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


Joseph F. Smith finally admits
A work by author: Richard Abanes
 McConkie's Mormon Doctrine and race issues

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 context or balance to the book's portrayal of members of the Church of Jesus Christ and their beliefs.

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.

Double standard

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 his 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.[14]
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."[15]

Once again, the reader is left to decide whether the author is completely ignorant of the history of race theory, anthropology, and the centuries-old Christian use of the Bible to justify slavery or if he is simply race-baiting. One is truly forced to ponder this as he selectively uses outdated quotes and removes or ignores material that may reflect positively on Mormons. The author turns to such sources as little-known "Mormon" writers instead of using authoritative sources that the LDS recognize as accurately representing their beliefs. He relentlessly refuses 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, the author's attempt to use Joseph Smith's racist-sounding quote about "confining" "the negro" "to his own species," as an indictment against the modern Church brings up the question of his intellectual integrity. After all, he fails to tell us everything else Joseph said that was progressive and even radical to his 19th century audience (see Notable omissions, p. 355).

The second example of the intellectual dishonesty of this book is demonstrated by the next variation of the author's "find the quote" shell game as he leaves out a portion and context of a sermon that again stands out favorably from the Christian practice of the day. The author describes Brigham Young as describing inter-racial marriage as "one of the most heinous of deeds" (361). Yet, he fails to acknowledge that there was no inter-racial marriage at the time, and any sexual relations with someone of African descent usually happened in a context of rape (see: Brigham_Young_on_race_mixing).

Here is one portion of the same sermon that the author neglects to show his 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.[16]

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."[17] Or the stories of "Christian slaveholders, including clergymen, 'brutalizing their slaves' which 'abound in the narratives of former slaves.'"[18]

Conclusion

Racism has become one of the most strident and damaging accusations that can be leveled in our society, and as such has become a useful weapon for those who wish to harm an organization or individual. As Southern Baptists know, "Few chapters in American religious history prove as embarrassing as the response of the American churches to the issue of race."[19] Thus, the author's appeal to an audience that is ignorant of the abysmal history of most of Christianity's dealings on race issues. He is obviously hoping his target audience will not notice that Latter-day Saints have always had integrated churches while other Protestant churches struggle with the residual division brought about by their own prolonged discrimination or outright expulsion of black members (especially if he pays some lip service in a "Postscript" to the fact that other Christian denominations have had their foibles too). Emerson and Smith assess the problem in the following manner:

Our examination of a variety of data and consideration of a variety of levels of social influence suggest that many race issues that white evangelicals want to see solved are generated in part by the way they themselves do religion, interpret their world, and live their own lives. These factors range from the ways evangelicals and others organize into internally similar congregations, and the segregation and inequality such congregations help produce; to theologically rooted evangelical cultural tools, which tend to (1) minimize and individualize the race problem, (2) assign blame to blacks themselves for racial inequality, (3) obscure inequality as part of racial division, and (4) suggest unidimensional solutions to racial division.[20]

LDS are, of course, not immune from the same human foibles. We, like all Christians, might wish that we had played a larger role in correcting social injustices. We must all look at our past and learn from it. But for the here and now, the LDS do have a decided advantage in our centralized leadership and our historical practice of maintaining congregations based on geographical boundaries rather than personal preference or race. Our members have never traveled past a white or black church to get to their own. We cannot fire ministers who do not succumb to the wishes of a congregation to remain racially segregated. Yet, we join all concerned followers of Christ in acknowledging that we have work ahead of us in putting aside differences accumulated through centuries of misunderstanding and intolerance.

One might well wish that rather than attacking and using race as a club, the author might accept a hand of fellowship with members of the Church in the hope that all religious traditions can combine their wisdom, understanding and love to unify mankind instead of divide. One hopes that the author will desist from and apologize for his racially divisive campaign against other religions. He would do better to focus his energy and talent on the important question of pastor Gregory E. Thomas as he says, "we must again note that a predominant pattern of church life for black churches has been that of racial separation. The question remains: why?"[21]

Endnotes

  1. [note]  Andrew M. Manis, "'Dying From the Neck Up:' Southern Baptist Resistance to the Civil Rights Movement," Baptist History and Heritage (Winter 1999), 41.
  2. [note]  Richard O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 47.
  3. [note]  Marty Bell, "Fire in My Bones: The Prophetic Preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr.," Baptist History and Heritage (Winter 1999), 13.
  4. [note]  Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of An Idea in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 447.
  5. [note]  Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989), 107.
  6. [note]  Forrest G. Wood, The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 318.
  7. [note]  Ibid., 293.
  8. [note]  Dana Martin, "The American Baptist Convention and the Civil Rights Movement: Rhetoric and Response," Baptist History and Heritage (Winter 1999), 44.
  9. [note]  Robert Root, Progress Against Prejudice: The Church Confronts the Race Problem (New York: Friendship Press, 1957), 59.
  10. [note]  J.C. Hough, Black Power and White Protestants: A Christian Response to the New Negro Pluralism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 177.
  11. [note]  Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 136.
  12. [note]  Gregory E. Thomas, "Black and Baptist in the Bay State," American Baptist Quarterly (March, 2002), 68.
  13. [note]  Ibid., 68-69.
  14. [note]  H. Shelton Smith, In His Image, But… Racism in Southern Religion, 1780-1910 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1972), 131.
  15. [note]  Wood, The Arrogance of Faith, 107.
  16. [note]  Brigham Young, "The Persecutions of the Saints, Etc.," 111.
  17. [note]  Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 26.
  18. [note]  Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 167.
  19. [note]  Manis, "'Dying From the Neck Up'," 33.
  20. [note]  Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 170.
  21. [note]  Thomas, "Black and Baptist in the Bay State," 75.

Further reading

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