Episode 206: Mormonism and Race

Here is one possible way of dealing with a racist past from a religious standpoint:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs_unRFvS5o

Does anyone believe the LDS church will do something like this?

[I do this all the time - I'm commenting before I'm done listening. It wouldn't happen so often if you guys weren't so darn interesting]

I wanted to say that I really felt it was important that Darron gave the definition of racism that he did. I hope it’ll be re-visited later in the podcast, but it was so essential to point out that racism is more (far more) than just hateful speech and violence. It’s also systematic and wide-spread (institutionalized often) limitation on opportunities, disadvantaging an entire group,  based simply on racial or cultural heritage. To this day I have Mormon family who will honestly and sincerely express love for oppressed groups and at the same time participate in repression of those same people, as though the lack of hate-speech makes the action ethical.

Darron & panel – great discussion.  Darron, My son started kindergarten on 21st and Grove, right next to WSU.  Like you I also grew up in the south, but it was long after I was baptized and received the Priesthood before I learned of the ban.  Like polygamy, it was a “shocker” (there’s your very intended WSU pun) to learn of this odd ball policy.  Nevertheless I toed the mormon line and left the very diversely rich south to see what Provo was all about.  As a Frosh at BYU in ’92 I openly asked my sociology professor how he reconciled Brigham Young’s racist statements, and of course, the ban.  The look of aghast and incredulity that I got from my classmates – it was like “how dare you bring something like that up!  where’s your faith?”  To my prof’s credit he responded that there was no answer other than the fact that we’ve been brought up in a racist Church.  That didn’t sit well with some of the fragile spirits in the class who probably still believe today that it was God’s will.

So much I’d love to comment on, but I’ll keep at this: A few years go on a trip to the lake on the NC/VA border we stopped at a convenience store on a Sunday.  I was pumping gas and watching as across the street members of a black southern baptist congregation piled into the front lawn of their little church building for a lunch gathering.  I imagined their service – the singing, the clapping, the gospel harmonies, and it finally dawned on me – the LDS Church will likely never succeed in growing it’s black base in the US.  Ban or no ban, BoM curse language aside, take away all the asinine statements by past leaders (including the recent BS press release: “we don’t know the origin of the ban” – whatever) – take all that away, and there’s still this problem of our worship culture – the long, the boring, the slow playing organ, etc.  For whatever reason, the McDonald’s-isation of our worship service is permanently affixed to the doctrine, and it’s frankly bizarre to me. 

I don’t hate the church nor the people in it.  But I absolutely hate it’s racist past and the existing inexplicable racist teachings still found in canonized scripture.   But most of all, I’m utterly embarrassed at how it’s been dealt with.   Can’t someone in authority just step up to the mic and say, “We have a serious confession to make….” ?

Good one, but I always took the treatment of race in the Book of Mormon exactly the opposite.  Primary example is Samuel the Lamanite, but more fundamentally in the revelations to Nephi making it clear that righteousness is what will save th Nephites, but the Lamanites will survive.  Several times different prophets said the Lamanites are more righteous than the Nephites.  It is blaring to me that race doesn’t matter.  The main thread of the Book of Mormon is the testimony of Christ and that all must repent to be saved – race will not save you.

I guess you read what you want.