Racial issues and the Church of Jesus Christ/Blacks and the priesthood/Pre-existence

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Criticism

• Critics claim that LDS scripture states that those with lighter skin color "are favored because of what they did as spirits in a pre-earth life."
• Critics claim that the Church taught that people who were born with dark skin were "neutral" in the pre-existence.

Source(s) of the criticism

• The God Makers (Cartoon)
• Simon Southerton, Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 2004) 12. ( Index of claims )
• Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism (Moody Press, 1979), 291–293.( Index of claims )

Response

Joseph Smith never taught the idea that those born with black skin were "neutral" during the war in heaven. Brigham Young, when asked this question, repudiated the idea:

...no, they were not, there were no neutral [spirits] in heaven at the time of the rebellion, all took sides…. All spirits are pure that came from the presence of God.^[1]

Conclusion

 ^{[needs work]}

Endnotes

1. [note]  Journal History, 25 December 1869, citing Wilford Woodruff’s journal.

Further reading

FAIR web site

• FAIR Topical Guide: