Mormon Heretic

I’ve really enjoyed reading Newell Bringhurst’s book Saints, Slaves, and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People Within Mormonism.  The epilogue has some really interesting events in the 1960s and 1970s.  There were some people inside the church that were more confrontational in their approach to the priesthood ban.  Bringhurst notes on page 185,

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Armand Mauss is an LDS sociologist from Washington State University.  He wrote a chapter in the book Black and Mormon, where he discusses race relations within the church.  He has both positive and negative things to say about race relations.  I’ll start with the positive.  Mauss notes that the LDS church has been involved in the national celebration of Black History month each February.  He notes several meetings in conjunction with Black History Month held in LDS churches in Salt Lake City, Oakland, Atlanta, Chicago, and Washington, DC (to name a few.)  Prominent LDS speakers such as apostle Dallin Oaks and Yoshihiko Kikuchi (First Quorum of Seventy) have spoken at these events.

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Alma Allred wrote a chapter in the book titled Black and Mormon.  On page 37, he states:

I don’t believe that LDS scripture allows for a restriction against blacks’ holding the priesthood.  Nor do I think that LDS theology can reasonably maintain that today’s blacks are descendants of Cain or that ancient intermarriage with Canaanites perpetuated any racial curse.  Too many scriptures collide with those ideas for them to be valid.

I found this perspective intriguing and  had to learn more. Read more…

Last October, I wrote a post titled, Mormon Women Blessing the Sick, as a follow up to my post on Women with Priesthood in Ancient Christianity.  Jonathon Stapley was the first to comment, saying

Equating early Mormon female healing with evidence of female priesthood is folly. Kris’ and my paper on female ritual healing is finally coming out in January (JMH). We treat most of your questions and clean up the historiography a bit.

In the interim here is our paper on the development of Mormon healing to 1847, including the role of women.

Well, I didn’t actually equate healing with female priesthood, but there is an interesting connection.  I am finally getting around to reviewing Jonathan and Kristine Wright’s (abbrev SW) paper which was published in the Journal of Mormon History in the summer of 2009.   Read more…

I just finished reading a book by Marcus Martins called Setting the Record Straight: Blacks and the Priesthood.  It was an interesting perspective.  Marcus is the son of Helvicio Martins, the first black general authority that I blogged about previously.  ”Setting the record straight” is a bit of an exaggeration.  Marcus does a good job of showing forgiveness, and he tries to address some of the common folklore.  He approaches the subject from a spiritual perspective more than a historical one.  So, if you’re looking for history, you’re going to be a bit disappointed.  But there were a few things I found interesting.

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As a follow up to my previous article discussing female priesthood holders in Ancient Christianity, I thought it would be interesting to discuss a now discontinued practice of Mormon women anointing and blessing the sick.  Did you know that Mormon women used to wash, anoint with oil, and lay hands on the sick until 1946?  Linda King Newell outlines the history of this practice in a Sunstone article called “A Gift Given: a Gift Taken”.  When questioned the propriety of women laying hands on the sick to heal, what do you think Joseph Smith’s response was?

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I attended Sunstone back in August.  Bridget Jack Jeffries (who runs a blog called Clobberblog), gave a fascinating presentation on female priesthood holders in the ancient Christian church.  Bridget is a “never Mormon” that attended BYU, graduating in 2005.  She “seduced” (her words, not mine) and married a BYU priesthood holder while there, and she is currently studying the History of Christianity in America at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago.  She has done some fascinating research on women and the priesthood in early Christianity that I wanted to share.

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Mark L Grover gave a fascinating biography on Helvecio Martins, the first black general authority in the LDS church in the latest issue of the Journal of Mormon History (Summer 2010.) Elder Martins was ordained to the Second Quorum of Seventy in 1990 under President Ezra Taft Benson. In 1995 he was released, and he passed away in 2005

Martins joined the LDS church in 1972 with his wife Ruda and son Marcus. Grover describes in detail race relations in Brazil. From page 36, Read more…

Apostle Paul Savage of the Church of Christ with Elijah Message

Sunstone has been going on since Wednesday here in Salt Lake City.  It ends tomorrow, and I thought I would give a few words about the conference.  I have been blogging at Mormon Matters for about a year and a half, and have never met any other bloggers here….until this week!  It has been nice to nice BiV and Stephen Marsh.  I hope to meet others tomorrow.  It was also nice to meet with a few apostles.

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Over the last year, I have come across a few bloggers who are members of the Community of Christ (formerly known as RLDS).  I have always been curious about the Community of Christ, and have often wondered the differences in worship between their services, and LDS services.  I wanted to share some of the stuff I’ve learned.

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I was first introduced to the idea of women holding the Melchizedek Priesthood in the book called Sidney Rigdon: Portrait of Religious Excess by Richard Van Wagoner.  Sidney claimed that Emma Smith was the first woman to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood (as I blogged about in Part 5).  The current book I’m reading, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power by Michael Quinn, seems to support this idea, and goes into greater detail.  Apparently, Brigham Young also supports this idea.  I’ve changed some of the formatting, and modernized the spelling below, but according to Quinn on page 36,
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First of all, I have to point to the Teacher, at Gospel Doctrine Underground, for introducing this topic to me. Previous to his discussion, I had not given much thought to when the Melchizedek Priesthood (MP) was restored. I just finished a book called “The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power” by D. Michael Quinn which goes into great detail on this subject. (Quinn has a similarly titled book called “Extensions of Power.”)

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With little fanfare over the weekend, President Uchdorf announced the call of only the second black general authority, Joseph Sitate of Nairobi, Kenya.  He was called to the First Quorum of 70, as well as Yoon Hwan Choi of Seoul, Korea.

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