In 1984 my supervisor at work, John, was also my next door neighbor. He was black, and married to a white woman. We became friends, and he would often ask about my Mormon religion (As we were know back in the day!). As was inevitable, soon he asked about blacks not being able to hold the priesthood before 1978. I, being the the good returned missionary with all my knowledge and wisdom, told him the reason blacks could not hold the priesthood before 1978 was because they were descendants of Cain, and were less valiant before they came to earth. This is what I had been taught in church. This made sense to me.
My friend told me that was the stupidest thing he had ever heard of, and that he would never join the Mormon church. I just took pity on him 34 years ago, but today I agree with him, that it is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever said! And guess what, the LDS church agrees with me!
Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form [1]
I so wish I could go back and change what I said to John. I wish I could find him today and apologize all these years later for what I said. If I had a do over, I would tell him we don’t know why blacks could not hold the priesthood, that I was uncomfortable with the policy, and that I’m glad they changed it.
I’m not the only one that has put my foot in my mouth. From a book written in 2000 by two BYU religion professors:
“David Whitmer maintained the prophet used an oval-shaped, chocolate-colored seer stone slightly larger than an egg… Such an explanation is, in our judgement, simply fiction created for the purpose of demeaning Joseph Smith and to undermine the validity of the revelations he received after translation the Book of Mormon” (Ostler and McConkie, Revelations of the Restoration, Deseret Book, 2000: 89-98)
From the Book of Mormon Translation essay 15 years later:
The other instrument, which Joseph Smith discovered in the ground years before he retrieved the gold plates, was a small oval stone, or “seer stone.” As a young man during the 1820s, Joseph Smith, like others in his day, used a seer stone to look for lost objects and buried treasure. As Joseph grew to understand his prophetic calling, he learned that he could use this stone for the higher purpose of translating scripture.
So what dumb things have you said about church doctrine/policy/history that you wish you could take back, and has now been repudiated with the church’s own Gospel Topics?
[1] Gospel Topics: Race and the Priesthood
Wheat & Tares 
Um – the book of Abraham. I recall telling a friend about my quad. I still don’t know what to make of that. Actually I have formed a conclusion, but not one that the LDS church would like.
I had a similar experience where a black coworker asked me why I was a member of a racist church. He not only knew about blacks only being allowed to hold the priesthood since 1978, but that black skin was assigned to those who were less valiant in the war in heaven. I went into complete denial while the shock that he knew about that settled in. I lied, and said it wasn’t so. Years later, I was so angry that the leadership didn’t prepare me for a confrontation like that. The membership has to defend the indefensible. It’s sickening.
I once said something very offensive to a trans person. It started as an honest mistake, but then I did myself deeper in a hole that I could have gotten out of quite easily.
The church essay repudiating that has not yet been written.
The church does a lot of good. OK. I’ll preface it with that. However, this is one of the worst things that the church does. It creates doctrines to explain policies that it creates about things that it does not understand (race, homosexuality, etc) and then expects the members of the church to do the dirty work of justifying those things to the world. I helped the missionaries teach a new-member discussion about 20 years ago wherein I tried to explain to a young woman why only men have the priesthood. I wish I could take it back. No more. Not for me. This is not something that I’m going to look back and regret in 20 years. If anybody asks, I’ll tell them straight up that the church is dead wrong on homosexuality but that I hope that doesn’t prevent the individual from seeing that I – as a person – have a testimony of the message of Jesus Christ as taught in the Bible.
I think I missed whatever convinced some others that the “membership has to defend the indefensible” or is expected “to do the dirty work of justifying…to the world.” “I don’t know” or “I’m currently unconvinced” have long seemed to me like reasonable positions for members to take on various matters. Where does the expectation of doing “the dirty work” come from?
JR, I think it stems from the knee-jerk reaction to defend the Church or its leaders in a way where every action/teaching was good and inspired. For me, growing up I was always under the impression that there was a reasonable answer for every action. We could “know” and be certain because we had the fullness, we had all the answers that other churches lacked. It was a paradigm shift when I began to see very smart people who I figured had all the answers be very comfortable saying they “didn’t know” the answer to a difficult question.
@JR,
Elder Bednar recently gave a talk to BYU (“Walk in the Meekness of My Spirit” Aug. 28, 2017) where he reiterated principles that then E. Oaks had given in “several BYU leadership conferences.”
Principle #4 states:
“4. Encouraging BYU faculty and other employees to offer public, unassigned support of Church policies that are challenged on secular grounds.”
While I know that these talks were directed at BYU leadership and faculty, that has been the consistent approach and direction of these two Apostles regarding the engagement of difficult policies and issues in the academic institution of BYU.
I would submit that this could certainly qualify as expectation to “defend the indefensible,” particularly when this directive is applied to instances when “policies are challenged on secular grounds.”
In a charitable light, perhaps there is a nuance of meaning in these directives that I am not understanding from them.
I was living in California during Prop 8, and I was an orthodox believer back then. I voted for it and openly supported it, because my Church leaders asked me to. Not only do I regret that, I also regret the hateful, offensive rhetoric I was dispensing and the unseen harm I might have done to others in the process.
Though there is more acceptance in society of same-sex marriage now (even among individual Latter-day Saints) the leaders of the Church haven’t back down, but instead doubled down, despite the obvious damage being done.
I don’t think God looks too favorably on the Nuremberg defense.
I told people over and over on my mission that if the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith was a prophet, and this is the Lord’s restored church and the only true church on the face of the earth. I also told them if the Book of Mormon is not true, then it’s all false.
This false and forced dichotomy has been a huge stumbling block for many who have abandoned everything once they start to question anything. Either it’s ALL true or it’s ALL false. A spiritually damning way of looking at the world.
I’m not sure the Church has backed away on this one yet, but they definitely need to. We still have too many talks from prophets and apostles reaffirming this line of thinking. Still too many lessons on the Book of Mormon as the keystone of the religion with the accompanying visual analogy of what happens to an arch when that keystone is removed.
I know even now I still struggle to shug off dichotomous thinking. I’m in the camp of the Book of Mormon not being historical in any way and it’s difficult for me not to just throw everything out because that’s what I was taught, what I did teach, and how I was raised to see things.
Issues related to the priesthood ban is the clear answer for me. Before 2013, I was under the impression we were required to defend the ban, and regrettably, I tried to do so. Changes to the preface of Official Declaration II and the gospel topics essay make clear there is room for an “I don’t know” answer, or even an acknowledgment that it arose from the racist views of church leadership.
I recall being scandalized in 2008 when a member of my bishopric implied over the pulpit that he disagreed with the ban. How times have changed.
Thanks, Mary Ann and JD. Your responses help me understand where that expectation has come from. While the BYU talks are too recent for me to have encountered them previously, they do seem to both support (reinforce?) and maybe grow out of what Mary Ann has thought to be the origin of the expectation. Mary Ann has reminded me that I did hear a good deal of that kind of thinking long ago. I suspect I didn’t experience a change from that to my current way of thinking as a major paradigm shift because for me it was quite gradual. It started as a pre-teen with seeing seeing mistakes by local church leaders and continued with seeing such mistakes by a patriarch and mission president as a teenager, then by other mission presidents, regional representatives, and general authorities. As the experience of such mistakes grew, it simply did not occur to me that other church authorities (current or historical) whose words and actions I had not observed would somehow have avoided making similar mistakes. It didn’t occur to me that I had any need or responsibility to defend their mistakes. It did occur to me that I make plenty of my own.
I almost lost a daughter believing and teaching her that sexual sin is second only to murder. It’s my biggest regret so far in parenting.
I remember telling non-member friends in high school and people I met on my mission that, despite what they had heard, Joseph Smith was never a polygamist, that polygamy was started by Brigham Young, and that Brigham only started it because so many men died crossing the plains and someone needed to take care of all the widows.
That was what I’d heard in both seminary and a year of pre-mission institute, so I thought I was on solid ground.