were real people and identified the exact place they made sacrifices. Joseph translated ancient records which repeated the curse of Ham account, and he and other modern prophets taught it openly. We have modern prophets taking a very direct stand on evolution and Adam and Eve.

I don't know that a progressive Mormon can just dump all this very easily. The progressive Christian just has to dump some scripture that we know wasn't written for thousands of years after the myth was created. Pretty easy. The progressive Mormon has to dump the teachings of modern prophets and modern scripture (it becomes the peeling of an onion--how far can you go with that?). This is dumping the very core of what Mormonism is.

Nah, I can dump all of that pretty easily. Nothing obligates me to believe it, and the sign on the door doesn't say "fully invested believers only."

My catholic friends to whom I've spoken view this as their take on transubstantiation or whatever that's called. None of them believe in it, all of them have been lectured about it and told that is the way it is by their ecclesiastical leaders.

[jay santos]

Nah, I can dump all of that pretty easily. Nothing obligates me to believe it, and the sign on the door doesn't say "fully invested believers only."

My catholic friends to whom I've spoken view this as their take on transubstantiation or whatever that's called. None of them believe in it, all of them have been lectured about it and told that is the way it is by their ecclesiastical leaders.

The progressive Mormon can dump what he wants. But there are greater consequences for the progressive Mormon. How do you explain the Book of Abraham with the curse of Ham account in it? How do you explain the Tower of Babel and the dispersion of man account being put in the Book of Mormon? You go far enough in your explanations, and you've ended up dumping nearly everything that makes the church true.

[jay santos]

We've debated this of course, but rising from the dead, raising others from the dead, curing lepers by the pass of the hand, are no more scientific or plausible than a 6,000 year old earth. The concepts are equally implausible and it's funny that people make these disnctions.

This makes no sense to me. You can prove the earth is not 6,000 years old, but you can't prove Jesus never healed a leper.

[Pheidippides]

The progressive Mormon can dump what he wants. But there are greater consequences for the progressive Mormon. How do you explain the Book of Abraham with the curse of Ham account in it? How do you explain the Tower of Babel and the dispersion of man account being put in the Book of Mormon? You go far enough in your explanations, and you've ended up dumping nearly everything that makes the church true.

As I often say, I have no clue what it means for a church to be true. So it's an irrelevant point of measure for me. I either get benefits from the church or I do not. And those benefits either outweigh the detriments or they do not.

[Indy Coug]

This makes no sense to me. You can prove the earth is not 6,000 years old, but you can't prove Jesus never healed a leper.

Nowhere in the scriptures does it say that the earth is 6,000 years old. Attempts to date the beginning Adam's mortal existence to 6,000 years ago have been made, but that's a separate issue.

Joseph Smith maintained that Noah = Gabriel, so you can throw that disconnect into the mix for the Gilgamesh-ites out there.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Des News has a long front-page article on the Randy Bott fiasco today:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765555339/LDS-Church-condemns-past-racism-inside-and-outside-the-church.html

They basically repeat the "we don't know" mantra over and over.

Interesting essay here by Samuel Brown:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samuel-brown/end-in-sight-of-racist-mormon-fringe_b_1309885.html

Until the malevolent nonsense masquerading as historical theology about race is exposed to public view, the Church may prove unable to purify itself entirely of the stain of prior racism. Even as many, hopefully most, Latter-day Saints have moved beyond a racist past they unfortunately shared with most of white America, some holdouts will continue to cause difficulty for the Church and its members. While the media should be cautious to avoid heaping blame on a sometimes embattled religious minority and must recognize that racist fringe elements do not speak for the Mormon Church or other individual Mormons, the sunlight of careful, sometimes hostile, reporting about racism may finally disinfect the minds and souls of those Latter-day Saints who maintain racist views. We who value the church can earnestly hope that this debacle will persuade those Latter-day Saints who hold such moth-eaten, malignant beliefs that it is time to abandon them. The Mormonism that emerges from such a movement forward will be a stronger, healthier, more Christian tradition.

He also characterized Prof. Bott as a glorified youth minister. Ha.

[CardiacCoug]

I don't know that a progressive Mormon can just dump all this very easily. The progressive Christian just has to dump some scripture that we know wasn't written for thousands of years after the myth was created. Pretty easy. The progressive Mormon has to dump the teachings of modern prophets and modern scripture (it becomes the peeling of an onion--how far can you go with that?). This is dumping the very core of what Mormonism is.

My opinion: you peel off all of the abstract/speculative theology and call it improbable and/or unknowable and just focus on being a good person. For a lot of LDS people I think that will still be best accomplished through the framework of Mormonism even if they reject the abstract theology. Other progressive LDS people might decide they can be better people outside of Mormonism or outside of organized religion completely and I think each person has to figure that out for himself/herself.

One theme that comes up here on CUF quite a bit is how much of this type of nonsense is specific to Mormonism and how much is just an unfortunate part of the history of all organized religion. There are seriously wacko elements in the history and present day practice in almost every religion. But sure Mormonism might have more than its share.

[jay santos]

Nowhere in the scriptures does it say that the earth is 6,000 years old. Attempts to date the beginning Adam's mortal existence to 6,000 years ago have been made, but that's a separate issue.

Joseph Smith maintained that Noah = Gabriel, so you can throw that disconnect into the mix for the Gilgamesh-ites out there.

I'm not making any point relative to the 6,000 year thing. I mention it in that post because it was a question for SU where he mentions it.

[jay santos]

Joseph Smith maintained that Noah = Gabriel, so you can throw that disconnect into the mix for the Gilgamesh-ites out there.

What's the disconnect?

[CardiacCoug]

He also characterized Prof. Bott as a glorified youth minister. Ha.

That's awesome. Nice smackdown by Sam. He is hilarious.

[Jeff Lebowski]

By the way, for anyone looking to for an interesting analysis of the folklore/justifications surrounding the ban, I highly recommend the following article by Armand Mauss:

http://www.mormonstories.org/other/DispellingtheCurseofCain.pdf

It was originally published in Sunstone, but I can't find an active link at Sunstone.

There is great paragraph on Page 59 regarding the dubious "We don't know" response:

I am aware that the official “explanation” offered these days for denying the priesthood to blacks is that “we don’t know.” That response to questions about the past is perhaps technically accurate, since very few members or even leaders know much about the history of our black members or of their part in our larger history. It is true also that we can’t be sure of all that lay behind Brigham Young’s 1852 declaration that “descendants of Cain” could not have the priesthood. In the absence of all such knowledge, certainly the safest thing for a Church member or leader to say today is that “we don’t know.” It is also a good public relations tactic, since it has the effect of changing the subject before it gets complicated! Yet it is also somewhat disingenuous to say that we don’t know, and it is certainly an unsatisfactory response to any of our converts, investigators, or youth who are conscientiously troubled by this chapter in our history, especially if they are black. The fact is that we do have a lot more relevant historical knowledge than the we-don’t-know response would indicate. This knowledge, furthermore, is based on authoritative historical research by responsible scholars, to which I have alluded in the hypothetical conversation just summarized.

[Indy Coug]

What's the disconnect?

Noah is a mythical figure that never existed, either that or the totality of his existence is dealing with an event that never occurred.

But then he shows up to tell Mary she's got a bun in the oven.

Even more fun would be having Occam and Jung duke it out over the universality of global flood traditions.

[The Rambam]

I think there's an argument to be made about priesthood being confined to certain lineages. . .

One of my favorite bits of scriptural history was pointed out by Nibley as quoted in the excellent biography by his son-in-law Boyd Peterson to the effect that Ephraim and Manasseh were both half Black. Their mother was a daughter of the Priest of On, who, all the scholars agree, was Black. So all through the racist garbage being spouted by Church leaders, they were proudly but ignorantly proclaiming themselves to be a member of a Black tribe.

This highlights the fact that the OT priesthood discrimination seems to not have been so clear-cut. At least not the Melchizedek Priesthood (the Levitical Priesthood was clearly Levitical).

Nibley knew this prior to 1978 but kept his mouth shut about it--which raises a whole different discussion about integrity v. loyalty.

I don't know that a progressive Mormon can just dump all this very easily. The progressive Christian just has to dump some scripture that we know wasn't written for thousands of years after the myth was created. Pretty easy. The progressive Mormon has to dump the teachings of modern prophets and modern scripture (it becomes the peeling of an onion--how far can you go with that?). This is dumping the very core of what Mormonism is.

I agree that this is a huge problem and almost certainly the main reason the Church doesn't just come clean. (The secondary issue is loyalty to their mentors, previous Church leaders.) I think that they think they will lose far more numerically if they were to admit the First Pres. lied when they said in 1949 that God "directly commanded" them to discriminate on the basis of race compared to the present circumstance of remaining a bit racist by not apologizing.

One of the reasons the church can't go back and say the ban was a bad policy is that it opens up other policy changes that were/are dumb. Two of these would be:

1) The Woman's blessing/priesthood

2) Word of Wisdom - policy changed in the 20s

I think the next shoe to drop will be discrimination against gays--mainly because the homosexual community is agitating for change and the women are largely silent.

But I agree that logic similar to that used to discriminate against Blacks is being used to discriminate against women. This discrimination is also not commanded and can't be justified and this policy will change eventually too.

And I agree that the WofW, especially as it is being taught and enforced, is a policy with little to do with revelation. I mean, for heaven's sake, beer is specifically approved in DC 89. I am truly sorry Heber Grant's stepfather was a drunk, but should we all be denied a cold brewski forevermore as a result? (This coming from a guy who has never tasted alcohol.)

And History of the Church 6:616: Joseph and Willard (my ancestor) and Hyrum all were sharing a bottle of wine with the jailer when the mob busted in at Carthage and killed the Prophet. Literally his last act before the attack was to imbibe. How far our culture has come from Joseph in so many ways.

I've become increasinly disillusioned w/ CUF, you are all quite obviously intelligent and thoughtful, however your disdain for past and present members of the LDS faith who don't share your progressive views is repugnant. . . .

I believe the policy was and is wrong, but CUF does a fantastic job of focusing on all the things wrong with Mormon History and culture while completely discounting anything good. It seems that 90% of the forum is actually more ashamed than anything else about their relationship with the Church.

The Church and its leaders have certainly screwed up, but the picture painted so often here is that this is all the Church has done and that enlightened CUFers are holding their noses and tolerating it.

It is easy to sit out here and point out how Church leaders have gotten and are getting it wrong. They have to figure out what is best for the whole--and sometimes that means lying or obfuscating the truth because the truth would shake testimonies and lead people to be less loyal to the Church and then some of them would stop paying tithing and start drinking and next thing you know they are schlepping their neighbor's wife. But seriously, I think the Brethren seriously believe that the Atonement of Christ is not enough to save you--you have to know signs and tokens and your wife's secret name. And they want to encourage as many as possible to get this sacred and necessary knowledge and make the associated covenants. So they choose their actions based on a calculation of what will lead the highest number into the Temple. I admit that if that were my goal and I were sitting in their seat, I might make the same decisions.

In other words, the Church's goal isn't truth; the Church's goal is maximization of Temple attendance. If your goal is also maximization of Temple attendance, you will be very uncomfortable here (and anywhere with progressive Mormons), because most progressive Mormons don't believe in the actual salvational necessity of what we view as symbolic ordinances. We see the Church as an aid to our personal progress, not the gatekeeper to heaven. To the extent it aids us, great. To the extent it hinders us, we complain and lament. Because we love it and want it to be better than it is. But we (at least me) recognize that our complaints could lead people to feel less adhesion to the Church. I'm ok with that because I don' view it as the gatekeeper to my salvation. And truth is a higher good IMHO than handshakes. I admit that reasonable people can disagree about this.

The problem with the Church's current "don't know how, when, or why" position is that it's a forced and artificial ignorance. Come on: the Church's racist history is in the top 3 of any list of major matters facing the Church, and the Church is not going to do everything in its power to answer those questions? Send a swat team of historians through the archives and create the most complete picture possible, and then interpret it and analyze it. Get answers. This is a top 3 issue, brethren.

Let's say $1 billion dollars went missing from Church accounts. Would the Church take a "don't know how, when, or why" position and just let the questions go unanswered? Hell no; a swat team of accountants would be on that faster than you can say amen.

But here we're talking about a gaping spiritual wound, one that has caused and continues to cause deep pain for many people. Worse than a missing $1 billion? Absolutely. Great is the worth of souls. And while it has not proven to be a mortal wound to the Church (it would have had the Church not changed), it is still a source of organizational trauma. So my question: Why the passivity? Why the forced ignorance? (These questions, as a matter of fact, have been answered in this thread.)

Form a Blacks and the Priesthood Commission, give them subpoena power, and have a report on my desk 12 months from today! Let's get to the bottom of this.

Amen and amen. It will never happen because the result of the study would result in more disenchantment than the continued racism.

My expectation has been that if you got the kind of straightforward, candid and lucid statement of responsibility (none of this mealymouthed prolix windbaggery we see in the typical release) from the LDS Church that we've been wanting--1) recognizing that priesthood ban was wrong, 2) acknowledging that it was racist, 3) acknowleding that it was not divine, 4) apologinzing and 5) fully and adamnetly repudiating it--you would see a profound change in the LDS church. The cult of GA infaliblity would be shattered. What happens then?

Is it wrong of them to not want to do it if they have a real and rational fear that it could blow up the LDS church? Which is the higher good? Preserving the institution or being true, authentic and just? They must believe that the institution does a lot of good.

None of us who pontificate here bears that agonizing dilema.

Hitting the nail on the head. In their seat, we might make the same decision they are making. But that doesn't mean I can't point out that it is a racist decision, placing a higher value on the strength of the institution than truth.