021 How the Priesthood-Temple Ban Became Fully Entrenched Policy in the Church

Episode Transcript
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Scott Woodward (00:05):
Once people come to terms with the uncomfortable idea that
Brigham Young committed an error inendorsing a priesthood ban on church
members with black African ancestry, apuzzling question naturally follows: if
the ban was an error, then why didn'tit get corrected earlier than 1978?
There were nine church presidentsbetween Brigham Young and Spencer W.

(00:28):
Kimball, and 101 years betweenPresident Young's death in 1877 and
President Kimball's revelation in 1978.
So why did it take so long to correct thismistake and again offer full privileges
to black Africans in the church, asthey had enjoyed in Joseph Smith's day?
In today's episode of Church HistoryMatters we attempt to offer at least

(00:50):
the beginning of an answer to thisquestion by tracing the key moments and
decisions in the leadership councils ofthe church when, instead of correcting
this error, they came to conclusionsthat led to an unfortunate hardening
in place of the priesthood ban.
In this episode, the years 1879,1904, 1907, and 1908 will, sadly,

(01:12):
be added alongside the year 1852 aswe piece together both the timeline
and the reasoning behind this ban.
I'm Scott Woodward, and my co-hostis Casey Griffiths, and today we dive
into our fourth episode in this seriesdealing with race and priesthood.
Now, let's get into it.

(01:34):
Hi, Casey.

Casey Paul Griffiths (01:34):
Hi.
How are you, Scott?

I'm so good.
Excited to chat with you more today.

Yeah.

We've got a lot of things to talk about, don't we?

Yeah.
A lot to talk about, and so let'sdive right in and get right to it.

Yes.
So today we're going to continueour series dedicated to exploring
the important church historytopic of black Africans and their
participation in priesthood andtemple privileges in The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Yeah.

Casey, why are we talking about this difficult issue again?
Why not just avoid it?

We've been given a commission by the president
of the church to root out racism.

Mm-hmm.

And though in my dealings with members of the
church, I haven't experienced aton of racism, we also recognize
that it's existed in the past andsunlight is the best disinfectant.

Yeah.

We want to fully explore it so that we can understand it,
and we want to do that thing that historyis meant to do: keep us from making
mistakes that have already been made.

Yeah.

And so we recognize that this isn't the funnest
topic to discuss, but we feel likeit's a very necessary discussion—

Yeah.

—to help people understand the history, the context, and
most importantly, how this changed and howrevelation continues in the church today.

Yeah.
President Nelson's asked Latter-day Saintsto “lead out in abandoning attitudes and
actions of prejudice,” he said, right?
And we believe that discussingthis history can actually play
a part in helping us to do that,and so that's why we're here.
So let's do this today.

Yeah.

Let me recap from our last, episode three.
If you didn't have a chance to catch thatone, let me hit on the salient points.
Let me know if I missed anythinghere, Casey, but we dove into the
question of the origins of thepriesthood-temple ban on black Africans.

Mm-hmm.

We know there eventually was a racially exclusive policy in
the church that was overturned by the1978 revelation to President Kimball.
And since we know that Joseph Smith didn'tinstitute any sort of racial priesthood
or temple ban, we wanted to pinpointexactly how that ban got put in place.
And I guess the short of it is that thebeginnings of what would later develop

(03:37):
into an exclusionary policy, theytrace back to 1852 with Brigham Young.

Mm-hmm.

The context was the Utah territorial legislative meetings,
where Brigham Young as the governor andseveral apostles and church leaders as
the legislative body were debating thepassing of a bill that would essentially
legalize a form of African slavery inthe recently created Utah territory.
In those meetings, Brigham Young arguedthat Utah should become a slave territory.

Mm-hmm.

And his two-step argument for slavery was essentially

this (04:09):
he said, number one, God cursed Cain, saying that his descendants would
not receive the priesthood until thelast of Abel's descendants received it.
And then number two, he said,“consequently, I am firm in the
belief that cane seed ought todwell in servitude.” So that's it.
That's his whole argument.
And you know, we didn't really talkabout this last time, but it's striking

(04:29):
to me that a priesthood ban on Cain'ssupposed descendants is already a foregone
conclusion in Brigham Young's mind here.
Isn't that interesting?

Mm-hmm.

And notice he doesn't argue that Cain's seed should be
banned from the priesthood, he simplyargues that since they are banned
from the priesthood, slavery isalso something that he believes in.
Aside from the oddness of theargument itself, what it tells us is
that somewhere between this publicmoment of 1852 and five years earlier
in 1847, Brigham Young's mind hadbeen changed on this issue somehow.

Mm-hmm.

We talked about last time that in 1847, he's on record praising Q.
Walker Lewis, an ordained black man, asone of the best elders in the church,
and saying that “we don't care about thecolor.” So then here we are, fast forward
1852, five years later, and BrighamYoung clearly cares about the color,
and he's on record in those legislativemeetings firmly stating that “a man

(05:23):
who has the African blood in him cannothold one jot nor tittle of priesthood.”

Mm-hmm.

So we tried to explore what happened, right?
What influenced this 180mental shift in Brigham Young?
We don't know for sure.
The historical record is scant.
But there were two scandalsof 1847 that we discussed that
likely contributed to this.
The first was this black member,William McCary, who started his own
schism of Mormonism by polygamouslymarrying white women outside of

(05:50):
Winter Quarters and trying to drawmembers of the church toward him.
That infuriated church leaders.

Mm-hmm.

And the second was when it was learned that a black member in
Massachusetts named Enoch Lewis, son of Q.
Walker Lewis, actually, he hadmarried a white woman and that
they had had a baby together.
And so those two episodes particularlyrattled some church leaders at that
time, and Brigham Young specificallyis on record about the Enoch Lewis
episode, stating his discontentat what had happened there.

(06:18):
So it seems like underneath it all,with our scant historical records
notwithstanding, what we can see isthat fear of race mixing is at the
heart of Brigham Young's concernsabout black equality and likely
accounts for what was underneath thereversal of his position on this issue.
I say that because he brings up concernsabout race mixing explicitly in those
1852 legislative meetings again.

(06:40):
So that does appear to be atthe heart of the concern here.

Mm-hmm.
And, I mean, the real heart of theconcern for a modern Latter-day Saint
is the question of infallibility.

Right.

It's well known that in some iterations of Christianity,
especially Catholicism, infallibilityis the expectation for church leaders.
We want to stress and emphasizethat's never been the expectation
for Latter-day Saints.
From section 3 of the Doctrine andCovenants onward, there's always been
this expectation that prophets arehuman, that they can make mistakes.

(07:12):
I mention Section 3 because that iswhere the Lord deals with Joseph Smith
losing the manuscript of the Bookof Mormon, which is a huge mistake.

Yeah.

And sometimes mistakes are caused by situations
like Joseph Smith where he made abad decision, and sometimes mistakes
are caused by environmental factors.
Like you mentioned that BrighamYoung doesn't even—he just states
that black people are descendantsof Cain like it's a fact.

Yeah.

It seems like that was so baked into the Christianity of
his time that nobody really questionedthat assumption, and they kind of
built their worldview out from that.

Mm-hmm.

We know, looking at the scriptures, that's not the case.
At least it's not explicitlystated within the scriptures.
It's a big assumption to say that.

Yeah.

And so When we deal with this question, we've
got to be comfortable with the ideathat prophets can make mistakes, and
sometimes they're affected by theenvironment that they grew up in.

Yeah.

And this is something that the current
leaders of the church acknowledge.
For instance, Dieter F․ Uchtdorf, memberof the Quorum of the Twelve, member of the
First Presidency, said, “To be perfectlyfrank, there have been times when leaders
in this church have simply made mistakes.
... God is perfect, ... but he worksthrough us—His imperfect children—and
imperfect people make mistakes.”

Yeah.

And so we've got to extend a little bit of charity
here and say, “They made a mistake.
They're products of their time,”but we also don't have to defend
the mistakes that they made.
We can just say “It was amistake,” and we can move on.

Yeah.

And by the way, Brigham Young himself taught
this principle of fallibility.
He said, “Can a prophetor an apostle be mistaken?
I will acknowledge that all the time, butI do not acknowledge that I designedly
lead this people astray one hair's breadthfrom the truth, and I do not knowingly
do a wrong, though I may commit manywrongs.” And so Brigham Young seems

(09:01):
to make an important distinguishmentbetween willfully misleading people
and mistakenly misleading people.

Yeah.

And the environment that he grew up in makes
it frankly not surprising that hewould hold some of these beliefs and
that he would try to guide the churchaccording to these beliefs, which
are incorrect, but I don't think thiswas done with malice or ill intent.

Yeah, I agree.
And we shared that great quote fromElder Quentin L․ Cook, actually, to
back that point up where, speakingdirectly about Brigham Young, he said,
“Brigham Young said things about racethat fall short of our standards today.
Some of his beliefs and wordsreflected the culture of his
time.” Exactly what you just said.

Mm-hmm.

And sometimes we say that.
Sometimes we say that, “You know,we've got to realize that prophets and
apostles are products of their times.”And I think what we mean by that is that
they are prone to the mistakes of themajority way of thinking in their day.
And that's true.

Mm-hmm.

And I thought you did, Casey, a particularly great job last
time of describing what those timeswere like in the 19th century America.
You know, what were the dominantways of thinking about race?
What were the prevailingthoughts on interracial marriage?
What was the dominant thinkingon segregation and how people
were deciding and debating in theU․ S․ of how to go about that?
If any of our listeners missed lastepisode, I think it would be well worth

(10:16):
your time to go back and listen toCasey's masterful contextualization of the
attitudes and beliefs of many in the U․S․ at that time, including in the church,
on these issues in the 19th century.
I just thought you did a greatjob, Casey, so props, my friend.

Oh, thank you.
And what this context really helpsus do is understand the forces
that are working against them andhow God kind of slowly and subtly
moves us into a better perspective.
I like it in the Book of Mormon whenMoroni says, “Condemn me not for my
imperfections.” And it's an interestingthing to go back and even read the

(10:51):
scriptures with this lens of race andbias and context, when it comes to it.
But he also goes on to say, “Learnto be more wise than we have been.”

Yeah.

And so part of our exploration here is “How can we
do better?” And how can we identifymaybe the same things that might
affect us in our time and find a wayto avoid them, but have charity for all
people involved in the process here?

Yeah.
And I love that about Moroni, thathe says, “Thank God that he has
let you see our imperfections sothat you may learn to be more wise
than we have been.” And I agree.
I think that's the productive wayforward in all of this, in my estimation.
There's no condemnation, butthere is trying to learn to be
more wise, hopefully, than thosegenerations who've gone before us.

(11:38):
I think that's great.

Mm-hmm.

And so to sum it up, we would say that through the debates
in 1852, Brigham Young won the debates.
Utah becomes a slave territory,even though he was opposed by
fellow apostle Orson Pratt.
We went into all thedetails of that last time.

Mm-hmm.

But the short of it is Utah becomes a slave territory for the
next 10 years until in 1862, the U.
S.
Congress passes a lawfreeing slaves in all U.
S.
territories.
So slavery only lasts 10 years inUtah, but the discriminatory theology
articulated in those 1852 debateseventually becomes very entrenched
in the church and leads to whatwe call the priesthood and temple

(12:15):
ban, a policy that is targetingspecifically black Africans from
participation in priesthood and temple.

Mm-hmm.

And so what we want to talk about today, I guess our burning
question of the day is that if 1852 wasthe first public articulation of a ban,
how and when and why did this becomefully entrenched policy in the church?
We talked about last time how 1852was not when the policy was made.
That was when the first theologicalidea was expressed publicly about

(12:46):
the connection between Cain and blackAfricans and how there would be no
black participation in priesthood.
But it wasn't, like, a policy, becausethe church wasn't doing policies.

That's right.
I mean, it's a real question as towhether or not it's correct to call
it a policy in the 19th century.

Yeah.

Because it doesn't seem like it was universally applied.
It was more of a belief floatingaround that sometimes acted as a
guide in certain actions, but thehistory from this time period shows
that it was really unevenly applied.

Totally.

People of mixed race, people that had
African ancestry were allowed tobe ordained to the priesthood.
Some weren't.
There were a number of differentsituations in which it happened, and
it doesn't seem like it was consistentreally until the 20th century—

Yeah.

—when they sit down and they start to codify what
the church teaches and believes insome of these more esoteric areas.

Yeah.
1907 is when we're going to getour first statement of policy that
I can find, and so let's kind ofbuild up between 1852 and 1907.

OK.

So I guess from the 10,000-foot view here, we could say
in summary that what we see fromthe historical record is a gradual
entrenchment of a priesthood ban supportedby false doctrine and then false memories.
The ban is then going to gainhistorical weight with each succeeding
generation of church leaderswho are unwilling to violate the

(14:20):
precedent set by their predecessors.
I think in a nutshell, thatencapsulates what happens.

Mm-hmm.

So now let's zoom in, and let's talk about that.
So first, false doctrine; second, falsememories; then generational entrenchment.
So let's talk about the false doctrine.
What are the two doctrinal pointsthat get bandied back and forth
as the kind of vying doctrinaljustifications for banning blacks?
We've already talked aboutBrigham Young's justification.
Cain, right?

Mm-hmm.

That Cain's descendants cannot have priesthood because
their ancestor committed a murder.

Mm-hmm.

What's the other false doctrine?

The second one is that something happened in
premortality that caused so thatcertain groups would not receive
the priesthood when they came here.

Yeah.

And it seems like Orson Pratt was primarily
the person behind this one.
Explain a little bit about that for us.

Yeah.
I find this just super interesting andironic, since Orson Pratt was the one that
was most vehemently opposed to BrighamYoung's rationale in the 1852 legislative
meetings, citing Cain's curse as thereason why blacks should be enslaved.
He himself questionedthat that was even real.
He said, “We don't even know theblacks are descendants of Cain.
Show me in the scriptures.

(15:29):
Show me where that is.” And,of course, you can't show that.

Mm-hmm.

But what's interesting is the very next year, 1853, he gives an
alternate rationale for that, which isthis premortality rationale: basically
that blacks could not be punished fora murder that their ancestor committed,
but they could be punished for somesort of action in premortality, right?
He said, “If rewards and punishments arethe results of good and evil actions,

(15:52):
then it would seem that the good and evilcircumstances under which the spirits
enter this world must depend upon thegood and evil actions which they had
done in the previous world.” And so hesays, “Blacks receive bodies among the
African negroes in the lineage of Canaan,whose descendants were cursed pertaining
to priesthood, because of somethingin the first estate.” So his rationale

(16:13):
avoids endorsing the multi-generationalcurse of Cain while still giving
a theological reason for a blackrestriction from priesthood participation.

Mm-hmm.

Now, by the way, the Church Gospel Topics essay explicitly is
targeting both of these doctrines, right?
Let me remind us, here's what the ChurchGospel Topics essay says on race and

priesthood (16:33):
it says, “Today the church disavows the theories advanced in the
past that black skin is a sign of divinedisfavor or curse,” that's Brigham
Young's rationale, “or that it reflectsunrighteous actions in a premortal
life.” That's Orson Pratt's rationale.
And both of those go against,again, Joseph Smith's own
teachings and precedent.
Remember that Joseph had taughtin the 1840s about blacks and

(16:56):
whites in their environment.
He said, “Change their situation withthe whites, and the blacks would be
like them.” And he insisted in 1844,“God created all men free and equal.

Mm-hmm.

But now, fast forward a decade, and by the 1850s neither
Brigham Young's nor Orson Pratt'srationales reflect Joseph's view of equal
standing in God's eyes of the blacks.
So, yeah, there's been a declinein the last decade somehow.

And can I add in something that is
interesting but also frustrating?
Orson Pratt seems to recognize theproblems with Brigham Young's argument
by saying there's no priesthood banstated on the descendants of Cain.
We've got two sources from theJoseph Smith papers that indicate
that Brigham Young recognized theproblems in Orson Pratt's arguments.

Yeah.

In the Council of Fifty minutes, the question
comes up of, “Are black people inservitude because they did something
in premortality?” In the Council ofFifty minutes, this is April 1845.
Brigham Young said, “The spirits of thechildren of men are pure and holy without
transgression or any curse upon them.
The differences you see is on accountof the circumstances that surround
them.” So in 1845, he's got it right.

(18:02):
And then in 1869 the question comesup again, and Brigham Young addresses

it even more directly (18:07):
he says, “There were no neutral spirits in
heaven at the time of the rebellion.
All took sides.
If anyone said he heard the prophetJoseph say that the spirits of blacks
were neutral in heaven, he would notbelieve them, for he heard Joseph say
to the contrary, all spirits are pure.
They come from the presence of God.”And he's going off of what section 93
of the Doctrine and Covenants teacheshere, which is that everybody comes

(18:29):
to earth innocent, free from any stainthat may have happened in premortality.
You get to start over.

Yeah.

But it's so tragic that these two couldn't accept,
basically, the arguments they usedagainst each other to disprove what
are the two most prominent theoriesfor why this was put in place.

And they're totally both right in their
arguments against each other.

Yeah.

And so that is frustrating.

Yeah.

That is frustrating.

And we want to emphasize, you know,
the church has disavowed anyof these arguments today, so.

Like, directly.
Explicitly.

Yeah.
In their own gentle way the church hasbasically said, “Yeah, this was a mistake.
This was wrong reasoning.

Yeah.
So that's the first part, right?
So the first part is there's this falsedoctrine that sort of keeps feeding this.

Mm-hmm.

And then, secondly, there's—the entrenchment that's
going to happen is supported bya few episodes of false memory.

Yeah.

So let's get into the two or three major memory slips—

Mm-hmm.

—all of which involve Elijah Ables.

Mm-hmm.

Our listeners will remember we talked about him.
He was the first black elder on recordto be ordained, 1836 of January.
He was ordained an elder.
Later that year ordained a Seventy.
He was washed and anointed in thetemple in Kirtland, and in Nauvoo he's
part of the Seventies quorum there.
A faithful elder.
He served several missions.
So Elijah Ables is awesome.

(19:59):
He's now old.
It's 1877.
The same year that Brigham Young diesElijah Ables's wife, Mary Ann, dies.
And there is some later recollectionthat Elijah Ables had asked Brigham
Young if he could be sealed to his wife,but what we do know for sure is that he
tried again, or he tried for the firsttime, in 1879, so—and his wife has now
been deceased for two years, and heappeals to the new president of the

(20:22):
church, John Taylor, to get permissionto be endowed and then sealed to his
recently deceased wife, Mary Ann.

Mm-hmm.

What happens next, Casey?

John Taylor decides to investigate the question because Elijah
Able has been ordained to the priesthood.
He's acting as a 70 and now he'snot sure—John Taylor, meaning,
here—what to do about ElijahAble's request to be sealed to his
wife, so he does an investigation.
This is another one of thosethings that clearly indicates
there's not a set policy in place—

Right?

—or John Taylor would've just said,
“Sorry, we don't do that.”

Yeah, “There's a policy.
Brigham Young said in 1852that we don't do that.” Yeah.
That's not what he says.

Yeah.
Yeah.

He's unsure of how to proceed yet.

Yeah.
So there's no policy, so John Taylor goesabout it in an investigative sort of way.
He tries to find people whowere there when Elijah was
ordained, what the circumstanceswere, and wants to figure out.
And that leads him to Provo, Utah.

Mm-hmm.

Where there are two people who have been tied to Elijah Able,
and that's Zebedee Coltrin and Abraham O.
Smoot.

Yeah.

And so John Taylor is going to ask an apostle, Joseph F.
Smith, to carefully look at ElijahAble's ordination and what the
circumstances were surrounding it.
And this is where we start torun into some problems that
cause problems down the line.

Yeah.
So President Taylor goes to Abraham O.
Smoot's house in Provo, Utah.
Zebedee Coltrin's there, and he says,“You guys apparently have insider
knowledge about Joseph Smith's views onblack people, so help me know what you
know.” And yeah, this is where Abraham O.
Smoot says to President Taylor thatback in 1835-36, when he was on his

(21:59):
mission in the Southern states, hesaid that he learned from some other
missionaries that Joseph Smith had toldthem that slaves were not entitled to
the priesthood, nor yet to be baptizedwithout the consent of their masters.
And then he says in 1838,Joseph Smith basically confirmed
that to him personally.
He said that “Joseph told me that I couldbaptize slaves by the consent of their

(22:21):
masters, but not to confer the priesthoodupon them.” Now, let's say that Abraham O.
Smoot is telling the truth hereand that it's a true memory.
If that's true, that does not sayunilaterally that Joseph Smith
believed that blacks should notbe ordained to the priesthood.
What that would say is slaves shouldn'tbe ordained to the priesthood.
What about all the blacks in the north?

Mm-hmm.

We don't know what Joseph was thinking there,
if that's an accurate memory.
Again, I'm questioning thisbecause it's 40-plus years old.
But that one's not the doozy.
It's whatever.
That one's whatever.
But it's when he talks toZebedee Coltrin next right?
Anything you want to say about Abraham O.
Smoot?

There's been some controversy with Smoot
because he was a slave owner.
In fact, the administration buildingon campus at BYU is the Abraham O.
Smoot building.
There were some people that felt likethe building needed to be renamed.
Smoot was an honorable man, but Ido think he was mistaken here, or he
misinterpreted what Joseph Smith said.

Yeah.

Placing this close to 1835-36 puts us smack dab in the middle
of the church's controversies in Missouri—

Totally.

—which we discussed were largely linked to
slavery and the church's viewson the equality of the races.

Mm-hmm.

There was maybe an overcompensation by leaders of the
church during this time because theyjust basically wanted to say, “We're not
trying to ruffle anyone's feathers here.
If slavery is the law where you're at,we're not intending to interfere with
that at all.” And that may have promptedJoseph Smith to make these statements.

Yeah.

We do have recorded instances of Joseph Smith
taking a practical approach, where he'dsay, “Yeah, you can teach a slave, but
don't do so without permission of theirmaster,” because that's what caused all
those problems in Jackson County andcontinued during this time period to
cause problems in Missouri generally,because Missouri was a slave state.

Yeah.

So I guess my interpretation would be that Smoot
misunderstood Joseph Smith and what hewas going for because there's so much
evidence from the Nauvoo period thatJoseph Smith did not hold some of these
views that Smoot is assuming he held.

He's clearly allowing Elijah Able and Q.
Walker Lewis to be ordained.
These are free black men—

Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.

—who are being ordained to the priesthood, and
so that clearly would contradictthat—his actions would contradict
that, unless he meant specificallyslaves should not be ordained, but
free blacks, that was fine, right?
Yeah.
There could be some layersof misinterpretation here.

It could be, yeah.

Then John Taylor interviews Zebedee Coltrin, the one who
had actually ordained Elijah Able asSeventy back in 1836, and Coltran tells
President Taylor that Joseph had toldhim back in 1834, just after Zion's camp,
that blacks, “Have no right nor cannothold the priesthood.” And he also said
that he heard Joseph teach that “No personhaving the least particle of Negro blood

(25:14):
can hold the priesthood.” Then as forElijah Able's being ordained a Seventy,
which seems to contradict it, if Josephhad said that in 1834, why in the world
would he let Elijah Able be ordained?
Coltrin said that after Josephlearned of his lineage, he dropped
Elijah from the Seventies quorum.
So there you go.

Mm-hmm.

That's what Zebedee Coltrin said happened, right?
And that's, again, a40-plus-year-old memory.
And, unfortunately, those twomemories by those two men in 1879
are going to provide the foundationfor a generations-long tradition
within Mormonism that the priesthoodban originated with Joseph Smith.

Mm-hmm.

So bookmark that.
We're going to come back to that.
But now, here's the interesting aftermath.
So five days later—remember how Joseph F.
Smith had been tasked with investigatingthe legitimacy of Elijah Able's
priesthood ordination at the same time?

Mm-hmm.

In a meeting held five days after President Taylor
interviewed Smoot and Coltrin, he metwith the Twelve to discuss this issue
and to relay what he had learned.
And according to the minutes ofthe meeting, I'm just going to
quote directly from the minuteshere because this is good.
This is as close as you get to themoment, it says this: “Brother Joseph F.
Smith said he thought Brother Coltrin'smemory was incorrect as to Brother Able

(26:22):
being dropped from the Quorum of Seventiesto which he belonged, as Brother Able
has in his possession his certificateas a Seventy given to him in 1841 and
signed by Elder Joseph Young and A.
P.
Rockwood and a still later certificategiven in this city.” Salt Lake.
“Brother Able's account of the personswho washed and anointed him in the
Kirtland Temple also disagreed withthe statement of Brother Coltrin.” I'm

(26:45):
still quoting, “Whilst he stated thatBrother Coltrin ordained him a Seventy,
but Brother Able also states that theprophet Joseph told him that he was
entitled to the priesthood.” So, ladiesand gentlemen of the jury, which evidence
should we weigh more heavily here?
On the one hand you have ZebedeeColtrin's over a 40-plus-year-old

(27:05):
memory recollecting that Elijah Able wasdropped from the Quorum of the Seventy
after Joseph learned about his lineage.

Mm-hmm.

And on the other hand, we have Elijah Able
personally showing Joseph F.
Smith his original Seventy certificatefrom 1841, and then even a more
recently documented one given himin Salt Lake City, which totally
contradicts Zebedee Coltrin's story.
And then we also have Zebedee's40-plus-year-old memory that
Joseph Smith said that blackshave no right to the priesthood.
And yet we also now have Elijah Ablehimself saying, “Joseph told me that

(27:35):
I'm entitled to the priesthood.” Andthen he actually has documentation
in his patriarchal blessing fromthat time, where Joseph Smith, Sr.
laid hands on his head, and it saysthis: “Thou hast been ordained an elder.
I mean—Joseph F.
Smith's right here, right?

Yeah.

All the historical documented evidence
that we have contradicts ZebedeeColtrin's memory on this one.
And so it's unfortunate that ZebedeeColtrin's memory is going to play
a role in having some weight in thecausing people to believe that Joseph
Smith starts this priesthood ban.

Mm-hmm.

Now, the whole reason we're dwelling on this 1879 episode here
is because it's the next key moment inour history leading toward the hardening
in place of the restriction BrighamYoung first articulated back in 1852.
President Taylor's decisionhere will have consequences.

Yeah.

So let's review all the factors he's weighing
together and against each other ashe decides on this case of Elijah
Able's request for temple ordinances.

OK.

So first are the testimonies that President Taylor
personally heard as he interviewedZebedee Coltrin and Abraham Smoot in
Provo about what they recall JosephSmith saying some 40 years earlier about
black ordinations generally and Coltrin'sclaim about Elijah Able specifically,
where he remembered Joseph droppinghim from the Seventies Quorum when

(28:55):
he learned of his African ancestry.

Mm-hmm.

In contrast, President Taylor had just heard Apostle Joseph F.
Smith testify after his own personaland careful investigation that Elijah
Able's, priesthood ordination andmembership in the Seventies Quorum
was never questioned by JosephSmith or any of his file leaders.
Ever.
Joseph F.
Smith was fully convinced by allmeasures that Elijah's priesthood

(29:18):
ordination was sanctioned and legitimate.

Yeah.

In fact, he's so convinced after talking with Elijah and
reviewing his priesthood certificatespersonally that he rather bluntly stated
that Zebedee Coltrin's memory aboutJoseph Smith dropping Elijah from his
priesthood quorum is faulty and incorrect.
And then the other factor sort ofswirling opaquely in the background is,
of course, Brigham Young's teachingson race over the past 25 years, right?

Mm-hmm.

Now, exactly to what extent President Taylor was influenced
by Brigham Young's precedent ofpriesthood exclusion and discriminatory
theology that fueled it is unclear.
But it's difficult to imagine that hisimmediate predecessor didn't have a
significant influence on him, right?

Yeah.

So those are the factors.
Now, what does President Taylorconclude after considering all the
evidence in Elijah Able's case?
Well, the minor positive outcome wasthat President Taylor allowed Elijah
Able's priesthood ordination to stand.
I guess that's the consolation prize here.

Yeah.

But the immediate negative outcome was that Elijah's
request for temple ordinances was denied.
The exact reasoning behind this decisionis recorded in the minutes of this
meeting, which I will now quote from,it says that “President Taylor wondered
if Able's priesthood ordination was not,‘probably like many other things done
in the early days of the church thatwere done without proper knowledge,’

(30:40):
but ‘as the Lord gave further lightand revelation, things were done with
greater order.’ So you see PresidentTaylor mulling this over and trying
to find a justification for JosephSmith allowing Elijah's ordination over
and against Brigham Young's teachingsof the last quarter century, right?

Mm-hmm.

Maybe it was a rookie mistake on Joseph's part, done “in the
early days of the church,” before the Lordhad given further light and before things
were done with “greater order,” right?
And notice that in John Taylor'smind, he seems to think the greater
order was the racial restriction.

Yeah.

So the meeting minutes state that he concluded that Elijah's
ordination, which “had been donethrough lack of knowledge that was not
altogether correct in detail,” would beallowed to remain because it had been
done “before the word of the Lord wasfully understood.” So there you go.
Elijah could retain his ordination,but there would be no temple
ordinances because they wouldn'twant to repeat the same error Joseph

(31:35):
Smith made through lack of knowledge,as they saw it, now, would they?
Man.
Isn't this just an interestingand unfortunate line of reasoning?
I say that because PresidentTaylor's conclusion could have easily
gone the opposite way, given thesame evidence, couldn't it have?

Mm-hmm.

Like, he could have concluded from Elijah Able's situation
that the “greater order” was theoriginal order of black inclusion Joseph
Smith had set in place and that theaberration from that greater order was
what Brigham Young had begun in 1852.
President Taylor could have concluded, inother words, what Elder McConkie concluded
shortly after the 1978 revelation, whenhe said that Brigham Young was actually

(32:13):
operating, “with a limited understanding”and under less light in restricting
black participation in the church, ratherthan more understanding and more light.

Yeah.

But alas.
Unfortunately that was not his conclusion,and with the precedent of the last 25
years of Brigham Young's teachings on theissue looming in the background, we can
perhaps see why it didn't go that way.

Mm-hmm.

So mark down President John Taylor's conclusions at this
1879 meeting as the next step towarda hardening in place of the priesthood
and temple restriction because he tookElijah Able's priesthood ordination not
as evidence of the greater order of fullBlack African inclusion established in
Joseph Smith's day, but as an exceptionalmistake committed in the early days of

(32:59):
the church before the word of the Lordwas fully understood on this matter.
Unfortunate indeed.

Yeah.
It's easy from our perspectiveto say they were wrong.

Yeah.

From their perspective, they're putting together this
story and trying to do what's right, andthey probably went in the wrong direction,
but again, there's not Ill intent here.

No.

It's not a gut reaction, either, to
basically say, “Well, he's black.
He can't hold the priesthood.”They perform an investigation,
which again indicates no policy—

Yeah.

—and also indicates them sincerely trying to get to the
bottom of things and come up withthe most equitable solution they can.
We might not like the outcome,but we can respect the method.

Yeah.
And I think that investigation alsoshows that this wasn't very common.
There's not very many black men inthe church at the time, A, and there's
especially not very many black men inthe church asking for temple ordinances.
This is so rare.

Mm-hmm.

Elijah Ables is this anomaly, right, this ordained black
man who now wants temple ordinances.
This is not, like, a frequentissue that they have to keep
turning down people, right?
This is, like, almost a one-off.

Yeah.

Where he doesn't know what to do.
And so, yeah, we've got to understand theculture of that time and the population
of the church at the time, and the mixof black and whites in Utah at the time,
and there's several layers of factorshere that just need to be considered.

Yeah.

So now fast forward 16 years from John Taylor's 1879 decision.
It's 1895, and a faithfulblack woman named Jane Manning
James has asked permission fromnow-church-president Wilford
Woodruff to receive her endowments.
He and his counselors initially had toldSister James that they could see no way
by which they could grant her request,but at a council meeting in August 1895,

(34:50):
President Woodruff “asked the brethrenpresent if they had any ideas on the
subject favorable to her race.” Do youbrethren have anything to go on that is
favorable to Sister James' cause here?
That's the question.

Mm-hmm.

And the first person to speak up in that meeting was Joseph F.
Smith, who reminded them that ElijahAble, who had passed away back in
1884, had been “ordained a Seventy andafterwards a high priest at Kirtland
under the direction of the prophetJoseph Smith.” So there you go.
Joseph F.
Smith in 1895 believed, A, that ElijahAble's priesthood ordination was

(35:23):
legit, and B, that it was favorableevidence that ought to be considered in
light of Jane Manning James' request.

Mm-hmm.

Now, others in the meeting brought counter arguments
against his point, particularly George Q.
Cannon, and so Sister James‘ requestwas not granted, and maybe we can talk
more about her in a minute, but the keything I want to highlight here is the
simple point that in 1895, Joseph F.
Smith is still keeping Elijah Able'slegitimate priesthood ordination
alive in the institutional memory ofthe leading councils of this church.

Yeah.

But that all begins to change nine years later, in 1904,
for reasons we cannot fully explain.
And Joseph F.
Smith's memory of ElijahAble is at the center of it.

Mm-hmm.

But before we go there, do you want to talk for a minute a
little more about Jane Manning James?

Yeah.
And that's a part of the story, too,is the two people that we maybe use to
humanize some of this history are ElijahAble and—Jane Manning James, during this
same time, asks permission to be sealed.
And what's interesting here isshe asked permission to be sealed
to Joseph Smith and Emma Smith.

As a daughter, right?

As a daughter, yeah.
Jane, in her autobiography, which shedictates—you can go to the church history
website and download this fairly easily.

Mm.

My wife and I read the whole thing together.
It's really quite interesting.

Mm-hmm.

Jane dictated it.
As far as we know, Jane was illiterate.
She didn't know how to write.

Mm-hmm.

But one of the things she said was that Emma Smith,
while they were living in Nauvoo, becauseJane initially lives with Joseph and Emma
when she first arrives there—was thatEmma Smith approached her and said she
asked if Jane was interested in be[ing]sealed to them as one of their children.
Jane's wording is, “I told her no,”and then Emma sort of backed off,
which sounds a lot like Emma, whereshe was very tentative about temple

(37:08):
ordinances and sealings and things.
She said that Emma approached hertwo weeks later and asked, and Jane
said, “No, ma'am,” and then Jane lateradmitted, “because I didn't know what
she was talking about,” and she says, “Ididn't know my own mind at that time.”

Mm-hmm.

And so she comes to the First Presidency and asks if she
can be sealed to Joseph and Emma as adaughter and we don't know what happens.
In 1884, she just makes the request.
It's in 1890 she requeststemple blessings again.
It seems like the personshe talks to is Joseph F.
Smith, who's the second counselor inthe first presidency at the time, and
she asks if she can be sealed to Q.

(37:44):
Walker Lewis, reminding him thathe was ordained an elder, and she
wants to receive her endowments.
And as far as we know, the conversationgoes like this: “Can I also be adopted
to brother Joseph Smith the prophet'sfamily?” She explains that “Emma
said Joseph told her to tell me,”so in this instance, she's saying
“Joseph Smith instructed Emma thatI should be adopted to their family.

(38:05):
She asked if I would like to.
I did not understand the law of adoptionthen,” which, just to clarify, the
law of adoption was that you couldask someone that you were close
to, to be sealed to you as a child.

Mm-hmm.

It actually seems like it was fairly common for
a while in the early church, andso she makes this request and in
1894 a request is made to Joseph F.
Smith by Zina Young onbehalf of Jane Manning.
She kind of persists with this aslate as 1903 she's asking Joseph F.
Smith, “Can I receive my endowments?
Can I receive the sealing?” So Janeis the opposite side, and an important

(38:41):
part of her story is that we sometimessimplify this by saying it's a
priesthood ban; it only affected men.
It was a priesthood and temple ban.

Yeah.

It affected men and women, and Jane
personifies that part of the story.

Yeah.

So there's these two figures, Elijah Able and Jane Manning,
who are both saying, “We want to go tothe temple, and this causes Joseph F.
Smith to sit down and decide to finallycodify things—to create a policy.

Yeah.

Which it appears really hasn't existed to this point.
And let's talk a little bit aboutthat policy and how it's announced.

OK, so let's circle back to 1904.

OK.

This is the year Joseph F.
Smith, who is now church president, has acrucial memory slip regarding Elijah Able.

Mm-hmm.

In a letter referencing Elijah's priesthood ordination, Joseph F.
Smith explained that it wassimply a mistake that, “was never
corrected,” and that “the rule ofthe church is that negroes cannot
receive the priesthood.” Oy.

Yeah.

What's so troubling about this is that, remember, Joseph F.
Smith is the one that performed theinvestigation on Elijah Able himself
back in 1879, and he's the one thatdefended the legitimacy of his priesthood
ordination to President Taylor.
He's also the one nine yearsearlier, in 1895, who had reminded
Wilford Woodruff and his councilthat Elijah was ordained in Kirtland

(40:00):
under Joseph Smith's direction.
But now, here in 1904, he's notremembering the conclusions of
his own firsthand investigation.

Mm-hmm.

Instead, it seems he's remembering or defaulting to John Taylor's
tentative conclusion at that 1879 council,where he said Elijah's ordination was
likely a mistake Joseph Smith madewhen things were less well understood,
and so it hadn't been corrected.
That's what it sounds like, right?

Yeah.

So that's 1904.

Mm-hmm.

Fast forward only three more years to 1907, and this is where
the church, under President Smith,officially adopts a “one-drop policy”—

Mm-hmm.

—which mirrored, in some ways, similar policies in the U.
S.
about segregation.
Like, in Virginia, they have this onedrop policy that if you have 99 white
ancestors and one black ancestor,then you're considered black and
so you need to use the facilitiesof the blacks, not the whites.

Yeah.

So kind of mirroring that kind of a thought, the First Presidency
decided that, “the descendants of Hammay receive baptism and confirmation,
but no one known to have in his veinsnegro blood, it matters not how remote
a degree, can either have the priesthoodin any degree or the blessings of the
temple of God, no matter how otherwiseworthy he may be.” That's a policy.

Yeah.

That's the decision.
And so notice here in 1907 priesthoodand temple access is not based solely
on one's personal worthiness but alsoan additional factor is whether or
not they have the slightest degree of“negro blood” that could disqualify you.

Mm-hmm.

So by 1907, we've got a policy.

Yeah.
And it's a hallmark of Joseph F.
Smith's presidency that he spendsa lot of time trying to codify,
put things into certain terms.
We talked a little bit earlier aboutthis, but one of the contextual
elements is the Reed Smoot hearings.

Mm.
Yeah.

Which—the Reed Smoot hearings—Reed Smoot is a Latter-day
Saint senator that's elected to the U.
S.
Senate, and then they refuse to seat him.
And the trials for Reed Smoot go on forseveral years, touch on every aspect of
the church, and very much the enemiesof the church attempt to paint the
church as un-American, as outside themainstream, and as dangerous and radical.

Mm-hmm.

And as weird as it seems for us today, we could, in
context, say that this desire to codifythe race policy reflects their desire
to move closer to mainstream America.

Yeah.

This is post-Civil War, but everybody that knows anything
about American history is goingto note that the Civil War ended
slavery, but it did not solve racism.

No.

In fact, in some ways, it intensified the problem
to where you could argue that thefeelings of segregation and racism
are at their peak in the early 20thcentury when this policy is codified.
And so it reflects theculture around them.
You've noted that it actuallyborrows language from statutes
passed in certain parts of America—

Yeah.

—where they're going to have this codified, systematic
racial divide that exists, but that's it.
It's not the church movingfurther from the mainstream.
The mainstream was racism at thistime, and it was the leaders of
the church moving closer to that.

Yeah.

But some of this stuff is really hard to implement.

Yeah.

The not-one-drop policy—how does that actually work?

Yeah.

That's tough.

One year later, so 1908, President Joseph F.
Smith and other leaders again gatherto discuss matters of race because
they'd gotten a letter from a recentlyreturned mission president in South
Africa, Ralph Badger, which promptedthe meeting and he—his question was,
“What shall be done where people taintedwith negro blood embraced the gospel?”
His missionaries had recently baptizeda Zulu chief, and that chief wanted to

(43:40):
take the gospel to the rest of his group.
And so Badger is wondering if thegospel should be preached to all
the native tribes of South Africa.
Like, “What should we do?” right?
Of course, the priesthoodquestion is all swirling in there.

Mm-hmm.

In response to that inquiry, Joseph F.
Smith recites for the gathered councilthe stories of Elijah Able and Jane
Manning James and specifically recountstheir appeals for temple blessings.
He uses Able's story as precedent, buthe remembers it very differently than
when he had personally interviewed Ableback in 1879, 30 years earlier, almost.

Mm-hmm.

What he said is that he remembered that Able's
ordination was declared null andvoid by the prophet Joseph himself.
Ah, oof.
This is a key moment.

Yeah.

A very unfortunate moment.
By this misrememberingof President Joseph F.
Smith, he essentially solidifiesthe racial restrictions.
Of course, that was in place already in1907, but this delegitimizes the memory
of Elijah Able as a legit priesthood man.

Yeah.

Paul Reeve, our favorite scholar on blacks and the
priesthood and temple in the church.
He said, “In that moment ofhistorical forgetfulness, Joseph F.
Smith created a new memoryfor the church moving forward.
This new memory erased from collectiveLatter-day Saint history the black
pioneers who complicated the racial story.

(45:02):
In the new memory, priesthood andtemples had always been white, and
the racial restrictions had beenin place from the beginning.” Ouch.
So well-worded and so painful.

Yeah.

So going forward, this becomes the accepted story
prophet Joseph Smith was the precedentmaker for the priesthood denial.
This effectively removes black priesthoodmen from the collective memory of
the church, and by 1912 George Q.
Cannon, a member of the FirstPresidency, he's going to give a
secondhand account—he seems to bequoting Zebedee Coltrin—about the

(45:47):
prophet's views on race and priesthood.
Nobody can ever find a firsthand accountof Joseph saying anything against this,
but Zebedee Coltrin remembers, right?

Mm-hmm.

So George Q.
Cannon's now starting to stateconfidently that Zebedee Coltrin's

memory is correct (45:59):
that Joseph Smith was the instigator of the policy.
Then, slightly over a decade later,Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, who's
the son of President Joseph F.
Smith, he's going to be able to writenow, very definitively, “It is true that
the negro race is barred from holdingthe priesthood.” And note this: “This
has always been the case,” he said.
“The prophet Joseph Smith taughtthis doctrine, and it was made known

(46:21):
to him.” Of course, no footnote.
Nothing that goes back to anoriginal statement by Joseph.
This isn't Joseph FieldingSmith being dishonest.
This is Joseph Fielding Smith acceptingas the narrative that's been passed down
now for the last decade-plus that JosephSmith was the precedent-maker here.
So—

Mm-hmm.

That narrative is not questioned for decades.
It's going to get reinforced in eachsuccessive generation because each
generation of church leaders is goingto be more and more unwilling to violate
the precedent of their predecessors.
This is just kind of the unwrittenorder of things—or now it's become,
in 1907, the written order of things.
This is how it is.
The memory is that Joseph Smithstarted it, and so that's that.

Yeah.
And again, it's unfortunate, right?

Yes.

And in a lot of ways it's untenable, too.
You mentioned the missionpresident from South Africa.
I actually have read journalsof a missionary in South
Africa named Wiley Sessions.
And Wiley Sessions is the guy whocomes back to the States and eventually
starts the Institutes of Religion.

Yeah.

While he's on his mission in South Africa, he writes
some poignant things about experienceshe's had with people of African
ancestry and his own questions aboutthe nature of the priesthood policy,
and Wiley Sessions is a man of faith.
He trusts the leaders of the church,but he also recognizes maybe the
untenability of this whole idea.

(47:43):
In fact, I think there's athreat of untenability that
goes back to Brigham Young.
Brigham Young, when he introduces thisidea, says, “the time will come when
they will have all the blessings of thepriesthood, and more.” So it's going
to have to eventually be resolved.

Yeah.

It gets to this point, and then the next generation is
trying to defend the previous generation,trying to uphold what they've done,
but also recognizing the issues withit, and that's going to lead us to
what we talk about in our next episode.

Yeah.
And I think what we've talkedabout today is helpful in answering
another question that I sometimesget from very earnest people when
we're talking about this history.

They'll want to know (48:20):
How is it possible that if Brigham Young's introduction
of this idea in 1852 was wrong, howdid it not get corrected right away?

Yeah.

How did the next president of the church not correct it, and
then the next president of the church?
We're going to get what, ninepresidents of the church between
Brigham Young and President Spencer W.
Kimball?

Yeah.

How was this not corrected by one of them at some point
if this was not somehow inspired of God?

Mm-hmm.

And I think what we've been talking about
today helps to answer that.
There was false doctrineand then false memories.
And the false memories are thekicker here, because that now
creates a false precedent thattraces back to Joseph Smith.

Mm-hmm.

And so at least one of the major reasons that
subsequent presidents of the churchdon't question this is because they
didn't have a question about it.
Like, it wasn't something thatthey needed to bring to God.
Precedent is the key here.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know that we can overstate this point.

Yeah.

It's just never happened that a generation of church leaders
have questioned the precedent of theirpredecessors, especially not Joseph Smith,
without some strong reason to do so.
And given the racial climate in Americafor the first half of the 20th century,
there really just wasn't reason toquestion what had become universally
understood as a restrictive stance towardblacks that originated with Joseph Smith.

Mm-hmm.

That, in a nutshell, is essentially why this
erroneous ban lasted so long.

Yeah.

There just wasn't a strong reason to question it until the
racial environment changes in Americain the second half of the 20th century.
Then we get some deep scholarlyinvestigation into the origins of this
ban, and we get apostles who startasking more urgent questions, and we
get a church president who begins tofiercely focus his faith on this issue,
and who ultimately, in unity with hisfellow apostles, approaches the Lord

(50:09):
in 1978 and receives a revelationfrom heaven that overturns this ban.
Now, we're getting a little ahead ofthe story here, but the basic point
we want to end today's discussionwith, to wrap this all up, is that
it's going to take a revelation fromheaven to cut through the tangle of
false doctrines and false memoriesintroduced by the human element of God's
servants, as we've talked about today.

Mm-hmm.

The good news is that this revelation comes in 1978,
but we have a few more things totalk about before we get there.

So hang in there.
We know this is challenging history,but the resolution is coming.
We're going to resolve the plot, and it'sa great resolution that's very uplifting.

Stay tuned.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of Church History Matters.
In our next episode, we continue thisseries by looking at what developments
occurred relative to the priesthood-templeban during the 70-year period from
1908 to 1978, including the challengesthe ban presented to missionary work

(51:10):
throughout the world, such as where tosend missionaries and whether or not they
should actively proselyte blacks at all.
We'll look at President David O.
McKay's innovations to move thework forward among blacks, despite
the ban, as well as highlight thediffering viewpoints and teachings of
various apostles in the 1960s, whichunderscored a lack of unity among the

(51:30):
brethren on this issue at that time.
Today's episode was produced byScott Woodward and edited by Nick
Galieti and Scott Woodward, with shownotes and transcript by Gabe Davis.
Church History Matters is a podcastof Scripture Central, a nonprofit
which exists to help build enduringfaith in Jesus Christ by making
Latter-day Saint scripture and churchhistory accessible, comprehensible,

(51:52):
and defensible to people everywhere.
For more resources to enhance yourgospel study, go to scripturecentral.org,
where everything is availablefor free because of the generous
donations of people like you.
Thank you so much for beinga part of this with us.

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021 How the Priesthood-Temple Ban Became Fully Entrenched Policy in the Church

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