0:01

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of

0:03

Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John DeLynn.

0:06

It is June 6, 2024.

0:09

We are here for part three of our

0:11

amazing, epic groundbreaking

0:13

series on

0:15

this book, Second Class Saints, Black

0:18

Mormons and the Struggle for

0:20

Racial Equality by Dr. Matthew

0:22

Harris. As those of you

0:24

know, we're doing a deep dive into

0:27

the Mormon

0:29

Church's priesthood and temple ban

0:31

on black people that lasted for over 150

0:33

years. And

0:37

this is not only integrated into the

0:39

Mormon Stories Podcast feed, but it's also

0:41

its own standalone podcast on Spotify and

0:44

on Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Today

0:47

we're going to be covering one

0:49

of the most important heroes in

0:55

20th century Mormonism, or maybe in

0:57

all of Mormonism. And

0:59

his name is Larry Nelson, Dr. Larry

1:01

Nelson. I assume he is a PhD.

1:03

I'm pretty sure he was. But

1:05

this is a man who stood

1:08

up for

1:11

black members of the

1:14

church, even spoke out against

1:17

the priesthood ban in the 40s, 1940s and 50s, and

1:19

had not only

1:23

a public debate with another BYU professor

1:26

in a national magazine,

1:29

but also had several

1:31

exchanges with the Mormon

1:33

Church first presidency. And

1:36

eventually this led to kind of force

1:38

the hand of the Mormon Church first

1:41

presidency, which led to one of

1:43

the first, if not the first

1:46

sort of doctrinal affirmations

1:49

of the priesthood ban, which

1:52

later gets reinterpreted as

1:54

the opinions of church

1:56

leaders, not necessarily doctrine,

1:58

just policy. This

2:00

is this is a really important

2:02

episode And

2:04

I am joined today again by

2:07

my colleague in All

2:10

good things. Here are two Samano. Hey, Gerardo. Hi

2:13

John. Thanks for joining Yes,

2:16

of course. I'm really excited about

2:18

this one Yeah, and we've

2:20

got of course the author of this

2:22

book Matt Harris. Hey Matt. Welcome back.

2:25

Hey John. Hey, Gerardo So

2:28

really quickly I just do what I do every time

2:30

This is a this is kind of a pilot

2:33

We're three episodes into what we hope to be

2:35

a series Much like the John

2:37

Larson series on Mormon stories and much like

2:39

the LDS discussion series So

2:42

at some point we're gonna have to

2:44

assess whether y'all want this series to continue

2:46

But the way that you can vote

2:48

for it would be to become a

2:50

monthly donor Go to donor box

2:53

org Slash Matt Harris

2:55

sign up to become a monthly donor if we get let's

2:58

just say 50 to 100 of you To

3:00

donate 10 bucks a month I'm

3:03

certain that we can make

3:05

this a 10 to 20 part series

3:07

and I'm also certain that the

3:10

world Mormons progressive

3:12

Mormons ex Mormons Never

3:14

Mormons will all benefit from this really

3:16

thoughtful discussion because it doesn't just talk

3:19

about the Mormon Church priesthood ban And

3:21

temple ban and racism, but it

3:23

also talks about how the Mormon Church Makes

3:26

decisions how the inside? Mormon

3:30

leadership how issues get raised

3:32

how they get debated how they get decided

3:34

how the church deals with dissenters all

3:37

of that is Super crucial and

3:39

why we believe this is worth

3:41

a series because it extends far

3:43

beyond into even How

3:45

the church has dealt with critics in recent times

3:48

how it deals with women has it how it

3:50

deals with the LGBT issues? Just

3:52

how the church changes. So anyway, please

3:55

donate to this series so

3:57

that it can become the 10 to 20

3:59

part series series that it deserves. All right.

4:02

So before we jump in, anything

4:05

that, Gerardo, anything you want to say

4:07

as a precursor to this deep dive

4:09

on Larry Nelson? No,

4:12

other than I agree with you that

4:14

this is probably going to be a, well, this is

4:17

going to be a really important episode, where

4:19

we're going to get really interesting

4:21

correspondents with the first presidency. I

4:25

think these are topics that a lot

4:27

of our audience are really interested to hear. All

4:31

right. All right. So Matt,

4:33

we debated whether or not

4:35

to start by doing

4:38

a deep dive into the

4:40

scriptural basis, basies, basically

4:42

the main Mormon scriptures in Book of Moses and

4:44

Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon that

4:47

were used to kind of justify the

4:49

priesthood ban by some general authorities, we

4:51

decided we're going to hold that analysis

4:54

for a future episode dealing with Adam

4:56

Benian, Apostle Adam Benian, and Lowell Benian.

5:01

But for some reason, I felt like that would

5:03

be an important place to start today's episode. And

5:05

I don't know if you would

5:07

even want to say anything about that before we jump

5:09

into Larry Nelson. But where do

5:11

you think we should begin on our

5:15

discussion about not Larry Nelson? Other

5:18

than I have one question, and that would

5:20

be, were there any opponents,

5:24

private or public, to

5:26

the priesthood ban before Larry

5:28

Nelson starts speaking up in the mid

5:30

1940s? Maybe let's start

5:32

there. And anything

5:35

else you want to say about scriptural justification? Yeah,

5:38

so I think the best

5:40

way to talk about the scriptural justifications would

5:43

be to talk about just to briefly recap

5:45

some things we've said over the past couple

5:47

of segments, which is that

5:50

in 1852, the ban

5:52

was put in place by Brigham Young,

5:54

which also barred people

5:56

of Black African ancestry from the

5:59

temple. And

6:02

throughout the 19th century, there are

6:04

various racial theories circulating among high

6:06

church leaders about why

6:09

they can't hold the priesthood. Some leaders

6:11

argued that it's because they were less

6:13

valiant in the pre-existence. Some

6:15

argue that it's because they were neutral.

6:18

They were fence-fitters in the pre-existence. That

6:20

is, they didn't take sides in this

6:22

war between Jesus Christ

6:24

or Jehovah and Satan. Some

6:27

argued that they were cursed. They

6:29

bore this biblical curse, and this is why they

6:31

were denied the priesthood. And some argued for all

6:33

of the above, some form of all of the

6:35

above. So needless to say,

6:37

it raised a lot of questions in the

6:40

minds of Latter-day Saints about why

6:42

it was that the church had barred people

6:44

of Black African descent from the temple and

6:46

the priesthood. And so they

6:49

wrote the Brethren questions, or sent them letters

6:51

in Salt Lake asking them questions about

6:53

why they were barred. And there was really

6:56

no doctrine. Up until the

6:58

mid-20th century, it was more of a policy and

7:00

a practice and less about a doctrine. And

7:03

as we're going to talk about today, it becomes

7:05

a doctrine in 1949. The

7:07

Brethren will solidify these policies

7:09

and practices of Black priesthood

7:11

denial into doctrine. And

7:13

one of the pivotal figures in this story would

7:16

be a man named Lowry Nelson. But

7:19

with the Scriptures, there are four

7:21

different... Can I just

7:23

jump in and just say, we covered in last episode

7:26

that both Joseph F. Smith... Tell me if I'm wrong.

7:29

The Mormon prophet Joseph F.

7:32

Smith and eventual

7:34

Mormon apostle and prophet Joseph

7:36

Fielding Smith, both... It's

7:40

our understanding that both acknowledged in

7:42

the early 20th century that they couldn't

7:45

find any

7:47

record of a priesthood ban

7:49

being codified by Joseph

7:51

Smith or Brigham Young. Is that right?

7:54

Yeah, that's an important point. And

7:56

they... Joseph F. Smith and his

7:58

counselors in the first presidency... they had looked and

8:00

looked, and they weren't the only ones, but

8:03

they had looked at some

8:05

of the founding revelations to

8:07

ascertain whether the band began with Joseph

8:10

Smith or Brigham Young and

8:12

whether there was an actual revelation from

8:14

God suggesting why Black

8:16

people ought to be banned, and

8:19

they couldn't find one. And they write letters

8:21

among themselves talking about, you know, we're looking

8:23

and we can't find one. But

8:26

nevertheless, they maintain this narrative that

8:28

the band began with Joseph Smith,

8:30

even though some of a

8:33

handful of Black men were ordained to the

8:35

priesthood in the early days of the church,

8:37

they argue that he was the founding prophet,

8:40

he was the one that exposited the great founding

8:43

doctrines of the church, and therefore he must have

8:45

put the band in place that Brigham Young and

8:47

other successors had followed. So it's

8:50

a little bit nebulous with the provenance and

8:52

the origins of the band from Joseph F.

8:54

Smith's part. And so there's a

8:56

lot of confusion about, again, who started the

8:58

ban and when and by whom, and what

9:01

were the justifications for the ban. And

9:03

this would all be settled in the 20th

9:05

century. And also in last episode, we talked

9:07

about Joseph F. Smith being commissioned by the

9:09

first presidency to write this book, The Way

9:11

of Perfection, where he basically

9:13

neglects to mention Black

9:16

people receiving the priesthood during Joseph Smith's time.

9:18

And this sort of begins, this puts the

9:20

church on the road to codification

9:23

of the priesthood ban as doctrine. Wouldn't you say

9:25

that's fair? It is.

9:27

And when, because of

9:30

the various racial theories circulating,

9:33

Joseph F. Smith wrote this book

9:35

to systematize the church's race teachings.

9:37

He felt that he had the

9:40

authority of the first presidency to do it.

9:43

And the book is not just about Black

9:46

people in the priesthood, but certainly those are

9:48

the most aggressive chapters in

9:50

the entire book, chapters 15 and 16,

9:53

which he articulates a new

9:55

systematic theology, trying to understand how Black

9:57

people fit into the plan of something.

10:00

salvation, why they were cursed, and what

10:02

it would take to remove that curse.

10:04

And so the chapters are really, really

10:07

explicit. And we also talked about

10:09

last hour that the brethren by

10:11

the mid 20th century, they

10:13

recognize that this book is

10:15

controversial. And when they

10:18

translated it into Portuguese, in particular,

10:20

they remove chapters 15 and 16

10:22

because they don't want Brazilian

10:26

and Portuguese Latter-day Saints to

10:28

read these offensive chapters. OK,

10:31

even though they didn't remove it from the

10:33

English version for decades, right? It

10:35

was as far as I know, it was never removed

10:37

from the English versions up until they so it was

10:39

published in 1931, went through, I think, 17 different reprintings

10:43

over the years, and I checked

10:46

with my good friend, sad to

10:48

say, the late great Kurt Bench, who owned

10:50

a wonderful bookstore in Salt Lake called Benchmark

10:52

Books. His son now runs it. But

10:55

anyway, Kurt used to work for Desert Book.

10:57

And I asked her, I

10:59

said, you know, the way to

11:01

perfection just seems to have disappeared. When did it happen? And

11:03

I had an idea when it happened, but I wasn't quite

11:05

sure. And so Kurt looked at some old

11:08

catalogs from Desert Book that he had

11:10

at Benchmark. And Kurt speculated

11:13

that it was removed from Desert Book shelves sometime

11:15

in 1989 and 1990 when the church was started

11:17

to expand

11:21

globally and calling its first black general

11:23

authority and so forth. So

11:25

but the last edition that I've seen from

11:28

1989, actually the last edition was 86, I

11:30

think they removed 89. But anyway, it

11:32

had 15 and 16 in there. OK,

11:35

so you were saying I stopped. I just want

11:37

to make sure we got the

11:40

Joseph Fielding-Smith part in. So where

11:43

I guess we were wondering, I was

11:45

wondering if there were any other dissenters, significant

11:48

dissenters, internal or external. We talked

11:50

about Talmage. Was

11:53

it Widstow last time? Talmage or Widstow,

11:55

one of the two. In Widstow, Elder

11:57

Widstow. Any outright opponents to the presentation?

11:59

did ban internal or out internal that

12:02

you know of internal or

12:04

external prior to Larry Nelson? Chris

12:06

Bounds Yeah, so Elder Widso

12:09

did not support the ban and didn't

12:11

support, I should say

12:13

that he didn't support the one drop

12:15

rule. Maybe that's more accurate because what

12:18

we see in the Council of 12-Minute Records,

12:21

the Elder Widso recommends ordaining

12:23

biracial Latter-day Saints to the

12:26

priesthood. And that would,

12:28

of course, contradict the one drop rule. And

12:31

so he's not comfortable with that. J.

12:33

Reuben Clark is another high-ranking church leader.

12:35

He's in the First Presidency. He

12:38

is not comfortable with the one drop rule. And

12:42

just to remind your listeners, the one drop

12:44

rule means that if you have a hundred

12:46

people in your ancestral line and one of

12:48

them has ties to Africa, just one out

12:50

of the hundred, you would be deemed cursed.

12:53

You would be denied

12:55

the priesthood and access to the temple.

12:57

And also in 1930, the US Census

12:59

used the one drop rule to define

13:01

African ancestry. So it's sort

13:04

of mainstream at this point in the United States

13:06

and that the church follows this rule. All

13:10

right, so let's see. Elder

13:13

Widso would be one of them. And then we're

13:16

going to talk about today or maybe next episode,

13:19

an apostle named Adam S. Benyon. He

13:21

would be another one who opposes the

13:23

priesthood ban. Before Lowry? Just

13:26

hard to say, but

13:29

certainly around the time of the 1940s that

13:34

Elder Benyon

13:37

has reservations about it. And

13:40

David O. McKay, who's an apostle, and he would go

13:43

on to become the LDS Church president from 1952 to

13:45

1970. But when he was an

13:48

apostle, Elder McKay is starting to

13:51

have some grumblings within. And I

13:54

think it's really important to contrast something

13:56

for a quick moment. And that is just

13:59

because Elder Benjamin, Elder Widsoe, and

14:01

Elder McKay have reservations about the

14:03

ban and the one drop rule

14:06

and so forth, it doesn't mean

14:08

that they're really, really pressing the

14:10

issue. These guys are consensus figures,

14:12

they're not activists, and we'll

14:14

see that change later on in the late 1950s and

14:17

60s when Hubie Brown comes

14:20

into the First Presidency. He

14:22

not only rejects the priesthood ban, but

14:24

he spends every minute of

14:26

the day, figuratively speaking, trying to end it.

14:28

And he does so in ways that Latter-day

14:31

Saints couldn't even imagine today.

14:34

So a few people, mid-century, Marion

14:36

D. Hanks, who was called in as a general authority, and

14:38

I think 46 or 47, he

14:41

does not support the ban, but he's a lower ranking

14:43

general authority, doesn't have the cloud of the 12. But

14:47

I guess the important point here is

14:49

that most of the apostles will follow

14:51

Joseph Fielding Smith and his hardline views.

14:53

Okay. Okay,

14:56

so definitely no

14:58

agitators let's

15:01

just say Lowry Nelson might be the

15:03

first known real agitator

15:05

against the priesthood ban,

15:08

right? Confrontational activist

15:11

agitator. There's no question about

15:13

it. He's... Okay. Yes. All

15:15

right. Okay, let's keep going. All

15:19

right. So well, let's talk about with

15:21

the Mormon racial theories and teachings in

15:23

flux by the mid-20th century with members

15:25

being confused about, you know, were they

15:27

less valiant? Were they neutral? All

15:30

of that stuff. This

15:33

all comes to a head in

15:36

1947 when a Mormon

15:39

academic named Lowry Nelson should give you

15:41

his biography. He was born in the

15:43

late 19th century in a little small

15:45

town in Utah called Farron, F-E-R-R-O-N, and

15:49

grew up in an Orthodox Mormon home. And

15:53

he went to Utah State Agricultural College

15:55

where he graduated. Went on to do

15:57

PhD work in sociology at the University

15:59

of Utah. of Wisconsin in the 1920s.

16:02

And in his academic career, he

16:05

taught at BYU for a short stint. He

16:07

taught at Utah State, what would become Utah

16:09

State. And he spent the bulk of

16:11

his career at the University of

16:13

Minnesota teaching sociology. And he retired in I think

16:15

1958. He also spent some

16:18

time brief stints in between his

16:21

academic work, working for the New

16:23

Deal, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration,

16:25

working in agricultural affairs. And

16:27

so he's, his specialty is

16:30

sociology, and particularly Cuba. And

16:33

so doing his field work over the years, he spent a lot of

16:35

time in Cuba. So we knew this island

16:37

well, he knew the population

16:39

well, he knew that it was biracial, he

16:42

knew that it was the last one of

16:44

the last, it was a long standing slave

16:47

colony, it produced sugar.

16:49

And so he knew that it had a long history

16:52

of race mixing. And so in 1947, Lowry

16:56

Nelson, Professor Nelson, received

17:01

a letter from an old friend of

17:03

his named Heber Meeks. And

17:06

Heber Meeks, they grew up together,

17:08

and I think they knew each other in college

17:10

as well. But Heber Meeks, he was the president

17:12

of the Southern States Mission at the time, in

17:14

the 1940s. And out of the blue,

17:17

I don't think he had talked to Lowry in a

17:20

long time, but out of the blue, he wrote Lowry

17:22

a letter and he said, Hey, the brethren have asked

17:24

me to gauge the

17:26

feasibility of expanding our mission

17:29

into Cuba. So he's

17:31

in the Southern States Mission with

17:33

the Southern United States, but the brethren

17:35

wanted to add Cuba on as part

17:38

of his responsibility. And so

17:40

he was tasked by the first presidency

17:42

to look into stab sending missionaries to

17:45

Cuba. And he said,

17:47

he asked, Lowry, he

17:49

said, you've been to Cuba many times. What

17:51

do you think? What is

17:53

the possibility of us preaching the

17:56

gospel to Cubans who have

17:58

a pure white blood? Now

18:01

this is just right. Can I ask a

18:03

question, Matt? Yeah. So, was

18:05

Larry Nelson up? He had, he

18:08

I know he was at BYU. I hope you didn't

18:10

just say this. You mentioned he was at what, Minnesota

18:13

for a long time. Yeah. Did he

18:15

become a BYU teacher after Minnesota? Yeah,

18:17

yeah. Thanks for the question. I neglected

18:20

to say something critical, which is

18:23

he leaves BYU under a cloud

18:26

of controversy because he is unorthodox.

18:29

But is that before Minnesota or after? This

18:31

is before. Okay. So, he's

18:33

at, he's at BYU before Minnesota. He's

18:35

at BYU before he's in Minnesota. What's

18:38

about that? Tell us about that. And

18:40

so, he, this is really

18:42

interesting because at BYU, he

18:44

teaches for a short period. He

18:47

knows the authorities. He meets John A. Widso,

18:49

the possible that we talked about a moment

18:51

ago, who doesn't support the band or at

18:53

least the one drop rule. So,

18:56

he becomes close friends with John A. Widso

18:58

when he's on the faculty at BYU. He

19:01

becomes, I

19:03

don't know if they're friends, but they were

19:05

certainly strongly acquainted with a man

19:07

who would go on, later go on to be

19:09

the BYU president, a guy named Ernest Wilkinson. So,

19:12

he got to know Ernest Wilkinson when he was

19:14

on the BYU faculty. Lowry

19:16

was just a little bit older than Ernie Wilkinson.

19:19

And in the 1920s, the late 1920s, Lowry

19:23

Nelson had Ezra Taft Benson and

19:25

Marquis Peterson in class. And

19:28

later on, Lowry Nelson

19:31

would brag to a friend when he

19:33

was criticizing Elder Benson and some of

19:35

his political views. He said,

19:37

this guy is not very bright. I only gave

19:39

him an A minus when he had me in

19:41

class. I

19:43

think it was tongue in cheek because he did think that Elder

19:45

Benson was smart. But anyway, so

19:48

he did have connections

19:50

with two of his students

19:52

who would later go on to be apostles and

19:54

also Elder Widso, who was a

19:57

well-respected apostle at the time. And

19:59

he leads BYU under a cloud of

20:01

controversy when he says to a

20:04

few of his associates that he doesn't really

20:06

believe in the Trinity. He doesn't know if

20:08

there's a God, doesn't know if

20:10

there was a Christ who is redeemed for our sins.

20:13

And you know, for a person teaching at a

20:15

church school to make this admission, that's a problem.

20:18

And it gets back to church president,

20:20

Heber J. Grant. They call

20:23

Larry Nelson in, and

20:25

he's the kind of guy that doesn't have a filter.

20:27

He doesn't know, I shouldn't say there's no boundaries. Maybe

20:29

he does and just doesn't care. But

20:31

he's not very circumspect. And he tells

20:34

the president, he said, it's true. I'm

20:36

having some issues about the Trinity. And

20:39

you know what happens next. President Grant responds, I

20:41

don't know if BYU is a good fit for

20:43

you. So Larry

20:47

Nelson leaves under a cloud of controversy

20:49

when he denies the Trinity to the

20:51

church president. Okay, wait, what do you

20:54

know what, is there any

20:56

deeper reading on what his concerns about the

20:58

Trinity were, or do you just not know?

21:03

One of the things I'm basing this on is

21:05

his autobiography that I have, and

21:07

that he published in 1985, a year before he died. And later in life,

21:09

he was really, maybe

21:14

as most people want to do as they get older, that

21:17

he was very thoughtful and

21:19

reflective about his life. And so he talks

21:21

about his time at BYU in his autobiography

21:23

in 1985. And he said that he just

21:28

didn't feel that there was anything to

21:30

the Scriptures. He didn't think

21:32

that there was any reason or evidence for it. Clearly,

21:35

I guess a proper Christian response would be

21:37

that he lacked faith. But

21:39

that was where he was at. And

21:42

also he didn't think that the suffering that

21:45

he saw in the world, he

21:47

just couldn't reconcile that with a maker. Okay,

21:50

so he was questioning the existence of God.

21:52

Is that what you're saying? Oh, yeah. Oh,

21:54

yeah. Okay, so was it like, is God

21:56

three separate beings versus one, the whole Book

21:59

of Mormon has a trinitarian view of God,

22:02

and then Joseph Smith develops the three separate

22:04

beings later. It's not that. It's just, is

22:06

there a God at all? No,

22:08

it's all of that, John. He's like, I

22:13

guess you would say he was an agnostic.

22:16

He wasn't a militant atheist by any stretch,

22:18

but he certainly questioned if there really was

22:20

a God. And he read church history, the

22:23

first vision, and Joseph Smith, he became very skeptical

22:26

about that. I'm not sure at what point in

22:28

his life he started to have his grumblings, certainly

22:30

when he was at BYU in the 1930s. But

22:33

did he develop these

22:38

thoughts as a younger man? I don't know. But

22:41

he certainly became more outspoken

22:43

in his heretical views as he

22:46

aged. And as we'll

22:48

find out in just a moment, he starts to

22:50

criticize what he calls the Negro doctrine. And

22:53

you can see his voice and

22:55

his tone getting more militant with

22:57

each passing year. At the point

22:59

in the 1970s, after a long

23:01

history of criticizing the brethren, 1975,

23:04

he tells one of my

23:07

good friends, the late great Armand Maas, he

23:10

wrote Armand a letter in 1975. And he

23:12

just said, you know, I just don't give

23:14

a damn anymore. I'm going to make my

23:16

views known. And if it hurts anybody's feelings,

23:19

I don't care. Do you know if he

23:21

talked about his doubts or non-belief more in

23:23

detail in his autobiography? Did he lay out

23:26

all out there? He does. Yeah. Then I

23:28

want to read that for sure. Yeah, he

23:30

does. Because I mean, now it's in vogue

23:33

to be atheist or agnostic or to be

23:35

skeptical of the Church's truth claims. But

23:37

I'm just not aware of, you

23:41

know, of people really thinking about that

23:43

or talking about it prior to like,

23:45

Fom Brody. You know, Fom Brody comes

23:47

out in 1945, where she's attacking the

23:50

Church truth claims head on. I

23:52

wasn't aware of other Mormon intellectuals doing

23:55

that prior to Fom Brody. Well,

23:57

I think there's an important distinction with between

24:00

Lowry Nelson and Fawn Brody. I mean, when Fawn

24:02

Brody writes, "'No Man Knows My History,' I

24:05

mean, her uncle is, we'd

24:07

go on to be the church president, right? Her

24:09

father, Thomas McKay, is a member of the first

24:11

column of the 70s. She's got deep roots in

24:13

the church. And she's

24:15

doing this publicly, whereas Lowry Nelson is

24:18

doing it privately. That's a big difference.

24:20

Right. Yeah, I just didn't

24:22

know if it existed at all. I've just

24:24

been wondering for quite some time, when did

24:27

Mormons start becoming atheist

24:29

agnostics and losing

24:31

their faith entirely? I'm just curious

24:34

when that started happening. Well,

24:36

for Lowry, for my

24:38

reading anyway, I'll stand corrected, but for my reading,

24:40

it probably happens in the 1930s. That's

24:43

fascinating. And I mean, can you imagine today

24:45

a BYU professor telling

24:48

a few colleagues, I really don't know if

24:50

there's a God. Oh, it's happening all

24:52

the time. Yeah, no, I'm aware. I'm

24:54

aware. I'm just saying that the people

24:57

who are doing this, and

24:59

I don't want to say anything more

25:01

about this really, but the

25:03

people that feel this way,

25:06

they're just doing it in private to a few people

25:10

that they're friends with, right? Yeah, yeah. Whereas

25:13

Lowry Nelson obviously didn't

25:15

know his audience. He told a few people

25:17

that maybe he thought he could trust, or

25:19

maybe he just never occurred to him that they may

25:21

rat him out to the church president, but that's what

25:23

happened. He got back to the church

25:25

president. So it's likely that in 47, he

25:28

doesn't really believe in the church's truth

25:30

claims at all anymore, right? No, no,

25:33

because at first, we'll

25:35

talk about this, but at first his

25:37

questions or his letters to the first

25:39

presidency about the priesthood banner, gentle, and

25:42

then you can see this sort of tone

25:44

where he just, you know, several letters

25:46

in, he's telling them they're racist. And

25:49

he's in the whole back. Yeah, but you were getting

25:52

to a good point, Matt, where like

25:54

this is the reason why he's writing

25:56

the first presidency is not just because

25:59

he had questions. is like

26:01

he's really riled up by the fact that

26:03

the brethren have asked his

26:05

friend, Meeks, to open

26:08

a mission in Cuba. And Meeks

26:10

asking him, do you think

26:12

I'm going to be able to find white

26:14

blood, pure white blood in

26:16

Cuba? And he's like riled up

26:18

by this. And this is what triggers him to

26:20

write the first presidency. Is that right? This

26:23

is what triggers him to write the

26:25

first presidency because Larry Nelson,

26:28

he wrote back

26:30

Meeks right away. And he said, are you kidding me?

26:32

Okay, wait, wait, wait, I want to actually read it.

26:34

I've got it up here. Yeah, okay. Let's do it.

26:36

I'm not too discourteous, but

26:38

I've got a couple things

26:40

I want to share. So here's the letter, and

26:43

we're going to share this. We're

26:45

going to share these PDFs,

26:47

hopefully. Julia, I've copied

26:50

them up to the directory. But

26:52

this is the letter. Y'all can

26:54

download this yourselves. It's

26:56

basically Church of Jesus Christ

26:59

office, a letter to say it's office

27:01

of the Southern States Mission, Atlanta,

27:03

Georgia, June 20th, 1947. Heber

27:06

Meeks is the mission president, and it's

27:09

a letter to Larry Nelson.

27:11

And I just want to read a little bit of it. He

27:13

starts out, Dear Larry. And

27:17

I visited Cuba

27:19

doing missionary work, blah, blah,

27:21

blah, Havana. I

27:25

learned that you're a specialist in

27:27

Cuba. And then he writes, I would appreciate

27:30

your opinion as to the advisability of doing missionary

27:32

work, particularly in the rural areas of Cuba, knowing

27:35

of course our concept of the Negro. Can

27:39

you zoom in? Just use the zoom

27:41

button on Acrobat on the right?

27:45

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Roberto. Is that

27:48

better? Yeah, I can't

27:50

see it. I can't see it.

27:52

You stop sharing. So there we go. Yeah, that's

27:54

great. goes

28:00

on, first of all, he's calling

28:02

them the Negro, which I think is common. But

28:05

then he writes on, are there

28:08

groups of pure white blood in the

28:10

rural sections, particularly in

28:12

the small communities? If

28:14

so, are they maintaining segregation from the Negroes?

28:20

The best information we received was

28:22

that in the rural communities, there

28:25

was no segregation of racist, and

28:27

it would probably be difficult to

28:29

find with any degree of

28:31

certainty groups of pure

28:34

white people. Okay, I've already

28:36

like triggered. Then he goes on,

28:38

I would also like your reaction as

28:40

to what progress you think the church

28:43

might be able to make in doing

28:45

missionary work in Cuba, in

28:47

view of particularly in the rural section,

28:49

the ignorance and superstition of the people,

28:52

and their being so steeped in Catholicism,

28:54

do you think our message would

28:58

have any appeal to

29:00

them? So I could go on, but

29:02

I'd love to hear your reactions to,

29:05

you know, Gerardo

29:07

or Matt, your reactions to this letter and

29:09

what he's trying to do here. Go

29:13

ahead, Gerardo. Well,

29:17

he's definitely a believer

29:19

in this one drop

29:23

rule, right? So that's why he's

29:25

talking about the pure white blood

29:27

and asking if he's going

29:29

to be able to find white,

29:32

pure blood people to baptize in Cuba.

29:34

Yeah. This

29:39

is a bit of what is it called when

29:41

you presentism, when you basically apply present

29:43

sensibilities to the past, but this idea

29:46

of a top Mormon leader saying, we got to find

29:48

the white, we got to find the

29:50

pure white people. He

29:53

literally says pure white people, like that's just

29:55

blowing up my modern sensibilities, Matt.

30:00

The church's policy about Black

30:03

and biracial people with

30:05

their missionaries was simple. We

30:08

don't go to them, they come to us. And

30:11

what that means is we don't specifically

30:14

seek them out to

30:16

proselytize because of the complications of

30:18

the church's race teachings. But

30:20

if they come to us and they

30:22

know the restriction, they know the theology,

30:25

and they're still okay with that, we'll

30:27

baptize them, we'll give them a patriarchal

30:29

blessing. But that's really about

30:31

us to the extent to which they could participate in

30:34

the church. And so they're

30:36

not, this is a classic example of when

30:38

Meek says, you know, Dear Lowry, what

30:40

do you think about Cuba? You've been

30:43

there. He's not

30:45

saying we're going to teach Black and biracial people.

30:47

What he's trying to say is, is

30:49

there a segregated part of the island that we

30:51

can go to and talk to the people with

30:54

pure white blood. This is the same thing they

30:56

do with in Brazil as well. When

30:58

they go into this, you know, biracial

31:00

country, we'll talk about Brazil

31:02

the next episode at length, but they go

31:04

into southern Brazil, because that's where the German

31:07

people reside. And their ethnic origins

31:09

are certain in southern Brazil, whereas in

31:11

northern Brazil, stay away from

31:13

northern Brazil, because Afro-Brazilians

31:16

are known to live in northern Brazil.

31:19

So they're really targeting white

31:21

people in Black and

31:23

biracial countries. And that this is

31:26

what's so challenging about this question

31:29

is really born out of ignorance, because Cuba,

31:32

I mean, it's absolutely impossible to

31:34

detect who's got pure white blood

31:36

when you have this island that

31:39

has a history of interracial marriage.

31:42

And don't forget that we talked

31:44

about last episode that there's this idea of pure

31:46

white blood is is a

31:49

fallacy. It's not true,

31:51

doesn't exist. Everyone

31:54

has some kind of Black

31:57

African ancestry. in

32:00

them. Is that right, Matt? Yeah,

32:02

that's correct. Not just black,

32:05

but also Neanderthal. Okay, so,

32:07

so Lowry, Lowry

32:12

gets this question from a

32:14

mission president about Cuba.

32:17

What happened? And

32:20

Lowry is he's just he

32:24

catches them off guard. And

32:26

he by this point, he's drifted away

32:28

from the church a little bit. And of course, I

32:31

don't think he Vermeerx knows this. And

32:33

he writes meaks back

32:35

and he says, you know, this is

32:38

just absurd on for

32:40

a couple reasons. Number one, it's

32:42

absurd because there's no such thing as a pure

32:44

white blood. This is a an island

32:47

with a long history of race mixing. And

32:49

number two, these are

32:52

my people, these people are my friends. This

32:54

is offensive to think that we can go

32:56

in there and target certain groups of people

32:58

and not others for salvation. And so, Laura

33:01

Nelson is bothered by that. And

33:03

in the midst of all of this,

33:07

he Vermeerx will present a

33:09

report to the first presidency.

33:11

And I've got it right here. It's called.

33:14

Oh, wow. Yeah, Smith's

33:16

a report of the first presidency.

33:19

It's called report of visit Cuba.

33:21

And he lays out a whole demographic

33:23

about the population there. And I'll just read

33:25

a couple of things from this report that

33:28

is interesting. So he's got

33:30

one segment that says why we should stay

33:32

out of Cuba. Unfavorable

33:35

factors, he calls it. The

33:37

first one is possible restrictions against

33:39

the church and introducing a doctrine

33:41

of race superiority into

33:44

an existing condition of race equality.

33:47

The reaction may come from the

33:49

government from Negro leaders, entire

33:53

mulatto element, a

33:56

general public, and our own government officials in

33:58

Cuba. So he lists five

34:00

reasons why it could be problematic. So

34:03

he's admitting that the Mormon Church

34:05

has a doctrine of

34:07

white superiority. Yeah, race

34:10

superiority, he calls it. And he put that in

34:12

quotes. Correct.

34:14

He also says that there's another

34:16

factor, the difficulty of determining Negroed blood

34:18

in large part of the population. And of

34:21

course, he's influenced by Larry Nelson here. The

34:24

co-mealing of the races have been going on

34:26

for many years. Again, Larry Nelson. And

34:29

no adequate records are kept by which color

34:31

can be determined. And

34:33

then a couple of more things. He says that

34:35

the sins of the people mixing

34:38

white and colored blood through marriage have

34:40

denied them the blessings of the gospel.

34:42

And then the last thing he says is they

34:45

are of Latin blood, meaning Cubans, they

34:47

are of Latin blood. And if opposition

34:50

arises, local or general, it

34:52

would be swift, intense, and

34:55

ruthless. And

34:57

then he also gives a rationale. I won't read

34:59

them all, but he gives a rationale about why

35:01

they should go into Cuba. He

35:03

says that we need to carry the gospel to every

35:05

kindred nation, tongue and people. He said

35:08

that there are at least one million people on this

35:10

island who are presenting their or

35:12

preserving their racial purity that are

35:14

entitled to all the blessings of the gospel. I'm

35:17

not certain where he gets a million people preserving

35:19

their racial purity, but that's what he says. There

35:22

is a great need for the gospel, the program of

35:24

the church among the white people. And

35:27

he says the white element would be responsive

35:29

to the progress of the church. So

35:32

he makes it very clear that if we do go in

35:34

there, it's the white people that need salvation. He

35:36

doesn't seem to bother with people of African

35:38

descent. And who is that again you were reading

35:40

from? That's the report that

35:42

Heber Meeks sends to the First Presidency about

35:44

the pros and cons of going into Cuba.

35:47

Can I read really quickly some

35:52

from Lowry's response back to Meeks? Because I

35:54

think it's really interesting. Yeah, yeah, please. Okay.

35:57

Just so people know, this is going a little bit back, right?

36:00

because Meeks would have produced

36:02

that report to the first presidency after

36:04

he got his response from Laurie. So,

36:08

yeah, that's fine. Yeah, this is

36:10

six days later. Six

36:12

days later, Larry Nelson writes

36:14

Meeks back. Okay. And

36:17

I'm just going to read just

36:19

a little bit, a few excerpts from it.

36:22

So this is again, June 26, 1947, Dear

36:28

Heber, and it's nice to hear

36:30

from you after many years. I'm

36:33

going to have the third paragraph. So

36:35

this is Larry Nelson talking. The attitude of the

36:37

church in regard to the Negro makes me very

36:39

sad. Your letter is the first

36:41

intimation I have had that there

36:43

was a fixed doctrine on this point.

36:46

So I think that's interesting. So a

36:48

prominent Mormon intellectual is saying in the

36:50

mid 1940s, I didn't know the church

36:52

had a fixed doctrine on this point.

36:55

That's interesting, right, Matt? He

36:57

grew up in the church and for him to

36:59

not know or believe that there

37:01

was a fixed doctrine is challenging. Well, he

37:03

didn't know it because there wasn't a fixed

37:05

doctrine. Even

37:08

though, you know, the way to

37:10

perfection was out there. I

37:12

mean, you know, but it's

37:15

still that wasn't perceived as doctrine up

37:18

through mid 1940s, right? Correct.

37:21

Okay. All right.

37:23

So he's sad about that.

37:27

I had always known that certain statements had been

37:29

made by authorities regarding the status of the Negro,

37:31

but I had never assumed that

37:33

they constituted an irrevocable

37:36

doctrine, which now we know doesn't exist. There's

37:38

no such thing as an irrevocable doctrine, but.

37:40

That's interesting. I just want to point out

37:42

something out. Is that

37:45

a word that the first president would later

37:47

use on their statement? Irrevocable?

37:50

Yeah. You'd have

37:52

to ask Matt. I don't know. I don't know.

37:54

Well, we'll see later. I don't know. Yeah.

37:57

I just want to say, I don't think there is such thing.

38:00

as an irrevocable doctrine in 2024, but that's the side

38:02

point. Because

38:05

if anything, the church changes over time.

38:08

Okay, I hope

38:10

no final word has been said

38:12

on this matter. I

38:15

must say that I've never been able to accept

38:17

the idea and never shall. I do

38:19

not believe that God is a racist, but

38:21

if the church has taken an irrevocable stand,

38:24

I would just like to see it

38:26

enter Cuba or any other island where

38:29

different races live and establish

38:31

missionary work. So that's a really cool point.

38:33

He's saying if the church is going to

38:35

be racist, then they shouldn't be doing missionary

38:37

work to countries that, you

38:39

know, with people with African descent.

38:41

And that's a really principled stance,

38:43

right? I mean, it makes sense to me. Yeah,

38:47

he just, it's implausible to find

38:49

a white race for one. And

38:51

for two, it just, it just

38:53

violates any kind of sense of

38:55

fairness and justice to favor

38:58

certain groups of people. This is really

39:00

progressive on his point, not just

39:03

in the LDS church, but also in the 20th century. I

39:05

mean, this is the time of Adolf Hitler

39:08

and his racial theories and racial hierarchies. This

39:10

is a time of segregation. This is a

39:12

time when black people were being lynched. This

39:15

is a time of gross oppression. And

39:17

here you have a Latter-day

39:20

Saint intellectual who

39:22

is really, really pushing back on his

39:24

church for promoting, you know, racism in

39:26

a larger American sphere.

39:29

It's why I felt like Larry

39:31

Nelson deserved his own episode. Let's

39:33

go ahead and go to the second page now of

39:35

his letter. I'm skipping down towards the end. He writes,

39:39

I am talking about the white people

39:41

now. The rural people are

39:43

predominantly white. That is, they

39:45

are as white as Mediterranean peoples are,

39:48

Spanish, Italians, et cetera, who

39:50

have been in contact with color for

39:53

centuries. The mores occupied

39:55

Spain, you know, for seven centuries,

39:57

there are no pure races

40:01

on this anthropologists are in

40:04

general agreement. Of course, this

40:06

does not mean that Negro

40:09

blood exists throughout the white races or

40:11

vice versa. There's grave doubt,

40:13

however, as to the purity of

40:15

the Nordic, Mediterranean, or even the

40:17

Negro, because I think our system

40:20

of religious organization could serve

40:22

the rural Cuban people as no other system could.

40:25

I am sad to have to write you and say,

40:27

for my opinion is worth, that it

40:29

would be better for the Cubans if we

40:31

did not enter their island unless

40:34

we are willing to revise our racial theory.

40:36

And then he ends by saying, I repeat

40:38

my frankness or bloodness, as you

40:40

will, is born of a

40:43

fervent desire to see the causes

40:45

of war rooted out of

40:47

the hearts of men. What limited

40:49

study I have been able to

40:51

give the subject leads me to

40:53

the conclusion that ethnocentrism and the

40:56

smugness and intolerance which accompany it

40:58

is one of the first evils

41:00

to be attacked if we

41:02

are to achieve the goal of

41:04

peace. What a legend! This

41:06

guy's a prophet as far as I'm concerned.

41:09

Matt or Gerardo, anything

41:11

you all want to say just in response to that

41:13

letter? I think that's an awesome letter. Yeah.

41:17

This is the first time that,

41:19

arguably, it's the first time that

41:21

brethren are hearing that there's no

41:23

such thing as a pure white

41:25

race. Anthropology doesn't support it.

41:28

In our segment last hour, we

41:30

talked about that in the

41:32

early 20th century, there was a famous

41:34

anthropologist named Frantz Boas, who

41:36

essentially is the founder of anthropology,

41:39

teaches at Columbia University. And

41:41

he and his students had produced

41:43

a spate of scholarship arguing that race

41:45

is a construction, that the

41:48

world is full of interracial encounters. It

41:50

had been that way ever since. And

41:53

so, Lowry Nelson is the intellectual

41:55

that he is. He's reading Frantz

41:57

Boas and other people making similar

41:59

arguments. And so he's telling the

42:01

brother and he'll ultimately tell the brother and not just

42:03

Hebrew meekes But he'll tell the brother in that there's

42:05

no such thing as a white race for you to

42:08

pretend that there is is Ethnocentric

42:11

and then later on Lowell

42:13

Bennion and others will follow up and let the

42:16

brother and know that there's no such thing as

42:18

a pure white race So they're being told this

42:20

around the mid 20th century Okay,

42:23

and and if we go back a

42:25

little bit Su Sa-Yong we talked about this before

42:27

about Su Sa-Yong gates Would have written a book

42:29

already about in the Mormon

42:31

community about this idea There's

42:33

not that all the races have been

42:35

mixing for For

42:38

as long as races have existed. Is that

42:40

is that right? Yeah, the word

42:42

she used was the lineages have been blurred

42:45

But I think that the point to know from

42:47

that is it goes right over their heads They

42:49

don't make that connection and neither does Su Sa-Yong

42:51

gates Either they don't make

42:54

the connection that because of these interracial encounters. There's no

42:56

such thing as a pure race Okay

42:59

Okay, so Larry Larry gets

43:01

heated up by this question

43:03

of Cuba what happens next?

43:07

Well, he decides to share

43:10

his views with the first presidency and

43:13

as one can imagine it doesn't go over

43:15

well If

43:17

you want to put that letter up John that this might be

43:19

a good time to do it. Here is June

43:21

26th 1947

43:25

so it's it's the same day That's

43:27

the same day. He writes back

43:29

Meeks. So he writes Meeks

43:32

and others if I'm getting that right It's

43:34

the same day. He writes Robert Smith. So

43:36

here's the letter and

43:40

It basically, you know, it's it's addressed to

43:42

George Albert Smith. Dear President Smith I'm

43:45

in receipt of a letter from Heber

43:47

Meeks I Close

43:49

it as a copy with a copy and

43:52

then he writes out because perhaps I'm

43:54

out of order so to speak it It

43:56

expects you just sorry just one point just

43:58

pointing out that he's saying he's

44:01

attaching his response as well to

44:03

Meeks. So the first president would

44:05

have access to what he wrote to Meeks,

44:07

not only to what he's writing to the

44:09

first presidency. Oh, very good, very good, thank

44:11

you. So he, so, okay, I didn't catch

44:13

that. So, so, so

44:16

basically you're saying George Albert Smith is

44:18

put on notice that there

44:20

is no pure race at all, right? That's

44:23

what you're saying? Yeah, yeah. If

44:25

you read the first paragraph that's not highlighted,

44:27

he says, I'm attaching my response to Meeks

44:29

here. Okay, got it, thank

44:31

you. But I wanna just make sure we,

44:34

you know, acknowledge the implications of that. Yeah.

44:38

Okay, so George Albert Smith has put on

44:40

notice that there's no pure race. He

44:44

says, perhaps I'm out of order in

44:46

expressing myself as I have. I've done

44:48

so out of a strong conviction on

44:50

the subject and with the added impression

44:52

that there's no irrevocable church doctrine on

44:54

this subject. I'm not unaware

44:57

of statements and impressions which have been

44:59

passed down, but I'd never been

45:01

brought face to face with the possibility that

45:03

the doctrine was finally crystallized. I

45:05

devoutly hope that such crystallization has not

45:08

taken place. The many good friends

45:10

of mixed blood through no fault

45:12

of theirs incidentally, unless you think the

45:14

preexistence it was their fault, which I

45:17

have in the Caribbean and who know

45:19

me to be a Mormon would be

45:21

shocked indeed if I were to tell

45:23

them my church relegated them to an

45:26

inferior status. As I told

45:28

Heber, there's no doubt in my mind that our

45:30

church could perform a great service in Cuba, particularly

45:33

in the rural areas, but it would

45:35

be far better that we go in, that

45:37

we not go in at all, than

45:39

to go in and promote racial

45:42

distinction. I want you to

45:44

know my feelings on this question and trust you

45:47

will understand the spirit in which I

45:49

say these things. I want to

45:51

see us promote love and harmony among

45:53

peoples of the earth. Now, Matt, I may

45:55

be overblowing this, but this seems like a

45:58

potentially very significant. moment in

46:01

the 20th century Mormon church leadership.

46:03

Because it's basically

46:05

31 years before

46:08

the priesthood band ends up

46:10

being lifted, but it's before

46:13

the brethren have really, really

46:15

kind of come down in a

46:18

hard line. So it could have been an opportunity

46:21

for the brethren to never

46:23

really indoctrinate, you

46:26

know, enshrine the priesthood band in doctrine

46:28

at all, right? If

46:31

it all, yeah, history is always predicated

46:33

upon contingent moments. And what that means

46:35

is, is that you look at the

46:37

choices before you. And

46:39

history would have turned out much differently if

46:41

George Albert Smith, for example, said, you know,

46:44

Larry, you make a good point. But

46:47

that's not what happened. That's

46:50

not what happened. And I think

46:52

it's instructive here that that

46:56

in the first presidency as George Albert Smith,

46:58

but also J. Reuben Clark, who had been

47:00

in the first presidency

47:03

since 1933, he was an

47:05

enormously powerful figure. And

47:07

then the second counter was David O. McKay. And so of

47:10

the three, David O. was certainly, President

47:13

McKay was the one that was least inclined

47:15

to be a hardliner on

47:17

this view. But the church is

47:19

always interested in unanimity and

47:22

presented presenting a unified front. And so some

47:24

of these guys will go along with this,

47:26

but they didn't have to. And but

47:29

that's a choice they made. And it

47:31

certainly had catastrophic consequences for people of

47:33

color in the church. Okay.

47:36

All right. So what happens next, Pat?

47:39

Well, so I think I

47:41

want to point out one thing from that letter

47:43

about his tone. And

47:46

he certainly direct, but

47:48

he acknowledges, you know, I may be out

47:50

of line. I mean, this is the church

47:52

president, you don't typically get rank and file

47:54

members like Lowry Nelson, telling

47:57

the church president want to do this is not how it's how it works. And

47:59

I think that's a good point. works in Mormonism. It's not

48:01

how it's ever worked. And

48:03

so Larry Nelson recognizes that

48:05

he's walking on careful

48:09

ground here by telling the church

48:11

president his views about going into

48:13

Cuba. And if you

48:15

want to show the response of George Albert

48:17

Smith, he doesn't really take Brother

48:21

Nelson's views in the spirit in which

48:23

they were intended. Absolutely.

48:26

Okay, so this is

48:28

this is July 17 1947. So it's basically,

48:35

you know, a few weeks later, there

48:38

was this intermediary letter from Joseph Anderson

48:40

basically saying, send us your

48:42

you know, your letter to President Meeks.

48:46

I do want to point out that it

48:48

says there that they didn't get the copy.

48:51

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so then they

48:53

got it, then they got it. Okay,

48:55

so this is basically George

48:57

Albert Smith, this is signed by the

49:00

first presidency. So it's George Albert Smith,

49:02

J. Reuben Clark, and David

49:04

O'Mekay, July 17, responding to

49:07

Larry Nelson. That's kind of weird. I

49:10

can see the first presidency publishing

49:16

approved statements with all three

49:18

signatures. How weird is it

49:21

for a private correspondence

49:23

to be signed by the first presidency? That

49:25

strikes me as weird. That's

49:28

the first thing that I noticed when I

49:30

read this exchange years ago is that he's

49:32

reaching out to the church president, and

49:35

he gets a response from the

49:38

entire presidency. And really, what

49:40

that means is it's a show of force, that

49:43

you're not only contending with me now, Larry,

49:45

you're going to contend with my counselors, and

49:47

we're going to speak from the office of

49:49

the first presidency, which is the highest quorum

49:51

in the church. And so really, as

49:53

a show of force, it's meant to

49:56

say that what we say is definitive,

49:58

it's final, and it's authoritative. And

50:00

you know that a lot in Mormon history that

50:03

a concerned church member will write the church

50:05

president And then the entire first presidency writes

50:07

back you see it a lot with race

50:10

and it's really a show of force as much as it is Anything

50:13

what we're saying about unanimity heard it. It's

50:15

just would it be to show unanimity as

50:18

well? Is that one of the things?

50:20

Yeah They're presenting a unified front because prior

50:22

to this point as we've been talking about

50:25

a lot of the general authorities had different

50:27

views about race Theories and

50:29

they're all over the place and the Saints

50:31

will pick up on this You know,

50:33

they'll write the first presidency letters and

50:35

various apostles letters asking about, you know

50:37

Elijah Abel asking about part they

50:39

call them part Negroes in those days. We'd say today

50:42

biracial and So

50:45

here they recognized by mid

50:47

20th century that that race is becoming

50:49

an issue among the church or at

50:51

least among church members And

50:53

including Lowry Nelson and I might add that the

50:55

church has always been worried about what they call

50:58

the thinking people of the church This is what

51:00

a lot of the authorities call them the thinking

51:02

people of the church That's a

51:04

fancy way of calling them intellectuals and

51:06

these are people who are intelligent.

51:09

They're well-schooled. They're articulate They write

51:11

they speak and the

51:13

brethren are always worried about what the thinking

51:15

people are thinking and saying and

51:17

so They're gonna nip this in

51:19

the bud pretty quick with Lowry Nelson They

51:21

don't want him to go off and that's

51:23

why in my mind in my reading they

51:25

respond as a unified presidency. Okay All

51:29

right. Well, let's jump back. So So

51:32

again, this is the first presidency and they write,

51:34

you know, brother dear brother Nelson As

51:37

you have been advised your letter of June 26 was

51:40

received in due course and Likewise,

51:42

we now have a copy of your letter

51:45

to President Meeks. So they've read the no

51:47

pure race thing. We have carefully

51:50

Considered their contents and

51:53

are glad to advise you as follows. So

51:55

for me that's significant They read the documents.

51:57

Is that is that what I'm seeing here?

52:00

Correct. Okay, so they're put on notice.

52:03

Again, in Mormon stories, you want to know who knew what when.

52:06

They're put on notice. All right, so

52:09

let's keep going. We make this initial remark,

52:11

and I want to get your take on

52:13

this, Matt. The social side

52:15

of the restored gospel is

52:18

only an incident of it. It

52:20

is not the end thereof. Can you

52:22

please interpret that for us, Matt? Yeah,

52:26

so I think by social side, he's

52:28

talking about interracial mixing. And

52:30

the end result, of

52:32

course, would be that if you

52:34

allow people to mix interracially, they

52:37

will. They

52:39

might date, and if they date, they might marry.

52:42

And of course, the end result would be the temple

52:44

and temple blessings. And so if you

52:46

have interracial couples mixing and mating, as

52:48

it were, then that'll prevent them

52:50

from going to the temple. And

52:53

they'll say this in private, not just to Larry

52:55

Nelson, but to other members over the years. They'll

52:57

say that if a black person marries

53:00

a white person, the white

53:02

person will inherit the seat of Cain. And

53:05

they're very vocal about this, and they're trying to

53:07

protect the

53:09

pollution of the bloodlines, as they

53:11

say, because the pollution of the

53:13

bloodlines would lead to a prohibition

53:17

from attending the temple. Okay.

53:22

All right, let's continue.

53:25

I have a question. I'm

53:28

sorry. No question. If

53:30

a white person would have married a black

53:32

person back then, would the

53:35

white person be denied their

53:38

temple blessings? Yes. Yeah.

53:41

So just to complicate your question for

53:43

a minute, Gerardo, there

53:45

was no question in the 19th and into

53:47

the 20th century that if a black and

53:49

white person married, that their

53:51

meeting minutes, they talk about this all the

53:54

time, that what

53:56

do we do if a black and white person marry?

53:58

What do we do if they adopt children? couple

54:00

adopts black children, can they be sealed in the

54:02

temple? And the short answer to

54:04

all of this is they'll tell interracial couples that

54:06

they can't, well,

54:08

obviously they can't go to the temple, but

54:11

they'll say that the white woman who marries

54:13

a black man, for example, that she can't

54:15

go to the temple and receive her temple

54:17

endowment because she's inherited the curse of Cain

54:19

from her husband, her children cannot be sealed

54:21

to her or them. And then finally, what

54:23

happens is in the 20th century, if you get

54:26

a white couple adopting black

54:28

children, the policy was

54:30

at first from David O. McKay that

54:32

they could not, those children could not be sealed to

54:35

the white couple. And

54:37

David O. McKay at one point in

54:39

the mid 20th century said that white

54:41

Latter-day Saint couples should not be adopting

54:43

Negro children, he says. But later

54:45

on, under Spencer Kimball's administration,

54:48

that seems to have changed where

54:51

the brother-in-allow it, it becomes

54:53

permissible for white couples who adopt black children, they're

54:55

allowed to have those children sealed to them in

54:57

the temple. And this is long before 1978 when

55:00

the ban was lifted. So the policies of these

55:02

kinds of things are being worked out as they

55:04

go along. Yeah, wow.

55:07

It's really interesting. So Matt, I'll

55:09

just say that comment about the social side of

55:11

the restored gospel is only an incident of it.

55:13

It is not the end thereof. What I

55:15

took it to mean is that the brethren are saying,

55:18

you academics, you sociologists, you're gonna

55:21

have your opinions about how

55:23

societies work, what really

55:25

matters is the doctrine, what God

55:27

wants. And that's what I thought

55:30

he was maybe saying there, but you're saying. Yeah, yeah,

55:32

I was putting a fine point on it. What God

55:34

wants is a pure race line, right? Okay. But yeah,

55:36

no, I think that's a fair reading of that. Okay.

55:39

All right, go on to

55:41

write. This is the first presidency. The

55:43

basic element of your ideas and concepts

55:45

seems to be that all God's

55:48

children stand in equal positions before

55:50

him and all things. And

55:53

I just immediately, I'm struck by that because

55:56

that means they're about to strike down or

56:00

equal and to God, which is what in

56:02

modern times all the apologists

56:04

are saying shows that the

56:06

church is and has never been racist because

56:08

the Book of Mormon says all are like

56:10

unto God. So I'm curious now to go

56:14

out and read the First Presidency arguing

56:16

with the notion that all are like unto

56:19

God. Why are you laughing, Arido? Yeah,

56:22

because I mean this is something you hear

56:24

over and over again these days on TikTok,

56:27

you know, almost that

56:29

phrase verbatim saying, you

56:31

know, explaining how the church is not

56:33

racist, it hasn't been racist. Because

56:36

all are like unto God. So yeah, so I'm

56:38

curious to see what the First Presidency is going

56:40

to say. You should respond to any modern argument

56:44

of all are like unto God with

56:46

the First Presidency letter to Larry Nelson

56:48

in July 17, 1947. You

56:51

can just use the First Presidency to argue

56:53

against the point. That'll be

56:55

interesting. All right, so your knowledge of

56:57

the gospel indicate that you, indicate

57:00

to you that this is contrary

57:02

to the very fundamentals of God's

57:05

dealing with Israel, dating for the

57:07

time of his promise to Abraham

57:09

regarding Abraham's seed and their position,

57:11

vis-a-vis God himself. Indeed, some

57:13

of God's children were assigned to

57:15

superior positions before the world

57:17

was formed. This was why I thought it

57:20

might be useful to talk about like Abraham

57:22

3, 22, and 23 as a

57:25

precursor to today's episode, but we'll talk about that

57:27

later. We

57:29

are aware that some higher critics in

57:32

HCC do not accept this, but

57:34

the church does. Now he's saying

57:36

the church, he's speaking for

57:38

the church. Your position seems

57:41

to lose sight of the revelations of

57:43

the Lord. Revelations now, okay, of

57:46

the Lord touching the pre-existence of

57:48

our spirits, the rebellion in heaven,

57:50

and the doctrines that are birthed into this

57:53

life, and the advantages under which we may

57:55

be born have a relationship in

57:57

the life heretofore. So there they are, going

58:00

down the pre-existence and

58:03

the pre-existence valiance affects

58:05

race in modern times. Am I,

58:07

am I right? They're throwing that down right there. Yeah.

58:10

They're appealing to Abraham chapter three as

58:12

their proof text and something's going on

58:15

in the pre-existence and

58:17

that would merit a black skin

58:19

that would merit somebody to be born

58:22

in an impoverished country to,

58:24

uh, merit, uh,

58:26

privilege. It's not just a penalty or a

58:29

punishment, but also people who born, born into,

58:31

let's say a middle-class upper middle-class home, they

58:33

did something in the pre-existence to merit that.

58:36

And so the brother and they're creating

58:38

this theology that gets

58:41

worked out in the 20th century, trying to

58:43

understand why they are, they are, they're our

58:45

privileged or punished people and they harken to

58:47

the pre-existent life to do that. And this

58:50

is a classic case of the first presidency,

58:52

writing back to this, uh, skeptical

58:55

LDS intellectual saying, look, you can't argue with

58:57

the doctrine. This is what the book of

59:00

Abraham says. And, uh, this

59:02

is what God is really teaching us about the

59:05

pre-existence and why the church

59:07

favors certain races and lineages

59:09

over others. The, the, the

59:11

letter says superior positions, but

59:14

really this is just kind of, kind of a different,

59:16

um, side of the coin from what

59:18

Joseph Fielding Smith had written in the way to

59:20

perfection, which is favored lineages. And

59:23

so this is what the first presidency is

59:25

saying is that God has favored lineages because

59:27

of their valiance in the pre-earth life. And

59:30

that should be controversial to people who

59:32

read the Bible or the book of

59:34

Mormon, because the Jews are God's chosen

59:36

people, right? I mean, according

59:38

to the Old Testament, New Testament. And

59:40

I think a lot of people who defend Mormon

59:43

racial theology in the 20th century, they're, they're

59:45

certainly going to appeal to the Bible that

59:47

God does have favored lineages and favored groups

59:50

of people that he brings the gospel to

59:52

them first and others last, and,

59:54

but really what's interesting as

59:57

some interesting black and biracial

59:59

people. they'll write the

1:00:01

first presidency letters and

1:00:03

they'll say, you know, how do you deal with

1:00:05

this idea that God is no respecter of persons?

1:00:07

How do you deal with 2 Nephi 2633, where

1:00:11

it says all are alike into God? How

1:00:14

do you justify, how do you reconcile that? And

1:00:17

frankly, the brethren don't have good answers for

1:00:19

it. And just a

1:00:21

quick thought at BYU, they run a,

1:00:23

there's a database, it's really, for researchers

1:00:25

and scholars, it's really wonderful. It's a

1:00:28

database of the standard works.

1:00:30

And what somebody had done at BYU is they

1:00:33

had corresponded the

1:00:35

standard works with general conference

1:00:37

talks, which is to say that you

1:00:39

can, you can put the

1:00:41

years in there. Like for example, 1950 to 1978, or 1900

1:00:43

to 1978, how

1:00:50

often or how many times did the brethren

1:00:53

use or quote all are alike into God

1:00:55

in their sermons. And

1:00:57

when I did that, I think

1:01:00

I found one instance, it was just a

1:01:03

passing reference that one of the general authorities

1:01:05

had said about all are alike into God.

1:01:08

And then after 1978, of course, all

1:01:11

are alike into God becomes the new branding for the

1:01:13

church when the band's been lifted. It's

1:01:15

so interesting. So they

1:01:17

just didn't, they couldn't quite understand it.

1:01:19

And one of the people, one

1:01:22

of my heroes in fact, is

1:01:24

Hubie Brown that we'll talk about at length

1:01:27

in another episode, but Hubie Brown is one

1:01:29

of the only apostles that I've seen. There's

1:01:31

one other one, a guy named

1:01:33

John Henry Smith, who was an apostle in

1:01:35

the early 20th century. But between

1:01:37

Hubie Brown and John Henry Smith, there were the only

1:01:40

two apostles that I know of that

1:01:42

are really trying to understand the

1:01:44

band vis-a-vis the great Book

1:01:46

of Mormon scripture that all are alike into God.

1:01:48

I mean, how is this possible? If all are

1:01:51

alike and they're equal, how can we have this

1:01:53

band? And so they're asking hard questions and Hubie

1:01:55

Brown in particular, will

1:01:57

ask these hard questions, sometimes in general conference. when

1:02:00

Joseph Fielding Smith is just a short distance from

1:02:02

him as he's at the pulpit speaking. So

1:02:05

there's not a lot of, you know, there's not

1:02:08

a monolithic thought in all of this, but some

1:02:10

of these brethren are reading the scriptures differently like

1:02:12

Hugh Brown and John Henry Smith.

1:02:16

Interesting. All right,

1:02:18

so let's go to the next

1:02:20

paragraph. This is, this is getting interesting for me more

1:02:22

and more. So it goes

1:02:25

on to say, this is the first

1:02:27

presidency. This is already blowing from the

1:02:29

days of the Prophet Joseph Smith, even

1:02:31

until now, it has

1:02:33

been the doctrine of the church, never

1:02:36

questioned by any of the church leaders

1:02:39

that the Negroes are not entitled to

1:02:42

the full blessings of the gospel. Now,

1:02:44

anybody who listened to just the last

1:02:46

two episodes can lay out

1:02:48

what the problems are with that statement.

1:02:50

Matt, why don't you go ahead and

1:02:52

just tell us why that's objectively wrong?

1:02:57

Well, because that they're arguing, you

1:02:59

mean the part where they're revelations

1:03:01

prior to the foundation of the

1:03:03

earth? Well,

1:03:05

it's saying that Joseph

1:03:07

Smith was the origin of the doctrine.

1:03:09

Didn't we already talk about Joseph

1:03:12

Fielding Smith and even B.H.

1:03:15

Roberts acknowledging

1:03:17

that there was no doctrinal

1:03:20

basis for revelation? Yeah, so

1:03:22

you have the first presidency.

1:03:26

They're aware that there's no revelation

1:03:29

they found, but they're now exercising

1:03:32

their dogmatic opinions.

1:03:35

And they're throwing down the dogmatic gauntlet

1:03:37

on Lowry Nelson saying, there is a

1:03:40

revelation we have, this is, it's a

1:03:42

commandment from the God. When the

1:03:44

truth is, they didn't find one. And I

1:03:46

don't know if George Albert Smith, to be

1:03:48

honest, if he knew what Joseph F. Smith

1:03:50

believed that because Joseph F. Smith,

1:03:52

we have letters where he says there's no revelation

1:03:54

we could find, but I believe it began with

1:03:56

Joseph Smith, the band. But we also have Joseph

1:03:59

Fielding Smith. Yeah, right. So

1:04:01

the Fielding Smith as well knew that

1:04:03

there wasn't an exact revelation. And

1:04:07

he was asked that I've got a

1:04:09

diary entry from William Grant, Bangator, who

1:04:11

was the mission president in Brazil in

1:04:13

1960 and Joseph Fielding Smith visited his

1:04:15

mission and, you know, does

1:04:17

what most apostles do. They give a

1:04:20

short message to the missionaries at his own conference. And

1:04:22

then afterwards, they open it up for Q&A. And

1:04:25

Grant Bangator, the mission president, writes about this in

1:04:28

his diary. He says that my

1:04:30

missionaries asked President Smith a whole bunch

1:04:32

of questions about the Negro doctrine. One

1:04:35

missionary perturbed him when he

1:04:37

was adamant. He wanted to know where

1:04:39

the revelation was denying black men the

1:04:41

priesthood. And you know,

1:04:43

Smith knew there wasn't one. And so he had a

1:04:45

hard time, you know, telling this elder, you know, take

1:04:47

it on faith. And the elder thought that

1:04:49

if this is such an important subject, there ought to be

1:04:51

a revelation. So Joseph Fielding knew

1:04:54

it, likely George Albert Smith knew it. This

1:04:57

is the response to Larry Nelson. They're really trying

1:04:59

to flex their muscles now to let them know

1:05:01

that, look, this is a policy and this is

1:05:05

we haven't made it a doctrine yet, but this is a

1:05:07

practice that's not going to go away anytime soon. And

1:05:10

obviously, Larry Nelson won't take this as the final

1:05:12

matter. Yeah, because I'm you

1:05:14

know, that that becomes, you

1:05:16

know, once once the church is writing

1:05:19

the Gospel Topics essays in the 19 in the in the

1:05:21

2000 teens, let's just say you would hear

1:05:25

people like Richard Bushman or others

1:05:27

say, you know, the brother just didn't know any of

1:05:30

this stuff. And so

1:05:32

they weren't the church was never really hiding

1:05:34

things from the membership. They just

1:05:36

the apostles never learned it. Well,

1:05:39

what this is showing us is for sure. Joseph

1:05:42

Joseph Smith knew Joseph

1:05:46

Fielding Smith, who later becomes a prophet, he knew.

1:05:49

And so the question is, did

1:05:51

he grant and or

1:05:53

George Robert's Albert Smith? No.

1:05:56

And if Joseph Smith did, how in the

1:05:58

world did he bridge? Grant and George

1:06:00

Albert Smith not? Or was there some

1:06:03

way to like change

1:06:06

the narrative to keep it from

1:06:08

subsequent apostles? Because the

1:06:10

other problem in that

1:06:12

paragraph is when they say Joseph Smith,

1:06:15

you know, was the origin of

1:06:17

Negroes not being entitled to the full blessings

1:06:20

of the gospel is what we already covered,

1:06:22

which is that Joseph Smith ordained somewhere between

1:06:24

what three to five black men to the

1:06:27

priesthood and Elijah Abel got at least some

1:06:29

of his temple blessings because he had his

1:06:31

washings and anointings and was in

1:06:33

the third quorum of the 70. So

1:06:35

like, either they're hiding this,

1:06:38

or somehow, George Albert Smith,

1:06:41

J. Rupert Clark and David Obakai didn't

1:06:43

get the memo, but Joseph Smith and

1:06:45

Joseph Fielding Smith did. How do we

1:06:47

make sense of that, Matt? Well,

1:06:50

you know, I think it's true

1:06:52

today is is also among today's

1:06:54

leadership in the church is also

1:06:56

true in the mid 20th century.

1:06:59

And that is these guys are, they're

1:07:01

ordaining bishops, they're ordaining state patriarchs, they're

1:07:03

involved in the church's businesses. I remember

1:07:06

reading J. Ruben Clark's diary, and I

1:07:08

was struck that 95% of his day

1:07:10

was sitting on board

1:07:12

meetings that dealt with business, nothing ecclesiastical.

1:07:15

And so I think it'd

1:07:18

be remiss for us to say they know this

1:07:20

stuff when they're hiding it, because I don't see

1:07:22

that. I mean, some I'm not saying sometimes they

1:07:24

don't try to hide things or obfuscate issues. But

1:07:27

to assume that they have this, you know,

1:07:30

working perfect knowledge of church history, and they

1:07:32

know the littlians announced, I would never make

1:07:34

that assumption. Because I think that the brethren

1:07:37

are like today, and also then, they're like

1:07:39

any any number of us, some of us

1:07:41

know more about church history than others, based

1:07:43

on our diligence in our study. And

1:07:46

I'm thinking of, you know, Russell Ballard, the

1:07:48

late Apostle passed away recently, I mean, the

1:07:50

guy was a used car salesman before he

1:07:52

came into the before

1:07:55

he became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve. One

1:07:57

does not imagine he's reading dialogue or the Journal of Mormon

1:07:59

history in his spare time. And I

1:08:01

don't mean that as an insult. I'm just

1:08:03

saying that he's not an academic. Jeff Holland,

1:08:05

Dallin Oakes, on the other hand, two academics,

1:08:07

two PhDs, Oakes is a lawyer,

1:08:10

former law professor, but they were known

1:08:12

to read scholarship. They were associated with

1:08:14

Mormon academic journals. And so I

1:08:17

think the same is true here. The

1:08:19

people that were really cerebral and who were

1:08:21

well-adversed or tried to be well-versed in Mormon

1:08:23

history would be people like John Widso. He

1:08:26

was trained in chemistry, but he had a

1:08:29

magnificent Mormon history library. James

1:08:31

Talensch, one of his colleagues in the Quorum of

1:08:33

the Twelve, he was also reading stuff. B.H. Roberts

1:08:35

was reading stuff. Joseph Phil Neesmith would spot read.

1:08:39

And he was a church historian, so he had access

1:08:41

to certain documents. But a whole

1:08:43

bunch of the other apostles, I'm thinking of a

1:08:45

guy named Charles Callister, who spent,

1:08:47

I think, what, two decades as an

1:08:49

apostle presiding over the Southern states mission.

1:08:51

I mean, you know, he's

1:08:53

dealing with 19 and 20 year olds. He's

1:08:55

not really having time at night under a

1:08:58

candlelight to go read church history as he's,

1:09:00

you know, perched in the south at the

1:09:02

mission home. So I don't know

1:09:04

if these guys, I have no

1:09:06

evidence, and I'm a historian, I work

1:09:08

from evidence. There is absolutely no evidence

1:09:11

to suggest that the brethren knew that

1:09:14

there was more than one black person ordained

1:09:17

to the priesthood, except for Elijah Abel.

1:09:20

And I say that, and

1:09:23

there's one exception to that. And if

1:09:25

you make one exception, maybe it's logical to say that

1:09:27

other people may have known as well. But in 1954,

1:09:29

when Reuben Clark

1:09:31

was poised to give this great civil rights address

1:09:33

just after the Brown versus the Board decision had

1:09:36

been made by the US Supreme Court, Reuben

1:09:39

Clark wanted to acknowledge in general conference

1:09:42

that there were a few colored

1:09:44

brethren, as he put it, who

1:09:46

held the priesthood. And when I read

1:09:48

that unpublished talk, it was never

1:09:50

given, President McKay didn't want him to give it. But

1:09:53

as I read that draft of that talk,

1:09:55

I was astonished because this is the first

1:09:57

indication that I have that one of the

1:10:00

top leaders knew there was more than just

1:10:02

Elijah Abel held the priesthood and to Reuben

1:10:04

Clark's credit wanted to acknowledge that to the

1:10:06

church body, but I don't

1:10:08

think there's a lot of cover up as much

1:10:10

as just certainly leaders who

1:10:12

were uninformed about the church's history. But

1:10:14

David O. McKay is signing this letter

1:10:16

that we're reading right now. His name's

1:10:18

on it. Yeah, let's let's

1:10:20

cut to the chase here and that

1:10:22

is most of these letters

1:10:25

in the twentieth century are written by Reuben

1:10:27

Clark. George

1:10:29

Albert Smith has a

1:10:31

long history of he's

1:10:34

had mental breakdowns for at least

1:10:36

three decades and

1:10:38

he's got a nerve condition and

1:10:40

he writes in his

1:10:42

diary, my nerves are shot. I could

1:10:44

barely function today and in

1:10:47

my book, I've got a little footnote where

1:10:49

I just give one episode of his nerves

1:10:51

being shot, but I was struck when I

1:10:53

read George Albert Smith's diary of how many

1:10:55

mental breakdowns the guy has. He's just really

1:10:57

you know, with all due respect, he's he's

1:10:59

having a rough time with his mental health

1:11:02

and so you know, it's not

1:11:04

likely that he's writing this letter and

1:11:06

because most of the tough letters that come

1:11:08

into the office of the first presidency are

1:11:10

turned over to Reuben Clark and

1:11:12

let me say a quick word about Reuben Clark because

1:11:14

he's really one of

1:11:16

the most influential church leaders in

1:11:19

the twentieth century and most Latter-day

1:11:21

Saints today know very little about him, but Reuben

1:11:23

Clark was a he was trained in the law.

1:11:25

I went to Columbia

1:11:27

University at the turn of the century and

1:11:30

his mentor benefactor was James Talmadge who was

1:11:32

the former president of the University of Utah

1:11:35

and Talmadge of course would go on to

1:11:37

be a high ranking church apostle, but Talmadge

1:11:39

mentored Reuben Clark recognized his brilliance and saw

1:11:41

to it that he got a was able

1:11:43

to further his education at Columbia

1:11:45

Law School and so

1:11:49

Reuben Clark is a brilliant man

1:11:51

and makes a market Columbia

1:11:53

goes to work for the United States government

1:11:55

and the State Department works in the Woodrow

1:11:57

Wilson Administration becomes an important part of the

1:12:00

ambassador to Mexico. And

1:12:02

when he's in Washington, DC doing his government

1:12:04

work, he's not active in the church. And

1:12:07

he doesn't go to church, hasn't been to the temple.

1:12:09

The temple doesn't he was sealed in the temple, but doesn't

1:12:12

bother to go with his wife. The

1:12:15

emphasis on temple attendance and

1:12:17

doing regular endowment sessions is

1:12:20

not was not didn't

1:12:22

hold up them like it holds up today. The

1:12:24

church leaders emphasize that today, but not so in

1:12:26

those days. But nonetheless, it was still unusual to

1:12:29

not go to church and to not go to

1:12:32

the temple, however infrequent. So anyway,

1:12:34

he wasn't active. And Hebrew Jay Grant called

1:12:36

him into the quorum of the 12 in

1:12:38

1933, even

1:12:40

though he wasn't active. And because they wanted

1:12:42

his they wanted his skills. He

1:12:45

was a smart man, he had

1:12:47

government connections. And President Grant wanted

1:12:49

the church to expand into Mexico.

1:12:53

And who better to help

1:12:55

do that than the ambassador to Mexico.

1:12:58

So Reuben Clark gets called into the

1:13:00

first presidency. And you can imagine that

1:13:02

this is a

1:13:04

young guy who's not been active.

1:13:07

And he gets ordained an apostle,

1:13:09

but he's not given

1:13:12

a position in the quorum of the 12.

1:13:15

And so he vaults over the other

1:13:17

apostles and goes to the highest quorum

1:13:20

in church leadership. And

1:13:22

you can imagine that some of the existing

1:13:24

apostles are little put off by

1:13:26

this because you know, they put in their time,

1:13:28

right, they've done the heavy lifting, they've done the

1:13:30

hard work. And all of a sudden, this outsider

1:13:32

gets elevated over them in church, the church hierarchy.

1:13:34

So there is some jealousy, we'll see this later

1:13:37

on with Hugh Brown to and,

1:13:40

but he cuts his mark pretty quick. He's the

1:13:42

guy, he's not a very good speaker. And he's

1:13:45

not charismatic, like David O. McKay, the other

1:13:47

counselor in the first presidency. And

1:13:49

so David O. McKay becomes sort of

1:13:52

the face of the operation to the

1:13:54

saints. He's handsome, he's charming, he's articulate.

1:13:56

But Reuben Clark is the guy behind

1:13:58

the scenes making the policy. if you

1:14:00

will. Okay. Yeah. So

1:14:03

he's the guy writing the

1:14:06

all of the first presidency, most of the first

1:14:08

presidency responses when people ask hard questions, they

1:14:10

turn to Reuben Clark, they have him do it. This

1:14:13

statement here, john, in

1:14:16

my mind, I can't prove this, but in my mind's eye, it's

1:14:18

just simply George Albert Smith, his health is

1:14:20

not well, they turn to Reuben Clark, hey,

1:14:22

you answer this Lowry guy, he's an intellectual,

1:14:24

you're an intellectual, write him back, we'll put

1:14:26

our name to it. And that's what I

1:14:29

see happening. But but get you know,

1:14:31

we, we went down that road about

1:14:33

J. Reuben Clark, because I asked you

1:14:35

the question, if you if you acknowledge

1:14:37

that David O. McCain knew that Joseph

1:14:39

Smith had given the priesthood to other

1:14:41

black men, and David O. McCain's on

1:14:43

this letter, which

1:14:46

means that he would have allowed it to go out, you

1:14:48

were implying that maybe he didn't read it. But

1:14:51

that would so do you know, not

1:14:53

necessarily. I mean, it's possible that he

1:14:55

didn't read it. But I think David

1:14:57

O. McKay was a placator. And

1:15:00

he was not a guy. I have

1:15:02

a friend who's a good scholar of David O. McKay,

1:15:04

and he my friend makes the comment

1:15:06

that McKay could tell

1:15:08

somebody, you know, a liberal Mormon like

1:15:11

Sterling McMurren, or Lowry Nelson, one thing

1:15:13

on Monday, and then tell a

1:15:15

church education system employee another thing on Tuesday,

1:15:17

he was always trying to please people. And

1:15:20

so it's possible in my mind that Reuben Clark

1:15:22

went to him and said, Look, we've got this

1:15:24

challenging question from this disgruntled Latter-day Saint intellectual, I'm

1:15:26

going to write this statement, here it is, just

1:15:28

sign it, if you want to read it, fine,

1:15:30

but sign it, we need to, we

1:15:33

need to be unified as a presidency. And I

1:15:35

think that's very likely that that could happen. What

1:15:37

I was also wondering is, is it likely that

1:15:39

one of them could send

1:15:41

out a letter signed by all of

1:15:43

them that all of them didn't all

1:15:45

read? Possible, John. I

1:15:47

think that David O. McKay was a 10 of

1:15:49

the details. I mean, you know, it's only a

1:15:51

couple of paragraphs. So you

1:15:54

know, it's likely that he probably read the letter.

1:15:56

But George Albert Smith is by this by his

1:15:58

presidency, he's, he's not doing. well mentally.

1:16:00

So, Reuben Clark's writing the church. Well, my

1:16:02

point is it's to say it would this

1:16:04

would be deceptive to say that Joseph Smith

1:16:07

was the origin of

1:16:09

the priesthood ban because they would

1:16:11

have known most likely that Elijah

1:16:13

Abel and possibly others. And so

1:16:15

that ends up being deceptive

1:16:18

whether it was intentional or knowing or

1:16:20

not. Well,

1:16:23

I would say that John that I

1:16:26

don't know it's misleading. Yeah,

1:16:28

it's it certainly could be misleading but deception tells

1:16:30

me or at least in my mind deception means

1:16:32

they know when they're trying to deceive willingly. I

1:16:35

think really what's going on for my studies and

1:16:37

thinking about this is that

1:16:39

they're really trying hard to create a coherent

1:16:41

narrative that the ban began with Joseph Smith.

1:16:43

They're still working out Mormon theology even into

1:16:45

the second generation of the church. And

1:16:48

so they're really really fastidious about pinning

1:16:50

the ban on Joseph Smith. And

1:16:53

this I'm going to jump ahead just for a

1:16:55

quick second if I can for 30 seconds that

1:16:58

even after the ban is lifted even

1:17:01

after the ban is lifted they're the general

1:17:03

authorities are really really careful even in 1978-1979

1:17:05

they're really careful to

1:17:08

make sure that church historians pin the ban on

1:17:12

Joseph Smith despite massive evidence to the contrary

1:17:14

that it began with young. And

1:17:17

so that's what I see happening in the mid 20th century that

1:17:20

they're not really asking the hard questions. And

1:17:22

we've got letters that at least

1:17:24

Joseph Hilling Smith and maybe one other apostle

1:17:28

that will respond to inquiring

1:17:31

Latter-day Saints about Elijah Abel and they'll

1:17:33

say it was a mistake. And

1:17:36

so I think some of them think that it

1:17:38

was a mistake that he was ordained or they'll

1:17:40

say David O said this it was

1:17:42

an accept there was an exception to the rule with Abel. But

1:17:45

nobody else was ordained. And again I don't

1:17:47

see any evidence that David O

1:17:49

McKay knew anything about Quack

1:17:51

Walker Lewis or already

1:17:54

those guys. All right okay

1:17:56

well I'm just you know a lot of us want

1:17:58

to know who know what when. And

1:18:01

then who said what, when,

1:18:03

aligned with what they knew. And so

1:18:05

that's why I'm asking these questions. Okay, back

1:18:07

to Larry Nelson, back to this letter to

1:18:09

Larry Nelson from the first

1:18:11

presidency, it goes on. This

1:18:15

is the first presidency speaking again. Furthermore, your idea,

1:18:17

this is kind of a rough paragraph for me.

1:18:20

Furthermore, your ideas as we

1:18:22

understand them appear to

1:18:25

contemplate the intermarriage of

1:18:27

the Negro and white races.

1:18:30

A concept which has

1:18:32

heretofore been most

1:18:34

repugnant to most

1:18:36

normal-minded people from the ancient patriarchs

1:18:38

till now, God's rule

1:18:41

for Israel, his chosen people, has

1:18:43

been, and is it

1:18:45

endogamous or endogamous? I

1:18:47

don't even know. Endogamous. Endogamous. Modern

1:18:50

Israel has been similarly directed. So

1:18:52

that's disturbing to me to hear the Mormon

1:18:54

church first presidency in the 1940s refer

1:18:58

to interracial marriage as

1:19:00

obviously repugnant. Not

1:19:02

just repugnant, but like face

1:19:05

valid, obvious repugnant. Yeah,

1:19:09

there are two main things with interracial

1:19:11

marriage going on here. And I remember

1:19:13

talking to the late, great Lester Bush,

1:19:16

one of the pioneers of Mormon racial

1:19:18

history. Lester, rest of soul,

1:19:20

just passed away last year. And

1:19:24

anyway, I remember talking, had a lengthy phone call with

1:19:26

Lester about interracial marriage and

1:19:28

the theological justification for it, and

1:19:32

shared my ideas with Lester. It was fun talking to him. He

1:19:34

was a brilliant man. And the

1:19:36

two things that I shared with Lester

1:19:38

that I talked about a little bit in this

1:19:40

book, and that is what we're seeing

1:19:42

now is we're seeing the most

1:19:44

extreme form of interracial marriage among church

1:19:47

leaders. And again, this is not unique

1:19:49

to Latter-day Saints. Other people in larger

1:19:51

American culture believe this as well. And

1:19:54

that is that you shouldn't have these bloodlines

1:19:56

mixing because it sullies the purity of the

1:19:58

white race. That's a very... extreme view,

1:20:00

right? That's like, this

1:20:02

is the stuff that Hitler would talk about with

1:20:05

bloodlines, and that's also an extreme view. So

1:20:07

it's an extreme view to oppose interracial

1:20:10

marriage because one bloodstream will pollute

1:20:12

the other. The other

1:20:15

idea that LDS church leaders will

1:20:17

latch on to in the 20th

1:20:19

century is they will start reading

1:20:23

what we call marital help literature. And

1:20:25

in this marital help literature, this popular

1:20:27

prescriptive literature about what makes a good

1:20:29

marriage, Spencer Kimball in particular will pick

1:20:32

up on this. And

1:20:34

Kimball will read that the best, these

1:20:37

are non LDS writers talking about what

1:20:39

makes good marriages in the 20th century.

1:20:42

And these 20th century American

1:20:44

marital experts will write books that

1:20:46

Kimball read in articles, mostly articles.

1:20:49

And you'll see them in Kimball's private papers, which

1:20:52

is how I know what he's thinking. And

1:20:54

so he's reading these articles about marriage, what

1:20:56

makes a good marriage. And he's not talking

1:20:59

about bloodlines being contaminated like this letter does.

1:21:02

He's talking, it talks about that the

1:21:04

best marriages are the ones that are,

1:21:08

are where Christians marry Christians and

1:21:10

Muslims marry Muslims and middle class

1:21:12

marries middle class and Japanese marry

1:21:14

Japanese and black people marry black

1:21:17

people. And the idea would be that

1:21:19

marriage is hard enough. Why would you

1:21:22

want to complicate it if a Jewish

1:21:24

person married a Christian person or a

1:21:26

Christian person married an agnostic or a

1:21:28

rich person married a poor person or

1:21:31

a black person married a white person. And

1:21:33

so for those of you who are listening

1:21:35

audience who, who are familiar with Kimball's views

1:21:37

on interracial marriage, which he talks about a

1:21:39

lot over the years during his ministry, this

1:21:41

is what he's latching onto. It's this popular

1:21:44

prescriptive literature that he's reading. It's not the

1:21:46

stuff of Reuben Clark where we're going to

1:21:48

sully the bloodlines. Maybe Kimball believes that, but

1:21:50

the fact is that's not really what's

1:21:52

undergirding his sermonizing on interracial marriage. So

1:21:55

those are two different views of

1:21:57

why certain leaders oppose interracial marriage.

1:22:00

in this letter, we're seeing the most extreme one. All

1:22:03

right. Very

1:22:05

good. Okay. So

1:22:08

they call it repugnant. And

1:22:13

then I think the only other

1:22:15

part I think that's worth mentioning

1:22:17

in this statement is

1:22:20

they're basically codifying

1:22:22

interracial marriage, the

1:22:25

ban on interracial marriage as being

1:22:27

doctrinal as well. Because

1:22:30

he writes, we are not unmindful

1:22:32

of the fact that there's

1:22:35

a growing tendency, particularly among

1:22:37

some educators, as it manifests

1:22:39

itself in this area toward

1:22:41

the breaking down of racial barriers

1:22:43

in the matter of interracial marriage

1:22:45

between whites and blacks. So he's

1:22:47

basically saying, hey, you liberal academics

1:22:49

are trying to build

1:22:52

acceptance in the broader culture for interracial

1:22:54

marriage. And then he ends by saying,

1:22:56

but it does not have the sanction

1:22:58

of the church and is

1:23:00

contrary to church doctrine. Now, I don't know

1:23:02

if you think that's significant, but that's basically

1:23:04

the first president saying that

1:23:07

the ban on interracial

1:23:09

marriage is church doctrine.

1:23:12

Right. Right. Right. Yep.

1:23:18

That's what's happening. So I

1:23:21

think that this isn't a

1:23:23

private letter, right? And

1:23:26

if Larry Nelson doesn't quite know its

1:23:28

doctrine, what about the tens

1:23:30

of thousands of other Latter-day Saints? Do they

1:23:32

know it's doctrine? And

1:23:36

so what the church

1:23:38

does is they're really alarmed by

1:23:40

Larry Nelson's letter, because in the letter

1:23:43

he just he says a couple of

1:23:45

things in some of his exchanges of

1:23:47

the first presidency. He says that, you know,

1:23:49

I hope this had not received an aura

1:23:51

of the sacred when he said

1:23:53

this, he's referring to the priesthood doctrine, the

1:23:55

race doctrine. And now

1:23:57

the brother in right and back saying.

1:24:00

it is doctrine and you shouldn't question

1:24:02

doctrine. But then it occurs to

1:24:04

them that if he doesn't understand

1:24:06

its doctrine, a man who's been in the church his

1:24:08

entire life, a man who taught at BYU, then

1:24:11

what about the other members? And

1:24:13

so by August 17th, 1949, they

1:24:17

decide they want to fix that. And

1:24:20

so they produce a first presidency

1:24:22

letter in which they're going to

1:24:24

lay down the law. And the

1:24:26

letter is going to state very clearly that

1:24:28

it's a doctrine, that it's

1:24:30

founded as a commandment, and

1:24:34

that it's a result of the behavior

1:24:36

of black people in the pre-existence. They

1:24:38

don't talk about neutral or less valiant,

1:24:40

they stay away from that. But

1:24:43

they do argue that this is a

1:24:45

doctrine and God's responsible for it. And

1:24:48

I want to go off record for a minute, I think

1:24:50

your listeners may be curious about this, that

1:24:52

there's been a lot of discussion about this 1949 letter.

1:24:55

And the reason why there's

1:24:58

a lot of discussion about it is because

1:25:00

in the LDS Church, the

1:25:03

office of the first presidency, they are

1:25:05

the ones that produce doctrine. And

1:25:08

for Latter-day Saints, I've had to explain this a lot over

1:25:10

the years about how doctrine works, because I think a lot

1:25:12

of members don't understand it. And in

1:25:15

the 19th century, when Brigham Young spoke, he would get

1:25:18

up to sermonize behind the pulpit

1:25:20

and he would say, you know,

1:25:22

wave his finger and say, I

1:25:25

speak in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, what I'm

1:25:27

saying here today is doctrine, and paraphrasing,

1:25:29

of course. And so it

1:25:31

was just the church president declaring doctrine. But

1:25:34

by the 20th century, the

1:25:36

high church leadership didn't want

1:25:38

church presidents going off by

1:25:40

themselves and pontificating, because

1:25:42

then you get stuff like Adam God,

1:25:45

and you get some other tough teachings

1:25:48

that the church would later repudiate. So

1:25:50

by the 20th century, doctrine then

1:25:53

becomes the provenance not solely by

1:25:55

the church president, but by the

1:25:57

office of the first presidency. So

1:25:59

the entire first presidency, the prophet

1:26:01

and his two counselors have to

1:26:03

agree about what doctrine is. And

1:26:06

by the late 20th century, to add one more

1:26:08

point to this, by the late 20th century, the

1:26:11

church has now added another layer, and

1:26:14

that is the quorum of the 12 apostles

1:26:16

also have to agree. So it's

1:26:18

now the two highest quorums of the church that

1:26:21

agree to something, and that becomes the doctrine

1:26:23

of the church. So it starts out just

1:26:25

by the church president, then the 20th

1:26:27

century moves into the first presidency, and then by

1:26:30

the late or by the 21st century, then becomes

1:26:32

both the quorum of the 12th and the first

1:26:34

presidency. And so in

1:26:36

the mid 20th century, when it was just the providence

1:26:39

of the first presidency declaring doctrine, this

1:26:42

was well known to the leadership, and I

1:26:44

want to read just something that your leaders,

1:26:46

your listeners will find interesting. This is Marion

1:26:48

G. Romney in 1944, he was an assistant

1:26:50

to the member of the quorum, to the

1:26:52

quorum of the 12th. And he gave a

1:26:54

general conference talk. And he

1:26:56

said something interesting. He said,

1:26:58

quote, today, the Lord is revealing his will

1:27:00

to all the inhabitants of the earth and

1:27:02

to members of the church in particular, on

1:27:04

the issues of this our day through the

1:27:06

living prophets with the first presidency at the

1:27:08

head. What they say

1:27:11

as a presidency is what the Lord

1:27:13

would say if he were here in

1:27:15

person. This is the rock

1:27:17

foundation of Mormonism. So I

1:27:19

repeat again, what the presidency

1:27:21

say as a presidency is what

1:27:24

the Lord would say if he

1:27:26

were here, and it is Scripture.

1:27:29

And I read

1:27:31

that statement by Elder Romney a long

1:27:33

time ago. And

1:27:35

when I read this first

1:27:38

presidency statement, countering

1:27:40

Lowry Nelson and enshrining these

1:27:43

theories and teachings and policies

1:27:45

and practices into doctrine, the

1:27:48

question I had was, was this

1:27:50

considered Scripture, this first presidency statement?

1:27:52

And I want to go off script, just a

1:27:54

quick moment, I gave a

1:27:57

conference talk years ago at

1:27:59

Independence, Missouri. It was at

1:28:01

the John Whitmer Historical Association conference,

1:28:03

was at their church headquarters, and

1:28:05

the Whitmer conference is comprised of

1:28:07

all the restorationist religions and

1:28:10

scholars who present their work. I

1:28:12

remember talking about race. This would have

1:28:15

been, I don't know, 2012 maybe. I

1:28:17

remember talking about race in my paper. There

1:28:20

was this man who

1:28:22

I'd never seen or met before. After

1:28:26

my presentation was over, I walked out. He made

1:28:28

a beeline for me. I remember he had this

1:28:30

starchy button-down

1:28:32

shirt and his little old glasses, and I

1:28:35

could pick him out from a ways away. He

1:28:37

was a church bureaucrat, so he worked in Salt

1:28:39

Lake. He said to

1:28:41

me, he said, I heard

1:28:43

you say in your paper that

1:28:45

the church teachings on race were

1:28:47

doctrine. Where do

1:28:49

you get that from? Because

1:28:53

at that point, the church was

1:28:55

talking about it just being a teaching

1:28:58

or an opinion of a few church

1:29:00

leaders. So it was a branding

1:29:02

effort that the church was trying to put out. I

1:29:05

said, where did I get it from? I got it from

1:29:07

the first presidency of a statement they made in 1949. He

1:29:12

just looked at his glasses, straightened him for a moment,

1:29:14

and he said, yeah, that's a tough one to deal

1:29:16

with. Because it's hard

1:29:18

to argue in the 21st century

1:29:20

that it's the opinions of some

1:29:22

church leaders when the first

1:29:24

presidency themselves declared it doctrine in 1949. And

1:29:28

that's what's going on here, is that they're

1:29:30

throwing down the gauntlet on Lowery Nelson. The

1:29:33

other thing I'll share with is

1:29:36

that the church archivists over the

1:29:38

years have looked and looked and

1:29:40

looked for this statement. And

1:29:43

I think there was even some people

1:29:45

out there, not the church archivists, but some people out

1:29:47

there that thought that this may have even been a

1:29:49

spurious statement, that it wasn't real because they couldn't find

1:29:51

it. So

1:29:55

when I was looking in the John

1:29:57

A. Widso papers at the Utah State

1:29:59

Historical Society, I found his copy of

1:30:02

the first presidency

1:30:04

statement. And what

1:30:06

was interesting about this is that

1:30:08

he had typed at the top

1:30:11

of his personal copy, he wrote

1:30:13

Church Doctrine Regarding Negroes. And

1:30:16

so Elder Widsoe and also Elder Kimball,

1:30:18

I have his personal copy of this

1:30:20

as well from his private papers of

1:30:22

the Church Archives. So Elder

1:30:24

Widsoe and Elder Kimball both call it

1:30:26

Church Doctrine because they're recognizing something transformative

1:30:28

here that the Church is trying to

1:30:31

elevate its teachings into doctrine. And if

1:30:33

you do that, if people have questions

1:30:35

like Larry Nelson in the future, you

1:30:37

can simply share this copy with them

1:30:40

and say, look, this is not something

1:30:42

that's open for debate. This has been

1:30:44

settled by the office of the first

1:30:46

presidency. Right. Right. Sounds a lot like

1:30:49

how the home members

1:30:51

or general authorities will

1:30:54

use other documents today,

1:30:56

such as the family proclamation.

1:30:58

But I don't

1:31:00

know. That's how it's like to me.

1:31:03

John, do you want to share the first

1:31:05

presidency statement? Because I don't think we have

1:31:07

shared that yet. All right. Perfect. Well, you

1:31:10

know, I'll just, let me just say this

1:31:12

really quickly before we jump to the 1949

1:31:14

statement, I'll just add, and this will be

1:31:16

in the PDF that we share in the

1:31:19

show notes that people can go through and read. I just

1:31:22

want to highly recommend that

1:31:24

people go, go to

1:31:26

the PDF because after, after

1:31:30

the first presidency responds to

1:31:34

Larry Nelson, almost doubling down

1:31:36

in that July 17th, 1947 letter, Larry

1:31:41

Nelson responds with an October 8th, 1947 letter

1:31:43

that's three pages long. That's sort of

1:31:49

just this brilliant response

1:31:53

as a professional, as a

1:31:55

sociologist, not only sharing

1:31:57

his expertise as a

1:31:59

sociologist. where he talks about

1:32:01

the development of cultures, how

1:32:04

organizations tend to resist change.

1:32:07

He talks about ethnocentrism and

1:32:09

in-group and out-group dynamics and

1:32:11

how that likely has influenced

1:32:14

both religion and the church over

1:32:16

time. He talks about,

1:32:20

you know, Japanese cultures and American

1:32:22

Indian cultures and how the

1:32:25

priesthood ban is problematic in

1:32:27

its selectiveness. You

1:32:30

know, in so many different ways, he talks about

1:32:32

Jesus Christ, how he can't

1:32:34

find Jesus's support for the priesthood

1:32:36

ban. And then he just shares

1:32:39

in that final page, his very

1:32:41

personal reflections on why he's

1:32:44

very troubled with the idea of

1:32:46

the priesthood ban being enshrined

1:32:49

as doctrine, sort

1:32:51

of just saying how ironic it would

1:32:53

be that someone like George Washington Carver,

1:32:55

who was a brilliant black scientist, would

1:32:59

be, it would be assumed that he would

1:33:01

have been unworthy in the pre-existence. And

1:33:04

then in this life, found unworthy for the

1:33:06

priesthood, whereas just some random white

1:33:08

person would be assumed to

1:33:11

be worthy because of pre-existence values,

1:33:14

how just disturbing those types of things are.

1:33:16

It's such a brilliant response. We don't have

1:33:19

time to really dig into it in this

1:33:21

episode, but I really highly recommend those of

1:33:23

you do check that out.

1:33:25

So anyway, what a brilliant series

1:33:28

of exchanges. Matt, I'm so grateful you're

1:33:31

bringing these exchanges to the

1:33:33

forefront. Let's go ahead now and

1:33:35

just jump to that 1949 statement. You've

1:33:39

already talked about it briefly, but I think

1:33:41

it might make sense to actually talk

1:33:44

a tiny bit more about it, to tell people

1:33:46

about what led to it, what it was, and

1:33:49

maybe a passage or two about

1:33:51

why it might be important. Yeah,

1:33:54

so a couple of passages I'll just read

1:33:57

that are instructive. The first one is the...

1:34:00

It says, the attitude of the church

1:34:02

with reference to Negroes remains

1:34:04

as it has always stood. It

1:34:07

is not a matter of the declaration of a policy,

1:34:09

but of direct commandment from the Lord, on

1:34:12

which is founded the doctrines of the

1:34:14

church from the days of its organization,

1:34:16

to the effect that Negroes may become members

1:34:18

of the church, but that they are not

1:34:20

entitled to the priesthood at the present time.

1:34:23

So the attitude of the church with

1:34:25

reference to Negroes remains as it has

1:34:27

always stood. Well, not entirely true, right?

1:34:30

Black men ordained to the priesthood during Joseph Smith's time.

1:34:32

So clearly there's an evolution in the

1:34:35

policy. And

1:34:37

then there are earlier leaders like Orson

1:34:39

F. Whitney, the apostle, and Joseph F. Smith,

1:34:42

who were calling these teachings, policies,

1:34:44

and practices. Well now this first

1:34:47

presidency statement is enshrining

1:34:49

into doctrine by saying it is not a

1:34:51

matter of the declaration of a policy. So

1:34:53

it's not just a policy, but

1:34:56

it's also a direct commandment from the Lord

1:34:58

on which is founded the doctrine of the

1:35:00

church from the days of the church. So

1:35:04

they're using the word doctrine. And

1:35:07

so they're really trying to be emphatic

1:35:09

by mid 20th century that they're trying

1:35:11

to really tighten up their church teachings

1:35:13

by elevating them into doctrinal status. And

1:35:16

in the last paragraph, as your readers can see, it

1:35:19

says, the position of the church regarding the

1:35:21

Negro may be understood when another doctrine. So

1:35:24

the second time they use the word doctrine,

1:35:26

another doctrine of the church is kept in

1:35:28

mind namely that the conduct of spirits in

1:35:31

the premortal existence has some

1:35:33

determining effect upon the conditions and

1:35:35

circumstances under which these spirits take

1:35:37

on mortality. And that while

1:35:39

the details of this principle have not been

1:35:41

made known, the principle itself

1:35:43

indicates that the coming of this earth

1:35:45

and taking on mortality is the privilege

1:35:47

that it is given to those who

1:35:49

maintain their first estate and that

1:35:52

the worth of the privilege is so great

1:35:54

that spirits are willing to come to earth

1:35:56

and take on bodies no matter what handicapped

1:35:59

may be. to the kind of bodies

1:36:01

there to secure, and that among

1:36:03

the handicaps failure of the right to

1:36:05

enjoy mortality, the blessings of the priesthood

1:36:07

is a handicap, which spirits are

1:36:09

willing to assume in order that they may come to

1:36:11

earth. So, I mean,

1:36:15

they're making it really, really clear. And this

1:36:18

is not a statement that was going

1:36:20

to be circulated in the church magazine,

1:36:22

the improvement era. It was not

1:36:24

a statement that was going to be broadcast

1:36:27

over the pulpit in general

1:36:29

conference. It was simply

1:36:31

a statement that would supplement Joseph

1:36:33

Fielding Smith's The Way to Perfection.

1:36:36

So when people like Lowry Nelson

1:36:38

had questions about the ban,

1:36:40

then they would simply look

1:36:43

to this statement for guidance.

1:36:45

And so what

1:36:47

was the shelf life of this

1:36:49

statement? Well, in

1:36:51

1951, it got misnamed.

1:36:53

The statement somehow got titled

1:36:56

1951, but it

1:36:58

was done in 1949, as Elder Widso's

1:37:01

personal copy indicates. And

1:37:03

in 1951, it was mislabeled, but

1:37:07

the brethren asked Ernest Wilkinson to share

1:37:09

this statement with members of the BYU

1:37:11

faculty who had been having some

1:37:13

difficulty with the church's teachings on race. And

1:37:16

I know we're going to talk about BYU

1:37:18

later. So they shared this

1:37:20

with the brethren or some

1:37:22

of the BYU faculty. They also

1:37:24

shared it with missionaries, Henry D. Moyle,

1:37:26

who was an apostle, and

1:37:28

also a First Presidency member. He

1:37:31

would speak to various church missions

1:37:33

as a general authority, and he would distribute

1:37:36

copies of this statement. But this

1:37:38

statement was never meant for public consumption. It

1:37:40

was only to be used when people had

1:37:42

questions about whether this was a policy or

1:37:44

a doctrine. And by the mid 1960s, by

1:37:47

1965, the brethren started to feel uneasy about this statement.

1:37:57

And there was a BYU religion professor named James.

1:37:59

James Clark, who was the nephew to

1:38:02

J. Reuben Clark, the

1:38:04

first presidency counselor. And

1:38:06

James R. Clark was producing a,

1:38:09

I think, five-volume series

1:38:11

called Messages of the First Presidency.

1:38:14

He started in, I think, 65 or early

1:38:16

60s, and the last volume was published in

1:38:18

75. And

1:38:20

James Clark wanted to publish some of the

1:38:22

seminal first presidency statements of the 19th and

1:38:24

20th century. And

1:38:27

so he went to his nephew

1:38:30

Reuben Clark and he talked to Joseph

1:38:32

Fielding Smith, and he

1:38:34

wanted to include some messages on first

1:38:36

presidency statements on polygamy. He also wanted

1:38:38

to include the 1949 first presidency statement

1:38:40

on race. And

1:38:43

Joseph Fielding Smith told him, let's not do

1:38:46

this. This is not wise to include controversial

1:38:48

statements like the 49 one and also ones on polygamy.

1:38:54

And the reason why it was controversial to

1:38:56

Joseph Fielding Smith, it wasn't because he disagreed

1:38:58

with the views. It was because

1:39:00

that this religion professor is trying to publish

1:39:02

this statement in the midst of the civil

1:39:05

rights movement. And so the

1:39:07

brethren recognized by 65 that having this statement

1:39:09

out in print for everybody to see could

1:39:11

be problematic. Year and a half

1:39:13

ago, when the church archivists called me, they wanted some guidance

1:39:16

on this statement. I told them, as I

1:39:18

mentioned a minute ago, where to find it. And

1:39:21

I sent them my copy, actually. I

1:39:23

told them where to find it in the Spencer Kimball papers. And

1:39:26

I said that they'd been looking in the

1:39:28

church magazines for it. I said it was

1:39:30

never published in church magazines. It was never

1:39:33

published in church newspapers. It was just simply

1:39:35

a private document to be shared among Latter-day

1:39:37

Saints who had questions about the race doctrine.

1:39:41

Yeah, you know, that's so fascinating. And

1:39:43

I'm just going to highlight, like many

1:39:45

people will debate over, you

1:39:47

know, what led to the cessation of

1:39:50

polygamy or what led to the cessation

1:39:52

of the priestic ban or,

1:39:54

you know, how does change happen

1:39:56

in the church? And

1:39:58

the perception is… is that,

1:40:00

you know, God decides

1:40:02

it's time, and then he telephones

1:40:04

the prophet, and then the prophet

1:40:07

writes down what God says and then lets the

1:40:09

membership know that God is in

1:40:12

charge of change in the church, and

1:40:14

he's at the helm. And

1:40:16

that instigation or activism

1:40:18

or public relations pressure, you

1:40:21

know, aren't what would ever lead

1:40:23

to a revelation, because God would

1:40:25

never be bullied or influenced by

1:40:28

social pressure or activism or the like.

1:40:31

But what this whole story gives

1:40:34

to me is just this kind

1:40:36

of insider inside look at sort

1:40:39

of what happens.

1:40:41

A statement is not generated

1:40:43

proactively because the brethren

1:40:45

want to let everyone know what

1:40:48

God's view is. It's like some

1:40:50

academic has some concerns based

1:40:52

on a mission president trying to think

1:40:55

about missionary work. And so he writes

1:40:57

a letter, and exchange

1:40:59

happens, and then a statement gets written, but

1:41:02

it's not published openly. They don't want

1:41:05

necessarily the whole church to know, they

1:41:08

don't want to necessarily be on the record to the

1:41:10

whole church. And so the

1:41:13

statement gets written in response to

1:41:15

activism, and then it's

1:41:17

judiciously decided how

1:41:20

much this will be shared

1:41:22

from a broader perspective. And

1:41:24

by 1949, the decision is clearly made. Not

1:41:27

yet, not yet is this gonna be something that's

1:41:30

a matter of public discussion from

1:41:32

the first presidency standpoint. And

1:41:35

to me, that's all very interesting and important. Okay,

1:41:38

I had a question really quick. Sorry,

1:41:40

did you put back up the image on

1:41:42

the screen, John? And

1:41:44

I wanted to ask Matt, who's this copy of? And

1:41:49

then I think there's some handwriting at the top.

1:41:52

Yeah, yeah. And I

1:41:54

wanted to explain that really quick. There it

1:41:56

is. Thanks, Gerardo. That

1:41:58

was a good question. This is John

1:42:01

Whitstow's copy and John

1:42:04