mitt romney, al sharpton, mormons, bigots, and hypocrisy (ain’t that a mouthfull?)

So the press’s next big thing is this comment by Al Sharpton that republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and members of the Mormon church apparently don’t believe in God and that people who really do believe in god will prevent Romney from winning the white house.. Romny replied by publicly calling Sharpton a bigot and the catholic church and the evangelicals have all rushed to Romney’s defense and to the defense of the Mormon church. fun times! The conservative wing of the blog-o-sphere has jumped on the “Sharpton is a bigot” bandwagon, of course, and is having a field day with it.

Now my own thoughts on the issue are a bit more complex. Taken in context, what Sharpton said was that Romney is a member of a church (the so-called “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, known more familiarly as the “Mormons”) that explicitly excluded people of African descent from holding any official positions right up until 1978. This is undeniably true. Sharpton further called on Romney to explain how he reconciled the racism of his church with his personal beliefs about Race and to clarify what those beliefs are for the American people. He also argued that such racism is incompatible with a belief in God because in his worldview God is not and cannot be a Racist, and that people who really believe in god will prevent any Mormon candidate from taking the white house.

While I don’t share Sharpton’s optimism about belief in God being incompatible with Racism – looking at the historical record God and religion have consistently been used to justify racism and bigotry over the last several centuries – I think that, far from providing proof that Sharpton is a bigot, his statements taken in context point us towards something we should seriously consider. To whit, how is it that a church that overtly embraced white supremacy in its doctrine up until very recently, and which as i will show still covertly embraces white supremacy, has become mainstream in America? and how in the world has that church managed to spread all over the globe?

Before I go any further I should clarify my own relationship to the Mormon church. I was born into a Mormon family, raised Mormon, passionately believed in the religion and regularly challenged other children to defend their religion against the claims of the Mormon church from elementary school on. I was a zealot. In fourth grade I even tried to convert my teacher. I was unusual only in my level of enthusiasm and the seriousness with which i studied scripture from a young age. The Mormon church teaches all its members – especially its children – that every member of the church must be a missionary and that part of how you will be judged after death is on how many people you were able to bring “the light” too, and I bought it hook line and sinker. In junior high I entered into a particularly heated debate with an african-american kid in my class who was the son of a Baptist minister. I have always had a very good memory and by this time i had huge portions of both the bible and the book of Mormon memorized and was prepared to debate doctrine with him on just about anything, but he caught me off guard with a question about something I didn’t even know existed. He asked me why my church had excluded black people and said they were inferior. If i believed that doctrine then I and my God were obviously racists, and if i didn’t believe that doctrine why had the Mormon god suddenly changed his mind during the civil rights movement and decided black people could hold positions of authority in the church after all? In other words, he asked me exactly the same question that Al Sharpton asked Mitt Romney.

And I had no answer.

In point of fact, i didn’t even know such a policy had ever existed, the Mormon church has been very careful to de-emphasize it and remove it from all their printed materials for members, even while leaving the justifications and reasoning behind that policy unchallenged. I went home and started asking questions, questions that no one had good answers too. I reread the various scriptures (in addition to the Bible the Mormons have a whole set of other “Scriptures” which they believe were translated from various sources by Joseph Smith and the other “prophets” who lead their church), i talked to everyone i could find who should have been in a position to give me answers, but none were forthcoming. Around that same time the church issued what amounted to a major policy statement on the importance of “the family” and why it was important for Mormons to do everything they could to oppose Gay rights, abortion rights, and so on. These were not new positions for the church, but like the old bigotry against black people the homophobic bigotry had been more subtle. No longer.

In the space of a few short years my search for answers had led me right out the door of the mormon church. When I was 16 I refused to attend services anymore and when my parents retaliated by taking away my access to the family car and all other privileges i accepted that and simply walked or rode my bike everywhere. In a very real way it was my first political activism. The more I learned about these issues the more i questioned other things – my conservative political outlook for one. In my freshmen year of high school I was quoting Rush Limbaugh in the classroom, by my senior year I was quoting Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. When I was 18 my parents threw me out of their house over our differences in religion and politics – my father explicitly said it was because he didn’t want me to influence my younger brothers and lead them out of the church – and i lived with my grandparents for the next few months until I was able to save enough money to move out on my own.

In other words, I know a little something about the Mormon church, to start with I know their doctrine far better then the vast majority of members of that church. Opposition to that church and the refusal to keep silent on its racism, homophobia, and sexism has cost me a tremendous amount and created serious strains with my family over the last decade since I left the church. So let me be absolutely clear on this: Al Sharpton is not someone I would normally ever quote or bother to defend, but he is absolutely 100% dead right that the Mormon church has been and remains a racist institution that still embraces white supremacist doctrine.

In fact, Sharpton drastically understates the case. When the church decided in 1978 that it was no longer politically feasible to remain overtly white-supremecist they announced that the world was now ready to accept black people and so they would henceforth be eligible to hold the priesthood. The thing is, the church’s argument as to why black people couldn’t hold the pristhood hadn’t had a damn thing to do with whether the world was or was not ready. The doctrine was that during the “war in heaven” when Satan and his followers were cast out, there had been a portion of the heavenly hosts who had eventually sided with God but who had remained undecided until near the end or who fought for God but were not as valient as others. Because they ended up on the right side of the war they were still rewarded with the chance to be born on earth, get bodies, and live and grow; but as a mark of their disgrace they would be cursed with Dark skin.

In other words, the mormon church to this day has never renounced doctrine that explicitly says black skin is a curse from God bestowed upon individuals who lack moral fiber and courage.

In a parallel story from the Book of Mormon (which supposedly traces the origins of native americans to Jewish refugees to America) the “Nephite” followers of the true faith are blessed with light skin and the “Lamanites”, who are apostate, are cursed with Dark skin. Eventually the apostate “lamanites” kill off the god-loving “nephites”, explaining in one fell swoop why native americans who are supposedly descended from Jews would have dark skin and why the slaughter of native Americans by White settlers was justified – it was a judgment from God for the sins of their Forefathers.

In response to questions from readers i borrowed my dads copy of the book of mormon and looked up where this occurs in the book of mormon. It’s in second nephi, chapter 5. The official summary at the begining of the chapter says “Because of their unbelief the Lamanites are cursed, receive a skin of blackness, become a scourge unto the nephites”. The actual verses are as follows:

[20] Wherefore, the word of the Lord was fulfilled which he spake unto me, saying that: Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And behold, they were cut off from his presence.

[21] And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.

[22] And thus saith the Lord God: I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities.

[23] And cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing. And the Lord spake it, and it was done.

[24] And because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey.

Second Nephi, Ch. 5, verses 20-24.

You can get the full text of the book of mormon online at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mormon/browse.html, thoug hpersonally i wouldn’t bother.

So there you have it, from the book of mormon itself, the dark skin of native americans (the supposed descendants of the lamanites) is the direct result of a curse from God designed to make them “loathsome” – because apparently the Mormon God thinks black skin is ugly – and as a result of their “black” skin, native americans are “an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety”.
None of this doctrine has ever been rescinded, recanted, or apologized for.

One of the main reasons they have never and will never recant this doctrine is that because – unlike the catholic church and the various Protestant denominations – the Mormons claim that the head of their church is a living Prophet who can communicate directly with God, so any major doctrinal change would have to imply that the either God has changed his mind or that the Prophet was wrong, either of which would scripturally invalidate their entire religion. This is particularly true of the stories about the origins of Native Americans, which make up virtually the whole of the Book of Mormon, the founding scripture of the Mormon religion.

The fact that Mormons are not regularly confronted with the bigotry of their church and forced by public opinion to either defend or denounce it is a failure on the part of every person of conscience in this country. If the truth about the mormon church were widely known their membership would fall through the floor (most members don’t even know what their churches official doctrines on Race are!) and their remaining members would never again win elected office outside of Utah. They would be as despised and shunned as their ideological cousins, the white-supremecist ‘world church of the creator’ and others that say openly the things that the Mormon church no longer promotes but has never renounced.

Even without ever touching on their raging homophobia or sexism it should be tremendously clear to everyone that the Mormon Church is an incredibly bigoted racist institution and that anyone who seriously believes its doctrines is also a bigot. Whether they believe in god or not is irrelevant.

Posted: May 11th, 2007 under gods & religion, news, politrix, race & racism.
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