Review
————
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 Kevin Folkman for the Association for Mormon Letters
For an outsider, the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with its lay leadership, can seem unusual. Some of the positions are familiar but don’t always have the same meaning as other churches. The concept of priesthood is also different. Every worthy male member over a certain age holds priesthood authority in the LDS church, while priesthood in many other denominations is generally limited to those in leadership roles. Within the LDS Church, it is understood that the leadership and governance of the church is universally linked with priesthood authority which is widely distributed throughout its membership. For over 120 years, that authority was restricted by racial heritage. Many current members of the church may not be old enough to have personally experienced the policy that banned members of African descent from holding priesthood offices and restricted their access to temple ordinances or the revelation that ended the policy 45 years ago. That history raises questions leaving many members looking for answers.
Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood, by Paul Reeve, is a small volume from Deseret Book that does an excellent job of answering many of those questions, but not all. Reeve is particularly well qualified to write on the priesthood/temple ban. He has devoted much of his academic career to studying and writing about the topic of race and the Church, including his previous work, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness. Reeve has also led the effort at the University of Utah to create and maintain a database, “A Century of Black Mormons,” that documents the names and biographical information on Black members of the Church during the years of the priesthood/temple ban.
The topic of race and priesthood has long been of interest to this reviewer. Reeve succinctly and comprehensively relates the history of the ban with many new details previously unknown to me. Reeve has organized the book into three sections, the first dealing with the universal acceptance of Blacks who joined during the Church’s first twenty years. Black male members were ordained to the priesthood and served missions, and individual Black members received as much of the temple ordinances as existed during the brief period when those rites were introduced in Kirtland and Nauvoo.
Reeve’s second section then deals with the beginnings of the ban during the presidency of Brigham Young and the racially-based segregation of temple ordinances and priesthood that lasted until 1978. Reeve correctly identifies the most likely and well-documented reasons for the ban as the fear of miscegenation or mixing of the races through marriage. He explains how over time, as succeeding church leaders dealt with the issues of the ban, various justifications were articulated, despite some obvious conflicts with scriptural admonishments about the universal nature of Christ’s restored gospel. This led to concepts such as the Black race being cursed as descendants of Cain who slew Abel or the idea that Blacks were fence-sitters during the pre-existent War in Heaven. Reeve deals with each of the justifications, providing as much an answer as can be found. Reeve notes that the search for justification came at a cost:
[At the turn of the 20th Century}…Church leaders moved incrementally away from their own Black members towards whiteness and its corresponding acceptability. It was a racial passage, however, that came with a price. That price included racial prejudice, policies, teachings, and practices that became tightly woven into the fabric of the Church and would take another seventy years to begin to unravel. [p87]
Over time, those justifications became more and more problematic, as the church expanded internationally into South America and Africa. Reeve shows how attitudes among the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve struggled with the issues resulting from the ban and President Spencer W. Kimball’s year’s long struggle leading up to the 1978 revelation ending the ban.
One of the most vexing questions for members has to do with whether or not the ban was instituted by revelation, either to Joseph Smith or Brigham Young, during their presidencies. Reeve does not believe that such a revelation occurred. As Reeve notes, there is no contemporary evidence for such a revelation[i]. As with much of history, there continue to be gaps in knowledge that can’t easily be filled. As President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said, “To be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in the church have simply made mistakes…God is perfect…but he works through us—His imperfect children—and imperfect people make mistakes” [p122].
The third and final section is about post-1978 inclusion and how we move forward as a church from this legacy of what has the appearance of racist theology. It includes a number of quotations on turning away from racism and prejudice. Bruce R. McConkie of the Twelve made perhaps the most emphatic statement in 1978 when he proclaimed, “Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or George Q. Cannon, or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that has now come into the world” [p110]. President Dallin H. Oaks said “we must do better to help root out racism” [p111].
Another question that Reeve responds to is how we react to the idea that our leaders whom we confirm and sustain as prophets, seers, and revelators, may have gotten something so wrong. He quotes Jeffrey R. Holland of the Twelve saying, “Be kind regarding human frailty—your own as well as that of those who serve with you in a Church led by volunteer, mortal men, and women…imperfect people are all that God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to Him, but he deals with it. So should we” [p122]. As Reeve says, “…the message seems clear: God is accustomed to working through fallible folks” [p123].
Every page in Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood reveals solidly researched information and insights that will help readers better understand the many questions surrounding the ban. This small volume has a greater chance of being read by more members of the Church, both due to its availability, and the important perceived endorsement as a book produced by Deseret Book, the Church’s official publishing outlet.
Some readers will have difficulty with the information in this book. Reeve notes that in 2010, 32 years after the ban ended, he was asked by a twelve-year-old deacon in his ward, “Why are Black people cursed?” indicating that the problem is still very much with us [p113]. While the thrust of Reeve’s book may be about helping individuals come to terms with race and the priesthood as it pertains to the Church, its greater lesson may be about increasing our awareness of how institutions, including the Church, can succumb to cultural and societal norms that are not in tune with Christ’s restored gospel. Current Church President Russell M. Nelson, along with leaders of the NAACP recently issued a joint statement recognizing how racism goes beyond individual feelings and attitudes. In the statement, they called on “government, business, and educational leaders at every level to review processes, laws, and organizational attitudes regarding racism and root them out once and for all [p129].
Understanding leads to individual change, and individuals then can influence families, businesses, government, and organizations, no matter how large, to change as well. Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood is an important step to understanding the priesthood/temple ban and then furthering that process of change.
[i] Normally even an unpublished revelation would have created some kind of paper trail. No evidence of such a revelation can be found in any of the minutes of the First Presidency or Quorum of the Twelve meetings from that time, nor is there any reference to such a revelation in their journals, personal correspondence, or public speaking on the matter. Lack of evidence, however, is not evidence of lack in any conclusive way. Given the amount of research on this topic and the huge volume of documents and information gathered by the Joseph Smith Papers Project, it seems unlikely that such a revelation beginning the ban occurred. See also Real vs. Rumor: How to Dispel Latter-day Myths, Keith Erekson, Deseret Book, 2021, pp 15-17; also, discussion in a Church History conference call for America Northwest Area, May 6, 2021, reviewer’s notes.