Review
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Title: Let’s Talk about Race and Priesthood
Author: W. Paul Reeve
Publisher: Deseret Book
Genre: Religious History
Year Published: 2023
Number of Pages: 176
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 9781639931194
Price: $13.99
Reviewed by Conor Hilton for the Association for Mormon Letters
Let’s Talk about Race and Priesthood by W. Paul Reeve is a truly remarkable book. Reeve offers a frank exploration of the temple and priesthood restrictions, which denied people of Black African descent access to the priesthood and the ordinances only available in temples for roughly 130 years (7). Reeve’s writing is clear and straightforward, allowing readers to feel the full weight of these restrictions and the associated policies, teachings, and “doctrines.” Throughout these pages, I encountered new information, largely tied to individual’s experiences, giving life, clarity, and specificity to the pain and sorrow of the temple and priesthood restrictions.
Reeve divides the book into three sections, “Phase One: Universal Priesthood and Temples,” “Phase Two: Segregated Priesthood and Temples,” and “Phase Three: A Return to Racial Inclusivity.” The sections move through history roughly chronologically, with the final section also including some explicit engagement with proposed justifications for the restrictions that still persist in some way or another today.
One of the most ingenious choices that Reeve makes is in this structure, which drives home that the priesthood and temple restrictions were a deviation from the earliest practices of the Restoration, transforming the 1978 revelation (Official Declaration 2) into a re-restoration. I never had the 1978 revelation presented to me in this way and I think it significantly alters the emotions surrounding the history to realize this. Reeve also repeatedly reminds his readers that the restriction is not tied to any known revelation and that it conflicts not only with Restoration practices begun by Joseph Smith but also with several explicit scriptural injunctions. I was struck by this, thinking about the ways that personal prejudice, social pressure, and other factors can cause us as individuals and institutions to ignore clear divine mandates. A sobering realization.
One of the most powerful parts of reading Reeve’s “Phase Two” is the wide variety of experiences and anecdotes and specific personal details that he collects. This collection of details and experiences reveals the complexity and impossibility of enforcing the temple and priesthood restrictions, while never letting the reader forget that there are real, specific people who were harmed by these restrictions. Reeve brings the specific injustices (and occasional exceptions) to the forefront, forcing the reader to really grapple with the reality of the restrictions, not dwelling in abstractions. I knew some of the details of this history from reading David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism a few years ago, but Reeve offers a wider, richer discussion.
Two moments from Reeve’s “Phase Three” section really struck me: 1) about Spencer W. Kimball talking about the need to unlearn racist ideas and beliefs he’d inherited to receive the 1978 revelation, and 2) Reeve explicitly noting that the Church “has not actively untaught the falsehoods that sustained the restrictions” (113). These moments highlight some of the ways that Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood explores a wide variety of expressions of racism—ranging from active animosity to unnecessary deference to existing policies and structures. The book will be a valuable resource for discussing with my kids the wide variety of expressions racism takes.
Growing up in the church in the 90s and 00s, I never heard most of the rationales offered for the ban while it was in place. However, I absolutely heard a wide variety of speculation surrounding why the restrictions were put into place and not removed until 1978. Reeve highlights four of these speculative justifications and calmly, carefully, and thoroughly refutes them. The calm, measured tone that Reeve uses here and throughout the book is certainly an asset in increasing the receptiveness of his audience (and increases the likelihood that folks will embrace what he has to say).
I wish the book had grappled a bit more extensively with what to do once you accept that prophets and apostles may be devastatingly wrong about important moral questions. Though that should probably be it’s own volume in the series! So I’m grateful for the opening of the conversation that Reeve offers here.
Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood is a remarkable book with the power to radically alter our community’s collective engagement with the priesthood and temple restrictions and their lingering racist legacy. The book’s clear, measured, and deeply informed prose makes it an invaluable tool for teaching kids and youth about this challenging part of our history. Any and all Latter-day Saints looking to understand our own racist past and present so that they can “lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice” should pick up Reeve’s book. May we all learn from the history Reeve has compiled and work that we may truly be one.