It wasn’t so much that I was a late bloomer (#102), as that I had a wonderful 9th grade seminary teacher who talked about the issue frankly and openly. He recounted the story to us of a newspaper reporter who asked Pres McKay when the blacks would receive the priesthood. Pres McKay reportedly answered him that it wasn’t going to happen in his(Pres McKay’s) lifetime.

We also had a family friend who was one of Pres McKay’s bodyguards. He would tell us stories of the Prophet all the time. Even as a young boy I remembered those things. Don’t you remember stories you were told as a boy?

Also, my memories of what Pres McKay said don’t have to be what I remember him saying at the time he said them. It may surprise you, but I also remember the day JFK was shot, and I have a clear recollection of watching Jack Ruby jumping out of the crowd and shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.

Belated thanks for your suggestion. You make a good point. For my lesson, I’ll be sure not to hold up “white” (or pastey-pinkish-white in my family’s case) as the normal color.

SC, you make a good point. For Joseph, it was the “endowment of power.” A bestowal a spiritual power.

Then later that day I got to attend a temple prep class also taught by J. I am loving my ward right now.

To clarify, I do believe that 19th Century “racist” ideas were the original “cause” of the Ban in some strong sense (See Brigham Young), and I do think the racism of subsequent church members and leaders may have helped perpetuate the ban for as long as it lasted, and I certainly think it helped churchmembers find certain racist rationales for the Ban acceptable and believable. But I think the real culprit here is our collective misguided attachment to theological precedent. Brigham Young taught what he taught very stridently. Subsequent church leaders took what he said very seriously, Young being a prophet and all. Later leaders could look back on what was becoming a lengthy history of unanimous acceptance of and adherence to the Ban on the part of their forebearers. And I suspect more modern churchmembers and leaders, seeing this history (to the extent they know it) and being loathe to confront the possibility that such an entrenched idea/practice could have been ill-conceived from the start, felt ideologically compelled to support it and rationalize, despite their own relative lack of racist sentiment.

In short, I think a frank discussion of the Priesthood Ban is as much an opportunity to discuss unfortunate attachments to theological precedent and “doctrinal” continuity as it is to discuss Mormon racism.

AB

AB