I’m pretty sure Mormons still believe in polygamy. Am I wrong?

Welcome, AMG readers.  I’ve got to tell you:  my book The Book of Mormon Girl just came out on Kindle last week and (for you print lovers) is now available for pre-order here.  Reviewers are calling it “laugh-out-loud funny” and “break-your-heart poignant.” See more reader responses here.

Now, for some serious business.  It’s time to talk about polygamy.  I can’t believe this column has been running almost two years without a serious talk about one of the most definitive elements of Mormonism—past and present.  It’s a subject we carry around in a great deal of silence.  There is a lot to say, so, please, read on through this very important edition of Ask Mormon Girl.

Dear AMG: 

I’m an unorthodox lifelong Mormon. I consider myself to be well-versed on our religious doctrine, and in some BYU religion classes, had heard something about polygamy being “the exception, not the rule” in the celestial kingdom. I just put it on the back burner of my mind because a) I couldn’t even stomach it, and b) It sure as hell wasn’t going to apply to ME. 

On Sunday, the Relief Society lesson was about the three degrees of glory. We of course addressed the fact that if a woman is not married in this life, she will have the opportunity in the next. During the last five minutes of class, the Relief Society President raised her hand to address the topic of exaltation and said, “Well, those of us who have righteous husbands need to be prepared in the Celestial Kingdom for him to take on other wives.” Ummmm, WHAT?! I had a feeling of absolute horror, and had a cold sweat and nausea instantly run over my body. 

The rest of the night, and next few days I spent looking for doctrine of what she’d said. I spoke with many people, none of whom seem to know the answer. I cried. I plead with God for peace. I got more sick about it. These past few days, I’ve been unable to concentrate at work. I feel totally emotionally distant from my husband because, after all, what is the point of being close to him if I have to share him with other women? It goes against every fiber of my being.  I asked my husband what he would do if faced with polygamy in the hereafter. He said if he had God actually gave him a choice, he would choose to be with only me, but that if it were a commandment, he would abide by it because he puts his love of God over his love for me. More nausea. 

My thoughts have been, “Why have I been trying to live such a good life to gain exaltation if it would be my absolute personal hell over there? I would rather be single in the Terrestrial kingdom than practice polygamy in the Celestial kingdom.” I know this probably sounds dramatic, but it’s how I feel. I’ve talked to my parents, and they tell me that I’m thinking about it with my earthly eyes, and that since there’s no specific doctrine, why worry about it now, but honestly, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s affecting my functioning at work, and I’m emotionally shut off from my husband. Please help! What’s your understanding of the doctrine? 

AD

Dear AMG:

After reading your research on the blacks and the priesthood, I felt for the first time I had received a clear explanation with historical background. I am curious why you have not discussed polygamy in more depth. I have read many books, but still have a hard time believing it was a revelation from God. From my perspective, the LDS faith still practices polygamy, not overtly but by permitting men to be sealed to more than one woman. Some personal experiences have added to my doubts, as well. I understand that this is a very controversial subject and perhaps that is why you have avoided it; however, I would appreciate your perspective.

AL

Dear AL and AD:

Thank you for raising the issue of polygamy.  It is an issue our community has profoundly mixed feelings about—shame, confusion, anger, resentment, fear, sadness, conviction, pride.  And one we rarely talk about.

We need to talk about polygamy.

Just last week, after the subject of Mitt Romney’s Mexican-born grandparents came up during a debate, I posted to the @askmormongirl Twitter line:  “Everyone knows Mitt’s ancestors went to Mexico to practice polygamy, right?  Because it was illegal in the states.”  And then, I came out about my own polygamous and non-polygamous ancestors: my great-great-great grandmother Lucy Evalina Waterbury Wight was a first wife, and my great-great-great grandmother Martha Clayton Dorton threatened to cut off her husband’s ears if he took a second wife.  “Come on, Mo tweeps,” I tweeted,  “Lose your shame.  Tweet your polygamous ancestors.”

What followed over the next 18 hours was a remarkable outpouring of Mormon thoughts and feelings about polygamy.  Some proudly tweeted their polygamous ancestors.  Others admitted to shame and confusion about doctrine and history.  Many (usually Mormon men) insisted they found polygamy “repulsive.”

Strong, strong feelings.

We need to talk about polygamy.

In the late nineteenth-century, the US government basically waged political, financial, and military war on Mormons in the west, in part because of polygamy.  Show trials in Congress.  National reform crusades and press coverage.  All of them depicting our ancestors as depraved men and duped women.  And it was all part of a very specific political effort (with strong anti-Asian and anti-Islamic overtones) to maintain the domination of white Protestant “normalcy” in the US.

To survive, our ancestors stopped talking about polygamy.  Some of them went on the “underground,” hiding out from federal agents and moving from town to town.  We learned not to talk about polygamy. We still do not talk openly about polygamy—by Joseph Smith, or Brigham Young, or as doctrine. We are still on the “underground.”  The life account of Joseph Smith in the official church Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith manual does not mention any of his more than thirty plural wives. When I have mentioned his polygamy in public, angry Mormons have emailed me, incredulous, and demanding proof that Joseph Smith was polygamous.  (If you doubt the facts, please see Todd Compton’s meticulously researched book In Sacred Loneliness.  There really is no debate.  Joseph Smith had at least 33 wives.  Many have been profiled at an amazing series on “The Forgotten Women of Joseph Smith” at the Feminist Mormon Housewives blog.)

We need to talk about polygamy.

Polygamy remains on the books in Mormon scripture (many, but not all, Mormons interpret Doctrine and Covenants 132 as an endorsement of polygamy).  And, yes, to this day, the mainstream LDS Church continues to form polygamous eternal marriages between one man and more than one women.  Current temple marriage policies allow a man who has been widowed or civilly divorced (without a religious divorce) to be married for eternity to a second wife.  A woman who has been widowed or civilly divorced (without a religious divorce) may not be married for eternity to a second husband.  Technically, the LDS Church does practice polygamy to this day.

Because of scripture and policy, many mainstream Mormon people today—not the ultra-orthodox FLDS splinter groups of Colorado City, but regular everyday Mormons who look like Steve Young and Mitt Romney–fully expect that heaven will be polygamous.  But they don’t talk about it.

We need to talk about polygamy.

In fact, the Mormon strategy for dealing with the public on polygamy is much like it was one hundred years ago: don’t talk about it.  The official line is that Mormons do not practice polygamy (which is not essentially accurate).  Apologists routinely downplay the historical extent of polygamy, stating that only 2 – 3% of LDS people ever practiced it; historians place that number closer to 20 – 30%.

I fully understand the reasons we tell the world we don’t practice polygamy.  The amount of sheer revulsion directed at Mormons for polygamy is astounding, and it’s ridiculous in a world where other form of non-hetero-monogamous relationship are welcomed or winked at.  We crave understanding.  We want to get along with our neighbors and fit in.  And yet the strategy of telling the world we don’t practice polygamy when polygamy remains a live Mormon doctrine may have some major drawbacks.

We need to talk about polygamy.

Growing up, I was taught not to worry about it.  “Put it on a shelf,” as the classic Mormon line goes.  “We’ll understand when we have an eternal perspective.” But that never worked for me.  From the time I was a child, I have always been a thinker by nature, and serious about my religion.  So I tested myself against the question, “Would I share my husband if it meant my sister Mormon could get into heaven?” And I decided, yes, I could.  I think I was about 9 or 10 years old.  Maybe that’s where my feminism started:  in female solidarity.

I’ve lived with the reality of polygamy for a long, long time.  I’ve seen the very real feelings it generates in people close to me.  I’ve seen white-knuckling, and anger, and heard wives extract promises from husbands, and siblings tell siblings they don’t really count as “Mormon” if they so much as remain silent when the issue of polygamy comes round.  Put it on a shelf? Hide it away? When we are taught to be a knowledge-seeking people?  The fact is, Mormons live with polygamy every day.  Even when we repress it.

Indeed, there are plenty of bright LDS young men and women today who look at the current temple sealing policies and conclude that yes, we do still practice polygamy.  They are not wrong.  They want no part of polygamy, and they find the way the culture denies it or “undergrounds” it to be scary and discouraging. And some of them walk away from the Mormon tradition.

And there are young people today who have no idea about Mormon polygamy or Joseph Smith’s plural marriages until they find it ON GOOGLE—what a wonderful way to learn the family secrets–often from one of the many anti-Mormon websites designed to shame and embarrass members of the faith.

On my twitter thread, @LDSBishop shared a story about an entire family that left the Church because they had no idea about polygamy until they read Richard Bushman’s Joseph Smith biography Rough Stone Rolling.

Why should we not inform our own people about our own history?  When we don’t, we set up our people to feel betrayed and ashamed, and we give power to people who would like to embarrass us.  What we refuse to be ashamed of, others can never hold over us.

As for the doctrinal value of polygamy, I have talked to plenty of Mormons who believe that polygamy was always a human rather than an inspired element of LDS doctrine and practice.  (See Flunking Sainthood author Jana Riess here.)  I have talked to plenty of Mormons who embrace it as an iron-clad eternal principle.  And I have talked to plenty of Mormons who think that polygamy may be an unfortunate but necessary part of the eternities.  Why? They cite two big unofficial reasons:

1. There are more righteous women than men, and if we all need to be married to get to heaven (as per LDS doctrine), then it makes sense that one man may have to marry more than one woman.
2. If our heavenly parents pro-create spirit children, polygamy would be necessary to create enough spirits to people a planet.

These are my personal unofficial responses:

1. As a feminist, and for the love of the men and boys in my life, I straight up refuse to believe that one gender is inherently or essentially more righteous than another.
2. The idea that the creation of spirits happens in a process that parallels sexual reproduction of human bodies is a remnant of nineteenth-century speculative theology.  Fantastic stuff.  But a pretty limiting view of God to believe that S/he has to generate spirits through a spirit uterus.  More recently, Mormon theologians have proposed a view of spirit creation as the “organization of matter.”  And on a more personal level, I loved being pregnant, but if spirit creation means that I have to pregnate a jillion souls, I’m out.

So, count me among the many Mormons who do not believe that polygamy is an eternal principle, even as I honor all the Mormons who did and do believe this, and the sacrifices they made and make for faith.  I love the idea that none of us enters the heavens singly, that we all must be bound together—across the generations—we all go in together.  It reminds me of the Buddhist teaching that none attains enlightenment until all attain enlightenment.  But one-man-multiple-woman polygamy is not an idea I can believe in, and it’s not just because I’m seeing with “mortal” rather than “spiritual” eyes:  symmetry, I think, is an eternal principle too.

But most of all, I dislike the way we hide polygamy, or seek to manage it with carefully-managed or contradictory messages.  That strategy we developed back in the 1890s sticks with us to this day and shapes our guarded, nervous relationships with non-Mormons.  I hate the shame the whole subject engenders.  I hate getting screaming e-mail messages from Mormons who are extremely ashamed that I mentioned Joseph Smith’s plural wives—a matter of historical record—in public.  And I hate getting e-mail messages from Mormons to whom I must gently break the news that such is historical fact.

We need to talk about polygamy.  A subject that drives such strong feelings among us deserves to be handled with candor, respect, and humanity.  That is what I’ve tried to do here.

Read The Book of Mormon Girl. Follow @askmormongirl on Twitter. Send your query to askmormongirl@gmail.com.

Ask *Mr.* Mormon Girl: What’s it like to be married to a Mormon?

[It’s Sunday night in the month of "Manuary"—the month my host blog at FeministMormonHousewives.org lets men run the show.  And even though this is sacred basketball time, Mr. Mormon Girl is putting his shoulder to the wheel and pitching in.  Which means, AMG is taking dictation as Mr. MG watches ESPN.]

Dear Mr Mormon Girl: 

What is it like for someone not of the faith to be married to a  Mormon with a public profile? Not just a Mormon, because that is complicated enough, but a Mormon in the public eye too . . . and a woman who has a full life of travel.  I like to travel, attend conferences for work and fun and meet as many MoFems as I can. My husband is nowhere near as social as I am and he sometimes resents the intrusion into our life. How do you find a balance? What works for you? 

Thanks-

Gregarious Gal

Do Mormons believe people can become gods?

Happy 2012, friends!  May this be a healthy, happy, and prosperous year for you. It certainly looks to be a busy one, as Mitt Romney is steaming ahead if not to a win in Iowa then almost certainly to the GOP nomination.  And if he does, you can bet that questions about unfamiliar Mormon beliefs will claim a chunk of media attention.

A few weeks ago, this question arrived from an old friend now teaching at a liberal arts college in the Northwest.  She wrote:

A question came up in my class today:  do Mormons believe that people can become gods?  

A.L.

Yes, I was raised to understand that this is Mormon doctrine.  But the way it’s taught on any given Sunday sounds more like this:

Mormons believe that we are the children of Heavenly Parents, that our spirits lived with our Heavenly Parents before our mortal lives, and that we came to earth on the plan that we should gain experience through mortality and prepare to return to our Heavenly Parents.  Like traditional Christians, Mormons believe that salvation from sin through Jesus Christ is what makes this return possible, but the kind of eternal experience the soul gets to share in and enjoy depends on his or her preparation.  And it is a Mormon teaching that souls continue to grow, progress, and experience throughout the eternities, and that part of that expansive experience is to become like our Heavenly Parents.

My fiancé is new to Christmas. How do I ease him into my Mormon family’s over-the-top holiday style?

Dear AMG,

I am engaged to truly wonderful man who was baptized into the LDS church a few years ago. My fiance was not a member of a Christian faith before he joined the church, and he has never really celebrated Christmas before. Not even in a secular way. This may not seem like a big deal, but allow me to illustrate: we could have been set up by a mutual friend six months before we eventually met, but we weren’t, because the mutual friend thought my fiance didn’t get Christmas and, remembering that my mother replaces every piece of decor in her house with Christmas decor during December, was convinced that the relationship could never work.

I have a big, loud, loving Mormon family that does not believe in halfhearted Christmas celebrations. We’re talking matching pajamas and rhyming, multi-stage treasure hunts and nativity re-enactments and Danish aebleskivers from my great-grandmother’s recipe and grandkids bolting to bed after sighting Rudolph’s nose in the sky and a laundry list of other traditions. And I’m afraid that this might be a little overwhelming for an adult’s first Christmas. My fiance’s heart is in the right place: the commercialism of Christmas is off-putting to him, he wishes the crowds at Temple Square would go inside the building and serve in addition to looking at the lights, and he went to two church Christmas parties last year where talk of Santa and presents abounded but there was nary a mention of the baby born in Bethlehem. I should say, too, that though he’s a little nervous about the prospect of my family’s enormous Christmas celebrations, he has prepared in the best way he knows how: research. Months ago, after a conversation about some of my family’s Christmas traditions, he got online and bought for himself one of our favorite Christmas storybooks. The book is out of print and probably cost him a small fortune, but it was very sweet. He is trying to understand why this holiday is important to me. 

So here’s the trick: How do I help this man I love understand this celebration that is important to my faith, to my family, and to me? 

Merry Christmas,

Anxiously Engaged

What’s up with Mitt Romney’s $10,000 bet? I thought Mormons weren’t allowed to gamble.

Dear AMG:

I’ve heard that LDS aren’t allowed to gamble or bet, which includes playing the lottery or even making a person-to-person bet (such as on a sports game).  However, I just heard Mitt Romney make a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry.  What is going on, then?

Thanks,

Daniel

What’s going on, Daniel, is that people who don’t plan to vote for Mitt Romney are poking around for ways to make him even more miserable than he already is, bless his pointy head.

And what else is going on is that Mitt is having a hard time coming up with clever verbal maneuvers to put away a Republican field that he and most American voters find utterly ludicrous.

Mitt’s been running for president since 2006, at least.  It hasn’t worked yet.  And he’s getting prickly about it.  Is it fun to watch?  No.  But even less fun are attempts to make every Mitt blunder some kind of moral issue.

Yes, it is true:  Mormons aren’t big gamblers, and somewhere in the handbook it says gambling is a no-no.  But plenty of us put a few bucks in the office NCAA basketball pool, or play a few rounds of nickel slots when we pass through Vegas (which is, by the way, a historically Mormon town).  Even a friendly $20 bet with a neighbor is nowhere near as serious a transgression as drinking a cup of coffee in the Mormon moral universe.

But Mormons are definitely allowed to talk about gambling and even to make metaphors about it.

Just like Mormons are allowed to use an idiomatic phrase like “Put that in your pipe and smoke it” without breaking the LDS prohibition against tobacco use.  Or even “That guy makes me so mad, it makes me want to strangle him!” without breaking the Biblical edict against murder.

Am I voting for Mitt Romney?  No.  I’m a stone cold Mormon Democrat.  I’m such a Democrat that I’ve already gotten two—that’s right, two– Christmas cards from the Obama White House.

But I do think that even Mitt deserves to make all the mistimed, uncharismatic, stiff debate one-liners he wants without having someone make it about his religion.

And I bet you a million dollars my readers will have something more to say. Readers?

Send your query to askmormongirl@gmail.com, or follow askmormongirl on Twitter.

I’m back in the LDS ward I grew up in, and my mortifying teenaged past haunts me. Help?

Dear AMG:

I was raised Presbyterian in Tennessee, started dating a Mormon boy, and was baptized in August 2003 at the age of 17. I dated him for two years, until I found out he had been cheating with numerous other girls–and in a town this small, everyone knew but me. I was embarrassed and hurt, and I hightailed it to Utah.  I am now 25. After graduating from BYU, I have moved back to this small town in Tennessee and am now living in the ward I was baptized in with my husband of two years.  (My ex-boyfriend eventually served a mission and is now happily married.)  But I am still mortified to be surrounded by his mother, cousin, brother, aunts and uncles, and friends.  My family is here, and I have a job with benefits, so I can’t move.  But I serve on the ward Christmas party committee, and four out of six women on the committee are related to my ex-boyfriend!  I know this sounds childish, but it really is driving me crazy.  Help? 

Mortified

Dear Mortified:

Let me tell you a true story.  There once was a Mormon boy who was cute and smart and perfect, and a Mormon girl in his ward who was a few years younger and also cute and smart.  And from the time she was seven years old, the girl was totally crushed out on the boy.  Dedicated.  Destroyed.  Wrote about him in her journal.  With hearts and stars around his name.  Froze when he whispered witty remarks under his breath during Sacrament Meeting.  Fast forward:  same ward, eight years later.  On the eve of leaving for college, after dating every other no-count female in the stake, boy shows up on girl’s doorstep and admits that he might like her back.  And what does she do?  Fifteen year-old girl fumbles.  Miserably.  Then cries.  Fast forward: same ward, eight additional years later.  Mormon boy’s mother holds a wedding reception for her son and his new bride.  Mormon girl is too nauseous to attend.  Fast forward another decade, stake reunion:  Mormon girl has a smashingly happy marriage and an interesting, adventure-filled life.  She enters stake youth reunion prepared to exhibit smashing happiness and adventurousness but finds herself instead utterly speechless when Mormon boy strikes up a conversation at the punch bowl.

Ah, wards.  The small towns of Mormondom.   No matter how far I travel, when I return to the Orange, California Stake, I might as well be fifteen years old and sporting a bad perm.  And I tell you this story from the Ask Mormon Girl personal archive to help you feel not so alone.  Inside every one of us lives an utterly mortified teenaged girl.   You can move across the city.  Grow out your perm. Dye your hair.  Change your name.  Marry.  Travel the world.  Earn degrees.  Win prizes.  But she lives on—awkward, moody, embarrassed, and self-despising.  And ready to leap out at the most untimely moments.  There’s nothing we can do but pity her, pity ourselves, have a good laugh with a girlfriend, and then move on.

But there’s a crucial difference between your story and mine.  I was mortified by my own desperately poor communication skills.  You were mortified by the rank perfidy of a no-good boyfriend! You were a sweet young thing, and he was a lothario!  You have nothing to be ashamed of!  And you have returned to your hometown victorious:  with a husband, a job, and (most impressively) health benefits!  You win!  When you enter that ward Christmas party in a few weeks, I want you to say a few reassuring words to that mortified teenager inside of you, but forbid her to speak. Hold your head up high.  Be your most charming and delightful self.  Behold your ex’s relatives with a regal but undetectable form of condescension.  They are, after all, the relatives of the young scoundrel who ruined his family name by running around with all the girls in town, and you are the girl he wronged years ago, and this, my dear, gives you one of the most powerful forms of cultural currency in the Mormon universe:  rightness.   Use it sparingly, and with mercy, for you must remember that inside every one of them too there lives a mortified, self-loathing teenager.  We all have embarrassing elements of our pasts.  The most gracious gift we can bestow upon our fellow wardmembers—the fellow inmates of our Mormon small towns—is to pretend we remember only the good parts.  We call that gift dignity. Claim it!

What about you, dear readers?  Any mortifying moments your inner LDS fifteen year-old is dying to admit?  What words of courage do you have for Mortified?

Send your query to askmormongirl@gmail.com, or follow @askmormongirl on Twitter.

 

Welcome to the world of Ask Mormon Girl!

Greetings!  Stopping by after listening to All Things Considered today?  So glad you did.  This is Ask Mormon Girl, a question-and-answer column I write for folks (non-Mormons and Mormons alike)  from my own *personal* *unorthodox* *not-official* *flawed* and *human* point of view.  This site has also grown a wonderful community of commenters who often give better answers than I do.  I thank them all for their kindness and wisdom.

If you’d like to stay in touch and get news about the January release of The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories from an American Faith on Audible.com and iTunes, please be sure to follow @askmormongirl on Twitter, or send a “howdy” to askmormongirl@gmail.com.  I’ll be sure to message you when the audiobook is out.

Here are links to two recent columns that will give you a feel for what we do here.

A few weeks ago, a non-LDS AMG reader asked “What do Mormons believe about African-Americans?”  My answer is here.

And this column gets lots of questions from folks inside the faith who are experiencing a faith transition–a change in the way they are thinking or feeling about their relationship to Mormonism.  Many Mormons experience a time when they need to step away from the faith and evaluate their beliefs.  And many of us come back.  Here’s a question from an LDS reader:  ”After seven years away from Mormonism, I’m hungry to come back.  But how?“

For writing on Mormonism and politics, please visit my column at Religion Dispatches. The Ask Mormon Girl column also runs every other Monday at the legendary Feminist Mormon Housewives.  I am very proud to be a part of the FMH community.  Mormonism is our home, and places like FMH and AMG strive to make it a place welcoming of honest exploration, kindness, humor, and humanity.

Thanks for stopping by. Please come back soon.

Love & marriage edition: Is my Mormon hipster style wrecking my marriage chances? And how will my family deal if I marry outside the faith?

This week, the AMG inbox was abuzz with messages from readers with love and marriage on the brain.  The first is a young man we’ll call Mormon Skater, a cousin, perhaps to the Mormon hipster made famous of late in a rather silly article from The New York Times.

Here’s what’s on his mind:

Utah is supposed to be the proverbial land of plenty for any returned missionary seeking a wife with whom to spend time and all eternity, and trust me when I say that upon returning from my mission (in Kobe, Japan) I fully expected the skies to open, inundating me with potential brides to be. All I’ve found in the three years since my homecoming, however, are wards full of girls that I’m mostly not interested in and who I feel are generally disinterested in me.

Upon returning to the land of the living I quickly grew out my hair, sprouted a beard, and slipped back into my collection of punk rock t-shirts, skater shoes, and slightly sagging pants. That pure sheen that accompanied me from the plane back to America quickly faded, and now most who look at me might doubt I’m even Mormon let alone one with a strong testimony who relatively recently served an honorable mission. This persona has served to attract a fair number of girls from outside the church, but my desire to marry in the temple and raise an LDS family has largely kept me from being overly attracted to or interested in starting a serious relationship with any of them. 

Maybe it’s naive of me to think that there might be a female counterpart to myself among the strict Mormon ladies of northern Utah… might I be better served by getting a hair cut and a shave, and becoming more like the clean cut guys who I constantly see gracing the insides of the conference issues of the Ensign? Or perhaps I should get off of my high horse and give some of the not member girls who actually seem to like me a chance.

What do Mormons believe about African-Americans?

As a Black American, I wonder how Black people are treated by Mormons. Is being Black still believed to be the mark of Cain?  How did that belief come about? Isn’t it just as possible that the mark of Cain could have been to be made white?

SS

SS, there is no question that the LDS Church has a racist past.  Just like the United States of America. And there is no question in my mind that racism does not fade easily—whether from Mormonism, or from American culture at large. But there are many African-American Mormons and their allies who work hard to address it.  To get a sense of their lives and their experience, check out this site or this article or this movie.

It’s impossible to generalize how Black people are treated by Mormons, but a little data helps to fill in the story.  Although the Church doesn’t keep track of members’ racial identities, folks in the know have estimated that there are between 500,000 and 1,000,000 LDS Church members of African descent worldwide.

In the earliest decades of the LDS Church, African-American members like Elijah Abel and Walker Lewis were ordained to the priesthood.  Something shifted, though, around the time of the death of Church founder Joseph Smith in the late 1840s.  In 1849, Brigham Young made a statement that Blacks were not entitled to hold the priesthood due to the “Curse of Cain.”  And after the Mormons—including Mormons of African descent—crossed the plains to Utah, in 1852, Brigham Young gave a speech to the Utah Territorial Legislature indicating that African-Americans could not hold the priesthood.  Still, Mormon history documents cases where individual African-Americans—descendents of Elijah Abel—were ordained through the 1930s.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Church leaders bought into the idea that people of African descent should no longer be ordained, they generated “reasons” for the priesthood ban.  They drew largely from American Christian folk theology that often connected racial difference to the curses placed upon Cain or Noah’s son Ham in the Old Testament.  These stories took hold among LDS people, especially in their isolation in Mormon settlements in the intermountain West.

But the effort to explain racial differences through Biblical narratives did not originate with the Mormon Church.  It dates back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  The idea that modern African and African-American peoples were the descendents of Cain, or Ham, or Canaan was widespread in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America and frequently used by whites to excuse race slavery.  In this regard, Mormons followed a larger American example. But some Church leaders also generated a parallel narrative (with no foundation in scripture) that attributed the priesthood ban to a lack of valiance in the pre-earthly life by the souls of those who came to earth as people of African descent.

The worldwide growth of the Church from the 1950s onward spurred new reasons for Church members and leaders to question the validity of the priesthood ban and to interrogate its rationale.  The ban rested heavily on the hearts of many Mormons, black and white, and many members and some leaders prayed for the Church to find greater light on this issue.  The issue became especially acute with the rapid growth of the Church in Brazil.  In 1978, President Spencer W. Kimball announced that in answer to prayer he had come to understand that the priesthood should be made available to all worthy male members of the Church regardless of race or ancestry.  This announcement has been canonized as scripture.

Historians of LDS thought agree that in the late 1960s, Church leaders backed away from the legends of Cain and Ham put forward by Brigham Young and those who followed him.  My research on your query suggests that the last time a General Authority (high-ranking Church leader) taught over the pulpit at General Conference that the Curse of Cain was connected to the priesthood ban was Ezra Taft Benson in 1967.  (Although it should be noted that Bruce R. McConkie–an outlier on this issue–continued to incorporate obsolete doctrines on race into his writing beyond the late 1960s.)  The teaching has disappeared from contemporary Church manuals.  You may, however, still hear it by word of mouth, as I did when I was a kid.  My professors at Brigham Young University in the late 1980s taught me to dismiss it as a distortion.

To my knowledge, no Church leader has ever stood at the pulpit and formally renounced the idea that Cain or Ham are the source of racial Blackness and the priesthood ban.  Perceptive observers note that the LDS Church leadership prefers to let old doctrines fade away quietly rather than address them directly.  On race issues especially, I think this leads to missed opportunities.  While younger generations of Mormons may rarely think about and may not even know about the Church’s history with African-Americans, older Mormons continue to quietly harbor outmoded ideas, and many non-Mormons, especially African-Americans, are aware of the Church’s past teachings but without a formal renunciation do not know whether such doctrines continue.  In 2006, Church President Gordon B. Hinckley did state over the pulpit at General Conference that racism is unequivocally wrong and totally unacceptable among Church members.  His comments were welcomed by African-American Mormons and their allies.

Still, I’m looking forward to the day when more Mormons will say out loud:  We were wrong.  We were wrong about Cain.  Wrong about Ham.  And wrong to deny the priesthood to people of African descent.  For in this regard, the curse has been ours to bear.

And just because you asked, the Old Testament does give one instance where someone was cursed for her transgressions with a skin of whiteness:  Miriam, in Numbers 12:10.

Send your queries to askmormongirl@gmail.com, or follow askmormongirl on Twitter.

After seven years away, I’m hungry to come back to Mormonism. But how?

Before I dive into this week’s query, I want to offer a big thank you to the American Public Media show On Being hosted by the marvelous Krista Tippet who invited me on last week to share my Mormon story. If you don’t know this wonderful program, please check it out. And, now, onto our question:

Dear AMG,

I lost my faith when I was 20 years old, home on summer vacation from BYU. I quit going to church, broke my parents’ hearts, traveled a bit, transferred to another university, married a non-member, and tried to fill the Mormonism-shaped hole in my life, which wasn’t particularly large until recently.

In the past year or so, I’ve developed a desire to return to church, to don a dress every Sunday and maybe even have a calling. I miss my community. I miss my people. This is sort of baffling to me, seeing as how I was “less active” (at BYU, no less!) for a long time before losing my faith, mostly because I found church depressing and boring. It sounds funny, but I have a much greater love and appreciation for the Mormon tradition now that I’m something of an outsider than I ever did while I was in it.

I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be an adult Mormon. I don’t know how to start in a new ward, especially since I have no inclination to apologize for or be ashamed of the past seven years of my life. I’m married to a non-member and childless– not exactly a great way to fit in. I don’t know if going back is possible. I don’t even really have any religious beliefs, beyond a vague belief in “something more” and an appreciation for the Christ-story. All I know is that I’d really like to come home.

Am I crazy? Is going back possible? How?

Sincerely,

Outside Looking In