Posted by:
PostMormon
(
)
Date: January 01, 2018 03:37PM
Anonymous Muser,
I have been reading An Atheist Defends Religion, so I think that is where the blog title came from. I think you are right about not using the word defend. I think if anything I was defending Mormons themselves, Mormons who you’d consider good people but for whatever reason are stuck in Mormonism. I was defending them. I will change the title shortly because I am NOT a defender of Mormonism.
Regarding your comment, “I don't recall a GA saying that dark skin is a curse since 1978 when OD-2 was released – long before the race essay.” Well, LDS leaders did in fact speak of skin curses after the OD-2. Scroll down to where I discuss Bruce R. McConkie where he says in his August 1978 talk, All Are Alike unto God at
https://postmormon.blogspot.com/2012/03/covering-up-seed-of-cain-doctrine-in.htmlIn that post I write:
Notice that this statement [by McConkie in All are Alike to God] in context refers to the teaching that blacks would “not receive the priesthood in mortality”; McConkie doesn’t say he was wrong about blacks being the seed of Cain. How could they erase it anyway when the First Presidency in the 1949 statement quoted Brigham Young’s saying blacks are the seed of Cain; and the 1951 statement by the First Presidency says that blacks "came to earth through the loins of Cain because of [their] failure to achieve other stature in the spirit world." The fact is, that even though the speech All Are Alike unto God is widely displayed by LDS apologists to argue the doctrine of the seed of Cain is no longer doctrine; it is clear from the words below from the same sermon by McConkie that he meant that we are to ignore him and Brigham Young when they said blacks wouldn’t receive the priesthood in mortality. For McConkie explains the process of the leaders of the church "receiving" the 1978 revelation to allow blacks the priesthood, by still referring to them as the seed of Cain, only now the “curse” has been lifted but they are still the seed of Cain. As Bruce R. McConkie himself puts it in the same sermon (words in italics for emphasis):
The President restated the problem involved, reminded us of our prior discussions, and said he had spent many days alone in this upper room pleading with the Lord for an answer to our prayers. He said that if the answer was to continue our present course of denying the priesthood to the seed of Cain, as the Lord had theretofore directed, he was prepared to defend that decision to the death. But, he said, if the long-sought day had come in which the curse of the past was to be removed, he thought we might prevail upon the Lord to so indicate. He expressed the hope that we might receive a clear answer one way or the other so the matter might be laid to rest … [then after the revelation is allegedly received McConkie states] The ancient curse is no more. The seed of Cain and Ham and Canaan and Egyptus and Pharaoh (Abr. 1:20-27; Moses 5:16-41; 7:8, 22) ... now have power to rise up and bless Abraham as their father. All these, Gentile in lineage, may now come and inherit by adoption all the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ... All these may now be numbered with those in the one fold of the one shepherd who is Lord of all.” (Personal Testimony of Revelation on Priesthood by Elder Bruce R. McConkie of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Priesthood [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1981], pp. 126-37).
When I tried to find the article online I noticed that BYU removed McConkies remarks on the seed of Cain, see
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-r-mcconkie_alike-unto-god-2/ A quick Google search shows that the LDS church has been editing McConkie’s speech and removing all the mention of the seed of Cain.
So as you can see the doctrine that blacks are the seed of Cain was still in force after 1978 and taught by some LDS leaders. So the Race and the Priesthood essay can be considered a change in doctrine that the 1978 policy change did not cover!