Criticism of Mormonism/Books/One Nation Under Gods/Use of sources/Double standard on race


An Example of Biased Histories
A work by author: Richard Abanes
 Destroying Governments and Religions

The Church of Jesus Christ, its leaders, and theology are racist

The Problem

The author spends an entire chapter berating the LDS on the issue of race, and either misrepresenting or misunderstanding LDS teachings on this matter. LDS views and sources are portrayed in the most hostile, prejudicial light possible..

Several chapters later, however, the author admits:

Of course, when any religion or denomination is tainted by the stain of racism, it always leaves future members in a very awkward position. And to be fair, Mormonism is not alone in this predicament. A number of Christian denominations (e.g. the Southern Baptists) have had to work very hard at racial reconciliation, often using public declarations to repudiate past racist statements by leaders.

Unfortunately, this admission was hidden in the "Postscript," and is not to be found in the hardcover edition of his book. This perspective was no where to be found in Chapter 16. This concession thus provides the illusion of fairmindedness, while actually providing little to the portrayal of members of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, the author ignores that leaders of the Church have also repudiated many past remarks by previous leaders. His statement leaves the impression that the Southern Baptists have done so, while leaders of the Church have not.

The author even goes so far as to quote Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine without telling readers that he published a revised version, and repudiated some of his own remarks.

Perhaps the double standard being applied to the Church would be better understood if the author's complaint that the Church has "underlying white supremacist beliefs," (353) and so they didn't support the Civil Rights movement (364) is placed next to the image of Ferrell Griswold, pastor of the Minor Heights Baptist Church, addressing Klan supporters as Birmingham public schools began their first week of desegregation in 1963.[1] Would the author really have the reader believe there were no Christian leaders among those who refused blacks their basic civil liberties and denied them entrance to their churches, schools, civic centers and voting booths? What were other high profile white religious leaders saying and doing to give blacks basic rights, let alone positions of leadership within their own churches? Two scholars outline how white leaders left the battle for civil rights to the black churches.

In response to King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech that his children might one day play together with white children, [Billy] Graham, who had been invited but did not attend the 1963 March on Washington, said: "Only when Christ comes again will little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children." This was not meant to be harsh, but rather what he and most white evangelicals perceived to be realistic.[2]

Three years later on October 9, 1966, Martin Luther King gave his "The Pharisee and Publican" sermon to the Ebenezer Baptist Church in which he said:

So often Negroes in Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia and other places have been taken to that tree that bears strange fruit. And do you know that the folk lynching them are often big deacons in the Baptist churches and stewards in the Methodist churches feeling that by killing and murdering and lynching another human being they are doing the will of Almighty God? The most vicious oppressors of the Negro today are probably in church.[3]

It is easy to look at the worst in one another, as Abanes has chosen to do. There are enough quotes indicting every religious tradition to make any thoughtful person cringe. There are also well-researched, honest and informative books and articles available from scholars on every aspect of race and religion. So one must ask, why does the author persist in this course of action? What purpose does it serve for him?

The author's barrage of the most negative and obscure data he can muster against the LDS might lead one to conclude that all other Christian churches were fully integrated with all races participating in leadership positions in 1963, or even in 1978 when blacks were given the priesthood by the LDS Church. The following quotes from varied and respected sources are provided so the reader has the appropriate historical context. They are not meant in any way to criticize other churches who are working so diligently to close the racial divide.

Virtually all Protestant denominations have separate Negro churches, and thus the areas of association for religious purposes have been very small.[4]
  • By the 1830's most southern evangelicals had thoroughly repudiated a heritage that valued blacks as fellow church members.[5]
  • The black Methodist church, created not from a desire to be separate but from a desire to worship without discrimination at the hands of white brethren, was to become the most enduring legacy of Methodism's refusal to accord the black communicant all of the rights and privileges of membership in the body of Christ.[6]
  • After the [Civil] war the southern churches, continuing the legacy of slavery, were among the first institutions to call for the separation of the races; by the twentieth century they had become bastions of segregation. With no desire to intrude into places where they were not welcome, most black Southerners were more comfortable in their own congregations.[7]
  • By November 1968 a survey research by the Home Mission Board revealed that only eleven percent of Southern Baptist churches would admit African-Americans.[8]
  • The most extensive research on integration was undertaken jointly by the United Lutherans, Congregational Christians, and Presbyterians (U.S.A.). They found that 1,331 out of 13,597 predominantly white churches have nonwhite members or attenders. That is just short of 10 per cent.[9]
  • Still in 1964, no more than 10 per cent of the white Protestant congregations had Negroes worshiping with them. Even these 10 per cent had only a few members or occasional attenders, so that throughout the US probably no more than 1 per cent of all Negroes worshiped in integrated congregations on Sunday mornings.[10]
  • According to the 1998 National Congregations Study, about 90 percent of American congregations are made up at least 90 percent of people of the same race.[11]
  • About eighty percent of all black Christians are in seven major denominations.[12]
  • In 1977, the American Baptist Churches in the USA had a larger number of blacks than any other non-black denomination… An interesting irony of the racial overtones still prevalent is that the American Baptist Churches of the South are now predominately a black sub-convention of the American Baptist Churches in the USA. There has been little white involvement since the influx of black Baptists.[13]

As can be seen by this parade of statistics, the author's outrage and talent might be more profitably spent in his own congregation, rather than in pointing at the proverbial mote in their neighbor's eye.

Historical Ignorance, or Race-baiting?

The author seems to delight recounting LDS leaders' ideas about skin color and the "curse of Cain," but this is either disingenuous, or reflects considerable ignorance. We will here provide him and the reader with a quick spin around the widely available literature on the origins of this unfortunate concept:

  • This interpretation of Noah's curse was no southern invention; indeed, it had been in circulation long before the discovery of America. Even so, it proved especially useful to white masters of the South because they had been put on the defensive by the powerful emancipationist movement.23

The story of Noah's Curse was so ingrained into the orthodox Protestant mind that it was sometimes invoked far from the pulpit. Speaking before the Mississippi Democratic State Convention in 1859, none other than Jefferson Davis defended chattel slavery and the foreign slave trade by alluding to the "importation of the race of Ham" as a fulfillment of its destiny to be "servant of servants."24

Once again, the reader is left to decide whether McKeever and Johnson are completely ignorant of the history of race theory, anthropology, and the centuries-old Christian use of the Bible to justify slavery or if they are simply race-baiting. One is truly forced to ponder this as they selectively use quotes and remove portions that may reflect positively on Mormons. They turn to such sources as little-known "Mormon writers" instead of using authoritative sources that the LDS recognize as accurately representing their beliefs. They relentlessly refuse to deal with modern Church practice and teachings that are well attested to by living leaders, preferring instead to use dated and out-of-context quotes that obviously clash with our modern social sensibilities.

Thus, McKeever and Johnson's attempt to use Brigham Young's racist-sounding but unfortunately typical nineteenth-century verbiage as an indictment against the modern Church brings up the question of their intellectual integrity. We have learned from sad experience that when anti-Mormon writers use ellipses, it is most likely not because the information is irrelevant but because there is something which must be removed to keep the picture uniformly bleak and, well, titillating. Three examples of McKeever and Johnson's less than forthright methodology will suffice. The missing portions are reinstated in italics for the reader in the first example:

You may inquire of the intelligent of the world whether they can tell why the aborigines of this country are dark, loathsome, ignorant, and sunken into the depths of degradation; and they cannot tell. I can tell you in a few words: They are the seed of Joseph, and belong to the household of God; and he will afflict them in this world, and save every one of them hereafter, even though they previously go into hell. When the Lord has a people, he makes covenants with them and gives unto them promises: then, if they transgress his law, change his ordinances, and break the covenants he has made with them, he will put a mark upon them, as in the case of the Lamanites and other portions of the house of Israel; but by-and-by they will become a white and delightsome people.25

Why is this missing sentence so important that it had to be removed by McKeever and Johnson? This was said in an era in which there was active debate in the scientific and Christian community as to whether all races came from a common ancestor, an argument that was ultimately settled by Darwinism. This sentence leaps out as a declaration that Native Americans are not just descended from Adam and Eve--they are from the favored seed of Joseph.

The second example of the intellectual dishonesty of this book is demonstrated by the next variation of their "find the quote" shell game as they leave out a portion of a sermon that again stands out favorably from the Christian practice of the day. McKeever and Johnson give the following portion of one of Brigham's fiery sermons condemning politicians. They offer the reader no background from which they can understand the rhetoric from the leader of a persecuted group watching their security threatened one more time when they are put in the middle of pro-slavery supporters and abolitionists:

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.26

Here is the portion of the sermon that McKeever and Johnson neglect to show the reader, however:

If the Government of the United States, in Congress assembled, had the right to pass an anti-polygamy bill, they had also the right to pass a law that slaves should not be abused as they have been; they had also a right to make a law that negroes should be used like human beings, and not worse than dumb brutes. For their abuse of that race, the whites will be cursed, unless they repent.27

Compare this to the views of the founder of American evangelicalism, George Whitefield, who "urged kinder treatment of slaves, but noted that cruelty can have the positive effect of heightening 'the sense of their natural misery,' thereby increasing receptivity to the Christian message."28 Or the stories of "Christian slaveholders, including clergymen, 'brutalizing their slaves' which 'abound in the narratives of former slaves.'"29

A third egregious example of McKeever and Johnson's persistence in misrepresentation is a quote from Joseph Smith. They only tell the reader of this portion: "Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species and put them on a national equalization."30 Yet, Joseph Smith had preceded this remark by saying:

They came into the world slaves, mentally and physically. Change their situation with the whites, and they would be like them. They have souls, and are subjects of salvation. Go into Cincinnati or any city, and find an educated negro, who rides in his carriage, and you will see a man who has risen by the powers of his own mind to his exalted state of respectability. The slaves in Washington are more refined than many in high places, and the black boys will take the shine off many of those they brush and wait on.31

If McKeever and Johnson are seeking to truly inform and educate the reader concerning Mormonism, why would they not want to disclose this part of Joseph's thinking? In fact, why would they not want to elaborate on Joseph's revolutionary solution for abolishing slavery? Instead of commenting on the revulsion of Mormon leaders towards the widely accepted standard of abuse and cruelty, they choose only to make known the rather common thinking of the day that demanded races remain separate.

Further reading

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