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W. Paul Reeve Biography

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Equality Worth Deacon Importance Of The Individual

Book:Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

“Brigham Young spoke... with extreme hyperbole. He even admitted as much in 1848 when he acknowledged, 'I frequently sa[y] 'cut his infernal throat'; I don't mean any such thing.”

Exaggeration Hyperbole

Book:Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

“Outsiders... projected their fear of race mixing onto the Latter-Day Saints almost from the beginning. Some Missouri residents... complained that the Saints had 'opened an asylum for rogues and vagabonds and free blacks,' while others were concerned that the Saints promoted black 'ascendancy over whites.'... Four days after Phelp's 'extra' appeared in print, a crowd of Jackson County residents stormed his printing office and destroyed all remaining copies of the extra as well as the original July issue of the Star. They scattered Phelp's type and the press itself and demolished his office and home. They seized Bishop Edward Partridge and Charles Allen and hauled them to the town square, where they tarred and feathered them... It marked the beginning of the Latter-Day Saint expulsion from Jackson County. Before the end of the year, some 1,200 Latter-Day Saints would be driven from their homes, charged, at least in part, with being too inclusive.”

Race Racism American Racism

Book:Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

“In 1897, Elder Joseph F. Smith... was speaking of Brigham Young's idea that Adam was the God of this world, a teaching sometimes referred to as the 'Adam-God theory.' It was something that Brigham Young taught repeatedly but that did not mesh with scriptural understandings and was eventually denounced as 'false doctrine." Joseph F. Smith explained, 'While I am not authorized to sit in judgment upon Pres[iden]t Young, I am at liberty to test the truths of his words or utterances by the revealed and accepted word of God. Anything uttered by man which is contrary to the Divine law must fall, while that only which is in harmony with it can remain, or stand.”

False Doctrine

Book:Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

“In 1843, in a discussion at Springfield, Illinois, [Joseph] Smith expressed his most open ideas regarding racial equality: Black people were not biologically inferior, but were impeded by a lack of educational opportunities and other environmental circumstances common to enslavement. 'They come into the world slaves mentally and phy[s]ically. change their situation with the white & they would be like them,' he argued. ' They have souls & are subjects of salvation' he continued and even suggested that 'Slaves in washington [were] more refined than the presidents.' Give them equal opportunity, in other words, and they could achieve equal or greater results.”

Equality Nature Vs Nurture Individual Worth

Book:Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

“Elder Heber C. Kimball told an audience of Latter-Day Saints, 'We are not accounted as white people, and we don't want to live among them.' He insisted, 'I had rather live with the buffalo in the wilderness.”

Race Whiteness White Culture

Book:Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

“[T]he debate between Orson Pratt and Brigham Young continued long after the legislative session ended. The two men gave life to the two competing explanations for the racial priesthood restrictions in the Church... Both explanations were grounded in an underlying assumption that Black people were inferior to white people and that white skin was normal and black skin was somehow cursed---a deterioration away from whiteness. Rather than trusting Jesus Christ when He told Joseph Smith, 'All flesh is mine, and I am no respecter of persons,' these various explanations favored white flesh over other shades of flesh and implied that Jesus Christ was in fact a respecter of persons.”

Racism Religious Hypocrisy

Book:Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

“[Orson Pratt] argued that only God could administer curses and that they were specific to a given time and place. In his estimation, enslavers who suggested that biblical curses were still in force had taken it upon themselves 'to execute the curse of Almighty upon that race without being commanded to do it and they will have to be punished for rising up and inflicting this curse upon [the] descendants of Adam.' Even if God did curse Ham or Canaan or Cain in the Bible, Pratt did not believe that such curses passed down to anyone else. He rejected the notion that nineteenth-century enslavers, including Latter-Day Saints, had any authority from God to enslave Black people. 'Shall we assume the right without the voice of [the] Lord speaking to us and commanding us to [introduce] slavery into our territory?' Pratt queried. He was dismayed by such a prospect... People of African descent were not guilty of some premortal sin for which slavery was the penalty, Pratt said. 'Shall we take then the innocent African that has committed no sin and damn him to slavery and bondage without receiving any authority from heaven to do [so]? That they and their children shall be servants to us and our children? The idea is preposterous in my mind,' he demanded. 'For us to bind the African because he is different from us in color [is] enough to cause the angels in heaven to blush![']... 'We have no proof that the Africans are the descendants of old Cain who was cursed, and even if we had that evidence we have not been ordered to inflict that [curse] upon that race.”

Racism Religious Hypocrisy

Book:Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

“In 1907... Joseph Fielding Smith, then serving as assistant Church historian, argued that the teaching... [of neutrality, inadequate valiance, or evil in the premortal realm] was 'not the official position of the Church, merely the opinion of men.”

Racism Religious Hypocrisy

Book:Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

“In John Taylor's assessment, Joseph Smith had erred in allowing Able [a member of African descent] the priesthood, and Brigham Young had revealed God's will when he declared Black people to be cursed descendants of Cain. With each new decision, the racial restrictions hardened in place, especially as each succeeding generation became reluctant to violate the precedent established under Brigham Young, even though Brigham Young's precedent violated the open priesthood and temple policies put in place under Joseph Smith.”

Racism Religious Hypocrisy

Book:Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

“As President J. Reuben Clark explained, Jesus taught Peter through example about the gospel's universal message, but it still took 'a thrice-repeated vision to convince him that God is no respecter of persons.' As President Clark noted, the Savior's 'acceptance of the Samaritans, the race hated by Judah, left Peter untaught.' Instead of following the Savior's example, he 'kicked against the pricks,' especially 'against the principle of the universal salvation of men---men of all creeds, races, and colors.' Peter still resisted even after the Lord commanded His disciples to 'go ye into the world.'... He thus offers a lesson in how hard it can be for good people, even prophets, to overcome their cultural assumptions and biases, even when the Lord gives them very direct instructions.”

Racism Religious Hypocrisy Cultural Bias

Book:Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

“...[Y]ou are free to hate anyone you choose. That is until you take upon yourself the name of Christ. At which point the right to hate is no longer available to you. - Catherine Stokes”

Christian Hate Christianity Racism

Book:Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood

W. Paul Reeve Biography

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