KIRTLAND, Ohio — With the 25th anniversary next month of what has come to be known as the "priesthood revelation," a panel of African-Americans say life in the LDS Church has improved in the past quarter century, but more can be done to draw black members into the faith.

Darius Gray, president of Genesis — a Salt Lake City-based organization for black members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — said from his vantage point, the revelation helped "change the church from a small, parochial institution into an international church."

Speaking Saturday at the Mormon History Association's annual meeting, he said the number of black Latter-day Saints in Africa now exceeds 154,000, with tens of thousands of additional black members in the Caribbean, Brazil

and other nations. That compared to a population of only 300 to 400 blacks worldwide when he joined the LDS Church in the 1960s.

The numbers are revealing, since the church itself doesn't release them. Church spokesmen say ethnicity is not listed on membership records.

The panel reflected on the implications of the June 8, 1978, announcement, made by then-church President Spencer W. Kimball, which stated that "all worthy males" would thenceforth be allowed to hold the faith's priesthood. Previously, the priesthood had been denied to black males, meaning they couldn't participate in the faith's most revered temple rites or hold leadership positions.

Darron Smith, who is compiling a book exploring black Latter-day Saint experience, said he believes the church is slow-growing in the United States and South Africa because both nations have a history of slavery and racism. The "character and tone" of the past are very different in other nations, he said.

Gray concurred, noting that LDS folklore about why the priesthood ban was in place remains in LDS culture as a "residue of racial attitudes that some members have unwittingly shared" among themselves and with African Americans. Such notions keep blacks from embracing the faith, and contribute to problems with retaining black members who do, he said.

The ban was never officially canonized as church doctrine, but was long practiced. "The prohibition was not put in place by God, but it was removed by God," Gray said. That move "literally changed the complexion of the church."

Ron Coleman, a University of Utah professor who wrote a book on early black pioneer Jane Manning James, said church leadership needs to "clean up" whatever literature still exists that retains the notion that blacks are "second-class." Though Coleman is not LDS, he said he lives in a predominantly LDS neighborhood and is aware the material still exists.

Margaret Young, co-author with Gray of a trilogy of historical fiction on black LDS pioneers, agreed that folklore regarding race is still perpetuated in some older versions of church teaching materials. As a white woman teaching English at Brigham Young University, Young said she has talked with Hispanic students whose white missionary companions told them skin color was an indicator of "how valiant you were" in pre-Earth life with God. Her son still encounters those same kinds of stories in seminary class, she said. "We've just got to get away from that."

Gray said cultural issues figure larger for black Latter-day Saints than most people realize. After attending a sacrament service with Gray, his sister told him she was interested in it, but "y'all have to do something about that music." Such concerns are not flippant or irrelevant, he said. "The (religious) songs I learned as a child are not in the LDS hymnal." The same is true of vocal modes of praise and worship in African American religious tradition.

As the church becomes more international, "we need to not only bring people in, but share in what they have to offer."

Once panelists had shared their thoughts, audience members asked questions and several applauded the fact that such a discussion was being held. One MHA official said a similar panel of black Latter-day Saints, organized in Washington, D.C., five years ago by the association, was unable to share feelings freely for fear of the political implications their remarks might have.

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In another session on Saturday, LDS Church historians working on a book about the Mountain Meadows Massacre shared part of their research in piecing the events and contributing factors together.

Richard Turley, of the Family and Church History Department, dismissed characterizations by some historians that the Baker-Fancher party that was murdered in southern Utah did not contain people who claimed to have killed church founder Joseph Smith. He documented the presence of at least one man who not only boasted about his role in the martyrdom, but threatened Brigham Young's life as well.

Fanned by word of U.S. troops marching on Utah and their previous persecutions, such talk helped incite the climate that led to the massacre, for which one local LDS leader was later executed. Even so, such talk could never justify the killings, he said.


E-mail: carrie@desnews.com

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