As I quickly approach age 50 I do look back on how far we have come in so many areas. However, like many of you, I think it would have been wonderful to have been around in those exciting early years when the heavens were pouring forth new gospel light.

Ardis, you need to drop the “at” from my email address and it will work. Thanks for reaching out.

Thanks for some great comments, all.

We can get upset at articles like this (and it made me sad in many regards) but ideas like these are still pervasive in our society. It is less politically correct to state these things overtly now, but the racism involved in the forwarded email I received today was only half a centimeter deep. You barely had to read between the lines to interpret it as a diatribe against an African-American president and anyone involved in any way in the fight for worker’s rights. (Tangentially, I have noticed that people who tend to criticize labor unions and the history of labor unions generally know nothing about the subject. An online article or two does not suffice.)

I know correlation has received a bad name in certain quarters, but at the very least it has had the merciful effect of taking lessons like this out of our Sunday instruction and has relegated it to the email forward.

And hopefully someday we will be a Christian people and a Zion people and will not even say these things in private or in email forwards.

I recognize that there are still many groups of people who are not entirely welcome in the church today. I could make a list, but I would undoubtedly forget someone. How we have taught our lessons in the past (of which the OP is a good example) does create less tolerance than it should. We have improved and we can continue to do better. I believe it should not take a revelation to do so, but I understand why you believe it would.

I acknowledge the difficulty of your position, and I wish there were a way I could personally make you feel more welcome. I know members who would not and I never want to be on the wrong side of that line. And I am willing to say that openly and without the anonymity of a pseudonym. Kevin said it well. “We are better off with you than without you.”

I can’t say that i’m surprised, given that i saw a lot of this sort of thing much more recently growing up in a still-quite-Southern region of a border state. You always hope for better from your own religion, though, you know?

Anyway, a few items that i thought were interesting:

→I was, like Clark, struck by how the tone of the piece shifted from the beginning to the end.
→I found it interesting that the “negro question” was pointed to as a (the?) primary source of friction leading to the Civil War, but that how to deal with it was painted as being essentially simply a North vs. South thing. I expect that nowadays, but i would have thought 1917 would have been close enough in time to it that there’d have been more nuance than just painting it as a regional thing (giving at least a very brief nod nod to e.g., the role of the antebellum northern Democrats, slaveholding in New York, or somesuch). Maybe geographical distance had the same effect then as temporal distance has now?
→I find it interesting that the author of this piece seems to never have heard of people of African descent passing for white—it appears that he held pretty firmly to the “one drop” rule leading to unmistakable signs of Africanness.
→The recognition of contemporary Northern racism was interesting, and i think actually a well-written segment.
→The bit in the “economic phase” section that alluded to the curse of Cain idea was phrased more strongly than i’ve seen it in Mormon stuff before—it actually claimed that the Deluge was the result of multiracial children, if i read it correctly. That’s pretty stunning.
→I still don’t get how Abraham 1:21ff. says anything about social perceptions of the meaning of skin color. But that’s apparently just me, i guess.
→And finally, if any of my students submitted a paper that said “here are opposing views” and then quoted two sources at length without any real comment, well, i’d fail that paper based on the sheer laziness that was in evidence.

Michael, I understand and sympathize with your situation, and hope you can continue to find a place in the church. I know we’ve made progress on the issue of race in the church; but even there we are still struggling in some ways. I’m not sure where all the issues you raise will end up, but what I am sure of is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone, and so is the Church. We are better off with you in it, than out of it. But I know that doesn’t lessen the struggle you face, so stay and help us work this out. Thanks for your comments.

We have a need to face the problems of our past, and learn from them. I appreciate that Ardis shared this particularly difficult article from this series. It is hard reading, but we need to face hard things if we are to progress, both individually and as a church. We still have much to learn.

I’ve been reading through the latest Joseph Smith Papers volume, looking at the first printings of some favorite Doctrine and Covenants sections, and trying to imagine what it would have been like to have been part of that first generation, where revelations seemed to come so fast and so easy. I’m no doubt romanticizing those days — they certainly didn’t have it easy in many ways, did they? — but the feeling that you could ask and receive in such clear and direct ways had to have been … I can’t even find a word to describe what it must have been.

[P.S.: I tried to write to you directly, but the email bounced.]

And I was not trying to bludgeon; really I wasn’t. As an active gay LDS man living the law of celibacy, these type of posts always cut like a knife for me due to the commandment I have from our Prophet and Apostles to not love anyone during my mortal sojourn.

I am frustrated that so many people find it easy to justify why we don’t seek for revelation on the tough issues of our day when they did so readily in early times of the Church.

Sorry.