[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:16] Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive Podcast on the Add On Education Network.
[00:00:22] The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me lessons and we try to add a little bit of insight, unique perspective.
[00:00:32] As you can tell, I am not the host of this show, Jason Lloyd, but instead I am his friend and the show's producer, Nate Pifer. What's up filling in for Jason Though pulling hosting duties this week, Jason is out of town taking a well deserved and a well needed vacation and I have been doing the same over the past couple weeks and he's been filling in for me so it seems only fair that I take my turn.
[00:01:04] We're getting towards the end of the year. We've only got a few of these left. It's crazy to think that we have been doing these every week this year and it's been incredible and we have been able to grow an audience for this podcast that we are incredibly thankful for. And I just wanted to say again thank you for all those that are listening all the way around the world.
[00:01:28] It's always amazing to get emails and various messages from from people from all walks of life and and all different places saying hey we you know like and enjoy the podcast and enjoy listening to it. So thank you for listening. We do our best.
[00:01:49] Jason left me on a fun week though to by myself tackle a few of the non Doctrine and Covenants parts of the Come follow me for this year and that is the Articles of Faith Manifesto 1 and Declaration 2.
[00:02:10] Just briefly for those that don't know what we're getting into today, it's it's going to be fun.
[00:02:16] Articles of Faith are self explanatory.
[00:02:19] If you have gone to primary once you will know what those are.
[00:02:26] The Manifesto one was the first public acknowledgment that church sponsored polygamy was ending.
[00:02:40] And Declaration 2 is all worthy men receiving the priesthood or having the opportunity to receive the priesthood.
[00:02:49] So we're gonna I know in the come follow me lessons it starts with the Manifesto and the Declaration. We're gonna start with the Articles of Faith because I think that they set up pretty well both the Manifesto and the Declaration because the Articles of Faith there's, there's lessons to be learned about or about our faith outside of the Articles of Faith and about what's not written in the Articles of Faith.
[00:03:17] Just a little brief kind of history or context of the Articles of Faith. I, Joseph Smith, as most of us know, did not always have the best relationship with the press in general and by not the best relationship it was a pretty, it was a pretty heated and confrontational relationship with the press at large. Back in the, in the middle of the 1800s.
[00:03:53] The press and journalism in general was by no means even trying to be objective.
[00:04:03] Most newspapers were owned by one or two people. Incredibly politically biased.
[00:04:09] Objectivity as we kind of know it now began in the, you know, around like 1890 and really actually more what we know today, kind of post World War I, which is crazy to think because maybe it's, maybe it's just me, but it doesn't really seem like journalism is really that politically non biased and objective even now. So consider how politically slanted journalism is now and imagine it being somehow worse. Back when Joseph Smith was, was first forming the church and, and the Saints were moving around from place to place.
[00:04:56] He has a famous quote. I don't know if it's famous, it's I, but it is a quote.
[00:05:04] He says, I have been in their mill speaking about the press.
[00:05:09] I was ground in Ohio and New York states. I was ground in the Presbyterian's smut machine and the last machine was in Missouri and now I have been through the Illinois smut machine.
[00:05:24] Needless to say, Joseph Smith didn't really hold in high regard a lot of the press that they were receiving, considering how much of it was again politically driven, completely incorrect and really totally misrepresentative of him and of the Saints at the time.
[00:05:46] With that said, though, Joseph Smith received multiple requests from a lot of newspapers.
[00:05:53] He received requests for interviews and basically tried to ask him to list the origins of the church, kind of to summarize the general beliefs of the church and things like that. Joseph Smith was incredibly eager to try to put out correct information to combat the misinformation or distorted information that was being printed about him and about the church, but would always run into a lot of difficulties considering he would, he would answer a lot of these questions in long form and the journalists or whoever covering him would edit it down to really small, totally incomplete answers when it was printed, thus making the distortion even more confusing.
[00:06:52] A lot of journalists would ask for specific, like Mormon creeds and Joseph Smith who was incredibly eager to put out, you know, the origins of the faith and the beginnings of the church and kind of a summary of the history of the church and of the, you know, the injustices that were happening to the members of the church. He was really reluctant on the other hand to talk about specific beliefs or to like list specific beliefs.
[00:07:24] And you know, you might ask why would, you know, why would the prophet be nervous about putting out specific beliefs. And I, and as he and a lot of the early church members and church leaders would say is, it is because the Latter Day Saint faith isn't meant to have creeds necessary necessarily.
[00:07:48] Joseph Smith said the Latter Day Saints have no creed, but they are ready to believe all true principles that exist as they are manifest from time to time.
[00:07:59] It feels so good not to be trammeled.
[00:08:03] So the idea is, is that, is that in our faith we, we definitely have some, we definitely have some core foundational doctrines and things that we do believe. But a, a big part of our faith is that we, we are part of a living church that receives, that receives continued revelation and continued understanding line upon line from church leaders now, from the Spirit now. And that even some of the practices and things in the church evolve and change over time too.
[00:08:41] Even if the core doctrines aren't changing, policy does. And we've seen that even just in our lifetimes quite a bit. And we're obviously going to be talking a lot about that today in the other sections.
[00:08:56] Even though Joseph Smith though was reluctant to publish specific lists of our church beliefs, other church leaders had no problem taking it upon themselves to do it. Oliver Cowdery.
[00:09:09] Cowdery had, I believe it was a list of eight principles that when you read through them you're like, oh yeah, this, this actually does cover quite a bit of what's even later in the official canonized articles of faith. Parley P. Pratt, Orson Pratt, Orson Hyde, all had written pretty long lists actually that, that cover general topics of our beliefs that again were even kind of used or quoted from. When Joseph Smith compiled his more official list of the, of our 13 core articles of faith, Joseph Smith was hit up by, in, in parentheses, Long John Wentworth, which is by the way, always will be the dopest nickname anybody can have. Long John.
[00:10:04] I almost wanted just have another child to name him John so that I can call him Long John because it's that awesome. Anyways, he was the editor of the, the Chicago Democrat, a newspaper, and he was hit up to ask Joseph Smith to provide again a summary of the church and the kind of the history of the church and then a more focused kind of official list of the core beliefs of Mormonism. Joseph Smith, of course, provided both a long summary of the history of the church and of the trials and various things that church members were going through and the injustices done to them in, in the various places that they were living and being removed from. And then at the end provided a list that we now know as the Articles of Faith. And the summary of the Church, of course, wasn't printed whatsoever as journalists back then were wont to do. But for whatever miracle it's worth, the Articles of Faith were published as Joseph Smith had printed them. So thank goodness for that.
[00:11:20] Joseph Smith later used this Wentworth letter, as it was called in the church paper Times and seasons in 1842, the Articles of Faith as we know them begin being used by missionaries abroad, church members and leaders in various classes and sermons.
[00:11:40] The Articles of Faith were canonized and called the Articles of Faith in General Conference 1880, and then were read again into official church canon in 1890, as they were read right before manifesto one was given to the Church in General Conference.
[00:12:01] A couple things that I just kind of want to briefly explore with the Articles of Faith are why are they important now?
[00:12:16] We have obviously received so much more incredibly amazing and rich doctrine. And even the church back then had, you know, temple ceremonies and had plural marriage and had the idea of exaltation and of the three kingdoms of heaven and had all of this really rich doctrine that wasn't covered in the Articles of Faith.
[00:12:43] Why is it still an important thing even now than to be discussing and to be, I guess, included in church canon if it's admittedly a very small, incomplete list of what our church believes?
[00:13:00] As I've kind of been preparing for this and thinking about it, there's two things that I think come to mind, at least for me, when thinking about that question or kind of going over that question. One is it's a fantastic entry point for new members of the church or for people investigating the church, or maybe even most importantly, just church members as children.
[00:13:23] As we all know, we all learn the songs in primary. It's one of the first things that we kind of work on with primary kids, you know, from year to year, kind of checking off or learning new articles of Faith.
[00:13:38] I don't know if they do it anymore, but I remember as a kid, I think we even got like a. I don't know, like a certificate or something when you would.
[00:13:45] When you would memorize and pass off all of the Articles of Faith, which at the time felt dope. And looking back, I'm like, oh man, I don't know if I actually even still have them memorized anymore. But I guess the idea is though, at the time were able to take really easily palatable, digestible, important core foundations of our religion and start with those things, even with small children, with the nature of God, the first principles and ordinances of the gospel priesthood, the way that we are subjected to governments of the countries we live in, which again, we will be talking about with the manifesto and just, and just the general idea of that we believe that God will yet reveal many great and important things on top of what we even know or understand now.
[00:14:49] And that again, as church members, it's our calling to do good, it's our calling to seek good things. It's our calling to read the scriptures that we believe in. The scriptures that we believe in the Bible as far as it is translated correctly, that we accept the Book of Mormon as the word of God and that again, we seek out as much light and knowledge as we can possibly get.
[00:15:15] It's a great foundation for a lot of people first learning about the church or coming into the church. And in that case, I think it's about as concise and a perfect entry into the, you know, Mormon doctrine or whatever LDS doctrine and leaves the door open for. And by the way, there's still a lot of other things. God will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.
[00:15:45] And what, what I guess is when I was saying earlier, what I love about the, the Articles of Faith that, that the lesson that we learn from the Articles of Faith, the, that aren't talked about in the Articles of Faith, again, go back to the idea that the LDS doctrine isn't creed the way that other religions have creed.
[00:16:09] And one of the most beautiful things about LDS doctrine is that it doesn't fit within these rigid boxes in these kind of archaic belief systems that have no flexibility or no, no, no flexibility. We have, we, we love and embrace the idea that policy changes, that fundamental doctrines don't, but that sometimes we don't know or understand why things are a certain way. But we go by faith with the idea that when we're given a, when we're given new information, that doesn't freak us out, instead that gives us a chance to really embrace that. And usually when we get new information, it helps clarify a lot of the things that maybe we didn't understand up to that point.
[00:17:08] And for me, one of the greatest lessons of the Articles of Faith is here is such a small, here is such a small, beautiful entry point.
[00:17:23] And we again, like the Articles of Faith, say, believe that God will yet reveal even more amazing things.
[00:17:34] Yeah, so that, for me, that's kind of the, that's kind of what I've got on the Articles of Faith.
[00:17:41] I was going to go through and kind of do a comprehensive deep dive into each one of them and see if there's something that we could add perspective to. But once I started kind of preparing for the Manifesto one and the Declaration two, I realized quickly we wouldn't have enough time for that. So let's actually move on and we'll get into the official Manifesto one.
[00:18:07] So historically, plural marriage as a principle wasn't any sort of a new idea or principle when the Saints began practicing it. Kind of starting in the early 1840s, biblical prophets had practiced plural marriage, and when instituted in the early church, it. It made sense for a lot of practical reasons, even if it's hard for some of us to kind of see it or accept it morally through today's kind of modern understanding or culture.
[00:18:42] I will just say a lot of excellent, thorough essays have been written dealing with the historical relevance, the moral relevance, the situational necessity in some cases, of the early saints and polygamy, and do a lot of a pretty thorough and excellent job of answering a lot of questions and criticisms in great detail.
[00:19:07] And I'm going to kind of stay away from a lot of that just because it's been so well covered in and by other people. But if you would like any links to that stuff, please feel free to email us at
[email protected] I believe it is.
[00:19:30] If not, go back on some further episodes and find the email address. Sorry, this is Jason's job, not mine.
[00:19:37] Or if you want, you can, I'm sure, just google it and find those two what I kind of want to focus on is the situation shortly before and shortly after the first manifesto. So the church was at the time under immense pressure from the federal government to end plural marriages.
[00:19:55] It had been kind of an issue with the Saints even in Illinois and Missouri.
[00:20:01] A lot of the people in the communities that weren't LDS saw it as abhorrent and weren't into it at all. And even when the Saints moved out to Utah, stories of polygamy would make their way into newspapers again, who were not covering it. Probably the most accurately or fairly, or even if they were, there were citizens that were still pretty upset about it and would then pressure their representatives to crack down on the practice, not only in their respective states, but also out in Utah.
[00:20:39] So the government passed a series of laws that basically put the church on notice that if this practice continues to be practiced in the church that their property would be confiscated.
[00:20:55] Temples, churches would all be confiscated, and any of the men practicing this would be in jail for sometimes really long sentences.
[00:21:07] This is kind of what I want to focus on is basically the impossible situation that a lot of people were put in at the time and how it, how important it is even now as we continue to get new commandments and things and have clarification of old practices and policy and commandments, how important it is to really have a relationship with God and how it is so important to be able to hear what we're being told by our general authorities and then as we were told by Joseph Smith and every prophet after that, then take it to the Lord and figure out where and how to best follow that commandment. So the impossible situation is the church is basically looking at losing their temples, losing their church, church houses and a lot of other property and stuff that the church owns at the time here in Utah, which is obviously not acceptable considering if the churches lose their temples, the whole point of having this church restored, which is to save us and to save our dead, basically comes to a grinding halt and isn't able to go forward. So that's unacceptable. And then you look at the tough situation for actual members of the church and leaders of the church that did have large families with multiple wives.
[00:22:46] The situation is a lose, lose on both sides. If they continue to practice or continue to stay in these plural marriages, they risk going to jail and losing their property and cutting off any sort of income or ways of taking care of these large families.
[00:23:06] But at the same time they are looking at the situation like, well, I can't just, I can't just leave and as the provider for these families and let you know, however many wives and however many children all fend for themselves either, so. So I can't just abandon that and by the way, break the covenants that I've made.
[00:23:29] And so again, it's hard when we, I guess maybe it's not hard. I think it's unfortunately sometimes a bit too easy to look at this situation from a critical standpoint when it's truly a no win situation.
[00:23:46] I've seen and read and have talked to a lot of critics of the church that attack the leaders and the members from both sides of this at the same time.
[00:23:55] If the church were to just say, okay, cool, we're totally done with this. Now that the laws are passed, all polygamist families are now just broken up, it's easy for the critic to then accuse them basically of revelation based on a situation and not from God, which in and of itself is a pretty kind of like overly simplistic and kind of a corny way of really viewing any revelation by itself as it is, considering Revelation for the most part is absolutely given in a pertinent situation. Right. A lot of the situations usually provide great context or understanding for the revelation in which is being given.
[00:24:35] I get that it's easy to criticize policy changes in a church by going, oh, I thought, you know, I thought that if it's right that it would never change and it's, and it was all just based on the political climate and that's what's dictating it. But like so many of those situations are there to provide the most incredible understanding and context for why things would be changing or why we would be getting more information on certain policies. Right. And the light knowledge given in those situations really, really couldn't be probably taught or understood had they not been absolutely as part of a climate or a situation that would necessitate something to be learned. Look at Adam and Eve in the garden, inside and outside of the garden. Look at the Word of Wisdom.
[00:25:30] I can probably imagine that Emma not wanting people spitting all over her floor was probably the perfect time for Joseph Smith to receive the revelation of on the Word of Wisdom. Which by the way, totally makes sense.
[00:25:46] You look at the children of Israel both in Egypt during Passover.
[00:25:52] You look at the 10 Commandments that the children of Israel got out when, when they were out of, of Egypt wandering around. You look at early apostles writing letters to the saints. I mean, the majority of our New Testament is, is early apostles teaching and providing context and new information and policy to members of the church literally because of very specific situations that were confusing or that. Or that were present in different regions for members of the church in those different reasons. So the idea that, oh, well, we're, you're only get, you're only getting this revelation because of the, of the political pressures, the political climate or the, or, or. Oh, it's really convenient that the situation was this and then the revelation came. It's like, yes, yeah, of course.
[00:26:48] Like it. It's silly to suggest and dismiss revelation because of the situation that is given is like, no, that's, that's exactly how revelation is given.
[00:27:02] And by the way, thank you. Because then in those situations. Oh yeah, cool. This makes sense why this would be given. So I kind of have a hard time with that criticism in the first place, but in this situation specifically. Yeah. What are they supposed to do?
[00:27:17] I mean, the government's threatening to come and, and take their properties, which by the way, keep in mind, they part of the reason that they've been run out of a lot of the cities that they had Established up to this point was because of plural marriage. It's not like. It's not like their lives just suddenly became complicated and hard once they got to Utah. It's like, no, no, no, no.
[00:27:44] It would have been very easy and convenient way earlier on in this situation if it was all because of political pressure and ease to go, hey, we're gonna not even have this practice to begin in the first place.
[00:27:58] This had been, this had been a problem or not a problem, but this had been an issue that had been basically being used by, by those persecuting members of the church from the very beginning of this practice.
[00:28:16] You look at it at this point, and it's literally now, at this point, hey, we've run you out of our cities, we've sent you out into the middle of nowhere, and now we're going to come and take all of your property.
[00:28:29] I feel like it makes sense that the Lord let his members practice and learn something that again, in, in my historical context, my view, historically, absolutely made sense as a commandment and as a practice, and that it was time for the Lord to go, okay, for the long term sustainability and survival of my church, this practice will end for now or forever. We don't know the answer.
[00:29:05] Critics also like to attack the church then of basically saying, oh, well, okay, well, if you're going to end it, then why were you.
[00:29:12] Why did it take 14 more years of kind of being misleading before completely dissolving families that were, you know, polygamous families? Or, or, or even. Why were you being deceptive about even entering into more plural marriages? Even after the first manifesto, which absolutely happened, it was, it was to an incredibly small scale compared to what it was before. But, but the members of the church found some pretty interesting ways around the United States laws, most obviously going to Mexico or going to Canada or even in some cases, just going out to sea, which is kind of genius. But again, yes, there were still marriages happening after the first manifesto. It is important, though, to note that in the first manifesto, Wilford Woodruff was very careful with the wording of, of how he presented it, which was not as, as a, as a presidency of the church. Like, like a lot of the declarations are after this as a first presidency and as the quorum of the twelve apostles, we officially declare that X, Y and Z, which we'll talk about in the next few weeks, some of the other declarations, but in this case, it was very much, here is revelation that I have received as the prophet.
[00:30:53] Here is how I would advise those in this Church to go forward from here because of the laws and the pressures that we're receiving.
[00:31:02] The first manifesto was only seen by him and a couple of the apostles before its publication.
[00:31:09] And in it the wording is very careful to, to express what the prophet was trying to say at the time, which was, hey, this practice is going to end. We are as a church, I'm advising us to no longer participate in this, in this practice anymore. Which by the way, in a no win situation is about as, I mean, I guess it's about as clean as you can do it, which is, yes, we, we understand the position this puts a lot of us in.
[00:31:47] We're going to do this so that we can not get all of our property taken.
[00:31:52] And then again in 1904, I believe is when finally the church is like, okay, by policy we are going to strictly enforce this commandment. Right? But there was a time kind of in between that, that, that allowed church members who by the way, in this situation were probably terrified and confused. And I can only imagine families hearing this manifesto going, oh, I have, you know, three wives and I don't know, 25 children who all rely on me. I can't just leave them. And because I'm scared of what is going to happen to us.
[00:32:31] It was probably, again, looking at this historically, it feels like it's about the best way that this could have possibly been handled. Understanding that it's a no win situation, understanding that everybody's probably confused.
[00:32:44] It's easier to understand why the manifestos were rolled out the way that they were.
[00:32:50] Clearly God knew for the long term preservation and worship of his church leaders, followers, the church would have to live by the laws of whether you want to say they're just or unjust, but that it would take some time for the implementation of that to actually work.
[00:33:08] And then in 1904, when the church again began strictly enforcing this, there was a that that left plenty of time in between there for people to figure out how, where they fit in this. Right.
[00:33:23] I would like to say that in a situation like this, and this is where I'm going to a lot of this, obviously I'm trying to be as factual about some of this, but also hopefully offer some personal context to this or opinion to this. This, I will say is this, this. What I'm going to say now is I'm going to say very much my opinion. I obviously think my opinion's right, but please take it for what it's worth. In a situation like this where you do have a governing body that passes a law that, that immediately makes previously law abiding citizens criminals.
[00:34:07] I will personally always default to God's law above man's law, and that it is the right of citizens and maybe even in some cases the duty of citizens to uphold their covenants.
[00:34:24] I know that critics of the church have a hard time with, with early church leaders and members being, as they would say, deceptive during the years of 1890 when the first manifesto came out and 1904 saying, well, it doesn't seem like, it doesn't seem like it's something that again, church leaders would do, being dishonest, you know, if it's the right thing, then they would, they wouldn't be deceptive about it. And I would say, okay, hold on.
[00:34:55] This, this, this country by the way, was founded on a bit of civil disobedience.
[00:35:01] When I read the scriptures, I read what I would call a lot of situations of some righteous deception.
[00:35:10] Pretty early on in the Book of Mormon we read about Nephi who by the way just got done killing a corrupt drunk Laban, tricked his servant, basically was very deceptive, tricked his servant into going and getting him the plates and then escorting him out of town. One of many examples throughout the scriptures. But simply put, in my opinion, God's law transcends man's law.
[00:35:37] In this no win situation, I, I, it's hard for me to think of what other choice a lot of fathers especially had in this, in this, in this situation where they're like, I've made a covenant to take care and provide for this family.
[00:35:57] But at the same time, if I do go to jail, then I can't provide for this family either. Therefore I will be righteously deceptive or not always the most.
[00:36:10] Hey, you're right everybody. I guess I am doing this. Throw me in prison.
[00:36:15] I have personal, I have personally thought through this and to me this, this makes so much sense that again, when discussing this with somebody who's being critical of this situation, I always kind of default to put yourself in this situation honestly and tell me what you would do.
[00:36:40] I'm, I'm gonna, I feel like that, that's thorough enough for that.
[00:36:45] Again though, as we now understand and practice, by a matter of policy, we don't practice, we practice, we do practice monogamous relationships.
[00:36:56] Thank goodness. For me, personally, I, I love my wife and, and I think that marriage is, is the most amazing and sometimes hardest thing in the entire world. And I probably, I probably feel like I speak for a lot of people when I say it takes all of my Strength to do my best to make that a good relationship without, without all of the other things that would come along with multiple relationships like that.
[00:37:24] And with that said, I can see completely the necessity and why the commandment was given early in the Church when it was.
[00:37:35] All right, let's move on to our third and final topic, which is the church's declaration number two.
[00:37:45] So as we know, declaration number two is the declaration in 1978 that stated that all worthy men can receive the priesthood.
[00:38:00] I say that specifically because I know sometimes it is.
[00:38:04] No, it is only it is, it's a matter of blacks. And the priesthood is how I hear it describe it all the time, like, whoa, no, it's actually very much broader than that. It's all worthy men, no matter what color of skin they have, can receive the priesthood.
[00:38:21] When again, talking about this specifically, it's, it's sometimes not the easiest thing to talk about again, because when we look at a lot of this through our modern lenses, modern societal lenses, we, I feel like, can be very.
[00:38:43] Simplistic in the way that we judge the situation.
[00:38:48] I will say that this in, as a missionary, especially in Oakland, California, was something that I have in the past struggled with greatly because again, when we look at this through our current understanding, it's a pretty heavy, it's a pretty heavy situation to try to, to come to terms with that at any point in our church's history that anybody that was worthy hasn't been able to receive the fullness of the blessings of this church, especially if those things have anything to do with race.
[00:39:33] As we probably know now, early on in the church, Joseph Smith, you know, gave the priesthood to African American men, had friends that were black. And it wasn't until Brigham Young became the prophet that there became a policy change that anybody of color couldn't have the fullness of the priesthood, blessings and temple ordinances.
[00:40:08] To try and sugarcoat some of this, I feel like is disingenuous and is not helpful. And as somebody that has had a lot of conflict with this myself and have friends and family who have left the church because they correctly feel like some of the history of the church has been sugarcoated to this point. And then we enter the age of information where all information is available to us at all time. And we can then go back and look through the early part of this church critically with a lot of information.
[00:40:50] It's easy to sometimes look at situations and go, why do I feel like I was kind of told the sugar coated version of this? Or why do I Feel like I was kind of told the easy, comfortable version of this.
[00:41:08] I don't feel like as church members we should ever feel like we can't be honest.
[00:41:12] And again, one of my favorite people ever. But President Hinckley said pretty specifically like our church history is, is important and is everything to who we are even now. And, and I accept that and I embrace that. To try to pretend that early church leaders weren't and didn't have some pretty unacceptable today's standards and should have never been acceptable to any standards. Racism back in the day is and would be lying about this. Right?
[00:41:51] Trying to, trying to say, well, they were, they were racist more than anybody else at the time is also a disingenuous thing to say. And it's important to also understand that, that Christianity and the history of it after, after the, the apostasy and kind of during the rebuilding of Christianity, there's, there's always been some very serious racial problems. I mean, the, you, you look at, you look at a lot of the Christie, a lot of the Christian churches, even around the time of the, the beginnings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and you have a lot of denominations that would, that would segregate, you know, white members and, and black members or I mean, even just as recently as like the 60s, you know, and 70s and, and probably even later, a lot of, A lot of the Ku Klux Klan, some of the most vile racists in in our modern history in this country would were all kind of part of the same, you know, religious congregations and things like that.
[00:43:12] Christianity in general, there has, there has absolutely been, you know, very, very, very troubling relationships with race.
[00:43:26] When when we look at this, when we look at the beginnings of, of the, of the policy ban of the priesthood being given to any worthy male, no matter what race or color of their skin.
[00:43:44] We we have to, we have to at some point understand that we might not know the reason why that that happened.
[00:43:55] There are a lot of speculations, there are a lot of, there are a lot of kind of stories about what was going on, you know, in winter quarters at the time, what was going on with early members of the church. But instead of trying to, instead of trying to come to a, a really easy convenient.
[00:44:18] Oh yeah, well, this, this is why, this is why it started in the first place.
[00:44:24] The church has never given us an official reason and on some level, I don't know if anybody actually alive today has the official reason. We don't know.
[00:44:38] And it could have been a mixture of a Lot of things. It could have been cultural pressures. It could have been because of a couple bad relationships or not relationships, but a couple bad circumstances and.
[00:44:53] And situations.
[00:44:57] We don't have the answer. And as much as I don't like not having the answers to things, this has been one of the things that I have had to accept that I may not understand in this life, and that is why the policy was implemented in the first place.
[00:45:18] For me, though, I feel like there's an amazing lesson to be learned.
[00:45:25] When the ban was lifted.
[00:45:28] At the time that the ban was lifted, you have a lot of the leaders of the church that had, basically throughout the band, had said things like, well, it might have been because of a curse. It might have been.
[00:45:46] Or it's because of a. It's because of a curse that dates back to Ham, which, by the way, thankfully, like, thank God the church is very explicit in coming out and saying now those ideas were absolutely, completely wrong and we disavow them. That is absolutely not the case.
[00:46:05] Well, how could. How could a prophet back then say those things? How could apostles back then say those things?
[00:46:12] That's a very real question.
[00:46:15] I'm. I'm actually going to leave it to our favorite apostle from back in the day, Bruce R. McConkie, to give us an answer for that. Because after the.
[00:46:26] Because he himself, by the way, had. Had speculated basing a lot of his opinion off of kind of just cultural understandings and. And trying to guess.
[00:46:39] Trying to guess why the ban was there in the first place.
[00:46:43] After the. After 1978, when. When the ban was lifted. I'm going to read his statements. Quote.
[00:46:53] There are statements in our literature by the early brethren which have been or which have interpreted to mean that the Negroes would not receive the priesthood in mortality. I have said the same things.
[00:47:05] All I can say to that is.
[00:47:07] All I can say to that. It is time disbelieving people repented and God in line believing in a living modern prophet.
[00:47:16] Forget everything that I have said.
[00:47:20] I'm going to pause there in the quote.
[00:47:23] That's kind of a great statement, especially in a circumstance like this.
[00:47:29] Back to the quote. Forget everything that I have said or. Or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. And this is again, outside of the quote.
[00:47:45] This is where I received an answer that has put a lot of my issues at rest.
[00:47:56] Back to the quote. We spoke with a limited understanding and. And without the light and knowledge that has now come into the world.
[00:48:04] We get our truth and our light. Light line upon line and precept upon precept.
[00:48:11] We have now added a new flood of intelligence and light on this particular subject and it erases all the darkness and all the views and all the thoughts of the past.
[00:48:24] They don't matter anymore. It doesn't make a particle of difference what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June of this year, 1978. It is a new day and a new arrangement. And the Lord has now given the revelation that sheds light out into the world on this subject.
[00:48:43] As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we for we forget about them.
[00:48:51] We now do.
[00:48:54] Sorry, we now do what Meridian Israel did when the Lord said the gospel should go to the Gentiles. We forget about the statements that limited the gospel to the house of Israel and we start going to the Gentiles. End quote.
[00:49:07] Again, I, I, as I read this, I know some of this is like, well, you can't just, you can't just forget about all of the things that were said.
[00:49:15] I get it. What I love about what he said there is the, the principle of that we, they as apostles or we as church members or whatever, we do our best at times to make sense of things that we don't understand.
[00:49:35] And at times we as members of the church and also the human members that are the leadership of this church who are, who are not infallible, also try to reason and make sense of things that they don't understand.
[00:49:55] President Dallin H. Oaks has a pretty great talk about that. Where, where in speaking of this specifically he, he says and counsels us, hey, this is a great situation in which to learn another lesson, which is you don't have to have answers or understanding for everything because sometimes in a situation like this you're made to, you're made to basically look pretty bad having to having to go back and be like, oh yeah, I guess I was just kind of trying my best to make sense of this. No, sometimes we can't make sense of this, by the way. Sometimes we can't make sense of this because it was wrong policy for what we understand now.
[00:50:37] Again, I'm, I'm never, I, I would never have the, you know, audacity to suggest that for sure it was wrong because of the way that we look at it now. But for whatever it's worth, it sounds like because of the statements again of the, of the brethren around that time, I feel like pretty safe in saying that was A wrong policy that was righted, and there wasn't a full understanding at the time of why that policy was even put into place in the first place and made it very easy for people to be very wrong about the nature of that policy to begin with.
[00:51:22] The lesson, at least for me from this and the thing that I take from this and would hope to pass along as hopefully one of the many lessons that we can learn from this is twofold.
[00:51:37] One being that we really don't always understand things and that, by the way, when commandments are given, other than with whatever kind of like context they're given in, we're not usually given a lot of answers right then at the same, at the same time as the commandments given, we're required to do what we can with the information that we're given and to use faith in obeying the commandments that we're given.
[00:52:08] There are commandments, and clearly there have been throughout the history of the church that have later been reversed or policy that has later been reversed.
[00:52:17] I can only imagine the absolute joy for a lot of people that were probably struggling with this during those years to see that there was a misunderstanding and that that policy was wrong and that absolutely all men are seen as equals in the eyes of God.
[00:52:46] It's. Instead of trying to dismiss or make excuses for things that we just don't have the information for, it's really okay to say I don't know.
[00:52:58] And for me that's hard because I like to feel like I have an answer for everything. Especially when people are critical of my beliefs, I like to have an answer.
[00:53:10] And simply put, I don't have an answer to everything.
[00:53:16] Even as a church, we don't have an official answer to how that policy even became a thing in the first place. Right. The second thing that I do get from this is that we are a living church. And I truly believe that one of the most incredible and miraculous parts about this church is that we are continually led by leaders who seek daily for inspiration from God in the ways that the church is governed, and that through time, absolutely, things are understood differently and things are viewed differently.
[00:54:01] And early on when our church was formed, unfortunately, the way that most people at that time saw people of a different race or a different color of skin than them was completely unacceptable. And it's very easy for us to see that with our modern perspective and that over time, hopefully we will be able to even look back now and, and say, oh, we even have hopefully continued light and perspective and, and, and understanding of the nature of God and of the commandments and of the nature of ourselves and how to best interact with those around us. And even in my lifetime, just watching how so much of the messaging of the church has really transformed from sometimes culturally, what it felt like when I was younger is. It's like, you know, we. You know, we love the righteous and hate the wicked. I know that that's probably.
[00:55:12] That's probably oversimplifying it, but. But it was very easy to be judgmental, and I love that. So much of the messaging, even now, as the church has really moved into love, love, love, love, love, love.
[00:55:31] And I look at that as even more of a testimony to me that we are being led by people who are inspired, by leaders who are inspired, and that sometimes we won't understand a lot of things, but we can take comfort and have faith in the fact that God is the head of this church.
[00:56:04] All right, thank you for.
[00:56:07] Thank you for bearing with me through this. I am not used to hosting the entire show, so hopefully that wasn't too painful for anybody.
[00:56:15] Nearly as painful for you as it was for me trying to discuss hard topics by myself, by the way, without Jason to help me out, to bail me out. But anyways, next week we'll be talking about some more of the church declarations.
[00:56:29] We only have a couple episodes left. I think there's going to be a Christmas episode after that, and then Jason and I will start digging into the Old Testament again. If you have any questions or comments or thoughts, please hit us up at
[email protected] thank you again for listening. And until next week, Sam.
