Is “white and delightsome” a racist scripture? Dr Matt Harris discusses the evolution of the priesthood/temple ban in the 19th century. He discusses black men who held the priesthood, and why Brigham Young removed their possibility of attending the temple. We’ll also discuss the controversial passages “white & delightsome” vs “pure & delightsome” in the Book of Mormon. Check out our conversation with Matt Harris…
Don’t miss our other conversations with Matt: https://gospeltangents.com/people/matt-harris/
Copyright © 2024
Gospel Tangents
All Rights Reserved
Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.
GT 0:49 So what I’d like to first do, I remember when we spoke, in fact, this was our first interview, it was about this book.
Matt 0:58 Which hadn’t been named yet.
GT 1:01 Yeah, it hadn’t been named. But what I’d like to do, because you do, I think in chapter one, you spend a very short chapter on the priesthood ban in the 19th century, and you noted that there were some black men who held the priesthood. Could you just give us a thumbnail of 19th century policies within the Church and blacks?
Matt 1:27 Yes. For years and years and years, the Church narrative was that the ban began with the Prophet Joseph Smith. In 1922, Andrew Jensen, who was the Assistant Church Historian published, I think it was a four volume encyclopedia biography. And just what it is, you just go through alphabetically to different subjects you could look up. And there was one subject in there that came back to bite the Church, and that the subject was Elijah Abel.
GT 1:57 Yes.
Matt 1:58 And so this is the first time that the Saints are reading that there was an early black priesthood holder. Oh, let me tell you, they wrote letters to the First Presidency, to the Quorum of the Twelve. How could there be a ban with Joseph Smith and Elijah Abel. Joseph Fielding Smith said, who was then the Church Historian, Joseph Fielding Smith said that that question has come back to haunt us. I wish he never would have included it. [He wished] Jensen wouldn’t have included Elijah Abel in the biography. So, they didn’t know how to answer it. How can you say the ban began with the Prophet, the founding Prophet, if a black man’s ordained to the priesthood. Joseph Fielding Smith was interesting in his responses. One Latter-day Saint inquisitor, he wrote back, and he said, “There were actually two Elijah Ables in Nauvoo, one was white and one was black.” I mean, there’s no evidence for any of this stuff, but he’s trying to work out this narrative. And then a little while later, he gave a different answer, and he said that it was a mistake. There’s no evidence for that either.
GT 3:07 Right.
Matt 3:08 And I’m not here to pick on Joseph Fielding Smith. I’m just merely telling the story that the brethren are trying to understand this and comprehend it. And J. Reuben Clark of the First Presidency was scheduled to give a general conference talk in October of 1954 and it’s the only time I’ve noticed where the brethren, where at least Clark had acknowledged that there were a few priesthood holders, black priesthood holders. Mostly Elijah Abel was known because of Andrew Jensen. But he acknowledges that there were a few priesthood holders of black African ancestry who held the priesthood. President McKay nixed the talk. “Don’t give it.”
GT 3:54 Really?
Matt 3:55 Yeah for two reasons. One, I think it was less about the acknowledgement of three black–well, that was part of it. That’s not true. Part of it was, we don’t want the Church [members] to know that there are three black priesthood holders. The other part was it, a lot of the talk talked about civil rights, which I’m sure we’ll get into in a minute. But President McKay didn’t want President Clark talking about civil rights and bringing attention to it when the civil rights movement was heating up, because it’ll bring attention to the race ban. So the ban–the Church, for years, thought that the ban began with the Prophet Joseph Smith. We now know that at least three or four black men held the priesthood. A couple more probably did, but the evidence is inconclusive.
Joseph Ball
Matt 4:42 I think for your listeners, one thing that’s really, really interesting is that you can’t say that Joseph Smith started the ban and then had black men ordained under his tutelage. He didn’t ordain them, personally, but other people did that he knew about. So, you can’t really say exception, exception, exception, but he was the originator. It doesn’t work that way. So Brigham Young, scholars today and the Church have acknowledged that Brigham Young is the founder of the ban. But what I want your listeners to know is Brigham Young accepted black priesthood holders at first. He knew about Joseph Ball, a black priesthood holder in Boston, also a branch president. I’ll say that again. A black man was a branch president in Boston, Massachusetts.
GT 5:30 See, now this makes me–because I know Paul argues–so you’re correct. Joseph Ball did hold the priesthood. He had black ancestry. But Paul Reeve argues that he was so light skinned he was listed as white on the census, that people didn’t know he was black. Do you agree or disagree with that?
Matt 5:53 I don’t know if I disagree with Paul on that. It’s hard to know about racial passing is really interesting, and it’s likely that he did pass, racially. Elijah Abel was light skinned, too. He was, I hate to say this, these fractions are ridiculous, but he was what they said at the time, 1/8 black.
GT 6:14 Yes, I know he’s listed on census records as Mulatto or Quadroon.
Matt 6:19 Yes.
GT 6:20 Quadroon would be one fourth black.
Matt 6:23 Joseph F, Smith, as I recall, says that he’s one eighth black. This is what they say in some documents. So, the brethren know that he’s got African ancestry. It’s less clear about Joseph Ball, and I think that that Paul’s speculation could hold up that if he’s listed as white on the census, it could mean that he was passing as white, but not necessarily. The real question is, how did the brethren view him? And so Joseph Ball, and there was a guy named William McCary who was a colorful character in history.
GT 6:59 Oh, very. I need you to help me get an interview with Angela Pulley Hudson.
Interracial Marriage Leads to Ban
Matt 7:03 Angela Pulley Hudson wrote a nice book about William McCary and his wife.[1] So William McCary has Indigenous ancestry [and] African ancestry.
GT 7:14 He also went by Warner McCary, I believe.
Matt 7:16 He also went by Warner McCary. Anyway, the upshot of the story is this is that Brigham Young was fine with Warner McCary. He was fine with Ball and and some others. And then they started taking polygamous, white wives. That’s where it turned south.
GT 7:32 Yeah, Walker Lewis’ son did, as well. Walker Lewis is interesting because—I think it was Wilford Woodruff, if I remember, called him a fine African, an elder.
Matt 7:44 Oh, yeah. They recognize that he has black African ancestry, and they even entrusted him with some ecclesiastical responsibilities.
GT 7:53 And he started the NAACP, a precursor.
Matt 7:59 He was involved in civil rights in and around Boston which is the hub of anti or abolitionist activity and folks pushing for racial equality.
GT 8:09 That’s another thing Benson would be upset about.
Matt 8:10 He would have been very upset at that. He did not believe in racial equality. So Brigham Young got word that a couple of these black men were marrying polygamous white wives. And in my opinion, it’s not coincidental that just after, not too long after he learns this, he gives this territorial address in 1852 where he announces, for the first time, the ban. And he also, and this is going to be jarring for your listeners to hear, but he also announced that if a black and a white man marry, they should lose their lives. They should die. He’s talking about blood atonement.
GT 8:51 I just had a conversation with Barbara Jones Brown, and she says that people don’t understand blood atonement. She’s talking in relation to Mountain Meadows, because she said you had to ask to be blood atoned, which clearly Warner McCary wouldn’t have asked. But yeah. I mean, he did say, “We ought to kill them and their blood out to be spilt.”
Matt 9:27 I mean, the idea about this is, of course, that interracial marriage is so grievous because there’s a pure white race, and it would be sullied with an interracial relationship, whether it’s black or brown or anybody else. But in this case, Brigham Young’s racism was so intense, it was directed towards black people. And we can talk about pure lineages and all that stuff in just a minute, but that was the idea that you would sully a pure, a racially pure bloodline with the seed of Cain, as the Church and Protestant groups had called it.
White & Delightsome
GT 9:58 Is that how we make them white and delightsome?
Matt 10:04 Well…
GT 10:05 I mean, I say that as a joke, but isn’t that why Joseph Smith specifically directed missionaries to go to the Lamanites, was so that they could intermarry with them and make them white and delightsome?
Matt 10:18 Yeah, which is not applied to black people. They were set apart for racism.
GT 10:23 But even Joseph Smith felt that way?
Matt 10:26 For Lamanites, for Native Americans.
GT 10:28 Beah, but he felt like blacks would not become white and delightsome?
Matt 10:32 No. Well, there’s a difference here. So let’s, let’s just pause for a quick moment and talk about what the teaching is, the doctrine is. The teaching was that everybody in the human family was white. There was a raceless human family, and they were all white. Some people sinned, and because they sinned, God had cursed them with a black or brown skin. So brown people are afflicted with this mythology, too. And so God cursed them with a black or brown skin. And if they repented of their sins, they could lose their curse. And the brethren could…
GT 11:10 The curse of the dark skin.
Matt 11:11 The curse of the dark skin. Now the scriptures don’t talk about black or brown. They just say dark. So various religious groups, including the Mormons, will interpret that dark skin to mean black or brown. This is not uniquely Latter-day Saint. I just want to be clear on this. I just published a big essay on this. Part of it shows up in my book, but I’ve devoted a 40 page paper to what we’re talking about now, what I call racial fluidity. And so the whole human race is white. Some of the human race sinned, and they got cursed to the black or brown skin. And they would have to lose that curse to inherit the celestial kingdom or exaltation, where they would be white again, or, as the scriptures put it, white and delightsome. How would they lose the curse? Well, they’d have to accept baptism into the Church. They would have to find God’s grace. They’d have to repent of their sins. And the brethren couldn’t determine if they would lose the curse in mortality or in the resurrection. They couldn’t determine when it would happen, but it would have to happen, because the idea would be that black or brown skin was offensive in God’s eyes, and they would have to lose that to be white again.
Matt 12:23 I know. I just want to acknowledge right here and now that I know this is terribly jarring to our modern sensibilities, and it should be. I mean, of all the things that maybe I’ve read and talked and written about over the last several years, it’s this idea of racial fluidity, that somehow your dark skin is a side of a divine curse. I mean, that is so incredibly offensive. Right? And so not all the brethren believe this, by the way. I just want to be clear on this. Hugh Brown, David O. McKay, Spencer Kimball did not–not Spencer Kimball. Kimball did, sadly, believe in some of this stuff. But McKay, no; Brown, no; Elder Widstoe, no; Elder Bennion, no. There’s others. So it was a very radical teaching, for sure, but that was the scaffolding behind it, that everybody was white, some people sinned, they got a curse. They would have to lose that curse again in order to inherit, the celestial kingdom. In 1944, in the mid 20th century, and before, this is when that doctrine was taught the most. And finally, in 1944, I found this in the Spencer W. Kimball papers. It was really interesting. It was a letter that the First Presidency wrote to a Latter-day Saint. I think it was a Latter-day Saint man. The man said, “I want to know, what will the color of the human race be? I assume it’ll be white in the Hereafter.” And the First Presidency, this is 1944, the First Presidency wrote this man, and they said that it is, unknown the color of black. I think was black. They used word negro. “It’s unknown the color of Negroes in the hereafter. It is not the doctrine of the Church that they’ll be white.” That’s what they said in 1944. The problem with that is that some of the more hardline apostles are teaching this, including Joseph Fielding Smith. But when asked to go on record and own the doctrine and the teaching, the Church sort of backed off a little bit. But if you look at the writings of some of the apostles, they’re very, very clear about this.
Matt 35:17 And in my book, there’s a little interesting interchange from 1954 where Mark E. Petersen had given this really, really aggressive anti-black talk, anti-black racism talk at BYU to religious educators. After the talk, Elder Peterson and Joseph Fielding Smith, the two apostles, were there, and they took questions from the educators. Hugh Nibley, the great Mormon apologist, asked a question, and he said, “Is it true that Negroes will lose their skin color in the resurrection or in mortality?” He gave either option. Now, this is off the record. This is not–they’re not taping this. There’s no transcript. It’ll be published in the Improvement Era, which is the Church’s magazine at the time. And so whatever was said would be off the record. And Joseph Fielding Smith said, “We have real, actual examples where Negros’ skin color has changed.” I mean, there’s no other way to interpret that metaphorically, that we have actual examples. And he never said that publicly in his writings, which is fascinating, because in my opinion, he knew that that would be controversial with black people. But he did say it with Native Americans or Lamanites.
GT 15:33 I remember hearing that in the 1970s.
Matt 15:35 Oh, we’ve all heard it.
GT 15:37 Yeah.
Matt 15:38 We’ve all heard it. And so even though the Church hasn’t taught that racial fluidities for a while now, in the 1970s, talk to any black or brown Latter-day Saint over the age of 35 and I guarantee you they’ve heard that if they’re righteous enough, their skin color will lighten. Of course, they’ll tell you that either laughingly, like how absurd this is, just funny, or they’ll say not laughingly. You know, this is disgusting.
GT 16:06 I will just share…
Matt 16:07 Strands of that today that linger.
GT 16:08 I will just share that we had a neighbor who had married a Native American, and my parents said that she had become lighter.
Matt 16:20 I know, this is one of the reasons why I wrote this book is because I want Latter-day Saints to understand this history, and I’m a historian, so it’s important to preserve this history. Of course, history, just for the record, is an interpretive act. So these are my judgments and conclusions based on hundreds and hundreds of documents that I’ve seen that are restricted, the First Presidency minutes, and Quorum of the Twelve minutes and documents at BYU. So, the history is really important, because you really can’t move beyond this history, and frankly, reconcile with some of this past, these past racial teachings, unless you own them. And you know, I’ve sometimes I’ve heard even from people my own family, when we’ve talked about this racial fluidity doctrine, my father would say, Well, I’ve never heard that, or I’ve never heard that in Church today.” My response is, “Well, I hope you don’t hear this in Church today. Oh, my.” But I said, Dad, that was the teaching of the Church for so many years. You wouldn’t have heard Joseph Fielding Smith applying it to black people, because he would have been just absolutely vilified if he talked about that during the Civil Rights era. But you certainly did read about his views on Native Americans because he published them by Deseret Book, Answers to Gospel Questions, Doctrines of Salvation. All of that is in there, but it’s directed towards Native Americans because the Book of Mormon privileges Lamanites or Native Americans, and says very little about black people, except, of course, the way they interpret certain passages with the curse of Cain and all of that.
Matt 18:04 Anyway, that’s a really controversial teaching, and I and I’ve often said to my dad and others, just because you haven’t heard about it or it’s not taught today, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t once taught. Once you put the foundation in place, you can understand how these things work. Elder Kimball gave a talk in 1960 when he was an apostle, and he talked about Lamanites leaving the reservation and living in the homes of Latter-day Saints, white Latter Day Saints. They would leave the reservation, and the idea was that they could be nurtured in Mormon teachings, they could perhaps receive a better education in public schools, and then they would go back home after the school year. Elder Kimball stood up in General Conference and he showed pictures of, he called them Lamanite children. I don’t like the word Lamanite just because it’s a racialized construction that has some tough meanings. But we’ll use the words that he used. He said that if you look at the pictures of these Lamanites here who left the reservation, or the hogans, as he called them, to live in the homes of members and compare them with the ones who stayed behind. These ones are lighter. These ones are darker.”
Matt 19:11 And what he meant by that was they’ve been nurtured in the gospel in these private homes, and it’s had an effect on their skin color. Let me just say one last word about this that your listeners, I think, will find interesting. So, that’s that racial fluidity we’re talking about. And in 1979 after President Kimball lifted the ban, a reporter from the LA Times named John Dart interviewed with President Kimball, and he had read the 1960 talk.
GT 19:42 Oh no.
Matt 19:43 And he said, Mr. Kimball, can you provide actual examples of where the skin color turns lighter? And you know, this is a tough question. This is a theological question, the way that that Elder Benson interpreted the Scripture. There’s no science behind this. And President Kimball said, “No, I can’t. I guess you would need science to prove it.” So he’s caught in a tough position. Even after he gave the talk in 1960, his son told me he wished he would never have given that talk, because so many Latter -day Saints wrote him letters, and they said, “Dear Elder Kimball, why are you linking skin color with moral purity?” The idea would be, in this case, moral impurity, and that’s offensive. So he knew it was a controversial talk from the get go. The journalist reminded him of that in 1979 and here’s the part your listeners will find curious. It wasn’t long after that 1979 talk where he convened a committee of three apostles, Tom Monson, Boyd Packer and Bruce McConkie and a handful of religion professors, some of whom were my old teachers at BYU. And they had cross referenced and revised parts of the Book of Mormon. The most critical verse of scripture that they revised was they took out white and delightsome and put in pure and delightsome. Now, the public motif for that was that they were just trying to go back to the original text. But that’s the public relations line. The real line is that they had been embarrassed by this white and delightsome stuff, as it applied to Lamanites, and they wanted to remove skin color for moral purity, and so that’s why they took white and delightsome out.
GT 21:34 So, you’re saying the original manuscripts didn’t say pure, it said white.
Matt 21:39 The original manuscript said pure and delightsome, as I recall. And at some point in 18, I think it was 1840, one of your listeners will correct me on this, I’m sure, but I think it was 1840 white and delightsome was put in, which, in my opinion, what difference does it make? It was Joseph Smith, either way, right?
GT 22:20 Yeah. He was still alive in 1840.
Matt 22:21 The Prophet was still the Prophet in the 1840s, so maybe he thought the translation was wrong. I don’t know. I can’t get into his mind about why he did that. But the point is that he was responsible for both of those pure and delightsome and white and delightsome. And so they wanted to get away from that controversial teaching, which was very prominent in the 20th century. Their magazines and literature and sermons always talked about this racial fluidity, that if you’re righteous enough Lamanites, you’ll lose your skin color. And that’s one of the reasons why the early Church leaders of the 19th century privileged them for redemption, is because they had to turn them white again. So, black people in the Church are reading these Book of Mormon verses. And even though it does not talk about black Africans or African American or anybody, it’s Lamanites, they want to know how those curses apply to them. So, that’s how they’re reading these scriptures. And so the Book of Mormon is not the most important proof text for the ban, but it is a proof text, and that’s something that’s hard for people to hear, because the Book of Mormon is some of those verses, although they’ve been toned down over the years, there are still some difficult verses that deal with race that people of color in the Church find problematic.
GT 23:19 Well, this reminds me of your talk that you gave at BOMSA last year. By the way, you should all go to BOMSA up in Logan in October.
Matt 23:32 Tell them what it is.
GT 23:33 Book of Mormon Studies Association. We’ve talked about it. Joe Spencer is the new president. Chris Thomas has finished his four-year term, although it’s supposed to be three, but he extended one year. Oh, by the way, I heard there’s a new president of John Whitmer Association. Do you know who that is?
Matt 23:51 I am, the president elect. I will, let’s see, take office the year after next. It’s a kind of a three year process.
GT 24:00 Oh, I thought it was this fall.
Matt 24:01 No, you get put into the executive team, as it’s called. I guess it’s probably wise, I think, the way they do it, which is you learn the ropes and all of that sort of thing, and then you– so the president-elect or the person who’s doing it this year is Mark Staker, who works for the Church. And the guy this year, Kyle Walker, works at BYU-Idaho. So, my tenure is after Mark Staker’s.
GT 24:32 Okay.
Matt 24:33 So I’m still a year and a half out.
GT 24:35 All right, so another sneak peek. I don’t know if that’s public, but it is now.
Matt 24:38 It is now. It’s been announced. That’s okay,
GT 24:43 I’ll just mention Ben Park is next year’s Mormon History Association president, too.
Matt 24:49 Yeah, that will be great.
GT 24:50 We got some great scholars on there, yeah.
Matt 24:55 Anyway, that’s one of the most difficult race teachings is this racial fluidity. There are a couple of other ones, too.
(End of Part 2}
[1] The book is titled, “Real Native Genius” and can be purchased at https://amzn.to/3I8jEUh
Copyright © 2024
Gospel Tangents
All Rights Reserved
Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:10 — 24.0MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Email | | More
