So, how does all this--the promise and problem of D&C 8:2--apply to revoking the priesthood ban? It’s my contention that the prophets prior to Spencer W. Kimball did not feel this coalescence of mind and heart, and the reason they did not feel it is because they did not allow all of God’s teaching to dwell in their heart in the matter of racial equality. Now let’s be 100% clear here. I am not saying these prophets consciously committed sin nor am I saying they maliciously held on to racial prejudice. Instead, I’m saying that they learned and even propagated misconceptions that made logical sense to them but did not come from God. In this, they were exactly like every other person trying to make sense of the world using, as we must, a combination of divine light and common sense.
It’s also important to recognize that these men were leaps and jumps ahead of us in terms of their spirituality, too. They were brave where we might not be, courageously maintaining other, true principles in a societal onslaught against those values. They dealt with daily problems and solved the vast majority of them in the way the Savior himself would have. But they were not perfect. The Lord knew that, and we should learn that. We will end our discussion this chapter with an analysis of what these logical imperfections were, where they came from, and how they prevented these choice men from seeing what the Lord wished to show them. We’ll also look closely at Spencer W. Kimball to learn how he was able to escape these same prejudices. Both examples, of failure and success, should be instructive to us as we tread the same path towards greater light and knowledge from Heavenly Father.
As major sources for what follow, Greg Prince’s David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, Armand Mauss’s All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage, and years worth of online and intellectual discussion on sites like fairmormon.org, mormonthink.com, and the entire Mormon bloggernacle and in journals like Dialogue (especially Lester Bush’s groundbreaking 1973 essay) have all contributed to my understanding along with my own fasting, prayer, and scripture study. I recommend these sources for those interested in reviewing the existing discussion for themselves.
President McKay and the Dissonance of Mind and Heart
David O. McKay, the first prophet we’ll look at, shows the level of mental labyrinth that had to break down before a policy reversal on the priesthood band could even be contemplated. Greg Prince, in an interview on the Mormon Stories podcast in 2005, relates President McKay’s chronological involvement with the ban:
“David O McKay was called to be an apostle in 1906. He recorded that the first time he became aware that a policy even existed, was on a trip around the world which was in 1921.So he’d been an apostle for 15 years, and didn’t even know that there was a policy. If he didn’t know, you can imagine what the level of knowledge was in the general church membership.”
From just this snippet of the interview, we learn that issues of race were not really issues for the church at this time. If an apostle could be unaware of the priesthood ban for 15 years working full-time in the Lord’s service, then this certainly wasn’t a subject of soul-searching or fervent prayer for the leaders of the church or, as Prince intimates, the general church membership. That’s not to say that individuals didn’t struggle with this knowledge, but it would seem that very few people even knew about the policy in the first place, let alone disagreed with it. Sadly, this would dovetail precisely with the larger attitudes of American organizations at the time. Racial stereotypes that demoted the humanity of men and women of darker skin color were simply the norm. They were completely Other to communities that were either legally or de facto segregated. There wasn’t anything to discuss. It was just the facts of life.
That is, until, like so many ideas in the world, we are confronted by that idea’s embodiment in living, breathing, talking, and thinking individuals. Prince continues, “When he was going around the world in 1921 on the request of President Grant, he encountered a couple in Hawaii. I believe the wife was Hawaiian, and the husband was African-American. That’s when he first became aware of the policy. He wrote President Grant, asking if it might be changed, and was told by Grant by return letter that no, there was nothing he could do about it. So, he basically accepted the status quo, and just lived with it until he became church president.”
Here we have Elder McKay confronted with the personal sadness that results from the priesthood ban. He sees a man who wants to serve his wife and congregation, wants to be sealed with her in the temple, wants to enjoy the blessings from having the priesthood in his home. I think Elder McKay felt that. He felt the first twinge of doubt, and this doubt prompted his letter to President Grant. Unfortunately, President Grant was inclined, like almost all others, to see the priesthood ban tradition as having been instituted by God (do you see any parallels with Nephi’s interpretation of imperfect scripture??).
Elder McKay's actions also underscore a moment of dissonance between his mind and his heart. His heart told him that something was wrong about this church policy. His head told him that if the Church had a policy in the first place, there must be a good reason. So he did the right thing. He inquired about the possibility of change and, as we'll see, began a lifelong task of wrestling to some degree with the background of the priesthood ban.
However, this encounter with a couple in Hawai'i was not a strong enough moment of dissonance to create a lasting effect just yet. Elder McKay’s worldwide trip was a whirlwind affair, so no doubt he received his reply well after he had left the presence of that Hawaiian couple. As an impossibly busy apostle, Elder McKay no doubt had other preoccupations that eroded that personal feeling of wrongness he had felt in Hawaii. By the time he received the letter, the power of the original dissonance had no doubt faded.
It took 33 more years, 3 years after becoming president of the church, for McKay to be confronted by this issue again. This time, he witnessed first hand the practice of the church in South Africa that required men who desired ordination to the priesthood to demonstrate their whiteness in absolute genealogical terms. The local leadership was paralyzed by the burden of proof required in this whiteness test. Effective immediately, President McKay curtailed the practice.
In that moment, President McKay experienced a unified dissonance. Not only did the racial boundary seem arbitrary in his heart, but his mind quickly recognized that the idea behind the priesthood ban had generated administrative consequences that crippled the kingdom of God. With the confidence of a prophet in his prime, President McKay ended the practice. At this point, we see the issue of race begin to trouble the prophet on a more consistent basis.
By the end of his life, President McKay had arrived at the conclusion that the priesthood ban was a policy, not a doctrine, as he confided to Sterling McMurrin in a personal conversation.
What then, we might ask, would have prevented President McKay, who did not believe the priesthood ban was revelatory, who told those closest to him that he had sought an answer on how to move forward for years, from progressively breaking this policy of spiritual racial segregation?
The answer, I believe, resides in the less progressive side of President McKay's attitudes about race. Like so many of his generation, he held entrenched ideas about what "Negroes" were capable of. While the priesthood ban might not be doctrine, and while general discrimination felt decidedly un-Christlike, President McKay believed in the superiority of whiteness. Morally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. The documentary history left behind in President McKay's papers makes it clear that he, like so many others, believed that black brothers and sisters were not capable of the same things white brothers and sisters were.
This continued prejudice would affirm that despite his other marvelous qualities, President McKay did not quite believe that all were alike to the Lord, black and white, bond and free. (see 2 Nephi 26:33). Full equality between members of different races was not a concept that President McKay allowed himself to break through his personal, subjective labyrinth to grasp.
So why wouldn't God jackhammer the light and truth into President McKay's mind and heart? If the church policy denied so many the blessings of the gospel and caused so much pain, as it did, then why wouldn't God take matters into his own capable hands?
As we'll explore more completely in a later chapter, God works with imperfect material while, incredibly, allowing that imperfect material use of agency. I have no doubt that he was sending spiritual promptings to dwell in the hearts of all church leaders and members, not only President McKay. Those whose personal experiences led them to be more receptive to this idea of racial equality seized upon those promptings. A vast majority of others who did not share those life experiences and predisposition toward supporting racial equality did not.
I won't rehearse the litany of retrospectively (and contemporaneously) offensive ideas preached by church leaders (including many apostles and the two prophets who succeeded President McKay) about race, but it's clear that President McKay, even had he entertained the spiritual message to lift the priesthood ban, would not have presided over a church that could embrace their black brothers and sisters as equals.
Rather than push his anointed to half-heartedly inch forward toward equality, rather than lift the priesthood ban only to allow theological explanations of racial inferiority to stand and calcify, I believe God was preparing another man, Spencer W. Kimball, to forcefully lift the ban with the momentum required to blast the cobwebs of exegetical racialism out of the church forever (even if some strands of that nonsense clung to dark corners of otherwise enlightened minds [and on the pages of cherished reference books] for decades afterwards).
Next post we'll look closely at President Kimball's preparation to break out of the attitudes about race that debilitated his generation and how, even after the announcement of Official Declaration 2, excellent church leaders still moved dangerously close to muting the message of the declaration by projecting its light through personal prisms of understanding.
It’s also important to recognize that these men were leaps and jumps ahead of us in terms of their spirituality, too. They were brave where we might not be, courageously maintaining other, true principles in a societal onslaught against those values. They dealt with daily problems and solved the vast majority of them in the way the Savior himself would have. But they were not perfect. The Lord knew that, and we should learn that. We will end our discussion this chapter with an analysis of what these logical imperfections were, where they came from, and how they prevented these choice men from seeing what the Lord wished to show them. We’ll also look closely at Spencer W. Kimball to learn how he was able to escape these same prejudices. Both examples, of failure and success, should be instructive to us as we tread the same path towards greater light and knowledge from Heavenly Father.
As major sources for what follow, Greg Prince’s David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, Armand Mauss’s All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage, and years worth of online and intellectual discussion on sites like fairmormon.org, mormonthink.com, and the entire Mormon bloggernacle and in journals like Dialogue (especially Lester Bush’s groundbreaking 1973 essay) have all contributed to my understanding along with my own fasting, prayer, and scripture study. I recommend these sources for those interested in reviewing the existing discussion for themselves.
President McKay and the Dissonance of Mind and Heart
David O. McKay, the first prophet we’ll look at, shows the level of mental labyrinth that had to break down before a policy reversal on the priesthood band could even be contemplated. Greg Prince, in an interview on the Mormon Stories podcast in 2005, relates President McKay’s chronological involvement with the ban:
“David O McKay was called to be an apostle in 1906. He recorded that the first time he became aware that a policy even existed, was on a trip around the world which was in 1921.So he’d been an apostle for 15 years, and didn’t even know that there was a policy. If he didn’t know, you can imagine what the level of knowledge was in the general church membership.”
From just this snippet of the interview, we learn that issues of race were not really issues for the church at this time. If an apostle could be unaware of the priesthood ban for 15 years working full-time in the Lord’s service, then this certainly wasn’t a subject of soul-searching or fervent prayer for the leaders of the church or, as Prince intimates, the general church membership. That’s not to say that individuals didn’t struggle with this knowledge, but it would seem that very few people even knew about the policy in the first place, let alone disagreed with it. Sadly, this would dovetail precisely with the larger attitudes of American organizations at the time. Racial stereotypes that demoted the humanity of men and women of darker skin color were simply the norm. They were completely Other to communities that were either legally or de facto segregated. There wasn’t anything to discuss. It was just the facts of life.
That is, until, like so many ideas in the world, we are confronted by that idea’s embodiment in living, breathing, talking, and thinking individuals. Prince continues, “When he was going around the world in 1921 on the request of President Grant, he encountered a couple in Hawaii. I believe the wife was Hawaiian, and the husband was African-American. That’s when he first became aware of the policy. He wrote President Grant, asking if it might be changed, and was told by Grant by return letter that no, there was nothing he could do about it. So, he basically accepted the status quo, and just lived with it until he became church president.”
Here we have Elder McKay confronted with the personal sadness that results from the priesthood ban. He sees a man who wants to serve his wife and congregation, wants to be sealed with her in the temple, wants to enjoy the blessings from having the priesthood in his home. I think Elder McKay felt that. He felt the first twinge of doubt, and this doubt prompted his letter to President Grant. Unfortunately, President Grant was inclined, like almost all others, to see the priesthood ban tradition as having been instituted by God (do you see any parallels with Nephi’s interpretation of imperfect scripture??).
Elder McKay's actions also underscore a moment of dissonance between his mind and his heart. His heart told him that something was wrong about this church policy. His head told him that if the Church had a policy in the first place, there must be a good reason. So he did the right thing. He inquired about the possibility of change and, as we'll see, began a lifelong task of wrestling to some degree with the background of the priesthood ban.
However, this encounter with a couple in Hawai'i was not a strong enough moment of dissonance to create a lasting effect just yet. Elder McKay’s worldwide trip was a whirlwind affair, so no doubt he received his reply well after he had left the presence of that Hawaiian couple. As an impossibly busy apostle, Elder McKay no doubt had other preoccupations that eroded that personal feeling of wrongness he had felt in Hawaii. By the time he received the letter, the power of the original dissonance had no doubt faded.
It took 33 more years, 3 years after becoming president of the church, for McKay to be confronted by this issue again. This time, he witnessed first hand the practice of the church in South Africa that required men who desired ordination to the priesthood to demonstrate their whiteness in absolute genealogical terms. The local leadership was paralyzed by the burden of proof required in this whiteness test. Effective immediately, President McKay curtailed the practice.
In that moment, President McKay experienced a unified dissonance. Not only did the racial boundary seem arbitrary in his heart, but his mind quickly recognized that the idea behind the priesthood ban had generated administrative consequences that crippled the kingdom of God. With the confidence of a prophet in his prime, President McKay ended the practice. At this point, we see the issue of race begin to trouble the prophet on a more consistent basis.
By the end of his life, President McKay had arrived at the conclusion that the priesthood ban was a policy, not a doctrine, as he confided to Sterling McMurrin in a personal conversation.
What then, we might ask, would have prevented President McKay, who did not believe the priesthood ban was revelatory, who told those closest to him that he had sought an answer on how to move forward for years, from progressively breaking this policy of spiritual racial segregation?
The answer, I believe, resides in the less progressive side of President McKay's attitudes about race. Like so many of his generation, he held entrenched ideas about what "Negroes" were capable of. While the priesthood ban might not be doctrine, and while general discrimination felt decidedly un-Christlike, President McKay believed in the superiority of whiteness. Morally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. The documentary history left behind in President McKay's papers makes it clear that he, like so many others, believed that black brothers and sisters were not capable of the same things white brothers and sisters were.
This continued prejudice would affirm that despite his other marvelous qualities, President McKay did not quite believe that all were alike to the Lord, black and white, bond and free. (see 2 Nephi 26:33). Full equality between members of different races was not a concept that President McKay allowed himself to break through his personal, subjective labyrinth to grasp.
So why wouldn't God jackhammer the light and truth into President McKay's mind and heart? If the church policy denied so many the blessings of the gospel and caused so much pain, as it did, then why wouldn't God take matters into his own capable hands?
As we'll explore more completely in a later chapter, God works with imperfect material while, incredibly, allowing that imperfect material use of agency. I have no doubt that he was sending spiritual promptings to dwell in the hearts of all church leaders and members, not only President McKay. Those whose personal experiences led them to be more receptive to this idea of racial equality seized upon those promptings. A vast majority of others who did not share those life experiences and predisposition toward supporting racial equality did not.
I won't rehearse the litany of retrospectively (and contemporaneously) offensive ideas preached by church leaders (including many apostles and the two prophets who succeeded President McKay) about race, but it's clear that President McKay, even had he entertained the spiritual message to lift the priesthood ban, would not have presided over a church that could embrace their black brothers and sisters as equals.
Rather than push his anointed to half-heartedly inch forward toward equality, rather than lift the priesthood ban only to allow theological explanations of racial inferiority to stand and calcify, I believe God was preparing another man, Spencer W. Kimball, to forcefully lift the ban with the momentum required to blast the cobwebs of exegetical racialism out of the church forever (even if some strands of that nonsense clung to dark corners of otherwise enlightened minds [and on the pages of cherished reference books] for decades afterwards).
Next post we'll look closely at President Kimball's preparation to break out of the attitudes about race that debilitated his generation and how, even after the announcement of Official Declaration 2, excellent church leaders still moved dangerously close to muting the message of the declaration by projecting its light through personal prisms of understanding.
