Interracial Marriage is critical to the reasons for a priesthood/temple ban on black LDS Church members. For many years, the official position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) was that “it is not known precisely why, how, or when this restriction [on the priesthood for male members of African descent] began in the church.” However, historical research utilizing early records suggests that the origins of the ban are quite specific, pointing to a confluence of events involving race and interracial sexual relations (often called “amalgamation” or “miscegenation” at the time) that served as the primary catalyst.
This was my first attempt at Mormon history scholarship and was a presentation I gave in 2012 at Sunstone outlining when, why, and how the ban began. Marguerite Driessen, former faculty at BYU was the respondent. Were you aware of this?
Don’t miss our other conversations on the priesthood ban: https://gospeltangents.com/mormon_history/racial-priesthood-temple-ban/
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Priesthood Before the Prejudice (1830–1846)
Contradicting later restrictions, evidence shows that Black men held the priesthood and participated in temple ordinances during the earliest decades of the Church.
- Black Pete, the first Black convert, was baptized in 1830 and served a mission in Ohio, likely performing baptisms in January 1831.
- Elijah Abel, perhaps the most famous early Black Mormon, was ordained an Elder and then a Seventy in 1836, received his washing and anointing ordinance in the Kirtland Temple, and participated in baptisms for the dead in the 1840s.
- Joseph Ball was ordained a high priest and served as a branch president in Lowell, Massachusetts, after Joseph Smith’s death in 1844. Ball was also slated to receive his temple endowment in Nauvoo in 1845.
- Walker Lewis, baptized in 1843, was ordained an Elder by William Smith, and was later referred to by Brigham Young in 1847 as “one of the best elders an African in Lowell,” [Massachusetts.]
Furthermore, marriage between Black and white members was not automatically prohibitive; John Teague, a white Irishman, joined the church in 1842 with his Black wife, Evelyn Wilbur, and John was ordained a priest and then an elder. These facts confirm that no formal priesthood restrictions existed before 1847.
Interracial Marriage Crisis of 1847
The shift from granting the priesthood to prohibiting it appears to have been driven by the highly visible, controversial interracial relationships of two Black elders in 1846 and 1847.
- Warner McCary and Interracial Polygamy: McCary, a freed slave who claimed to be part Indian, was baptized by Apostle Orson Hyde in 1846. Some believe he was ordained an Elder, but this is disputed. In 1847, McCary married Lucy Stanton, a white woman, with Orson Hyde performing the wedding. McCary later caused outrage in Winter Quarters by engaging in “sealing ceremonies” with white women that included sexual intercourse witnessed by his wife. Church leaders quickly expelled McCary from the camp. Brigham Young expressed concern about “amalgamation,” or race mixing, during a meeting where McCary was discussed.
- Enoch Lewis and the Mixed-Race Child: Simultaneously, in Massachusetts, Enoch Lewis (son of Elder Q. Walker Lewis) married Matilda Webster, a white woman, in 1846, and they had a mixed-race infant girl in 1847. Mission president William Applebee was so disgusted upon meeting the couple and their child that he wrote a dismayed report to Brigham Young asking if it was “the order of God to be tolerated in this church to ordain negroes to the priesthood” and allow amalgamation.
When Brigham Young received Applebee’s report in October 1847, he responded strongly, stating that when Black and White people “mingle seed it is death to all” and that if they were far away from non-Mormons, they would “all be killed.” Following these cases, Brigham Young privately claimed that “black-white sexual relations were against the law of God and advocated death to all who participated.” This reaction was fueled by a desire to stop interracial marriage & led to the institutional restriction.
The ban was publicly affirmed on February 15, 1852, when Brigham Young addressed the Utah territorial legislature and espoused the Curse of Cain doctrine, stating that the mark of Cain “is seen in the face of every negro on the earth” and declaring that any man “having one drop of seed of Cain in him cannot hold the priesthood.”
Elephant in the Room: Racism
While interracial relationships may have been the catalyst that triggered the ban, many argue that this analysis ignores the underlying issue: pre-existing racial prejudice. Marguerite Driessen notes, “interracial marriage can cause no problems and it can result in no bad consequences at all unless there’s already racial prejudice to begin with.”
The underlying racism allowed church leaders to:
- Ignore precedents like Elijah Abel’s ordination.
- Contort accepted doctrine to justify exclusion. For example, the Second Article of Faith states that humans will be punished for their own sins, not Adam’s transgression, yet the priesthood ban relied on the “curse of Cain,” effectively punishing Black individuals for the sins of an ancestor.
- The notion of “accursed lineage” derived from the Book of Abraham’s account of Egyptus, which was used to justify denying saving ordinances based solely on lineage, a factor over which people have “no agency or control.”
Thus, the events of 1847-1852 did not create the prejudice, but rather offered a convenient, concrete focus for leaders to impose restrictions that many members and leaders were already culturally inclined to accept. The ban was the result of church policy, not doctrine, and was maintained because the congregation was unwilling to fully accept equality until the 1978 revelation ended the restriction.
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