Scott Woodward:
 Some people see a connection between the church’s past restrictive policy toward blacks in the church and the church’s current restrictive policy towards gays in the church, specifically prohibiting gay temple marriage. In what ways are these two issues similar, and in what ways are they different? How can church members reconcile A, the teaching that the prophet won’t ever lead the church astray, with B, the fact that church presidents for over a century taught false doctrine about blacks? How might the scriptural basis of the Lamanites being cursed with a skin of blackness have influenced early church leaders’ thoughts on justifying the initial priesthood and temple restrictions, and what should we make of that curse anyway? And why didn’t God clearly communicate earlier to his prophets that it was his will that all his children would receive the blessings of the priesthood and the temple? In today’s episode of Church History Matters, we dive into all these questions and more with our special guest, Dr. Paul Reeve, a scholar on race in Latter-day Saint history. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today we dive into our seventh and last episode in this series dealing with race and priesthood. Now, let’s get into it. Hello, and welcome, everybody. This is exciting. This is the end of our series on race and priesthood and temple. I have some good news, and I have some bad news. The bad news is Casey is gone again today. I don’t know what it is about our Q+R episodes, but—no, he had an important family thing he needed to be to, so we will miss Casey dearly—but the good news is that we are here with Paul Reeve. Paul, welcome.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah. Excited to have you on the show. We’ve been touting your work a lot. We’ve recommended your book, Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood, but before we go into details about that book, let me read your bio to our listeners here: W. Paul Reeve is the chair of the History Department and Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah, where he teaches courses on Utah history, Mormon history, and the history of the U. S. West. His book Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness received three best book awards, and that was published by Oxford 2015. He is author of Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood, published by Deseret Book in 2023, earlier this year. He’s a project manager and general editor of an award-winning digital database called Century of Black Mormons. If you haven’t checked that out, you’ve got to go check that out. It’s designed to name and identify all known black Latter-day Saints baptized into the faith between 1830, the year the church is organized, and 1930, and the database is live at centuryofblackmormons.org. A tremendous resource. OK, so Paul, I’ve got to ask right out the chute here: How did you become so interested in researching race in Latter-day Saint history? Tell us your backstory.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. Well, the existing kind of answers when I started my research weren’t satisfying to me.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
And I’m at a Research 1 university. You’re looking for your next book project. You have to publish.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
And I had encountered a variety of what are called “whiteness studies”—

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
—where scholars have suggested that Italian immigrants, Irish immigrants, those who come to the United States in the 19th century, weren’t necessarily accepted as white on arrival. They were racialized as not white enough, denigrated in a variety of ways, and in a labor and immigration context had to claim whiteness for themselves. And research in my previous scholarship had indicated to me that some of this same kind of racialization was happening to Latter-day Saints, but it wasn’t necessarily an immigrant and labor context. This was an insider religious group who is being racialized as somehow racially other—not white enough. By converting to the Latter-day Saint faith, somehow you are racially degenerate. And especially after the church openly acknowledges polygamy, this just touches off the imagination of outsiders in terms of ways they imagine polygamy not merely destroying the traditional family but destroying the white race.

Scott Woodward:
 Wow.

Paul Reeve:
So anyway, then I tried to situate the priesthood and temple restrictions within that context—

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
—and dug into that topic and situated it within this bigger framework, and I found answers—also new sources that previous scholars hadn’t used. These were speeches that were transcribed in the 19th century in Pitman shorthand, but never—they were captured, I should have said, in Pitman shorthand, but never transcribed into longhand.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
And those new speeches also added new information in terms of the development of the racial priesthood and temple restrictions inside the faith.

Scott Woodward:
 Hmm.

Paul Reeve:
So really, I mean, you know, there’s—there’s a scholarship answer, and then there’s also sort of personal curiosity, and I was—I was looking for, you know, answers that better satisfied my questions about the racial priesthood and temple restriction.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm. Interesting. OK, so you’re a practicing Latter-day Saint.

Paul Reeve:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
 And did you grow up LDS? Are you a convert? Has your family been in the church for multiple generations? Like, tell us your LDS backstory.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, so I am multi-generational Latter-day Saint. I had ancestors, Levi Newton Merrick and Charles Merrick, who were both killed at Haun’s Mill.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
The Reeve ancestors emigrated in 1853 from England. They were sent by Brigham Young in 1861 to help establish the cotton mission in southern Utah, and my family’s been there ever since. I grew up in Hurricane.

Scott Woodward:
 OK.

Paul Reeve:
Small town just 18 miles north of the Utah-Arizona border. My dad ran beef cattle on the Arizona Strip, so I grew up riding horses and branding cattle. I served an LDS mission. Deep LDS roots in my family.

Scott Woodward:
 Well, thank you, Paul. So tell us just real briefly about the Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood. We’ve been touting that as, like, something that everybody should go get a copy of. Did Deseret Book reach out to you to publish this? Or how did that work? Do you mind talking about that for a second?

Paul Reeve:
Well, first of all, thank you for your kind words and also for promoting it. That is very kind, and it means a lot to me. I appreciate it.

Scott Woodward:
 You bet.

Paul Reeve:
Deseret Book reached out to me when they were conceiving of the Let’s Talk About series.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
They explained that they were attempting to address sometimes controversial topics, give people something more substantial than the Gospel Topics essays to sink their teeth into, but still remain short and accessible.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
Written to a Latter-day Saint audience. And they asked me if I would consider writing the volume on Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
And I was really intrigued by the series, and encouraged, in fact, that they were proposing this series, but I was immediately skeptical, and I—

Scott Woodward:
 And why was that?

Paul Reeve:
Well, I said to Lisa Roper—and I had a fantastic time working with Lisa. Honestly, like the best editor, just excellent beyond belief, but I just said to her, you know, out of my skepticism, I just said, “I don’t believe that Deseret Book will be willing to publish anything that I write on this topic.” I just didn’t think that they would be willing to be as open and honest as I feel like the topic deserves, and so I think the first time we, Lisa talked to me, I just expressed that skepticism. And to her credit, she never once backed down. She said, in fact, “Well, that’s the point of this series. We want to be open and honest. We want to engage these questions in a way that holds up to scholarship but also remains faithful in the Latter-day Saint tradition.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
And, you know, once again, she never backed down, and the book is the result.

Scott Woodward:
 That’s awesome.

Paul Reeve:
So, yeah, Deseret Book approached me. I didn’t approach them, because my skepticism simply said they wouldn’t be willing to tackle this topic in a way that I thought it required.

Scott Woodward:
 Well, honestly, I think that’s so encouraging, and what a marvelous nod to a proposition that we believe in very much at Scripture Central, namely that good, honest, and thorough scholarship is entirely compatible with faith.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 In fact, the entire Let’s Talk About series is this testament that study and faith go hand in hand, so I love it. Those are great little books, and the whole collection should be on the shelf of every Latter-day Saint home, in my opinion, so well done. Now, we’ve got a lot of listeners who are anxious to pick your brain on this topic, Paul. But first, let me tell you a little bit about our listeners’ preparation. So Casey and I now have done, let’s see, six episodes. We started out episode one, laying that racial context of America into which the church was born or established, and then we talked about Joseph Smith and black Africans, and we could find no racial restriction or anything like that in terms of priesthood or temple in Joseph Smith’s day. So the question is, where did it start? And so then we did another episode on 1852 in the beginnings of the priesthood-temple ban in the church. And then the question is, “Well, how come it stayed if that was an error there? How did it stay for so long? Like, how did nine church presidents not catch that error?” And so we talked about how that became fully entrenched policy in the church. So our next episode then covered the period from 1907 to 1978, right before the revelation, where there was disagreement among church leaders as to whether or not the ban was church doctrine or just church policy and the circumstances that began setting the stage for the revelation. And then our final episode was all about 1978 and what happened there. So we’ve kind of paved the way and cleared the runway for you, Paul. You can assume in your responses to our listeners’ questions that they know something about all that history. They should have at least six hours of it under their belt now. If not, we highly recommend they go back and listen to those episodes. So I think we’re ready to dive in. Anything else you want to say before we jump in, Paul?

Paul Reeve:
No, that’s great. Great background, and yeah, thanks for doing all that work. It sounds fantastic.

Scott Woodward:
 Let’s just start with one of the most challenging questions, and I will say this is one of the questions that came up most from our listeners. It was about possible LGBT correlations with the priesthood ban. I’ll frame it like this: Some people, essentially they see a connection between the church’s past restrictive policy toward blacks in the church and the church’s current restrictive policy toward gays in the church, specifically prohibiting gay temple marriage. And so if church leaders got it wrong about race for so many years, the thinking goes, then what’s to say they’re not currently getting gay marriage wrong? Isn’t it just a matter of time before there’s a 1978 revelation equivalent for gay marriage, right? So that’s kind of the framework of a lot of people are coming from. Let me give you a few examples from our listeners. And a big shout out here to Steve and Austin and Brian and Nicholas and Steph and Julie and Michael and Gemma and Joseph and Ryan and—so many people asked a version of this question, so let me just do a succinct one here to kind of speak for all of them. Let’s do Steve from Saratoga Springs. Now, Steve says, “I often hear people make the argument that just like the ‘doctrine,’” air quotes, “of blacks and the priesthood changed, the church or God will eventually change the doctrine on gay marriage and allow it. What are your thoughts on how this differs or how it is similar?” That’s the question. Can you address the merits of making that parallel? What are your thoughts?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, I like how—I think you said Steve asked that question, because he is asking for potential parallels and potential distinctions, and I think there are both. So I’ll start with potential parallels.

Scott Woodward:
 OK.

Paul Reeve:
And I think it’s appropriate for us to ask those kind of questions. Are we talking about simply taking our cultural assumptions in the 19th century about race and in the 20th and 21st centuries about gender and sexuality, and importing them into our answers within the faith?

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
Right? And we see that taking place with racial understanding in the 19th century.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
Is there a potential parallel? You know, what are our cultural assumptions? And certainly cultural assumptions across the course of the 20th century about gender and sexuality have changed.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
And, you know, I think it’s OK to consider that, right? Is that what is going on here? And so those are potential parallels.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
Then I think it’s also important to understand that there are distinctions.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
The first distinction that I see is simply the fact that there was historical precedent for black male priesthood ordination and temple admission.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
That includes the First Presidency in 1840 talking about a policy of welcoming people of every color into the temple they were about to build in Nauvoo, right?

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
We don’t have historical precedent for gay marriage.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
None that I’m aware of.

Scott Woodward:
 There’s no Elijah Ables equivalent or no Q. Walker Lewises to speak of when it comes to gay marriage.

Paul Reeve:
Right. So that’s an important distinction. And then the other important distinction is the fact that in the 20th and 21st century, you can be openly gay and qualify for a temple recommend. You could not be black and qualify for a temple recommend.

Scott Woodward:
 Hmm.

Paul Reeve:
In other words, I think of Frida Lucretia McGee Ballou, who I include in the chapter on the 1978 Revelation. She was a Latter-day Saint for 69 years before she was allowed to enter a Latter-day Saint temple, and all indications are, right, she could answer the temple recommend questions exactly the same as a white person, the white person be admitted and Frida excluded.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
So no matter how otherwise worthy they may be, right, they are excluded according to Latter-day Saint policy.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
You can be gay and qualify for a temple recommend, you know, living according to church standards, so I think that’s an important distinction to keep in mind as well.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
I fully acknowledge that that doesn’t include being same-sex married—not trying to suggest otherwise—but the rituals that the church suggests are necessary—you can qualify for the endowment ritual. You can qualify for washing and anointing, right? All of those were barred from black people simply because of their racial status.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
And it’s also important to acknowledge that a fundamental tenet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is continuing revelation. And so, you know, our canon is open. Maybe there are unanswered questions yet to be decided. That’s a possibility as well. I’m not foreclosing that at all, simply saying there are important distinctions as well as potential parallels.

Scott Woodward:
 And the distinctions are, specifically, there’s no church history precedent. And I think we could also say there’s no scriptural precedent whatsoever, right? There are scriptural passages that are talking about open inclusion for blacks, specifically right? But there’s no equivalence in terms of gay marriage. Is that fair?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, I haven’t found any.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
But once again, right? Like, I’m open to, you know, possibilities.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
But yeah, I think that’s an important distinction.

Scott Woodward:
 And then the second distinction you’re seeing is that gays can enter the temple and receive ordinances if they’re worthy, whereas blacks could not enter the temple and receive ordinances, no matter how otherwise worthy they may have been, right?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 And it seems like another distinction is—and you make a great case for this in your book, but—the 1978 revelation to President Kimball seems to have been a corrective revelation, which effectively repairs the church’s departure from Joseph Smith’s original racially inclusive practices, right? Whereas for gay marriage, there is no sanctioned past precedence to get back to. There’s nothing to correct in terms of divergence or drifting from the more original or pristine thing, right? So a revelation authorizing gay marriage would be a major departure away from all the precedents of ancient scripture and church historical practices and teachings. And so that would have no parallels with the 1978 revelation in that sense as a divine corrective.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. No, I think so. I mean, that’s how I’ve come to understand the racial history, right, is 1978 is a return to our universal roots. So that would be a distinction if we received a revelation about gay marriage, right? And that doesn’t mean that it’s not possible, once again, right? But we’re talking about similarities and distinctions, and the way that I see this history, that would be a distinction.

Scott Woodward:
 So, of course, God could eventually give a revelation to the First Presidency and Twelve authorizing gay temple marriage, if that’s in his plan, right?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 That’s his prerogative. We believe God will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God, and maybe that’s one of them. Maybe it’s not. Only God knows. But what I’m hearing you say, Paul, is that although the past priesthood temple ban and current restrictions on gay marriage both grew out of the cultural assumptions of their times, there seems to be at least three important distinctions that make them different. Let me see if I can summarize these: first, precedent. Yes with blacks. None with gays.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 Second, temple worthiness. Entirely possible for gays. Impossible for blacks.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 And third, the 1978 revelation returned us to a past practice we’d strayed from, whereas a revelation authorizing gay marriage would be striking out into completely unprecedented territory.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 Here’s our next most frequently asked question, and this is—shout out to Ken and Lori and Bob and Matt and Vincent and Joseph and Jennifer and Chris, all asking a variety of this question. And let’s let Ken be the voice for this. Ken says, “How do we reconcile the error of multiple prophets, starting with Brigham Young, in denying the blessings of the priesthood and temple covenants to black members of the church, with the statement made by President Wilford Woodruff when he said, ‘The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as president of this church to lead you astray’”? How do you reconcile those two ideas? Because we’re talking about Brigham Young all the way up to and through President Kimball until 1978. How do you reconcile that?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, I think those are really good questions to ask, and this is really heavy history, and it brings up the question of prophetic fallibility, and I think it prompts us to stare it squarely in the face.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
And I think and I hope that that’s good in terms of causing us to exercise our faith, right? To think through these things in a deep way and come to terms with them.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
Deseret Book actually asked me to grapple with that. So there’s a chapter in the book that deals with Woodruff’s statement.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
My sense as a historian is that we as Latter-day Saints sometimes take that outside of its context and give it truncated meaning that doesn’t match the context in which Woodruff is expressing it.

Scott Woodward:
 OK.

Paul Reeve:
As I understand it—and there are, I think, three quotes that are included with Official Declaration 1 in Latter-day Saint scriptures, quotes from Woodruff’s speeches that he is giving as he goes around Utah Territory defending the manifesto, because he’s facing the accusation that he’s a fallen prophet and he’s simply bowed to political pressure, the manifesto is not, in fact, a revelation.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
And I think it’s important to have in context that the Supreme Court in May of 1890 has issued a ruling.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
You know, the church has argued that the Edmunds-Tucker Act is unconstitutional, and the Edmunds-Tucker Act is a piece of anti-polygamy legislation that is really kind of grinding the church to dust very slowly. It’s confiscating church property valued at above $50,000, but had for the time excluded properties used strictly for religious purposes. Well, in this May 1890 Supreme Court decision, the Supreme Court actually upholds Edmunds-Tucker and even opens the door for the possibility of the confiscation of properties used for religious purposes if they are being used for things the government considers illegal—that means marrying people into polygamous marriages.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
And all of a sudden Latter-day Saint temples are on the chopping block.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
That’s the context for the Woodruff revelation in September of 1890. He’s actually been subpoenaed by the government to testify. They have to prove that temples are being used for illegal purposes, and they’re going to subpoena Woodruff in an effort to try to make that determination. And he goes to California, comes back, and issues the manifesto. And as he defends the manifesto, he’s saying, “God gave me a revelation.”

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
He’s defending it as revelation.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
He’s basically articulating the trade-off as, “We’ll abandon polygamy and preserve temple worship,” something much more central to Latter-day Saint theology. And the reason why that little, short history, I think, is important, in context, what he’s saying is, “God won’t give me a revelation that will lead the church astray.”

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
I think a profoundly defensible position, and we don’t ever have Brigham Young claiming a revelation for the racial restrictions.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
And, you know, it develops across the course of the 19th century in fits and starts, accumulating precedent with each new generation of leaders, some of them falsely remembering back that it began with Joseph Smith and that it was always in place.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
So you have a very different trajectory taking place there. As a historian, I can sort of watch that unfold across the course of the 19th century in fits and starts, and I think firmly in place by the beginning of the 20th century, without any claim to revelation.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
I only see one revelation in the Latter-day Saint canon on that question, and it comes in June of 1978, and it restores us back to where we started.

Scott Woodward:
 Hallelujah.

Paul Reeve:
I think that’s the important context to keep in mind.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
Sometimes when we apply that statement by Woodruff outside of that context and simply use it as a blanket statement, it sounds as if then God revokes a prophet’s agency when he makes him a prophet.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
And as I understand it, the fundamental foundation of the Latter-day Saint plan is agency.

Scott Woodward:
 Wait—that even includes prophets?

Paul Reeve:
It includes prophets, right? Like, God doesn’t revoke a prophet’s agency when he makes him a prophet.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
I just have no evidence that that’s the case. And in fact, the Old Testament is filled with all kinds of examples of prophets exercising their agency in, I think, sometimes poor ways, and I think those stories are included in the Old Testament in an effort to get us to learn from their mistakes.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
Right? Like, they’re not being held up as the good example, but actually, “Hey, here’s what happens when you exercise your agency poorly.”

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
David and Bathsheba is a good example.

Scott Woodward:
 Sure.

Paul Reeve:
Right? But the Old Testament is filled with those.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah. That’s so good, and let me add two quotes to that, I think just to bolster what you’re saying here—basically to help us to see, like, what Wilford Woodruff could not have been saying. So here’s Brigham Young himself, and I think we shared this a few episodes ago, but he said, “Can a prophet or an apostle be mistaken?” Good question. Then he says, “Do not ask me any such question, for I will acknowledge that all the time, but I do not acknowledge that I designedly lead this people astray one hair’s breadth from the truth.” He doesn’t “designedly” do it, right? He says, “I do not knowingly do a wrong, though I may commit many wrongs.” I think that’s great. That’s—clearly President Young was acting out of his own honest convictions in 1852. I think that’s true.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 And then you have President Joseph F. Smith saying this: he said, “If the president of the church should become unfaithful, God would remove him out of his place.” That’s a similar language to what Wilford Woodruff says. “He will not suffer the head of the church to transgress his laws and apostatize. The moment he should take a course that would in time lead to it, God would take him away. Why? Because to suffer a wicked man to occupy that position would be to allow, as it were, the fountain to become corrupted, which is something he will never permit.” According to Joseph F. Smith here, he’s saying that the promise that the church president won’t lead us astray is not a promise of prophetic infallibility but an assurance that God won’t allow the head of this church to become corrupted and deliberately deceive us. And again, Brigham Young and John Taylor and everyone afterwards, nobody was being deliberately deceptive or malicious in my reading of the historical record. Is that where you come down as well?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, no, I think they fully believed the positions that they adopted, and it became so well entrenched, right, that you can account for the 1949 statement and the 1969 statement in defense of the racial restrictions because they fully believed by that point especially that, you know, they were in place from the beginning.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
They coincided with the founding of the faith or always been in place. God put them in place. They traced back through the midst of time to the eternities. So they are defending what they understood, absolutely.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah. Thank you. Next question. This question comes from Alex in Idaho Falls. Alex says, “Although the evidence presented seems to overwhelmingly indicate that the priesthood and temple ban was a mistake, I have not seen the church or the apostles use the word ‘mistake’ in explanations or conversations about the ban.” And then he says, “‘Mistake’ may be inferred from the most recent devotional to BYU faculty by Elder Cook, but he himself did not use that specific language.” And I think the quote he’s talking about is this one from 2020, where he said that “Brigham Young said things about race that fall short of our standards today. Some of his beliefs and words reflected the culture of his time.” And Alex is right; he didn’t use the word “mistake” there.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 So Alex’s question is, and I sense this from especially religious educators who are a little bit sensitive about this, “Would it be getting ahead of the church leadership for gospel teachers to explain the ban using the “mistake” language?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, so I can’t, obviously, speak for church leaders. I think when you get new information, right, then you have to reevaluate your own assumptions, and I think President Uchtdorf has invited us to do that.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
He wants us to look beyond the iron gate of what we think we know and be willing to consider new sources, new evidence. A great talk Elder Maxwell gave, he calls intellectual curiosity a sign of meekness, a willingness to accept new evidence and new information.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
And, you know, this has been a journey for me, and so when new evidence comes to light, then I think we have to, you know, challenge our own existing cultural understandings.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
And I think that the Latter-day Saint leadership is going through that process.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
I think they educated themselves around this issue, and then that led to the 2013 Race and the Priesthood essay, right, where they are disavowing previous teachings on this topic. And if you understand Latter-day Saint history, you understand that doesn’t happen very often.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
Right? And then I think they are continuing to learn. I would say that we do have President Kimball in 1963, who at least is expressing somewhat of an open attitude about this and does point to the racial restrictions as a possible error.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah. That’s his language, right? Possible error.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. Possible error. His language. So is it possible that they get to the point where they’re openly saying “mistake”? I don’t know. I have no problem saying it, and I say that in the Deseret Book manuscript.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
So once again, Deseret Book asked me to be open and honest in how I make sense of this for myself, and I do not see that the racial restrictions are of divine origins.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
That’s certainly where the evidence lands with me, but I think it takes time for the new information, the new scholarship, to kind of percolate, to sort of get into the hands of people who are making these kind of decisions, and I have no assumption that the leadership is reading anything that I write.

Scott Woodward:
 Sure.

Paul Reeve:
So I’m not suggesting that in any sort of way, but you know, once again, it just takes time, sort of a slow process. The leadership also learning about new evidence, new information, and coming to their own conclusions.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah. Oh, that’s a great answer. And for what it’s worth, Alex, I’ll just add that I think church leaders have already given the green light for you to teach this honestly and frankly. I mean, the “disavowal” language of the Gospel Topics essay gets you quite a ways down that road, and then Elder McConkie’s August 1978 comment where he asked us to forget everything that he said or Brigham Young said about the ban, and then admits that they spoke with limited understanding and without proper knowledge. Add to that Elder Cook’s statement that you cited and the fact that church-owned Deseret Book sought Paul out for his honest scholarship and printing his conclusions that you just heard. Add all of these elements together, and I don’t think you need to feel that you’re somehow getting ahead of church leaders on this. I think we’re on really safe ground to just teach this openly and honestly, and then just be careful and thoughtful about how you apply it.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 All right. Next question. This one came up a lot, Paul. This is probably the third most frequently asked question. So Allison from Salt Lake, Erin from Boise. Emily from Murray. Kenneth didn’t tell me where he’s from—that’s OK. I’m not offended. Jeff from Herriman. Joseph from Nottingham, England. Rob, I don’t know where you’re from, Rob, but—they’ve all asked this question in one way or another. Let me see who’s the most succinct here. OK. Maybe Jeff. Jeff from Herriman. He said, “How might the scriptural basis of the Lamanites being cursed with ‘a skin of blackness’ have influenced early church leaders’ thoughts on justifying the initial priesthood and temple restrictions?” Let me read another one: [Erin] from Boise. “You’ve talked about how people erroneously use the Bible to justify their racism,” talking about the Cain and the Ham stuff, ”but what about the Book of Mormon, specifically the Lamanite skin color curse, 2 Nephi 5? I don’t know how to explain that to my kids or anyone else when it comes up,” Erin says, so I guess there’s a few questions in there: first of all, do you see any evidence, historically speaking, that any of the brethren used this as reasoning for the justification of the ban?

Paul Reeve:
The short answer is no.

Scott Woodward:
 Hmm.

Paul Reeve:
They are not drawing on the Book of Mormon. They understand the Book of Mormon to be a book that, in their understanding, right, is giving a history of native peoples, not of people of black African descent.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
They are not drawing upon it as a justification for the racial priesthood and temple restrictions. I found no evidence of that, and it’s important to make that distinction just right up front.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
That doesn’t solve the racial questions about the Book of Mormon.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah. There’s another question there.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. Right? Yes, but—

Scott Woodward:
 So question number one is no evidence that they drew upon this to justify the ban against black Africans.

Paul Reeve:
Right. Correct.

Scott Woodward:
 OK, so now what about the racial implications of those verses?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. We can talk through those racialized verses in a variety of ways. And I don’t know, Scott, if you have your favorite interpretation or not. There are several that exist, and I think there are possibilities out there, but I think it’s important to kind of think through them and think deeply, sort of get below the surface.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
So some have suggested that the language of black and white is metaphorical.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
And I think there’s an internally consistent way of reading them that way.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
That’s one possibility, in other words.

Scott Woodward:
 That wickedness is equated with darkness and righteousness with whiteness or lightness.

Paul Reeve:
Correct. And Joseph Smith actually gives us a potential key for that, because in 1840, as he’s going through the Book of Mormon, he is making some word changes, and one of the word changes he makes is changing “white” to “pure.”

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
So from “white and delightsome,” he changes it to “pure and delightsome.”

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
So is that a key, right?

Scott Woodward:
 Possibly. Possibly.

Paul Reeve:
Can we read the language about white in the Book of Mormon as a metaphor for purity? And there are other verses, right? That even uses “white” and “pure” coinciding with each other, as if they, you know, they are synonymous with each other.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
Is that a key to how we can approach those racialized verses?

Scott Woodward:
 It’s an intriguing possibility that I’m not sure I’m fully convinced by yet, but I’m open to it. Because I read verses, like, you know, Alma 3 is probably the most explicit.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 “The skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren. And this was done that their seed might be distinguished from the seed of their brethren, the Nephites, that thereby the Lord God might preserve his people, that they might not mix.” Like, that kind of sounds very literal, or at least more than a metaphor.

Paul Reeve:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
 So, yeah, there are a few theories about what this could mean.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 One you’ve mentioned is that it’s metaphorical, like dark equals wickedness. Light equals righteousness. Another is that the Lamanites somehow tribally mark themselves with dark pigment in a similar way to how the Amlicites in Alma 1 marked themselves with a red mark on their foreheads to distinguish themselves from the Nephites. There’s an intriguing article in the Interpreter about this that we’ll link in our show notes. Another theory is that this language mostly reflects the racial bias of Nephite authors. So, like, maybe the Lamanites intermarried with some of the indigenous locals, and so their children were darker-skinned or something, and then the Nephites began to tell themselves the story that God was the one who actually changed their skin color as a mark of a curse or something.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 And another theory is that God just actually changed their skin color. Who knows? The jury’s still out for me. I don’t know. I’m not sure. Which one do you find most convincing, Paul?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. So thanks for walking through all of that, because, you know, there are those explanations that exist out there. I’m also intrigued by a possibility that occurred to me in reading, you know, 2 Nephi 5.

Scott Woodward:
 OK.

Paul Reeve:
So we focus on, I think, verse 21. That’s the racialized language. In verse 14, Nephi is telling us sort of the context for how he starts to think about his brothers, right? Remember, we’re talking about his actual, biological brothers, right? In verse 14 he is telling us that they’re starting to make weapons of war because you might actually have to kill your brother. As a historian, anytime nations go to war against nations, people against people, rhetoric from one side looking across the divide to the other side, you start to dehumanize the enemy in preparation for the potential of having to kill them.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
I do an exercise in my Utah history class around the Utah War, and there are Latter-day Saint hymns that result from that period that are looking across at these federal soldiers who are marching on Utah, and “if we have to kill them, well, what we’re killing are godless heathens,” right? You define the people you might have to kill in terms that dehumanize them.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
And the federal troops marching on Utah, they are, some of them, anxious to get to Utah and kill some Mormons, right? And they’re using dehumanizing language in that context as well. I see one potential is Nephi is dehumanizing his brother. They’re filthy. They’re degraded. God’s cursed them. We are very much justified in making weapons of war and potentially having to kill people who are, in fact, a relative.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
That’s a way of thinking through the kind of language that Nephi is deploying.

Scott Woodward:
 So that would kind of lend itself toward that theory of racial bias of the authors of the Book of Mormon.

Paul Reeve:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
 More than God himself doing the thing.

Paul Reeve:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
 OK.

Paul Reeve:
But regardless of how we think through this, I think the important point to make is that curses in the Book of Mormon are not racial.

Scott Woodward:
 Hmm.

Paul Reeve:
Even if we’re talking about skin color—if you want to take it literal, right, that God zapped them with a different skin color, I don’t believe that’s true. That’s just not how we function.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
Right? Like he did it in this time and then never does it again?

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
Right?

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
Skin color is not related to righteousness. It’s simply not.

Scott Woodward:
 Right.

Paul Reeve:
And President Nelson is on record telling us that our relationship to God is based upon our devotion to him, not upon the color of our skin. That’s a universal truth, in my estimation.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
So read the Book of Mormon holistically. So if you are racially cursed, then if you understand how racism works, you are racially incapable of overcoming your racial condition.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
That’s how people of black African ancestry were treated, right?

Scott Woodward:
 Right.

Paul Reeve:
You are racially inferior, and there’s nothing you can do, no behavior you can engage in—

Scott Woodward:
 Ugh.

Paul Reeve:
—that gets you beyond that.

Scott Woodward:
 Oy.

Paul Reeve:
But in the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites sometimes are more righteous—

Scott Woodward:
 Right.

Paul Reeve:
—than the Nephites.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
It’s not a racial curse, in other words. Repentance erases it, and if you want to take the skin color literally, then who wins the Book of Mormon? The dark-skinned people win and annihilate those who believe that white superiority means that you’re better than other people because of the color of their skin. It’s a profound rejection as a book—the overarching message, I should say, is a profound rejection of white supremacy.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
So in other words, if you want to take those skin colors literally, then the overarching message is a rejection of white supremacy.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
I don’t think you have to take them literally, but it’s important, I think, to recognize that the curses that are operating in the Book of Mormon are not racial. They are parallel, in my estimation, to the way that curses are being deployed in the Old Testament.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
Curses simply mean separation from God because of sin. And how do you restore the promised blessings? You simply repent, and it erases the curse. And that’s what I see taking place across the Book of Mormon, even as it deploys this racialized language that I think we rightfully find disturbing.

Scott Woodward:
 Hmm. That’s interesting. When you think of the mission of the sons of Mosiah down to the land of Nephi to try to convert their brethren, the Lamanites, like the first grand mission of the Book of Mormon is a redemptive mission for that group of people, our long-lost cousins. And there’s a profound conversion, right? The whole story of the anti-Nephi-Lehites is amazing.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 And fast forward to the pinnacle of the Book of Mormon. In 4 Nephi, when Mormon summarizes this age, he says there were no longer any -ites. There was no Nephites, no Jacobites, no Josephites. They were all just one. One name that unified them was they were the children of God. So I like what you’re saying, that the arc of the Book of Mormon, like the scriptural arc is anti-racist. It ultimately culminates in a—at least at its best, at its peak of purity, there is no distinctions made, no racial, no any type of -ites.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 They were unified. They were known as the children of God. Their only distinguishing characteristic.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, I love that. That’s the ideal.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
I think that’s the ideal of Zion.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
And it’s the culmination. I think you’re exactly right. After Christ’s visit, we’ve erased all of those ways that we invented to create barriers between each other. The way that we looked across the cultural divide and assumed the worst—

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
—of our brethren, right, and denigrated them as racially other. Inferior. Filthy.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
Loathsome. I think that’s a central message, right? I think that’s the Zion message, right?

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
Inclusion.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
And I think it’s embedded in the Book of Mormon, even at the same time that we have these ways in which those in the Book of Mormon are attempting to figure out, “Hey, who is different from us, and how do we sort of negotiate that?” And sometimes we’re going to use language that is denigrating to define someone who is different from us.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
But the Book of Mormon’s message, Jacob says, right, remember your filthiness before you engage in that. Consider the beam in your own eye before you start picking at someone else’s mote.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm. That’s good. So to summarize a response to this question, neither of us know for sure what exactly the curse of darkness on the Lamanites was. There are some intriguing possibilities.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 But we can still say a few things about it, right? First, that early church leaders never drew upon this Book of Mormon point to justify the priesthood-temple ban on black Africans, that was the short answer to the first part of the question, and second that no matter where you come down on how literal or metaphorical the curse of darkness on the Lamanites was, this isn’t analogous to the ban on black Africans because the Lamanite curse could be overcome by repentance, and they could thereby be restored to full covenant privileges, as we see happen frequently in the Book of Mormon text, but not so with the ban on black Africans, right?

Paul Reeve:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
 The language of the 1907 policy, again, was “no matter how otherwise worthy they may be,” they cannot participate in priesthood or temple. They were black, and there was nothing they could do about it. So you’re saying something intriguing about this. You’re saying the Lamanite curse wasn’t actually a racial ban in any sense.

Paul Reeve:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
 Yes, the text is clear that there was something that distinguished them, but it was a something they could overcome through repentance.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 And then I guess our third point is that you and I both are thoroughly convinced that the narrative arc of the Book of Mormon is toward anti-racism, right? Toward unifying people in Christ in ways that overcome petty distinctions or tribal differences. As we come into Christ, those things fall away and we are left with a unified people calling themselves the children of God, and that’s the only distinction that matters. OK, next question. Since we’re on the topic of scripture, not the Book of Mormon, but the Book of Abraham, here’s Lance from San Tan Valley, Arizona. He said, “It seems clear that the Book of Abraham solidifies the so-called Cain-Ham theory, supporting with scripture the church’s old understanding regarding race and the priesthood. Please explain how this is either wrong or mistaken.” Then I got Jay, who said, “Brigham Young and all church leaders after that would’ve read and contemplated Moses 7:6-8, and Abraham 1:21-27. From these scriptures, it would be understandable as to why they might have some of their beliefs. In your podcast, you never once addressed these scriptures.” He’s saying that to me in Casey, and there’s actually not a question mark at the end of Jay’s statement there. That’s not a question. That is an indictment, Jay. You’re right. We only quickly referenced Abraham 1 in passing. We said that Parley P. Pratt seems to be drawing on that language in his 1847 excoriation of William McCary in Winter Quarters. But, yeah, we should probably address those verses, if you have a quick way of doing so. Paul, anything you want to say about the Abraham verses? I know in your book you do a good job handling that.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. I think that they did provide justification for the racial restrictions, especially as they grow in accumulating precedent. So the language in the Book of Abraham, “cursed as pertaining to the priesthood,” starts to be used publicly by the 1850s to justify the racial restrictions.

Scott Woodward:
 Hmm.

Paul Reeve:
There are five publications after the 1852 legislative session, and I deal with that directly in a new book that LeJean Ruth and Christopher Rich and I co-authored on the 1852 legislative session and then the aftermath. There are five publications, and some Latter-day Saint leaders are using that shorthand. So they are drawing upon the Book of Abraham and never suggested otherwise.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
We just don’t have indication that Joseph Smith draws upon it to justify a racial restriction, but it does provide a justification later. It’s important to remember that the Book of Abraham is not canonized until 1880.

Scott Woodward:
 After Brigham Young’s gone.

Paul Reeve:
After Brigham Young’s dead. Exactly.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
And I think the same thing is true about those verses in the Book of Abraham as is true with our discussion with the Book of Mormon, right?

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
So some suggested that it’s a racial restriction being implemented in the Book of Abraham, but remember, Abraham is coming from a father who is engaged in idol worship.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
So if it’s a racial restriction, Abraham and his lineage would not be allowed to be the father of, you know, the Abrahamic Covenant.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
So it’s not a lineage issue, it’s a repentance issue. Abraham abandoned the idol worship of his father and therefore became the father of the covenant.

Scott Woodward:
 He sought for the blessings of the fathers and the right whereunto he should be ordained to administer the same. He wanted to become a rightful heir, high priest, holding the right belonging to the fathers, and so, yeah, he’s seeking as one who’s not an heir to that. He wants to become an heir, and he successfully does it through his righteousness. That’s a good point.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. So once again, I don’t see a racial component there. I think it was misread to justify a racial restriction.

Scott Woodward:
 OK.

Paul Reeve:
And remember, we have Orson Pratt in 1856, fabulous news speech that has been transcribed from Pitman shorthand where Orson Pratt says, “We have no proof that Africans are descendants of Cain.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
That’s the only justification Brigham Young ever gives, and Orson Pratt rejects it. There is no proof that Africans are descendants of Cain. And Orson Pratt is on record making that point.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
So if you set up sort of a racial lineage justification, you’re going to bump headlong into the second Article of Faith, that we are held accountable for our own sins, not for someone else’s transgression.

Scott Woodward:
 Right.

Paul Reeve:
And yet Brigham Young’s justification holds the supposed descendants of Cain accountable for a murder in which they take no part. So any kind of lineage-based explanation that you’re going to offer is going to violate the second Article of Faith.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
And violate the principle that President Nelson has articulated, right? Our relations to God is based upon our devotion to God.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
Not upon skin color or somehow lineage.

Scott Woodward:
 So let me read a few verses in Abraham. How would you just explain this real quick? So it talks about how the King of Egypt descended from Ham. I’m starting in verse 21, and he was a partaker of the blood of the Canaanites by birth. There’s a—kind of this backstory about how the land of Egypt was discovered by a woman, daughter of Ham and daughter of Egyptus, and then it goes on to talk about how—that the first government of Egypt was established by Pharaoh, the eldest son of Egyptus, the daughter of Ham, and it was set up in a patriarchal government. But then it says, verse 27, “Now Pharaoh being of that lineage by which he could not have the right of priesthood, notwithstanding the Pharaohs would fain claim it from Noah through Ham, therefore, my father was led away by their idolatry.” So how would you just help someone see that that’s not actually a justification for a priesthood ban on black Africans?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, so some have suggested really the violation there is matriarchal descent, coming through a woman, but I see really what’s taking place is the idolatry is the problem.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
I think what’s taking place in those verses, even though it was used by some Latter-day Saint leaders to justify the racial restrictions, it’s telling us that Pharaoh, in the verses preceding the notion of a cursed lineage, that Pharaoh is engaged in idol worship. It also describes him as a righteous man in terms of the way that he’s presiding over his people, but he’s cursed as pertaining to the priesthood, and if we take those verses in connection with Abraham, right?

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
He’s abandoning the idol worship of his father, and then he is the person who the covenant relationship is established through. The real issue is idol worship, and repentance overcomes it.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
Right? It’s not lineage based.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah. That’s good. And again, Abraham is showing that he transcended that through his righteousness and his seeking.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 I think that’s a good reading of that. I remember Russell Stevenson, he said, “I’ll give somebody a 20-ounce steak if you can show me that verse 27 is talking about those of sub-Sahara Africa. I’ll give you a 20-ounce steak. Again, the assumptions that early church leaders had to read into this text to connect that to black Africans in America, they’re taking some serious leaps there.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 But all that’s in the air when the church is first established, right, that blacks are descendants of Cain and Ham, and all of that’s part and parcel of the nature and structure of reality, but that’s all assumptive and certainly not scriptural and I think that’s been disavowed.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 This next question comes from Rob in Arkansas. He said, “What are your thoughts about how to explain the origins of the priesthood and temple ban in a faithful manner to others without throwing past prophets under the bus, in spite of the fact that human error played a large part in its implementation for 100 years?” Or another person asked it like this. This is Marlene from Salt Lake. She said, “I work as a therapist,” and she asked, “If our past prophets were not infallible and made mistakes with the priesthood-temple ban for black people, how can we be assured that the current prophets are not making similar mistakes about current social issues? I’d like to know how to help my clients and kids and people in my book club who have similar questions.” So we have listeners that are trying to figure out, “How could I explain this to others better?” Right? If the reality of prophetic fallibility is there, how do we navigate our current situation? So how do you explain all of this without, as Rob says, throwing prophets under the bus?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. I value being a part of a religious tradition that is led by a prophet, but in my estimation, a part of being on a stumbling walk with God doesn’t mean that I cede my moral conscience over to anyone else.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
I am still responsible for my own relationship with God and also responsible for engaging in the work. And sometimes, you know, just an observation, it feels like sometimes we cede that over to someone else.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
Brigham Young in particular encouraged us not to do that. He encouraged us, in fact, to find out for ourselves.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
To do the work that it takes. We’re supposed to work out our own salvation. It doesn’t mean that we let someone else figure it out and then just blindly follow behind. Brigham Young actually encouraged against blind devotion.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm. I happen to have that Brigham Young quote right here. Would you like me to read it?

Paul Reeve:
Yes.

Scott Woodward:
 OK. Brigham Young said, “I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by him. I am fearful they settled down in a state of blind security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation and weaken that influence they could give to their leaders, did they know for themselves by the revelation of Jesus that they are led in the right way.” And then he says, “Let every man and woman know by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates or not. This has been my exhortation continually.” So there you go.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. So I think, you know, it’s a mistake sometimes for us as Latter-day Saints to put our leaders on such high pedestals that it does both them and us a disservice. We become lazy in our own faith. Faith doesn’t grow unless you have to exercise it, unless it becomes challenged. And that’s a part of the path of discipleship, in my estimation.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
I’m on a stumbling walk with God. I continue to make mistakes, but also my engagement in the religious tradition includes considering the things that Latter-day Saint leaders are teaching and consider them in all patience and faith, as the Doctrine and Covenants recommends.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
And taking them to God and wrestling that out for myself, and I then am accountable to God. And I’m comfortable with that relationship, and yet it requires me effort, right? And sometimes the other path feels like you’ve just given over your moral agency to someone else, and I don’t know that that’s what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

Scott Woodward:
 I really like what you’re saying, Paul. Let me maybe add a related thought directly to Rob’s question about how do you explain all this without throwing prophets under the bus. Rob, I’d just briefly add that we don’t need to throw prophets under the bus, but we may in our teaching need to recalibrate our understanding of prophets just a little. For instance, it’s only shocking to learn about the weaknesses and errors of prophets if we begin with the belief that they don’t have weaknesses and they don’t commit errors, right?

Paul Reeve:
Yes.

Scott Woodward:
 So if we can begin with the more accurate premise that prophets are flawed humans whom God calls to do his work, then when they do display weaknesses or commit errors, it’s not shocking or scandalous at all. So if we can normalize prophetic fallibility by noticing and learning from the prophetic weaknesses and errors memorialized in our own scriptural canon, then I think this will go a long way in our study of church history as well.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 So that’s a thought, for what it’s worth. And to Marlene’s question about how we can be sure that current prophets aren’t making mistakes in their stances on current social issues, et cetera, Paul, I think you hit that right on the head, but what you’re saying is tough and requires spiritual maturity: you know, the ability to simultaneously sustain God’s prophets with patience and faith on the one hand, while on the other hand not doing what Brigham Young warned against and settle down in blind security, trusting our eternal destiny in the hands of our leaders with reckless confidence. Like, that’s a delicate balance.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 And I believe it requires us to learn to discern, like, truly discern the Spirit of God in our lives, just like Brigham Young was saying. And so don’t let anyone tell you that’s easy. What would you add to that?

Paul Reeve:
I love it. I think that’s just well said. Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 Let me ask another question. Justin from Riverton asks, “God could have easily communicated his will to any of the prophets, right? He could have overruled any of their objections. It didn’t matter what their society or culture told them. God’s supreme authority would’ve trumped anything these prophets erroneously believed.” Here’s his question: “So why didn’t he clearly communicate to any of them that it was his will that all his children would receive the blessings of the priesthood and the temple?”

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, because he did. Joseph Smith claims five revelations telling him that the gospel is to be preached unto every creature.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
Who does that leave out? It’s in the Doctrine and Covenants five times.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
He did. But he also gives us our agency to ignore the revelations he gives us.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
He tells Joseph Smith twice, “I am no respecter of persons,” and he claims all flesh as his own. What color of flesh does Jesus Christ not claim? What color of flesh is excluded from his redemptive power?

Scott Woodward:
 Oof.

Paul Reeve:
And yet he gives us the agency to ignore those revelations.

Scott Woodward:
 Good point.

Paul Reeve:
And I think that’s exactly what happens. You know, the historical circumstances and changing circumstances, and we see this take on a life of its own and grow in accumulating precedent, right? Ezra Taft Benson, as an elder, talks about the Samuel principle in a talk he gives. I think it’s 1975 or 1976. He uses the notion that the children of Israel come to Samuel and say, you know, “Give us a king,” and Samuel’s like, “No.” And they continue to insist. And finally God says, “Well, Samuel, they haven’t rejected you. They rejected me. Give them a king, and let them suffer the consequences.” And that’s, like, a 400-year kind of consequence.

Scott Woodward:
 Yes.

Paul Reeve:
Like, this is not sort of, like, a on a whim kind of a thing with short-term consequences.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
You know, they fall into idolatry, and all of those kind of challenges we see play out in the Old Testament. And President Benson calls it the Samuel principle. Sometimes God gives us what we want and lets us suffer the consequences. He did not come down and stop Brigham Young from saying the terrible things that he said on the 5th of February 1852. He let him say those things and let them grow in accumulating precedent.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
He doesn’t save us from our own sins. That’s a violation of the plan, right? He lets me sin every single day if I want to sin.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
That’s agency. If you give human beings agency, things are going to get messy. It’s inevitable.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
If you study history at all, you understand that it’s messy, and that doesn’t all of a sudden get tidy when I cross over and start studying Latter-day Saint history.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
So I think the key to me is agency, and God is not going to violate our agency. He’s not going to violate the agency of a prophet.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah. So what about in, like, the 20th century after Brigham Young’s day? Like, why didn’t God just come down and correct the error? What about that?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. You know, the answer in the 20th century is that these explanations become so entrenched that the leadership believes that they were in place from the beginning. They’re not doing historical research. We have Lester Bush, who publishes in 1973 an article that called into question the standing narrative.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
He says there is no evidence that the racial restrictions were in place from the beginning. So historians start to unravel the cultural assumptions.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
But you also have those in the leadership who simply say, “Hey, this is the way it’s always been. We shouldn’t question it.

Scott Woodward:
 Right.

Paul Reeve:
And in the book, I use the quote from President Romney, who says that. He says, “I know President Kimball is praying about this and searching about this and is really investing time and energy in this, and I said, you know, ‘Why are you wasting your time? This is just the way that it’s always been, and we should continue to stick with it.’”

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
That’s a paraphrase. The direct quote is in the book, but nonetheless, I’m saying that’s the inertia that President Kimball is fighting against.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
The cultural assumptions is that it’s always been in place and we should just spend our energy defending it. And President Kimball does the opposite and starts to investigate, right?

Scott Woodward:
 Wow.

Paul Reeve:
And calls into question the standing narrative.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
And asks the leadership also, “OK, where are the scriptural justifications?” And they can’t come up with any. And you have other leaders, like Hugh B. Brown, who is saying there’s no revelation that begins it. Let’s get rid of it by policy vote, right?

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
But you have some in the leadership who are resistant to that and suggest that these teachings are so entrenched that it will take a revelation. So there is no consensus. And that helps us to account for why it, you know, drags into the second half of the 20th century.

Scott Woodward:
 So it seems like, and maybe Casey and I have been too reductive on this, but our simple response to that has been the Lord never told them because they never asked, certainly not unified. There’s some secondhand accounts that President McKay was maybe asking and the Lord said not yet, or something. I don’t know if you have anything else to say about President McKay, but it seems like this one needed a unified approach. The Lord needed them to ask him humbly and unitedly in order for the revelation to come.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
 So I don’t know: Is that too reductive, he didn’t tell them because they didn’t ask? And you’re saying, Well, yeah, they didn’t ask because it was so entrenched that they felt like that was just the way it was, that there was no reason to ask, is kind of what I’m hearing you say.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s a good way of putting it, Scott. I think that’s right. And the accounts in the McKay administration, the only accounts that I could find were always secondhand and in McKay’s own diary. He never claims that.

Scott Woodward:
 That he asked the Lord about this directly?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah. Right.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
Right. But what I see is a lack of unity and a lack of consensus. So I see people like Hugh B. Brown and even President McKay moving towards, I think, racial openness.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
And Hugh B. Brown simply trying, I think, working behind the scenes in the 1960s, trying to move the church forward on this issue because he’s convinced it’s just a policy. And President McKay comes to that conclusion himself, and Hugh B. Brown simply says, “If it’s a policy, let’s get rid of it by policy vote, right?

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
And yet people like Harold B. Lee are entrenched in the racial policies.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah. They’re ready to defend it, right? As they want to be defenders of the truth.

Paul Reeve:
Yes.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah. I don’t see them being obstinate for obstinacy’s sake. I’ve thought about, as we’ve been studying Paul recently in Come, Follow Me, that Paul was so determined to, like, stamp out this little movement of Jesus freaks who were trying to do this aberration from the true Judaism, right? Until he met Jesus and then he realized, “Oh, shoot. I’ve been defending the wrong thing.” And that’s what I hear Elder McConkie saying in 1978 in August when he’s like, “Forget everything I’ve said about this. I was trying to defend, yes, I was trying to defend it because I believed it was true, but now I have learned that it wasn’t true.” And so I don’t see Harold B. Lee or Bruce R. McConkie or anyone doing that to be obstinate, but they actually believed it. They actually believed that this began with Joseph Smith, and it was something that deserved defending rather than overturning.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, I think that’s right. I think that’s a good way to put it.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm. And before we move on to the next question, Paul, let me just ask about what your understanding is about the importance of unity. It seems like that was the key piece in 1978 when President Kimball was able to get the First Presidency and Twelve unified with him in asking the Lord about this, that’s when the magic happened, right? That’s when the revelation came. Anything you want to say about the importance of the unity in the Twelve at that time?

Paul Reeve:
I think that’s key. I think there’s a lack of consensus during President McKay’s presidency, and I think that President Kimball learns from that and goes about a process wherein he is cultivating for years, cultivating a new understanding and cultivating consensus—

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
—amongst the leadership, asking them to consider these questions, asking them to study it out, asking them to write some reports: where are the scriptural justifications?

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
And cultivating kind of a new understanding, asking them to be open about the possibility. So I think he’s laying the groundwork, and I think he understands that principle of consensus and is building consensus so that they have this unifying and what everyone involved expresses as a profound spiritual experience on June 1, 1978 in the temple, and I think he did the work beforehand that opened the door for that to take place.

Scott Woodward:
 I love that. I was talking to a stake president yesterday. He was just saying thanks for this series. It’s been helpful. He said, “My major takeaway as a stake president has been I need to seek consensus more in my stake council as I’m making decisions relative to my stake rather than saying, ‘This is where we’re going. This is how we’re going to move forward,’ instead slowing down a little bit and making sure we build consensus, especially about important issues.” And he said that the feeling has been very different, that feeling of unity and peace and harmony and a reassurance to him that, “Yes, I’m actually being guided by the spirit here.” If there’s ever any question, then let’s counsel about it and make sure that the Spirit of the Lord is in this. And when you get consensus among a diversity of people like that, in that setting, that can bolster your confidence that you’re doing the Lord’s will. I thought that was right on.

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, I love that, and I think there are historical examples where the lack of consensus leads, you know, in the opposite direction. And I think the most horrific example is the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where William Dame did call the high council together, and they all said, like, “Hey, if there are travelers stranded, we should go rescue them. That’s the consensus, right? And then it’s after the dismissal of the council that Isaac Haight pins William Dame one-on-one and gets a different answer from him to call out the militia.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
So without the mitigating council, right, you have horrific consequences.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
And I’m also reminded of the entry that George Q. Cannon makes at the end of Brigham Young’s life, where he says that, you know, some members of the Quorum of the Twelve are concerned that Brigham Young sometimes operated outside of consensus. And I don’t have the reference right in front of me. Scott, I know that you have used that before.

Scott Woodward:
 Oh, I have it right here.

Paul Reeve:
OK.

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah, George Q. Cannon, he says, so this is journal entry August 29, 1877. So shortly after Brigham Young died, and Elder George Q. Cannon says, “Some of my brethren,” speaking of the Twelve, “as I have learned since the death of President Brigham Young, did have feelings concerning his course, that they did not approve of it. They felt oppressed, and yet they dared not exhibit their feelings to him. He ruled with so strong and stiff a hand, and they felt that it would be of no use to let their voices be heard. In a few words, the feeling seems to be that he transcended the bounds of the authority which he legitimately held, and some even feel that in the promulgation of doctrine he took liberties beyond those to which he was legitimately entitled.” That’s the quote. Now, that’s not specifically about the race issue here, but I think that totally applies, and we see a missed opportunity here for the mitigating, I like what you’re saying, influence of a council. If Brigham Young could have just sat down, especially with Orson Pratt and others, and just said, “Here’s what I’m thinking. Here’s my understanding. Do you concur? Do you feel in harmony with me about that? Is this something that we can all agree on and we can move forward in this way? And it’s clear that he did not do that, right? And we have Orson Pratt standing up and opposing him in the legislative meetings. And so, yeah, it appears that there was an opportunity lost there of the power of consensus and harmony in the highest councils of the church. And so.

Paul Reeve:
Yes.

Scott Woodward:
 That’s lesson learned, right? That’s something about like, OK, how can we learn from this history to be better, to improve? What are the lessons that we can take away? That’s one of my big takeaways. I agree with that stake president. Let’s just make sure we’re counseling together about our decisions and our conclusions in whatever sphere of influence. We happen to occupy at the time, whether in our own families or all the way up to the leading councils of the church.

Paul Reeve:
I like that. And I think it’s important to include stake council, not just high council, right?

Scott Woodward:
 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Paul Reeve:
And ward council, right? And listen to all the voices.

Scott Woodward:
 Yes.

Paul Reeve:
Give them weight. Don’t be dismissive.

Scott Woodward:
 Beautiful. Well, Paul, this has been such a treat to get your thoughts and insights. I know there’s so much more to probe, and there’s more questions we were not able to get to, but let me just ask you this last question to bring us home: Paul, how can we as Latter-day Saints heed President Nelson’s call to lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice?

Paul Reeve:
Yeah, I think that’s really profound call to action and it means we have to act, and it means, in my estimation, that we can’t become defensive or deny our own racial history. I don’t know as a historian how you root out racism without examining its roots.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
And I think history, then, can actually serve as a catalyst for greater good.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
If we can learn the weight of our own racial history, not deny or defend it, not get defensive, but actually own it.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
Then I think we can adopt a position of power. We can actually lead out, because we can say, “We engaged in racism and have learned its consequences.”

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
“And now are ready to stand in places of empathy and move forward in matters of racial justice.”

Scott Woodward:
 Yeah.

Paul Reeve:
I think, what better people than Latter-day Saints to heed his call? I think we should be at the forefront of matters of racial justice. That’s what he’s asked us to do. I hear that as the call coming from the First Presidency. And to do so, I think we have to come to terms with our own racial history, understand its consequences, and then be willing to stand in places of empathy.

Scott Woodward:
 Hmm.

Paul Reeve:
That includes listening to our brothers and sisters who might be different from us, who might look different from us, and do so with virtue and holiness—to esteem our brothers and sisters as ourself is the call of the disciple of Jesus Christ, and to esteem our brothers and sisters as ourselves is to recognize that because someone else’s skin color might be different from mine, they might have different life experiences. And rather than become defensive, I need to esteem them as myself in virtue and holiness the Doctrine and Covenants says.

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
That’s my obligation as a disciple of Christ, right?

Scott Woodward:
 Mm.

Paul Reeve:
I think that’s the call of a disciple, and I think Latter-day Saints are primed and prepared, but first of all, we have to own our own racial history, understand its consequences, and like Moroni asked us to do, to use the mistakes of the past to learn to be more wise. And our own racial history can teach us to be more wise on racial matters.

Scott Woodward:
 Yes.

Paul Reeve:
I think we’re a people who do well when we come together, and the call is for us to, amidst our diversity, be inclusive and unified. That’s the vision of Zion that I believe in.

Scott Woodward:
 Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. This concludes our series on race and priesthood. For more of Dr. Paul Reeve’s excellent scholarship, we highly recommend beginning with his book, Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood. Today’s episode was produced and edited by Scott Woodward, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.