Mormon leaders sometimes encouraged intermarriage with Indians as one method of lifting them toward a “white and delightsome” destiny and Mormons did read the verses cited in highly racialized ways. Even still there are internally consistent ways of reading the “white and delightsome” verses that are not nearly as racialized, readings that better characterize a twenty-first century engagement with the text than that of the past.

The structure of the two sentences above are designed to indicate change over time. In the 19th and 20th centuries the post acknowledges that Mormons read the “white and delightsome” verses in highly racialized ways, and then points to a potential alternative way of reading the same verses that attempts to capture more recent engagements with the text.

If your intent is to embarrass or shock people with quotes from past Mormon leaders, I think you have picked the wrong blog. My experience with Keepa readers is that they are a highly educated group who value Keepa for its honesty and forthright engagement with the past. I dare say many are familiar with Kimball’s statement. It is a favorite among those who don’t like the LDS Church. Using it here to suggest that the post is somehow dishonest, however, comes across as disingenuous. There are web sites a plenty with strings of quotes from past LDS leaders. Quote mining is easy. Situating those quotes within broader textual and historical contexts, paying attention to change and continuity over time, attempting to understand historical figures on their own terms, not mine, takes a bit more time and effort than passing around quotes. It ultimately reaches for a higher standard of honesty as well.

“The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos; five were darker but equally delightsome. The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation…. At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl-sixteen sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents on the same reservation, in the same Hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather. There was the doctor in a Utah city who for two years had had an Indian boy in his home who stated that he was some shades lighter than the younger brother just coming into the program from the reservation. These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.”

LDS Prophet Spencer W. Kimball (before he became president), General Conference, Oct. 1960

Our understanding of Joseph Smith’s view of these passages seems to be murky to me (he may have interpreted some of these passages racially). Royal Skousen on pages 895 to 899 of his Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon provides an alternative way to understand the change in the 1840 edition from “white” to “pure” in 2 Nephi 30:6 being made “probably because of a perceived difficulty in allowing a change in skin color to apply to the descendants of the Nephites”.

Skousen reasons that Joseph Smith may have seen “the remnant of our seed” in 2 Nephi 30:3-4 as referring to descendants of Nephi for whom a skin color change to white may not have made sense to Joseph Smith given that he may have seen descendants of Nephi as racially white already. Skousen seems to feel that Joseph Smith, if viewing these passages racially, overreacted in this case because for the time period which this passage is describing (after the Book of Mormon has come forth) significant interaction between descendants of Laman and Nephi would have made the two groups racially indistinguishable; thus making it possible for descendants of Nephi to experience a skin color change to a lighter color.

Skousen says, “In other words, the editing change to pure may represent a conscious attempt at avoiding what was perceived as a difficult reading (the Nephites are supposed to be light skinned), which therefore explains why the change from white to pure was made here – and only here – in 2 Nephi 30:6.”

Notice Skousen uses many qualifiers in making this argument leading me to believe that it is not clear if Joseph made this change to fix a reading that he may have seen as difficult in a racial framework or if he wanted to make it clear that skin color change was not the intended meaning of these passages throughout the Book of Mormon.

However, I don’t think the BoM is our problem. As direction of the thread indicates, it is the very problematic history of the priesthood ban, the doctrines/teachings used to bolster it, and the beliefs and actions of Mormons, from its lay members to our highest leaders. The central, difficult question for Mormons is whether the priesthood ban was divinely inspired, an edict from God. That’s the whole game. The leadership has been reluctant to approach that question in any form. The roll-out of the change, the language around it at best still imply that the ban was God’s will at some point. I don’t think we live this down in the media or put this to rest within our own community until that question is answered – either through an official statement or through coming organically to a communal consensus.

Paul’s post is needs to get out where people other than LDS can see it. Are you planning to do a broader dissemination of it, Paul, than what is here on the blog?