by Juliann Reynolds
| Their views do not move us toward the solution or definition of problems that public debate is for. Instead, they deal with the phony and the titillating and the shocking, and raise once again questions that were decided long ago.1 |
As they begin this chapter, McKeever and Johnson tip their hand with an improperly referenced thirty-nine-year-old quote from a popular magazine of the day that would be almost impossible for the average reader to find:
I would not want you to believe that we bear any animosity toward the Negro. “Darkies” are wonderful people, and they have their place in our church.
President Joseph Fielding Smith
Look magazine, 22 October 1963, 79 [sic]2
In response to their shockingly polemical treatment of a serious and critical issue facing all religions, I will display to the reader what McKeever and Johnson do not–the official stance of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then I will peruse LOOK magazine and its article titled “A Memo From A Mormon,” from which McKeever and Johnson cherry-picked their opening salvo. Next, we will discuss the double standard that anti-Mormons apply to the LDS Church while nervously whistling past the graveyard of their own troubled religious history. Last, it is time to ask a question of those who continue to pit racial groups against one another in the name of Christ. Are they guilty of engaging in a subtle but virulent racism by reducing the black race to nothing more than a convenient brickbat in their polemical assaults on other Christians?
The Church’s Official Stance
Let there be no doubt that Latter-day Saints recognize the role of our religion in furthering Christ’s command to love our neighbors. Let there be no doubt that we wish to correct the centuries of division between races. But let there be no doubt that McKeever and Johnson do not give the reader any indication that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stands with all other Christian churches in their efforts to heal the wounds of the past and reach out to a future of respect, tolerance and understanding between all of God’s children. Here is a small sampling of the many authoritative quotes spoken to LDS Church membership in semi-annual conferences broadcast world-wide within the last decade:
Not long ago the First Presidency and the Twelve issued a
public statement from which I quote:
“It is morally wrong for any person or group to deny anyone his or her inalienable dignity on the tragic and abhorrent theory of racial or cultural superiority.
We call upon all people everywhere to recommit themselves to the time-honored ideals of tolerance and mutual respect. We sincerely believe that as we acknowledge one another with consideration and compassion we will discover that we can all peacefully coexist despite our deepest differences.3
President Hinckley expressed these sentiments in the semi-annual conference a year later:
We must not be partisans of any doctrine of ethnic superiority. We live in a world of diversity. We can and must be respectful toward those with whose teachings we may not agree. We must be willing to defend the rights of others who may become the victims of bigotry.4
One statement alone, given by Bruce R. McConkie to Church seminary and institute teachers shortly after the 1978 revelation granting priesthood to all races, answers each and every objectionable statement or action that McKeever and Johnson can dredge up from bygone eras:
There are statements in our literature by the early brethren which we have interpreted to mean that the Negroes would not receive the priesthood in mortality. I have said the same things… All I can say to that is that it is time disbelieving people repented and got in line and believed in a living, modern prophet. Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President 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 now has come into the world. We get our truth and our light line upon line and precept upon precept.
We have now had added a new flood of intelligence and light on this particular subject, and it erases all the darkness, and all the views and all the thoughts of the past. They don’t matter any more. It doesn’t make a particle of difference what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June of this year [1978]. It is a new day and a new arrangement, and the Lord has now given the revelation that sheds light out into the world on this subject. As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them. We now do what meridian Israel did when the Lord said the gospel should go to the gentiles. We forget all the statements that limited the gospel to the house of Israel, and we start going to the gentiles.5
Last and most important, the defining scripture that is binding on Latter-day Saints says, “he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.”6
A Look Through LOOK
Now that the reader is aware of the true position of the LDS church on the subject of racism, let us review McKeever and Johnson’s favored medium for authoritative information, LOOK magazine. It provides an excellent lesson in how easily sources can be excised from the very surroundings that explain them when the intent is to sensationalize rather than to inform.
The cover of the October 22, 1963 issue reflects the prevailing social culture of the nation. It pictures a radiant Jackie Kennedy-like woman sitting in a new car, smiling with her laughing toddler who is standing on the car seat next to her. The child is dressed in an unbuttoned red cardigan, the collar of her crisp white blouse peeks over the sweater and her pleated plaid skirt is accessorized with stylish black and white oxfords and bobby socks.
This issue highlighted new 1964 cars. The full-page ad on page 55 tells us “what every girl should know.” Women of that era evidently needed to know that “the man who drives a Super Torque Ford is a man of substance” and that she should “marry him at the first opportunity.”
Not one article, photo, or ad in a full 154 pages of this colorful oversized magazine interrupts its perky Caucasian landscape by featuring an African-American. They are not to be seen in ads, Catholic schoolrooms, or even on a featured college football team. Looking at this slice of life from the sixties, the only reason one would have to think blacks even lived in the United States is one photo on page 118 where a few blacks are pictured as the recipients of charity. The patronizing hypocrisy of examining one small church’s “attitude toward Negroes” in this sort of environment has, of course, not yet settled into the mainstream of American consciousness.
“Memo From a Mormon: In which a troubled young man raises the question of his church’s attitude toward Negroes” is an article that indicates a growing awareness by the magazine of the need to talk about “Negroes,” but there is no urgent need to talk to them or with them. The article itself is well done and fairly presented from the point of view of a young man who wished an end to the practice of allowing blacks full membership but restricting them from participation in the lay priesthood. The rogue quote used by McKeever and Johnson is only found in the “Editor’s Note” attached to the article. William B. Arthur, managing editor of LOOK, interviewed Joseph Fielding Smith, then acting president of the Council of the Twelve Apostles. The full quote, following an explanatory paragraph, is as follows:
“I stand by every word in the article,” President Smith said, after reading it aloud in Mr. Arthur’s presence. “The Mormon Church does not believe, nor does it teach, that the Negro is an inferior being. Mentally, and physically, the Negro is capable of great achievement, as great and in some cases greater than the potential of the white race. He can become a lawyer, a doctor, a scientist, and he can achieve great heights. The word ‘inferior’ is indeed unfortunate.”
Mr. Arthur asked President Smith if a Negro boy can pass the sacrament in the Mormon Church, as 12- and 13-year-old white Mormon boys do. President Smith replied, “No”. He then was asked whether Negro boys could prepare the sacrament, as 14- and 15-year old white Mormon boys do. The answer was “No.” “Can he bless the sacrament or perform baptism, as the 16-, 17-and 18-year old white Mormon boys do?” Mr. Arthur asked. Again the reply was, “no.” “The Negro cannot achieve priesthood in the Mormon Church,”
President Smith said. “No consideration is being given now to changing the doctrine of the Church to permit him to attain that status. Such a change can come about only through divine revelation, and no one can predict when a divine revelation will occur.
“I wouldn’t want you to believe that we bear any animosity oward the Negro. ‘Darkies’ are wonderful people, and they have their place in
our Church.” 7
Interestingly, the article ends here. However, a statement from the body of the featured article is worth noting as it pinpoints the uncomfortable situation for LOOK‘s selectiveness in highlighting only Mormons.
The Negro who accepts the doctrines of the Church and is baptized by an authorized minister of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is entitled to salvation in the celestial kingdom, or the highest heaven spoken of by Paul.
It is true that the work of the ministry is given to other peoples, and why should the so-called Christian denominations complain? How many Negroes have been placed as ministers over white congregations in the so-called Christian denominations?8
A Convenient Double Standard
Perhaps the annoyance of President Smith over the double standard being applied to Mormons would be better understood if placed next to the image of Ferrell Griswold, pastor of the Minor Heights Baptist Church, addressing Klan supporters as Birmingham public schools began their first week of desegregation in the same year.9 Would McKeever and Johnson really have the reader believe there were no Christian leaders among those who refused blacks their basic civil liberties and denied them entrance to their churches, schools, civic centers and voting booths? While President Smith was quoted as saying “darkie” in 1963, what were other high profile white religious leaders saying and doing to give blacks basic rights, let alone positions of leadership within their own churches? Two scholars outline how white leaders left the battle for civil rights to the black churches.
In response to King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech that his children might one day play together with white children, [Billy] Graham, who had been invited but did not attend the 1963 March on Washington, said:
“Only when Christ comes again will little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.” This was not meant to be harsh, but rather what he and most white evangelicals perceived to be realistic.10
Three years later on October 9, 1966, Martin Luther King gave his “The Pharisee and Publican” sermon to the Ebenezer Baptist Church in which he said:
So often Negroes in Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia and other places have been taken to that tree that bears strange fruit. And do you know that the folk lynching them are often big deacons in the Baptist churches and stewards in the Methodist churches feeling that by killing and murdering and lynching another human being they are doing the will of Almighty God? The most vicious oppressors of the Negro today are probably in church.11
It is easy to look at the worst in one another, as McKeever and Johnson have chosen to do. There are enough quotes indicting every religious tradition to make any thoughtful person cringe. There are also well-researched, honest and informative books and articles available from scholars on every aspect of race and religion. So I have to ask, with so many others, why do McKeever and Johnson persist in this course of action? What purpose does it serve for them?
McKeever and Johnson’s barrage of the most negative and obscure data they can muster against the LDS might lead one to conclude that all other Christian churches were fully integrated with all races participating in leadership positions in 1963, or even in 1978 when blacks were given the priesthood by the LDS Church. The following quotes from varied and respected sources are provided so the reader has the appropriate historical context. They are not meant in any way to criticize other churches who are working so diligently to close the racial divide.
Virtually all Protestant denominations have separate Negro churches, and thus the areas of association for religious purposes have been very small.12
By the 1830’s most southern evangelicals had thoroughly repudiated a heritage that valued blacks as fellow church members.13
The black Methodist church, created not from a desire to be separate but from a desire to worship without discrimination at the hands of white brethren, was to become the most enduring legacy of Methodism’s refusal to accord the black communicant all of the rights and privileges of membership in the body of Christ.14
After the war the southern churches, continuing the legacy of slavery, were among the first institutions to call for the separation of the races; by the twentieth century they had become bastions of segregation. With no desire to intrude into places where they were not welcome, most black Southerners were more comfortable in their own congregations.15
By November 1968 a survey research by the Home Mission Board revealed that only eleven percent of Southern Baptist churches would admit African-Americans.16
The most extensive research on integration was undertaken jointly by the United Lutherans, Congregational Christians, and Presbyterians (U.S.A.). They found that 1,331 out of 13,597 predominantly white churches have nonwhite members or attenders. That is just short of 10 per cent.17
Still in 1964, no more than 10 per cent of the white Protestant congregations had Negroes worshiping with them. Even these 10 per cent had only a few members or occasional attenders, so that throughout the US probably no more than 1 per cent of all Negroes worshiped in integrated congregations on Sunday mornings.18
According to the 1998 National Congregations Study, about 90 percent of American congregations are made up at least 90 percent of people of the same race.19
About eighty percent of all black Christians are in seven major denominations.20
In 1977, the American Baptist Churches in the USA had a larger number of blacks than any other non-black denomination… An interesting irony of the racial overtones still prevalent is that the American Baptist Churches of the South are now predominately a black sub-convention of the American Baptist Churches in the USA. There has been little white involvement since the influx of black Baptists.21
As can be seen by this parade of statistics, McKeever and Johnson’s talents might be more profitably spent in their own congregations rather than in pointing at the proverbial mote in their neighbor’s eye.
Historical Ignorance, or Race-baiting?
Now let us look at McKeever and Johnson’s stumbling attempt to pass off centuries of Christian belief in a “curse” as being a uniquely Mormon invention. They ask, “If the Mormon God has removed the curse that was once on the black race, why has he not also removed the mark?”22 Again, let me give McKeever and Johnson a quick spin around the widely available literature on the origins of this unfortunate concept:
This interpretation of Noah’s curse was no southern invention; indeed, it had been in circulation long before the discovery of America. Even so, it proved especially useful to white masters of the South because they had been put on the defensive by the powerful emancipationist movement.23
The story of Noah’s Curse was so ingrained into the orthodox Protestant mind that it was sometimes invoked far from the pulpit. Speaking before the Mississippi Democratic State Convention in 1859, none other than Jefferson Davis defended chattel slavery and the foreign slave trade by alluding to the “importation of the race of Ham” as a fulfillment of its destiny to be “servant of servants.”24
Once again, the reader is left to decide whether McKeever and Johnson are completely ignorant of the history of race theory, anthropology, and the centuries-old Christian use of the Bible to justify slavery or if they are simply race-baiting. One is truly forced to ponder this as they selectively use quotes and remove portions that may reflect positively on Mormons. They turn to such sources as little-known “Mormon writers” instead of using authoritative sources that the LDS recognize as accurately representing their beliefs. They relentlessly refuse to deal with modern Church practice and teachings that are well attested to by living leaders, preferring instead to use dated and out-of-context quotes that obviously clash with our modern social sensibilities.
Thus, McKeever and Johnson’s attempt to use Brigham Young’s racist-sounding but unfortunately typical nineteenth-century verbiage as an indictment against the modern Church brings up the question of their intellectual integrity. We have learned from sad experience that when anti-Mormon writers use ellipses, it is most likely not because the information is irrelevant but because there is something which must be removed to keep the picture uniformly bleak and, well, titillating. Three examples of McKeever and Johnson’s less than forthright methodology will suffice. The missing portions are reinstated in italics for the reader in the first example:
You may inquire of the intelligent of the world whether they can tell why the aborigines of this country are dark, loathsome, ignorant, and sunken into the depths of degradation; and they cannot tell. I can tell you in a few words: They are the seed of Joseph, and belong to the household of God; and he will afflict them in this world, and save every one of them hereafter, even though they previously go into hell. When the Lord has a people, he makes covenants with them and gives unto them promises: then, if they transgress his law, change his ordinances, and break the covenants he has made with them, he will put a mark upon them, as in the case of the Lamanites and other portions of the house of Israel; but by-and-by they will become a white and delightsome people.25
Why is this missing sentence so important that it had to be removed by McKeever and Johnson? This was said in an era in which there was active debate in the scientific and Christian community as to whether all races came from a common ancestor, an argument that was ultimately settled by Darwinism. This sentence leaps out as a declaration that Native Americans are not just descended from Adam and Eve–they are from the favored seed of Joseph.
The second example of the intellectual dishonesty of this book is demonstrated by the next variation of their “find the quote” shell game as they leave out a portion of a sermon that again stands out favorably from the Christian practice of the day. McKeever and Johnson give the following portion of one of Brigham’s fiery sermons condemning politicians. They offer the reader no background from which they can understand the rhetoric from the leader of a persecuted group watching their security threatened one more time when they are put in the middle of pro-slavery supporters and abolitionists:
Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.26
Here is the portion of the sermon that McKeever and Johnson neglect to show the reader, however:
If the Government of the United States, in Congress assembled, had the right to pass an anti-polygamy bill, they had also the right to pass a law that slaves should not be abused as they have been; they had also a right to make a law that negroes should be used like human beings, and not worse than dumb brutes. For their abuse of that race, the whites will be cursed, unless they repent.27
Compare this to the views of the founder of American evangelicalism, George Whitefield, who “urged kinder treatment of slaves, but noted that cruelty can have the positive effect of heightening ‘the sense of their natural misery,’ thereby increasing receptivity to the Christian message.”28 Or the stories of “Christian slaveholders, including clergymen, ‘brutalizing their slaves’ which ‘abound in the narratives of former slaves.'”29
A third egregious example of McKeever and Johnson’s persistence in misrepresentation is a quote from Joseph Smith. They only tell the reader of this portion: “Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species and put them on a national equalization.”30 Yet, Joseph Smith had preceded this remark by saying:
They came into the world slaves, mentally and physically. Change their situation with the whites, and they would be like them. They have souls, and are subjects of salvation. Go into Cincinnati or any city, and find an educated negro, who rides in his carriage, and you will see a man who has risen by the powers of his own mind to his exalted state of respectability. The slaves in Washington are more refined than many in high places, and the black boys will take the shine off many of those they brush and wait on.31
If McKeever and Johnson are seeking to truly inform and educate the reader concerning Mormonism, why would they not want to disclose this part of Joseph’s thinking? In fact, why would they not want to elaborate on Joseph’s revolutionary solution for abolishing slavery? Instead of commenting on the revulsion of Mormon leaders towards the widely accepted standard of abuse and cruelty, they choose only to make known the rather common thinking of the day that demanded races remain separate.
Use of LDS Scripture
Apparently, McKeever and Johnson are not very comfortable disclosing LDS scripture and therefore quote very little of it. They make much of a few selected verses from the Book of Mormon, however, while leaving out any verses that could explain the use of “dark” or “black.” They quickly quote the following from 2 Nephi:
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.32
McKeever and Johnson then interpret LDS scripture in the most inflammatory manner possible, again using outdated quotes. In contrast, I offer them an abbreviated tour of the Bible:
Many shall be purified, and made white…33
When I looked for good, then evil came [unto me]: and when I waited for light, there came darkness… My skin is black upon me.34
Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness.35
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.36
Are McKeever and Johnson completely ignorant of the repeated biblical use of black and white as symbolic references to good and evil? An African-American minister, Frederick Price, has a point that McKeever and Johnson and any others of similar mindset should contemplate:
If God cursed Ham and the curse was blackness so that all of his children came out black, then what shade of black would they be? Black people come in every shade-but if God cursed Ham, it would mean that every cursed black person would have to be the same shade… If Ham were cursed, the color could never change, because it would not be determined by genetics, it would be determined by the curse. The only way that a child could come out a different shade than a parent who carries the curse would be if the curse changed.37
McKeever and Johnson, not satisfied to leap frog through LDS belief and history, prattle on about a few hopeful expressions by LDS leaders that the disappearance of any “curse” would literally manifest itself in a change of skin color. However, scholars such as Forrest Wood plainly state that the Christian justification of slavery would come “crashing down” without a belief in a curse and “could be sustained only on the assumption that God either changed the color of Ham’s skin instantly or that of his descendants in a relatively brief period. This was orthodox Christian thinking.“38
Summary
Racism has become one of the most strident and damaging accusations that can be leveled in our society, and as such has become a useful weapon for those who wish to harm an organization or individual. As Southern Baptists know, “Few chapters in American religious history prove as embarrassing as the response of the American churches to the issue of race.”39 Thus, McKeever and Johnson appeal to an audience that is ignorant of the abysmal history of most of Christianity’s dealings on race issues. They are obviously hoping their target audience will not notice that Latter-day Saints have always had integrated churches while other Protestant churches struggle with the residual division brought about by their own prolonged discrimination or outright expulsion of black members. Emerson and Smith assess the problem in the following manner:
Our examination of a variety of data and consideration of a variety of levels of social influence suggest that many race issues that white evangelicals want to see solved are generated in part by the way they themselves do religion, interpret their world, and live their own lives. These factors range from the ways evangelicals and others organize into internally similar congregations, and the segregation and inequality such congregations help produce; to theologically rooted evangelical cultural tools, which tend to (1)
minimize and individualize the race problem, (2) assign blame to blacks themselves for racial inequality, (3) obscure inequality as part of racial division, and (4) suggest unidimensional solutions to racial division.40
LDS are, of course, not immune from the same human foibles. We, like all Christians, might wish that we had played a larger role in correcting social injustices. We must all look at our past and learn from it. But for the here and now, the LDS do have a decided advantage in our centralized leadership and our historical practice of maintaining congregations based on geographical boundaries rather than personal preference or race. Our members have never traveled past a white or black church to get to their own. We cannot fire ministers who do not succumb to the wishes of a congregation to remain racially segregated. Yet, we join all concerned followers of Christ in acknowledging that we have work ahead of us in putting aside differences accumulated through centuries of misunderstanding and intolerance.
We offer McKeever and Johnson a hand of fellowship in the hope that all religious traditions can combine their wisdom, understanding and love to unify mankind instead of divide. I hope McKeever and Johnson will desist in their racially divisive campaign against other religions. I challenge them to focus their talents on the important question of pastor Gregory E. Thomas as he says, “we must again note that a predominant pattern of church life for black churches has been that of racial separation. The question remains: why?”41
Endnotes
1 Tom Braden, “I Was the
Target of a Hate Campaign,” LOOK (October 22, 1963), 60. Since McKeever
and Johnson chose LOOK magazine as a defining source, it seemed
appropriate to use a quote from the same issue as the epigraph for this review
as well.
2 Bill McKeever and Eric
Johnson, Mormonism 101 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2000), 233.
3 Russell M. Nelson, “Teach
Us Tolerance and Love,” Ensign (May, 1994), 71.
4 Gordon B. Hinckley, “This
is the Work of the Master,” Ensign (May, 1995), 71.
5 Bruce R. McConkie, “All
Are Alike unto God,” an address to a Book of Mormon Symposium for Seminary and
Institute teachers, Brigham Young University, 18 August 1978, as quoted in
Jessie L. Embry, Black Saints in a White Church (Salt Lake City:
Signature Books, 1994), 34. [New Mormon Studies CD-ROM (Smith Research
Associates, 1999).]
6 2 Nephi 26:33.
7 Jeff Nye, “Memo from a
Mormon: In which a troubled young man raises the question of his church’s
attitude toward Negroes,” LOOK (October 22, 1963), 97.
8 Ibid., 76.
9 Andrew M. Manis, “‘Dying
From the Neck Up:’ Southern Baptist Resistance to the Civil Rights Movement,”
Baptist History and Heritage (Winter 1999), 41.
10 Richard O. Emerson and
Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of
Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 47.
11 Marty Bell, “Fire in My
Bones: The Prophetic Preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Baptist History
and Heritage (Winter 1999), 13.
12 Thomas F. Gossett,
Race: The History of An Idea in America (New York: Oxford University Press,
1963), 447.
13 Nathan O. Hatch, The
Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale
University Press, 1989), 107.
14 Forrest G. Wood. The
Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to
the Twentieth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 318.
15 Ibid., 293.
16 Dana Martin, “The
American Baptist Convention and the Civil Rights Movement: Rhetoric and
Response,” Baptist History and Heritage (Winter 1999), 44.
17 Robert Root, Progress
Against Prejudice: The Church Confronts the Race Problem (New York:
Friendship Press, 1957), 59.
18 J.C. Hough, Black
Power and White Protestants: A Christian Response to the New Negro Pluralism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 177.
19 Emerson and Smith,
Divided by Faith, 136.
20 Gregory E. Thomas,
“Black and Baptist in the Bay State,” American Baptist Quarterly (March,
2002), 68.
21 Ibid., 68-69.
22 McKeever and Johnson,
Mormonism 101, 243.
23 H. Shelton Smith, In
His Image, But… Racism in Southern Religion, 1780-1910 (Durham, North
Carolina: Duke University Press, 1972), 131.
24 Wood, The Arrogance
of Faith, 107.
25 Brigham Young,
“Re-Organization of the High Council, Etc.,” Journal of Discourses,
reported by G.D. Watt 8 October 1859, Vol. 7 (London: Latter-Day Saint’s Book
Depot, 1860), 336, partially quoted in McKeever and Johnson, Mormonism 101,
235.
26 Brigham Young, “The
Persecutions of the Saints, Etc.,” Journal of Discourses, reported by G.D.
Watt 8 March 1863, Vol. 10 (London: Latter-Day Saint’s Book Depot, 1865), 110,
quoted in McKeever and Johnson, Mormonism 101, 241.
27 Brigham Young, “The
Persecutions of the Saints, Etc.,” 111.
28 Emerson and Smith,
Divided by Faith, 26.
29 Albert J. Raboteau,
Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 167.
30 Joseph Smith, History
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Vol. 5 (Salt Lake City:
Deseret Book Company, 1978), 217-218, as quoted in McKeever and Johnson,
Mormonism 101, 238.
31 Joseph Smith, History
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Vol. 5, 217.
32 2 Nephi 5:21, quoted in
McKeever and Johnson, Mormonism 101, 234.
33 Daniel 12:10.
34 Job 30:26, 30.
35 Joel 2:6.
36 Psalms 51:7.
37 Frederick K.C. Price,
Race Religion and Racism: A Bold Encounter With Division in the Church (Los
Angeles: Faith One Publishing, 1999), 149.
38 Wood, The Arrogance
of Faith, 88, emphasis added.
39 Manis, “‘Dying From the
Neck Up’,” 33.
40 Emerson and Smith,
Divided by Faith, 170.
41 Thomas, “Black and
Baptist in the Bay State,” 75.