CNN’s Roland Martin said on Thursday that a plan by right-wing operatives to bring up President Barack Obama’s past association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright could lead to others putting Mormonism on the table. Martin warned Obama supporters might be inclined to bring up the issue of Romney’s faith.
“If the GOP wants to do that, you’re now putting Mormonism on the table,” Martin said. “You’re now putting on the table how African-Americans were treated by the Mormon religion. I don’t think Mitt Romney really wants to have that conversation, considering he was an elder and his dad was an elder, and they really did not embrace African-Americans.”
When asked, Romney sought to distance himself from the strategy, the brainchild of Ameritrade billionaire Joe Ricketts, calling it the “wrong course,” but without further comment.
Given the abysmal history of Blacks and the Mormons, or Church of Latter Day Saints, which includes outright discrimination and some of the most vile racist language imaginable, Romney would probably prefer to stay away from the subject of religion altogether rather than risk a full public account of that racism.
Following the death of Joseph Smith Jr., Mormon leaders beginning with Brigham Young, instituted a policy of excluding people of African descent from Priesthood ordination and from participation in temple ceremonies. These practices continued in the church until the 1978 Revelation on Priesthood.
Romney, who was a 30-year-old elder in the church in 1978, has said that he played no role in the church’s earlier discriminatory policy, and that he wept tears of joy on hearing the news that it had been changed.
But that policy enjoyed a long and fertile history prior to the 1978 Revelation. The Book of Mormon, published in the late 1820s, states the following:
“And [God] had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. Wherefore, as they were White, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people, the Lord God did cause a skin of Blackness to come upon them. And thus saith the Lord God; I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities.” (2 Nephi 5:21)
Mormon leader Brigham Young is quoted as saying in 1849, “You see some classes of the human family that are Black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits; wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind.”
While modern day members of the Mormon faith are quick to dismiss their past doctrines as old news, the church has yet to either fully disclose the depth of its past racism, or make any attempt to atone for it, even with its own Black members.
In 1995, Black LDS church member A. David Jackson asked church leaders to issue a declaration repudiating past doctrines that treated Black people as inferior.
In particular, Jackson asked the church to disavow the 1949 “Negro Question” declaration from the church Presidency which stated “The attitude of the church with reference to negroes…is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord…to the effect that negroes…are not entitled to the priesthood.”
Jackson’s request for a declaration of repudiation, or even a public apology, was denied. To this day, church officials claim that the 1978 Revelation speaks for itself, and no further discussion is necessary.
We disagree.
Further discussion is necessary, especially if the GOP plans to once again make political hay of President Obama’s faith.
(Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune)