Scott Woodward:
Hi, this is Scott from Church History Matters. As we near the end of this series, we want to hear your questions surrounding race and the priesthood and temple ban in Latter-day Saint history. On our final episode of this series, we will be honored to have Dr. Paul Reeve as our special guest to help us respond to your questions. He is an author and scholar on all things related to race and Latter-day Saint history, and Casey and I have drawn heavily from Dr. Reeve’s excellent research throughout this series. He is well equipped to handle any question, so please do us all a favor and don’t hold back. Submit your thoughtful questions anytime up to August 10, 2023 to podcasts@scripturecentral.org. Let us know your name, where you’re from, and try to keep each question as concise as possible when you email them in. That helps out a lot. OK, now on to the episode. In 1907, the First Presidency codified the church’s official policy about black African participation in both priesthood and temple, declaring that “No one known to have in his veins Negro blood, it matters not how remote a degree, can either have the priesthood in any degree or the blessings of the temple of God, no matter how otherwise worthy he may be.” By contrast, in 2020, church president Russell M. Nelson reminded all church members that “Your standing before God is not determined by the color of your skin. Favor or disfavor with God is dependent upon your devotion to God and his commandments and not the color of your skin.” The major catalyst shifting the church away from that discriminatory 1907 policy and toward the marvelous inclusivity encapsulated in President Nelson’s words was the Lord’s revelation to church leaders in 1978. But this revelation didn’t come all of the sudden nor out of the blue. In fact, it was decades in coming and grew out of the convergence of real-world circumstances in which church leaders found themselves and the church, which they led. In today’s episode of Church History Matters, we take a look at some of the relevant historical developments in the church during the 70-year period from 1908 to 1978, from the decades-long season of racial hardening and exclusion to a softening and relaxing of certain church policies under President David O. McKay in the 1950s and ‘60s to disharmony and divergence of views among the apostles in the 1960s, and finally to the unexpected call of Spencer W. Kimball as church president in 1973. So today we set the important stage for next week’s climactic episode, all about the details of the 1978 revelation itself. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today we dive into our fifth episode in this series dealing with race and priesthood. Now, let’s get into it. Hi, Casey.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Hi. How are you, Scott?

Scott Woodward:
Great. You ready to dive in, tackle this next era?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. We are getting to the turn. We’re going to resolve the plot, and this is the start of that as we deal with the latter half of the 20th century—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—and what happened with church leaders there. So, Scott, do you want to give us a recap of where we’ve been, and then we’ll dive in?

Scott Woodward:
Yes. OK, so in our last episode, we acknowledged that although the 1852 year was the first public articulation by Brigham Young of a priesthood ban on blacks, yet there was no official church policy established on the matter at the time. In fact, there really wasn’t anything official in terms of church policy on the books until 55 years later, in 1907, as far as we can tell.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So we traced what happened during that 55-year time period that led to the establishment of this policy.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And so the long and short of the matter is basically that the priesthood and temple ban gradually became entrenched in the church because of two major factors: number one, dueling false doctrines, and number two, false memories.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
The two dueling false doctrines that were intended to explain why blacks didn’t have rights to the priesthood were—the first one was from Brigham Young, his teaching that blacks were the descendants of Cain, the murderer of Abel, and who were therefore barred from the priesthood as a curse until such a time as all of Abel’s posterity would be allowed to receive it. The second false doctrine was Orson Pratt’s teaching that blacks were barred from the priesthood as a punishment for some unspecified evil actions in premortality. Brigham Young argued against Orson Pratt’s teaching while Orson Pratt argued against Brigham Young’s teaching. Both of these theories were flatly disavowed as false doctrines in the church’s official Race and the Priesthood Gospel Topics essay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So that’s the dueling false doctrines. Then, as for the false memories, there were two crucial ones, both involving Elijah Able. The first occurs in 1879 during an investigation instigated by President John Taylor about whether or not Elijah Able, a black man ordained to the priesthood in Joseph Smith’s day, should be granted his request to receive his endowment and be sealed to his recently deceased wife.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
President Taylor personally interviewed two old men in Provo, Utah, who claimed to have intimate knowledge of the prophet Joseph’s views on blacks. That was Abraham O. Smoot and Zebedee Coltrin. Zebedee told President Taylor that Joseph Smith had dropped Elijah from the Seventies Quorum after he learned about his lineage, and he said that he heard Joseph say that blacks have no right to hold the priesthood. Now, that memory was contradicted by Elder Joseph F. Smith’s personal investigation into the legitimacy of Elijah Able’s ordination. He saw, firsthand, ordination certificates of Elijah’s, which were still valid, his patriarchal blessing, which had said he had been ordained an elder, and Joseph F. Smith had personally talked to Elijah, and Elijah had told him about his experience with Joseph Smith and how Joseph had told him that he was entitled to the priesthood, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So Elder Smith makes these facts known in the meeting with the Quorum of the Twelve about the matter, openly challenging Zebedee’s memory. But unfortunately, Zebedee’s false memory was favored by some church leaders, such as George Q. Cannon, who will bring it up later, which provides the foundation for the generations-long erroneous tradition that the priesthood ban originated with Joseph Smith.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
President Taylor concludes from the evidence presented at that meeting that perhaps Elijah Able’s ordination was legitimate in one sense, but that it was also “not altogether correct” in another sense because it had innocently occurred before the word of the Lord was fully understood. So now, fast forward 25 years to 1904, when tragically Joseph F. Smith himself, now the church president, inexplicably has his own memory slip, in which he contradicts his 1879 conclusions, saying now that Elijah Able’s ordination was a mistake that was never corrected. Then, three years later, in 1907, President Smith and his counselors decided, here’s where we get the official policy, “that no one known to have in his veins Negro blood,” I’m quoting now, “it matters not how remote a degree, can either have the priesthood in any degree or the blessings of the temple of God, no matter how otherwise worthy he may be.” That represents the solidification of an actual restrictive policy, right? There it is. The die is now cast, and the entrenchment is essentially complete.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Then one year later, one more piece to this, one more memory slip. In 1908 in a meeting with church leaders, President Smith’s memory now slides even further to fully harmonize with Zebedee Coltrin’s false memory, when he said that Elijah Able, “His ordination was declared null and void by the prophet Joseph himself.” That was President Smith in 1908.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So two really just unfortunate memory slips: Zebedee Coltrin talking about what he remembered Joseph saying, which is contradicted by the evidence, and then Joseph F. Smith himself decades later, after having examined the evidence, now misremembering and siding basically with Zebedee Coltrin’s memory. At this point in time, through these misrememberings, this essentially creates a new memory for the church going forward from the very highest office in the church, in which the racial restrictions had always been in place from the days of Joseph Smith, and legitimate black priesthood men, like Elijah Able and Q. Walker Lewis had basically never really existed, right? They were now essentially lost from the collective memory of the church. So that’s the tragedy of the false doctrines and the false memories.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Now, that narrative is not questioned for several decades, and it gets reinforced in each generation as successive leaders are unwilling to violate the precedent of their predecessor. Why would they? Like, nobody questioned that it was legitimate history.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So to sum it all up in a nutshell, dueling false doctrine plus false memories, plus successive generations of church leaders unwilling to violate the precedent of their predecessors. This is what entrenches the priesthood and temple ban on blacks in the church. You know, and sometimes the question is asked, “If the priesthood-temple ban wasn’t inspired by God, then why didn’t one of Brigham Young’s next eight successors correct this mistake earlier?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And what we’ve just summarized is basically the answer to that question in a nutshell.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And I’ll add one more factor to your well-done analysis here, and that is the predominant culture that the church exists within—

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—particularly in the United States. It really wasn’t until after World War II that people start questioning the racial hierarchy that’s been set up and sort of reinforced over time in place. And a couple of key things, like the ideologies that they fought against in World War II, which were racially based; the integration of the armed forces, which happens just after World War II, which causes a lot of mingling among these groups that have been deliberately set up to be separate from each other—

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—also starts to affect the church, so we can’t pretend like this is happening in a vacuum. Church leaders start to seriously question and examine the problem in the midst of civil rights ramping up in the United States as well, and that affects them. The other factor that we sometimes need to take into account, too, is the globalization of the church that happens in the 1950s, where we start to have influence of the church extend to places like Africa, and people there inquiring for missionaries for proselyting materials and for a full-on membership in the church.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I mean, I’ve been to the Church Museum of History and Art and seen a statue of the Angel Moroni that a congregation in Ghana built on their own without being members of the church because they loved the Book of Mormon and the teachings, and all these things are going to come together to lead us to where we want to be. We’re also playing against some incredibly powerful historical forces.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Tradition. What they saw as doctrine. What seems obvious to us right now might not have seemed as obvious to them in the context they existed in, and what we’re going to deal with today is the lead up to the 1978 revelation, which is really the first time the entire First Presidency and Twelve make this a matter of personal revelation. They seek a revelation from God.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. That’s right. Isn’t it interesting that in all of this, first of all, like you’re saying, like it’s not even really a question of whether or not this is accurate or appropriate, given the broader culture of the day. So they can’t really be faulted for not inquiring of the Lord, seeking some sort of revelation on the matter.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Like, you only inquire about what you have questions about, and nobody was really questioning this as a legitimate way of seeing things and as the way that God had ordered the universe, right? Ordered the world with these kind of built-in caste systems among humanity, which, like you said, is not really questioned until after World War II, very strongly in the U. S. and then in the church.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s remarkable that the very first time that the First Presidency and the Twelve collectively inquire about this issue, like, together, unitedly, is 1978.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And when they did so a revelation was collectively received by them, and the ban was overturned. Like, the very first time they inquired collectively, unitedly, the ban was overturned. It’s very interesting.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And you’ve put an interesting quote into our outline here today that I want to share. This is from Bruce R. McConkie.

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Bruce R. McConkie, in a talk that was given just a couple months after the revelation, said, “You will recall that The Book of Mormon teaches that if the apostles in Jerusalem had asked the Lord, he would’ve told them about the Nephites, but they didn’t ask. They didn’t manifest that faith, and they didn’t get an answer.” And then he goes on to say, “One underlying reason for what happened to us is that the brethren asked in faith. They petitioned and desired and wanted an answer, President Kimball in particular.”

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s a remarkable admission from someone we see as kind of a hardened defender of the priesthood policy who actually became one of the most ardent supporters of the new revelation after it was given. I’m talking about Elder McConkie here.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But we also know a little bit about what was going on behind the scenes leading up to 1978 as well.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And that’s what we’re going to deal with today. So today’s burning question is, “What happened in the 70 years from 1908 to 1978, and then what led to the apostles overturning the ban?” So let’s dive into this, and let’s take a look at what we know about those 70 years—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—and how we start to lay the groundwork for the 1978 revelation.

Scott Woodward:
Great. I would say that what happens next, if I was to put a header in our notes, which I did, I would call this header “A Season of Hardening and Exclusion.” That’s how it’s going to—from 1908 for the next several decades, more policies of exclusion begin to emerge, particularly as regards missionary work to blacks, right? What I’d call a semi-official soft exclusion of blacks in terms of missionary focus.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So, for example, in that same meeting where President Joseph F. Smith had that memory slip about Elijah Able in 1908, church leaders decided that missionaries “should not take the initiative in proselyting among the Negro people, but if Negroes or people tainted with Negro blood apply for baptism themselves, they might be admitted to church membership in the understanding that nothing further can be done for them.” That same year, there was an announcement in the Liahona magazine that “Our missionaries laboring in states where Negroes abound have been instructed not to deny information concerning the gospel or even baptism to members of that race who earnestly desire the same, but not to make any special effort to convert them.” So we’ll just kind of softly exclude blacks from even missionary efforts.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Even as late as 1920, President Heber J. Grant wrote to a mission president in California instructing him to tell a sister who was struggling with segregation in the church. He said, “We should bear in mind that our mission is not directly to the Negro race.” So in this time period, so over this next—what is that? About 12 years—we have these kind of semi-official policies that are instructing missionaries to not directly seek black converts.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That, of course, violates the Lord’s injunction, repeated no less than five times—I counted—in the Doctrine and Covenants to take the gospel to “every creature” in “all the world.” No asterisks. No footnotes. It’s just everybody, everywhere.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But you can understand that this kind of behavior, this kind of posturing, would be a natural outgrowth of embracing those erroneous doctrines and those false historical memories. And so as a consequence the church increasingly is considered to be kind of a white church—

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
—which meets all the criteria of respectability within the broader American culture at that time.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. We should note that even in the midst of this policy, there were black members of the church.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
There’s a lovely website we’ve referred to before called The Century of Black Mormons, and during this time period, there are people—most of them, according to the website, are in the deep south of the United States—who are drawn towards the church and join the church and serve within the church in spite of the fact that they can’t serve at every position. So there’s no, and never was, any ban on people of African ancestry being members of the church.

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But obviously the priesthood policy is off-putting and does kind of result in us being seen as this white church during this time.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, that’s right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But again, there’s also cracks in this as well. Like, you mentioned Heber J. Grant. I’ve done a lot of work on an apostle named Joseph F. Merrill.

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And in his letters, which are available at BYU, he’s not particularly supportive of the priesthood policy, but he’s not particularly defensive about it, either.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And it seems like the line he shared was one shared by a fair number of church leaders, which is, “This is the way it is. If God wants to change it, he can intervene and change it,” but it doesn’t seem like in his papers it was a question that came up with too much frequency. That might have to do with kind of the western nature of the church during this time, where we’re predominantly a western, North American church.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, I think that’s right. And the fact that there’s not very many blacks in the church—there are some, but—percentage wise, there’s not enough maybe to agitate the question very profoundly among church members or church leaders. In fact, I’d say the next sort of movement in the history, as we continue on, the next sort of heading in my notes, is the beginning of push back, questioning, investigation, and then a kind of a mix between a softening among some and a retrenchment among others.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And so I’d say that even as those teachings, those policies, those practices were hardening in place, some church leaders and members began to question their origins and even advocate for reform. There’s going to become an unevenness in views even among church leaders. Like you’re saying, like, Joseph F. Merrill would have a different view than say, a Mark E. Petersen.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Hugh B. Brown. Spencer W. Kimball. They’re going to begin to kind of question Hugh B. Brown especially, while others are going to sort of reinforce the restrictions like, Harold B. Lee, Ezra Taft Benson, Joseph Fielding Smith, Mark E. Petersen, Bruce R. McConkie.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And this lack of consensus largely accounts for why there’s really no movement, right? No decisive change in this policy for several decades in the 20th century.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Maybe the first moment of, like, kind of questioning that’s kind of historically significant is in 1947. Let’s maybe talk about this.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
The First Presidency at this time assigned a fellow named Heber Meeks, who was president of the Southern States Mission to explore the possibility of opening up missionary work in Cuba. So Meeks reached out to his sociologist friend named Lowry Nelson, who was a professor at the University of Minnesota, and he asked him about the racial picture in Cuba and specifically what he thought the likelihood of being able to avoid conferring priesthood on men with African ancestry was. That was his question. “What do you think the likelihood is that we can avoid ordaining men with black ancestry there?” Nelson responded to both Meeks and to the First Presidency with clear dismay and disappointment at the policy. “Wait, what? This is a thing?” Right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And as he pushes them on this, they respond with this important quote: they said, “From the days of the prophet Joseph, even until now, it has been the doctrine of the church, never questioned by any of the church leaders, that the Negroes are not entitled to the full blessings of the gospel.” So a few important things in that quote, right? “From the days of the prophet Joseph,” and they call it a doctrine, and they say that it’s never been questioned.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So we can see a few problems in that quote, but that’s the understanding at the time, in 1947, of the leaders of the church, First Presidency.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
In 1949, the First Presidency of George Albert Smith, they’ll respond to inquiries into the policy. People would write letters and ask the First Presidency, “Can you please clarify the church’s position on blacks and priesthood ordination? And they would respond with this kind of ready response, which is this: “It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy, but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the church from the days of its organization to the effect that Negroes are not entitled to the priesthood at the present time.” So you can see right there, again, how entrenched this idea is.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
It’s a commandment from the Lord. It’s a doctrine, and it began in the days of Joseph. That’s just fully hardened in place and not really questioned—

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
—until President David O. McKay becomes president of the church. So he becomes President in 1951, and then apparently it said that in 1954, President McKay appointed a special committee of the Twelve to study this issue, like, try to get to historical bedrock. And from the result of that special committee was the conclusion that the priesthood ban had no clear basis in scripture, but that church members were not prepared for change, was the report. Isn’t that interesting?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
1954.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s interesting. And a genuine concern among them is how church members would respond to this.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I want to back up to the question of—that 1949 statement says it’s doctrine.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And at this point in time, doctrine is a word that means “what is taught,” basically. But in our church doctrine sometimes is used as a synonym for truth, you know?

Scott Woodward:
Eternal truth. Unchanging. Undeviating.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And it seems like one of the nuances that President McKay introduces in the discussion that we really need to give him credit for is asking, “Is this a doctrine, as in a truth, or is this a policy?” Policies within the church change all the time, based on the circumstances that we live in. All of us have been a witness to a number of policies changing. It’s something that happens on a regular basis, and it doesn’t really shake anybody’s faith, you know?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
We changed the way we did the ordinances in the temple during Covid so that it would be a little bit safer. Didn’t affect any of the truths or doctrine taught in the temple, but the policy changed.

Scott Woodward:
Right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And President McKay seemed to be really intent on gently pushing forward this idea of, “Hey, is this a doctrine, or is it a policy? Policy we can change. A doctrine we have to get revelation from God to alter.” And I think that was part of the intent behind this committee to study the scriptures is another characteristic of doctrine is it’s generally found in the canon, and outside of that reference in the Book of Abraham, there wasn’t a lot of support to say that this was a doctrine.

Scott Woodward:
Right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
If it’s a policy, then we can work with it, and President McKay starts to take gentle movements. For instance, in 1954, he discontinues the practice in South Africa of requiring a person to trace their ancestry to prove that they have no black ancestors, the “not a drop” policy, which was never really feasible.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
If we’re being honest with ourselves here. And he also, in a place like Fiji—if you visit Fiji, the natives of Fiji have African features. You would assume that they’re descendants of African individuals, but that’s just what native Fijians look like, and there’s no link between them and Africa.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So the question came up is, “Could a native Fijian hold the priesthood?” President McKay says, “Yeah, they can. They’re not of African ancestry, and we’re not going to try to establish a connection there.” So he’s trying to gradually soften it, but it’s also a challenging time because among the leadership of the church, there are some people that are defensive, that, like you mentioned, harden a little bit when it comes to the policy and its origins and aren’t as willing to explore how that works. And we could name a couple examples. In fact, why don’t we go through a couple examples of that?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, one example would be in 1954—these are just well-documented examples—where in the aftermath of the watershed Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, right? This is huge. This overturns segregation as a legal thing, right? In the United States.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
In the aftermath of that, Elder Mark E. Petersen of the Quorum of the Twelve speaks at BYU and publicly pushes back against that Supreme Court decision, saying, “I think the Lord segregated the Negro, and who is man to change that segregation?” Yikes. He then reaffirms that the descendants of Cain were denied the priesthood, which was an act of segregation by God. God himself segregated the Negro. So that’s very public pushback from Elder Petersen, who was not alone in his instincts toward this conservative retrenchment in light of societal change.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So that’s one example. Another example would be just a few years later, Elder Bruce R. McConkie, who at that time was in the presidency of the Seventy. He publishes a book called, famously, Mormon Doctrine. It’s kind of a dictionary-esque, right? Almost encyclopedia, like A through Z.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
If you looked up entries on, like, “caste system” or “Negro” or “Descendants of Ham or Cain,” you would find this same idea. This is after Brown v. Board of Education. This is when President McKay is softening things. At that same time, Elder McConkie is retrenching this idea that the doctrine is that descendants of Cain cannot hold priesthood, that this is a divinely ordained caste system. So kind of that same cloth as Elder Mark E. Petersen.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So we have different movements even within the quorum. In fact, in 19—I think it was 1961—President McKay calls into the First Presidency Hugh B. Brown.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Hugh B. Brown is probably the most open to change of any of the apostles at this time. He’ll work behind the scenes throughout this decade to try to overturn the restrictive ban. He firmly believed it was just a policy, and if it’s a policy, it could be changed. And so, let’s change it.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
In fact, this is hard to pin down because we don’t have access to the actual minutes of the meeting where this apparently took place, but there’s reports in Hugh B. Brown’s own family history that he put it to a vote in the Quorum of the Twelve and got a majority to side with him that we should just change this policy. This is the 1960s. But then when Elder Harold B. Lee found out about that, who was absent at that meeting, that he then came back and said, “Whoa. We’ve got to be careful with that. This is a doctrine, and doctrines can only be changed by revelation.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So you have that dynamic at play, where some of the apostles are feeling like this is a policy, probably an erroneous one, according to Hugh B. Brown.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And then others, like Harold B. Lee that feel like, “Ooh, let’s be careful. This is a doctrine. If this came from God, we can’t change it but by revelation.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And then Elder Mark E. Petersen and others felt the same. But at the same time, we have President McKay—like, in Brazil. Do you want to talk about Brazil?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Brazil, as most people are aware, has a large African population, and as the church extends into those areas—in fact, a pattern that we need to point out here is that the frontiers of the church were affecting the headquarters of the church here. A lot of times these questions were coming up because of areas the church was growing into, and the question of how we’re going to deal with that. For instance, just about a year ago, Harvard Heath published David O. McKay’s diaries that were kept by his secretary, Clare Middlemiss, and they don’t have everything in them, but one of the things that they do show is members of the First Presidency and Twelve considering the question of establishing the church in African countries. And one of the proposals was, you know, “We haven’t gotten a revelation to change the policy, but could we just give them the Aaronic Priesthood? They need the Aaronic Priesthood at least if they’re going to have their own congregations, just to bless the sacrament and perform basic ordinances like baptism, or they’re going to be totally dependent on missionaries that come from outside their country to do those things.”

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And so they’re having lively discussions about this, but one of the things that is a major question during this time is, like you mentioned, Hugh B. Brown says that a majority of the church leaders agreed with him, but it wasn’t a total lock. It wasn’t unanimous. There were still people that dissented, and the sources seemed to indicate that the primary source of their dissent was, “We can’t change something this major without a revelation.”

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And that’s a genuine concern if they’re moving against decades of precedence and decisions by church leaders. They just want to be sure that the Lord is on board with this, and so it takes a lot of time to work towards it, and it’s kind of two steps forward and one step back. For instance, in 1963, Hugh B. Brown speaks in general conference in favor of civil rights. A couple years later, Ezra Taft Benson, also in general conference, said that he thought the civil rights movement was dangerous, that it was linked to communism, and believed that it was intended to destabilize the harmony of the United States. So there’s lively discussion in private and in public happening.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
They had to have known a little bit about how each other felt, and they’re having these discussions play out before them.

Scott Woodward:
I remember in my early twenties, I heard President Hinckley in general conference say something like this. He said, “I can testify that the church quorums are as united as they’ve ever been in the history of the church.” I remember thinking, “Weren’t they always united? Haven’t they always been just, like, totally harmonious and everything?” And, you know, this is a great example of a time when no, they were not. They were not united. There was very different feelings on this issue, on the spectrum of “Is it a policy or is it eternal doctrine? Is civil rights a good thing? Is this movement wonderful, or is this a front for the communist revolution in America?”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
You know, in fact, even back as early as 1954, there are records that suggest that President McKay actually sought a revelation about changing the church’s priesthood-temple policy—

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
—but that he didn’t receive the answer that he sought, and so he concluded that the time was not yet ripe.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So that’s interesting, and we’re only working on secondhand accounts as we try to reconstruct details of that, so it’s kind of hard to get at, but one crucial thing about 1954 is that there was not unanimity in the quorum.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
One thing that President McKay did not do, which President Kimball will do and do very effectively, is to seek consensus among the apostles first before they take the question to the Lord.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And so changing that policy with such a wide variety of feelings on it among the apostles could have been disastrous.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Not because it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do, but if church leaders weren’t on board or not unitedly on board, that could have been a major problem.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And again, we’re drawing from public statements here. When it comes to their private feelings, they’re nuanced. They’re complex.

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Let me give you another example: This is a letter that Spencer W. Kimball, who’s a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, writes to his son Edward L. Kimball in 1963. So this is right as the civil rights movement is ramping up in the United States, as these discussions are happening among the Twelve. He writes and says, “the conferring of priesthood and declining to give the priesthood is not a matter of my choice nor of President McKay’s. It is the Lord’s program. When the Lord is ready to relax the restriction, it will come whether there is pressure or not. This is my faith. Until then, I shall try to fight on. I’ve always prided myself on being about as unprejudiced as to race as any man. I think my work with the minorities would prove this, but I’m so completely convinced that the prophets know what they’re doing and that the Lord knows what he’s doing, that I’m willing to let it rest there.” And Spencer W. Kimball is maybe the person we need to focus on for the next few minutes.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Because he’s going to be the key catalyst in this change.

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But understanding how he goes about the change is a really important part of the story, too.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, and he was open to the idea that this could be an erroneous policy, but he did not side with those who were agitating for change by raising loud voices. He trusted the brethren. He trusted the process.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Is this the same letter that you just quoted from? There’s another one in 1963, or maybe it’s from that same letter to Edward Kimball, where he said, “I have wished the Lord had given us a little more clarity in this matter, but for me it’s enough. I know the Lord could change his policy and release the ban and forgive the possible error,” he calls it a possible error, question mark, “which brought about the deprivation.” And he said, “If the time comes, that He will do, I am sure.” So he’s very open to the possibility it could be erroneous, like some people were saying.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But he’s also trusting the Lord’s timing on this and not being one of those loud voices agitating for change.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That was his personality. I’d say Hugh B. Brown was maybe a little more aggressive, from what I’ve read. Spencer W. Kimball was more content to kind of pull back a little and wait and watch and trust and kind of see what happens.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And there are some gentle movements in the direction of change. For instance, in 1969, the First Presidency issues a statement designed to move us away from common explanations given in the church for why the priesthood-temple restrictions are given. For instance, their statement from 1969, instead of citing Cain’s murder or premortal reasons behind it, is simply a “We don’t know.” But it does affirm this has been the church’s position from the beginning of this dispensation and that Joseph Smith and all succeeding presidents of the church have taught that “Negroes,” this is the quote from it, “were not yet to receive the priesthood for reasons which we believe are known to God, but which he has not made fully known to man.”

Scott Woodward:
Hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So there’s still some error in that, but not a conscious error on their part. I don’t think they have the historical record we have today.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. They’re clearly moving away from those two erroneous doctrines that this was primarily founded upon:

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Cain’s murder and premortal less valiance. Yeah. Now they’re just saying, “This is the case for reasons which are known to God. We don’t know fully why.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That’s an important move. That’s a really important move.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So that’s 1969.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So that happens in 1969.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And then in 1970 Joseph Fielding Smith becomes president of the church. He is, I believe, 93 when he becomes president of the church.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So he’s in there for a little while, but only about two and a half years or so. Harold B. Lee becomes president of the church, and even though Harold B. Lee has shown to be a little bit more conservative on this question, he does say a few things. Like, Harold B. Lee says, “It’s only a matter of time before the black achieves full status in the church. We must believe in the justice of God. The black will achieve full status. We’re just waiting for this time.”

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And so as president of the church, Harold B. Lee is basically saying, “Yeah, it’s going to happen, but we don’t know when exactly. We’re waiting for it to happen,” emphasizing his position, which seems to be consistent, that it’s going to require a revelation for this to change.

Scott Woodward:
And did he say that statement as president of the church?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I am not sure.

Scott Woodward:
I was just curious.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But it’s late period. He’s either president of the church or in the first presidency.

Scott Woodward:
OK.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Which he was in the first presidency under Joseph Fielding Smith.

Scott Woodward:
Excellent. Yeah. And sometimes Harold B. Lee gets painted as kind of, like, the hard-liner, right? He’s the hard-liner that is unbudging on this issue.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But I think if we look at his heart, like, he was determined to defend the true doctrine, right? He was determined to hold the line regardless of external pressure. We will not bend. We will not buckle based on external pressure. If this is God’s will, it’s God’s will. If it’s going to change, he’ll change it, not picketers, not those who are rioting. It’s not going to be because of some sort of external pressure. So I think it’s his deep loyalty. It’s his deep faith that this really did come from God. He wasn’t trying to be obstinate. He wasn’t trying to be a stick in the mud. He was trying to defend the line.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And President Kimball said the same about himself. He said, “I was willing to go to my grave,” like, defending this if this was actually God’s will, then I was willing to toe the line all the way to my grave, regardless of what others would say, so.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Now, one thing we should mention here, too, and this is sort of a parallel event in the history of the church, is that Harold B. Lee becomes president of the church when, I believe, he’s 73 years old.

Scott Woodward:
Hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s a baby.

Scott Woodward:
Young. He’s healthy. He’s hardy.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. He’s a young whippersnapper, and there’s people from this time talking about how they expected Harold B. Lee to be president of the church for 20 years—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—or so, based on his age and the fact that the previous church president was 95 when he passed away, but something unexpected happens. Harold B. Lee passes away suddenly 18 months into his presidency. Until Howard W. Hunter this was the shortest tenure for a church president in the history of the church, and—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It happens rather suddenly. My understanding is he goes in for a routine checkup and has a massive heart attack.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And is gone. And suddenly somebody that nobody really expected to be president of the church is president of the church, and that’s Spencer W. Kimball.

Scott Woodward:
A guy full of health problems—

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
—and heart problems and—

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
President Kimball comes from this kind of unique background where he spent a lot of his life working with minority populations. He grows up in Arizona. He feels a special calling to work among the American Indians, to assist and help them, and he’s probably one of the more progressive voices among the Twelve when it comes to this question. At least we know he has a really intense desire to find out what the Lord’s will is concerning this.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, in 1973, when he became president of the church—in fact, shortly after he becomes president, he wrote another letter to his son Edward. We’re so in debt to Edward Kimball, by the way. Like, he has given us so much behind the scenes and the inner workings of his father, President Kimball.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And what we’re going to include in the show notes, his tremendous article that has been published in BYU Studies on this. So good. So we’ve actually been citing it all throughout today.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Without having said that out loud. So there you go. He’s so good. So here’s a letter that his dad wrote to him right after he became president of the church. Now President Kimball said, “Revelations will probably never come unless they are desired.” And then he said, “I believe most revelations would come when a man is on his tiptoes, reaching as high as he can for something which he knows he needs, and then there bursts upon him the answer to his problems.” That’s such a great letter, and it’s such a great description of what’s going to happen in the next five years.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
President Kimball begins reaching, standing on his tiptoes for that revelation that will come in 1978, and so we’re excited to talk about that. We’re going to talk about that in our next episode, but any final thoughts you want to say in this episode as we wrap up, Casey?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Just this: President Kimball comes onto the scene, and he’s who we’re going to focus probably the movement towards the 1978 revelation on.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But there’s lots of things swirling in the mix here. Ed Kimball, in his excellent article, points out that black members of the church started to receive promises in their patriarchal blessings of priesthood and temple blessings.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Of missionary service.

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
A gentleman I was acquainted with when I served a mission in southern Florida, was a black member of the church prior to the revelation. And he talked about the same thing, too.

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And so there’s lots of forces coming together on the frontiers of the church and at church headquarters to make what happens in 1978 possible. You know, here we are, 44 years removed from that. We sometimes don’t appreciate all the obstacles as well that had to be overcome. And what we’re going to talk about in the next episode is really a masterclass in how a person seeks consensus and revelation from God in a kind of hostile environment. President Kimball is really wonderful in the way he goes about this.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. We’re going to see what it means to study an issue out. Sometimes we think that revelation just comes super easy to prophets.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I remember somebody—I was in a small group where somebody suggested that to Elder Richard G. Scott. They said, “Oh, apostles and prophets just ask, and revelation just comes.” He just kind of chuckled at that, and he said, “No.” He said, “There’s a great price to pay for revelation.” And so, yeah, there’s no better, more intimate view into the difficulty and challenge and beauty of that process as is the process that President Kimball goes through to receive this revelation.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So, yeah, we look forward to looking at that in detail, talking about that in our next episode.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
All right.

Scott Woodward:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Join us next time as we carefully explore the price a prophet paid to receive one of the most influential revelations of the last hundred years in the church. We’ll look at both his personal preparation and, significantly, the ways in which he helped prepare his fellow apostles to receive this revelation jointly with him. It truly is a masterclass in seeking revelation. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti and 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.