The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

Ask Mitt Anything!
(Just don't expect an honest response!)

Mitt Romney was on Meet the Press with Tim Russert on December 16th, and I will admit he comes across as pretty polished. In the course of his interview, he mentioned racism in America and Russert pounced on him about the mormon church and it's past openly institutionalized racist theology.

MR. RUSSERT: You, you raise the issue of color of skin. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court, Brown vs. Board of Education, desegregated all our public schools. In 1964 civil rights laws giving full equality to black Americans. And yet it wasn't till 1978 that the Mormon church decided to allow blacks to participate fully. Here was the headlines in the papers in June of '78. "Mormon Church Dissolves Black Bias. Citing new revelation from God, the president of the Mormon Church decreed for the first time black males could fully participate in church rites." You were 31 years old, and your church was excluding blacks from full participation. Didn't you think, "What am I doing part of an organization that is viewed by many as a racist organization?"

Romney's response was OK at first and then ended up being over the top. The "my dad marched with Martin Luther King" and "walking out on Goldwater" shtick. The claim that Romney pulled over his car when he heard about the "new revelation" and openly wept. All good and noble sentiments perhaps, but it really evades the question. The question was a simple one, was it wrong for the mormon church to exclude blacks from the priesthood until the 1970's?

The mormon church does not apologize for nor does it reject the teaching of the past prophets that blacks were denied the priesthood because they were unworthy, cursed with the mark of Cain. It is a no-win question for Romney. Reject the church's teachings as racist and you declare that the prophets were wrong, that the revelation was wrong and throw the whole system in disarray. Support the prophets and you agree that blacks are accursed and only recently allowed to enjoy the full blessings of the restored gospel. I don't envy Romney having to answer the question, but at least he could be honest about it.

Romney went on: "My faith has also always told me that, in the eyes of God, every individual was, was merited the, the fullest degree of happiness in the hereafter, and I, and I had no question in my mind that African-Americans and, and blacks generally, would have every right and every benefit in the hereafter that anyone else had and that God is no respecter of persons."


That may be what Romney personally believed, but it is NOT the historical position of the mormon church and if he believed that way then he did so in spite of his mormonism, not because of it, in direct opposition to his church's positions. Here are a couple of direct quotes from mormon authorities, not some crackpot Bishop in a far away ward, but the heads of the mormon church itself (there is an excellent article about the changed "revelation" available from arch-"anti" Sandra Tanner's website here)

Joseph Smith himself taught that "Negroes" are the "sons of Cain." (History of the Church, Vol. 4, page 501) Mormon leaders also taught that "As a result of his rebellion, Cain was cursed with a dark skin; he became the father of the Negroes, and those spirits who are not worthy to receive the priesthood are born through his lineage." (Mormon Doctrine, 1958, page 102)

Brigham Young, the second prophet of the church, asserted: "Cain slew his brother.... and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is a flat nose and black skin." (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 7, page 290)

Joseph Fielding Smith, who became the tenth prophet of the church in 1970, made it clear that Mormons should consider blacks as inferior: "Not only was Cain called upon to suffer, but because of his wickedness he became the father of an inferior race." (The Way to Perfection, page 101) On the following page Smith asserted that the "negro brethren" have a "black covering emblematical of eternal darkness."

This sort of material is dismissed out of hand as "anti-mormon", but it is hard to make the case that dogmatic assertions on matters of theology, declared by those in authority and with the gift of special priesthood revelation, can be considered "anti-mormon". They are not out of context, because there is no context that would allow these statements to be any clearer. I have said before that Christians have a lot to apologize for when it comes to race relations, but the difference is that by and large we have because we recognize that our racist past is not Biblically mandated. We have for the most part recognized our culpability and apologized for it. Mormons cannot, because to question the curse of Cain upon blacks is to question the prophets, the priesthood and Joseph Smith himself and that makes the whole house of cards fall.


(The transcript is available here, the video is available here)