LDS: A leaky roof, pork, and skepticism about the restored priesthood

I was about half an hour late to meet with the Mormons, Elder C. and Elder M. (they told me their first names, but I forget them since I usually use their proper titles), on account of a leak in my apartment's roof. Unfortunately, the leak was right over the desk in my study, and since my desk was messy that meant a ton of papers scattered about on it became drenched. They are mostly dry now, but I take it as a handy reminder that I should tidy my study soon.

Upon arrival I was greeted by B. and a glass of whiskey. I was a bit hesitant to take the glass, since I was worried about making the Mormon's uncomfortable, but B. has told me before that they have said they are okay with it.

The missionaries have suggested to B. before that he try abstaining from alcohol. This is part of what the LDS commonly refer to as the Word of Wisdom, a prophecy given to Joseph Smith, Jr. and recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 89, that instructs Mormons to abstain from alcohol except for Communion. It also discourages tobacco use, and drinking of coffee and tea.

In our meeting with them last Saturday, they told B. with some contrition that they had been speaking with a fellow on their rounds who challenged them to obey the Levitical instruction not to eat pork. Realizing that now they were being asked to do what they had been asking of B., they (impressively, in my books) decided that they had better take the challenge to abstain from pork. And they have been, as of last night. Say what you will about their beliefs; I can't help but admire their willingness to put their actions where their mouths are, even with something so relatively trivial.

So much for context.

When I arrived, the discussion was on the 1978 revelation to LDS President Spencer Kimball that blacks should be allowed priesthood authority in the church. Due to my possible absence, the discussion on the Godhead and Faith had been postponed. Though we would speak a bit about the Godhead later that night, I will report on that part in a later posting.

There are a great many things that could be said about the past racist policies of the LDS church, but many of those things could also be said of any Christian denomination that has been around for a while, and even more about those denominations claiming guidance by a divine representative. I do not wish to deal with that discussion now, and it was not the purpose of the discussion last night. We instead considered a question more fundamental to LDS belief: can we trust that the restored priesthood is authentic if its revelations appear to follow cultural trends? The same question could be asked, for example, about the 1890 manifesto prohibiting polygamy in the LDS church.

B.'s contention was along these lines (if I remember correctly):

"Let's be honest. If factions within and without a church are pressuring it to change its practice, and after a few years of this it changes its practice, most of us would at least suspect mere conformity rather than revelation. It all seems too convenient."

B. undeniably had a point. The most evident motive for the change is the cultural pressure, I know that culture is a powerful agent of change, and the sequence sure looks like cause-and-effect. The missionaries admitted as much a few times as we continued discussion along these lines. Their explanations, as I remember them, are:

1. God couldn't work until the leaders of the Mormon church, the black members of the church, and the black people outside the church reached a certain point in their development as a culture,
   
2. the LDS leadership fluctuated throughout the Civil Rights movement, rather than immediately changing their rule to fit with cultural pressures,
   
3. the LDS church historically has not had a uniform view about the status of blacks, and
   
4. the LDS scriptures make no clear statement about blacks entering the priesthood.

Some of these arguments are better than others, and I'll address them individually.

Regarding No. 1, to some extent this makes sense to me. It is true that God sometimes waits until people are ready before giving a certain revelation or acting in a certain way (the stories in Matthew 17:1-13, Acts 16:6-10 or Exodus 3:7-10 come to mind, though none explicitly says why God was waiting). God has even withheld things (like tons of revelation) from the Gentiles (that's right, it was restricted on the basis of race) until shortly after Jesus' arrival, and withheld explicit knowledge of Christ even from almost all the Jews. So it wouldn't be without precedent. That said, what was the readiness here? If there was a lack of readiness, it must have been on the part of the leaders. Blacks had always been welcome in the Mormon church, and had been appointed as Elders (a priesthood position) under Joseph Smith, Jr., although I didn't know that at the time of meeting with the Mormons. But if it was a lack of readiness of the leaders, were they really very spiritual men? They may have been spiritual by the standards of their time, but if I am to count them as Apostles and Prophets I have to hold them to a much higher standard. This, to me, is a weak point in the case for a restored priesthood.

No. 2 seemed to me at the time to be at best inconclusive. I mean, fluctuations are a bad sign aren't they, if you're supposed to be guided by an unchanging God? Reading a bit about it on Wikipedia, I can see a bit better where they're coming from. For example, in 1969, Harold Lee, an apostle, blocked the Quorum of the 12 from allowing blacks into the priesthood on the basis that the decision should only be reversed as a result of revelation. Thus, there was resistance initially to the cultural trend. It was during intense deliberation as a result of the expansion of the church into South America that the 1978 revelation is said to have come. So, at least according to a superficial investigation, it seems that the primary influence leading to the 1978 revelation was not the North American civil rights movement, but rather the LDS church's ambition to expand into other countries. This does not really solve the problem, but it specifies the question we should be asking. Was the 1978 revelation (a) a real revelation given when the church asked for leadership concerning their expansion, or (b) an expedient fake revelation meant to permit greater expansion of the church?

No. 3 seems historically accurate. Joseph Smith, Jr. and many of the early Mormons spoke against slavery, and blacks were admitted into the priesthood before Bingham Young's time. (Bingham Young was Joseph Smith, Jr.'s successor, and probably the Mormon I like least of those I've met or read about. There was some controversy about his selection, which makes me wonder...) Even after blacks were not supposed to be admitted into the priesthood, some were; and there were movements within the Mormon church at various times that wished blacks to be admitted into the priesthood.

One of the most surprising discoveries of my investigations is that Bringham Young, during the very pronouncement restricting the priesthood to non-blacks, said that there would come a time when blacks could again be admitted to the priesthood. This can be seen as looking forward to the 1978 revelation that overruled Young's proclamation. While I still find the idea that God wanted to change the church's policy on this for a hundred years or so unpalatable, that is a pretty impressive prophecy (and more testable than most in the LDS church) coming from a man like Young. Maybe God was working in him in some way, even if that work was far more corrupted than it should have been for anyone acting as God's primary representative on Earth. After all, God can make a donkey talk, and making Bingham Young qualify his prophecy accordingly is far easier than that (especially if we assume that Young was, in some measure, seeking to follow God and aware of His guidance).

As to no. 4, notwithstanding interpretations of the curse of Cain, which is a whole other kettle of fish, Mormon scripture is clearly against institutions such as slavery. This is most obvious in the statement by Joseph Smith, Jr. in Doctrine and Covenants 101:79 that "It is not right that any man be in bondage to another." There are also instances of leaders being opposed to slavery, but the above quotation alone is a more direct statement on slavery than exists in the Christian scriptures alone. Regarding priesthood, there is no racial restriction in the Mormon scriptures that I am aware of, and apparently none was advanced to support the racial restriction of the priesthood. All in all, the LDS scriptures seem ambivalent on the issue of blacks in the priesthood.

At the meeting itself we essentially reached a point where we all had to confess we knew too little about the situation to continue. As far as I am concerned, it is still an open topic (as is the whole debate about the validity of the restored priesthood). But both the meeting and the subsequent research were a good learning experience, and I hope to delve further into the question of the restored prophecy in the future. It is annoying that very little of the revelation given in the Mormon church is falsifiable, beyond testing it against commandments of scripture, because it is usually in the form of imperatives or doctrine rather than predictions. I suppose, and the Mormons agree with me about this, that the only sure indicator I may be left with is the testimony of the Holy Spirit – and the only direction it has ever given me regarding my interactions with Mormons is that I ought to keep talking with them.

In any event, at that point in the evening, we transitioned into a discussion on the Godhead, which I will present in a later entry.