We haven’t heard any more of them since I b-blasted this review:

My father served in several local government positions for years and was deeply involved in improving race relations and ensuring equal rights for all Saginaw and Saginaw county’s citizens. Around our dinner table he often talked of the inequalities that existed between the whites and the blacks. He took me to several of his various civic meetings. I attended the county civil rights commission meetings, the city council committee on equality, and board of education meetings.

Before the ninth grade I was aware of life-destroying discrimination. A few days before my fourteenth birthday, late at night on June 12, 1963, my father called me to the television set and we watched the news of Medgar Evans murder. Four years later to the day I was baptized a member of the LDS Church, having read The Book of Mormon and gaining a testimony by the time I was 16.

My father never asked me about the Church’s position on blacks and the priesthood, though he knew of the issue. Prominent Mormon George Romney ran for and was elected twice Michigan’s governor and each time the Democratic challenger brought up the Church and its denial of the priesthood to blacks. George’s rejoinder was always to examine his record. As the CEO of American Motors, the citizen leader of Michigan’s recent constitutional convention, and as a private citizen, his respect for and defense of the constitutional rights and Christian treatments of blacks as brothers and sisters was apparent. I believe my father allowed Gov. Romney’s example to answer any questions he had about the Church and the blacks.

Before I went on my mission I spent a lot of time (even worked at) an anti-establishment bookstore. There I became friends with Jimmy Letherer, the one-legged white man who marched with Rev. Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery. He told me story after story of terrible things done–even lawful, terrible things done–to blacks in the South, the North, and everywhere.

Then I was called to serve a mission in California, Nevada, and Arizona during the turbulent times of 1969-1971. Kent State, Viet Nam, Angela Davis, and the Black Panthers. In my first area, Las Vegas, there were several days of the threat of race riots and noisy motorcycle cops revving their engines all night long at the gas station next to our apartment.

From all these experiences I suppose for a Midwestern white kid, I was pretty sensitized to the race situation.

Midway through my mission my companion and I, serving in California, received a referral to teach the Gospel to a young black man, about 21 years old, L.T. Harper. He was sweet on a young woman, still in high school, in the ward and her parents had welcomed him into their home, and though concerned about a budding romance between the two, learned enough about L.T. to know he was sincerely interested in the Gospel.

During the several weeks of our teaching, he and the young lady decided to remain friends but not pursue a romantic relationship. L.T. continued the lessons. When he gained a testimony, he asked to be baptized. I did not realize this was a special case. My companion from a small, Idaho farm town, was as enthusiastic as I was to baptize a convert, but was a bit concerned about things and said we had to contact the mission president to receive some guidance.

Our mission president, Clark M. Wood, listened to our description of our teaching, of L.T.’s testimony, and of his desire to be baptized. He then said we could baptize him as long as we were convinced L.T. understood thoroughly the fact that at this time he could not be given the priesthood.

I remember how sad I was when we sat down with L.T. to discuss this. He listened and said to us that he knew the Gospel was true and that knowledge coupled with the knowledge that “someday” he would be able to hold the priesthood–whether in this life or the next–was sufficient for him. He wanted nothing to get in the way of his baptism because he knew the Church was true.

I have always felt grateful that in this mortal life I have evidence that I tried to overcome whatever racism I possess because of culture, upbringing, situation, ignorance, or selfishness. That is what L.T. Harper’s baptism does for my past. But what it does for my future, it has been doing every day since I heard his rationale for accepting a mortally incomprehensible limitation based on race. He said that because the Gospel was true, he wanted to be part of it, regardless of being denied the priesthood. A promise of “Someday” was enough for him.

I do try, often remembering L.T. specifically, to reduce the frequent and seemingly powerful challenges to my faithful obedience to the doctrine of Christ by saying, “someday,” and accepting that promise as enough.

I expect this is true of most things we are sure we fully understand.

With the current three-week Gospel Doctrine focus on Abraham, I wonder how many people are thoughtlessly repeating the old conclusions about Abraham 1, without realizing that the scriptures *do*not*say* what we have used them to show, that our old interpretation came from the need to find scriptural support for a practice we did not understand.

It came up in my ward last week where a very knowledgeable woman indicated that “we know” Esau couldn’t pass on the birthright because his wife was of “ineligible lineage.” Trying not to embarrass her, I cut her off a little abruptly and said that we would be talking about that again (next week), and that there were new understandings of those verses since 1978 when we realized just how strongly we were wresting those verses. I don’t know yet how that discussion is going to go.

Thank you for your comment numbered 32. The discussion in Abraham regarding Pharaoh has always made me wonder. Your conclusion has cleared up a question for me.