By Tim Martin
I read with mixed emotions the Observer article “Mormons in media drive” dated 6 March 2013.
The article explained that the Mormon Church has created a new web site that “will
publish all there is to know about the faith” and help “Ugandan journalists and
the general public [to] get credible information” about their religion.
The article was positive and accurate in its depiction of
Mormonism’s moral positions. For instance, the Mormon Church should be
commended for its “strong stance against cohabiting, alcoholism, pre-marital
sex and homosexuality.”
However, the Mormons’ new site fails to cover some of the
important topics that the Observer article
said it would address. For instance, the article quotes Sean Donnelly as saying
that the site “would throw more light on…controversies like…racism.” But the
site’s article on racism sidesteps the main points of this controversy almost
entirely.
Concerning racism, the site accurately discusses the 1978
change in Mormon Church policy allowing male church members of African descent
to hold its priesthood. It also describes the current state of racial
integration in many Mormon congregations. While true, these points beg the
question at hand.
The most controversial race issue is that the Mormon
Church’s top leaders have repeatedly claimed that dark skin is a curse from
God. For instance, revered Mormon Apostle Mark E. Petersen declared: “At least
in the cases of the Lamanites [American Indians] and the negroes we have the
definite word of the Lord Himself that He placed a dark skin upon them as a
curse—as a punishment and as a sign to all others.” (“Race Problems—As They Affect the Church,” an address given at Brigham Young University on August 27,
1954)
Notice that Petersen is not claiming that this is his
personal opinion. As an apostle of the Mormon Church, he claimed that this was
the “definite word of the Lord Himself.”
The Book of Mormon also supports this teaching. Although
“black and white” people are all invited to approach God (2 Nephi 26:33), the
fact that some have much darker skin is based on divine curses against their
ungodliness. Second Nephi 5:21 explains that the people known as Lamanites
received “a sore cursing, because of their iniquity.” What was the nature of
the curse? God “cause[d] a skin of blackness to come upon them” so the
Lamanites would not “be enticing” to His followers.
(It’s worth noting that on 1 March of this year the Mormon
Church announced its new digital edition of the Book of Mormon. While the main
text of the book remains the same, the church has strategically altered some of
the chapter descriptions. For example, in the 1981 print edition of the Book of
Mormon, the chapter description for 2 Nephi 5 says that the “the Lamanites are
cursed, receive a skin of blackness, and become a scourge unto the Nephites.”
The new version omits the phrase “skin of blackness” and merely says that the
Lamanites “are cut off from the presence of the Lord.”)
The same theme is found in another Mormon scripture, the
Pearl of Great Price. In the Moses 7:8 the people of Canaan were cursed, “and
there was a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan, that they were
despised among all people.”
Sadly, the Mormon Church’s apostles and prophets have never
apologized for these and many other statements—some of them far worse. (See “The Mormon Church and the African,” published by the Africa Centre
for Apologetics Research, for extensive quotations.) Instead, the church
diverts attention from the issue by repeated references to the racial harmony
one can observe in Mormon congregations since the 1978 “revelation.”
Still, there is another aspect of this issue that the Mormon
Church needs to openly admit if it wants to engage in genuine full disclosure.
According to the Book of Mormon and Mormon leaders, once a person with dark
skin ceases to practice evil and begins following the Lord, his/her skin will
transform into lighter shades. In the second chapter of 3 Nephi some of the
Lamanites left their tribe and joined with the righteous Nephites. Verse 15
explains: “And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white
like unto the Nephites.
At the church’s General Conference in October of 1960,
Mormon Apostle Spencer W. Kimball described his visit to an Indian community in
Arizona. The Mormon Church had been making converts there for 15 years and had
over 8,400 members. Now that these dark-skinned Indians had been accepting the
Mormon gospel, Kimball—who would later become the church’s prophet—could
report:
For years they have been growing
delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were
promised (2 Ne. 30:6). … The children in the home placement program in Utah are
often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the
reservation….At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old
daughter were present, the little member girl—sixteen—sitting between the dark
father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her
parents. (Conference Report, October 1960, pp. 32–37; accessed at http://scriptures.byu.edu/gettalk.php?ID=1091&era=yes)
This aspect of Mormon teaching has not been properly
addressed. Instead, it is covered up. Though Mormon leaders avoid the topic,
its implications still permeate Mormon culture. For example, Mormons often
produce large outdoor pageants depicting scenes from the Book of Mormon. Every
one of them depicts Lamanites as savages with dark skins and Nephites as more
sophisticated people with light skins. If you were to ask any lifelong Mormon
why there is a difference in skin color between the Lamanites and Nephites,
they know the correct answer.
People in Uganda and other nations where the
Mormon Church is attempting to make inroads may never hear the facts about this
racist doctrine—at least from the church’s missionaries. •
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