We’re going to take a deep dive into the 1970s and BYU with regards to race. There have been lots of rumors on the internet that the reason the LDS Church got rid of the temple/priesthood ban was because they were going to lose their tax-exempt status. Is that true? Dr. Matt Harris from Colorado State-Pueblo will answer that question. He will talk about both the Nixon and Carter administrations, and even include a letter from former President Jimmy Carter!
Matt: On the internet, there are lots and lots of chatter about people saying that President Carter had instructed the IRS to crack down on the church. And I’ve seen this i`n probably, I don’t know, half dozen to a dozen places and people are so emphatic about it. [They say] Yes, he did this. One of them even went through his journal which is published and had conjectured that during President Carter’s visit to Salt Lake in 1977. That’s when he laid down the law in 1976-77.
Anyway, it’s just conjecture. That’s all it is. So anyway, I wrote President Carter a note. I asked him, “This is what it’s been said about you, that you used the IRS to crack down on the Mormons and put pressure on them to lift the priesthood ban.” And he wrote back a wonderfully written letter, and he said, “I have no recollection of ever doing that. However, I did help the Mormons with welfare and some work getting them something in Africa.” He didn’t elaborate. So President Carter said that.
GT: This is a recent letter?
Matt: This is three or four years ago.
GT: Okay.
Matt: Yeah. And I should add too, I have family in Atlanta. During one of my trips to see my brother and my sister years ago, I spent a lovely day at the Carter Library looking for these kinds of things. And there were big thick Mormon files but nothing that dealt with the IRS.
GT: It’s weird to be doing history on living people.
Matt: It is because they fight back. When they’re dead, they can’t. They don’t fight back. So it’s a challenge writing contemporary history. Because they they’re alive. They read it.
Were you aware these two administrations pressured BYU over race?
An under-appreciated story in explaining the priesthood and temple ban was President Spencer W. Kimball’s announcement of a new temple in Brazil. Harris talks about the significant role the Brazil Temple played in changing attitudes among the apostles.
Matt: Anyway, so when I met with Ed Kimball one long afternoon, we had dinner. When we talked and I said, “I want to share a thesis with you about your father that you didn’t write about in your book [Lengthen Your Stride.]” This thesis is this. He’s an academic. So he knows what a thesis is. I said, “Your father wanted to lift the priesthood ban the minute he became the Church President.”
And he looked at me, his eyes got really big. And he said, “You’re right.” He said, “I wasn’t at liberty to write that.” And I said, “Well, I am.”
And anyway, I shared some of my ideas with him, that the Brazil Temple was one of the ways that he would do that. I mean, think about how ironic it is to announce the building of a temple in a nation that’s like 85% biracial. Nobody can go to the temple. Right? How crazy is that? And President Kimball had been to Brazil in the 1950s. He had apostolic, administrative oversight over Brazil. I think President McKay wanted him in Brazil. So anyway, so he’d been to Brazil. He knew the challenges of the priesthood ban there. So he’s very familiar with the people in the country. And so they announced a Temple where no one can worship.
…
Matt: And anyway, so President Kimball is a masterful manager of people. In the university setting where I work in or if you study organizational behavior, this is a classic case of organizational behavior, how to deal with people, how to get them over to your position. And so, President Kimball brings him in over a period of several weeks some of the hardliners and consults with them and counsels with them. Kimball says, “We’ve got a problem in Brazil, Elder McConkie. You know that we have a new temple here. What do we do? Now this is the funny part. President Kimball knows what needs to be done. But he can’t do it without getting buy-in from the most vociferous member of the Twelve. And the most vociferous apostle opposing the ban, at least at that time. Right?
Matt: [McConkie wrote] “Mormon Doctrine” of course where he articulates his views about the ban an African-Americans. or persons of African descent. So he has to persuade Elder McConkie this is the right thing to do. Elder McConkie, will be persuaded if the saints are to utilize the Brazil Temple, they have to give black men the priesthood. That’s the short answer. If you read Elder McConkie’s son’s memoir, Joseph Fielding McConkie writes a book about his father in 2003. If you read the chapter on the revelation, Joseph Fielding McConkie gives the credit to his father. “It was my father’s idea to give blacks the priesthood.” At least that’s how I read it. “The Brazil Temple.” I’m thinking. I actually chuckled when I read that chapter. Because President Kimball knew darn well what he was doing. Elder McConkie didn’t know what was going on.
Over the years, BYU is known as being predominantly white, and overwhelmingly Mormon. How do black and non-LDS students fare at BYU? In our next conversation with Dr. Matt Harris, we’ll talk about how well BYU administrators have tried to attract both racial and religious minorities.
Matt: I know some black students who have gone there and they fit in really well and been happy and some have just been miserable. Some have said the racism was nothing to write home about, it was okay. Others, oh my gosh, I’ve never been around as racist an institution as BYU.
Racism, of course, is defined in different ways, right? It’s not just calling somebody a racial slur, which I don’t think happened. But it’s using shards of the old Mormon racial doctrine. For example, a black BYU student came home to her dorm room one day, and her white roommate looked at her just stared at her as she walked through the door, and the black girl said, “What are you staring at?”
The white girl responded, “I just wonder what you’ll look like in the resurrection when you’re white like me. I wonder if I’ll recognize you.”
I mean, those are micro-aggressions that are just intensely painful.
…
GT: It does seem like Muslim kids seem to fit in well at BYU. I know some Muslims that have worked at BYU. I know Mohammed Elewonibi made it in the NFL.
Matt: Yeah, I remember him.
GT: He was a big lineman for BYU.
Matt: Was he LDS?
GT: No, he was Muslim.
Matt: Muslim. Okay. Yeah.
GT: Islam, they don’t have the Word of Wisdom, but they don’t drink.
Matt: They have the health code.
GT: BYU can be actually very attractive to Islamic athletes.
What are your thoughts about racial and religious minorities at BYU?
Wheat & Tares 
Great interview! Very interesting perspective on lingering issues about which we all carry around assumptions. This also gets me more interested in reading the Spencer W. Kimball biography in the future. Thanks for the post.
So interesting about Kimball wanting to rescind the racial ban the moment he became president. My immediate first thought was a parallel to President Nelson wanting to rescind the term mormon the moment he became president. Too bad an apostle has to wait to become president and then get the rest on board to reveal new revelations. I just imagine the good Uchtdorf or some others could do if they were allowed to implement their personal desires as revelations.
After the interview, I discovered that Mohammed Elewonibi had converted from Islam to LDS. (He played on the Super Bowl Champion Washington Redskins and then played in the Canadian Football League for several years.)
Check out Washington Post article.
David Nielsen, Ex employee of Ensign, a LDS nonprofit organization, says LDS church using tithing money for “for profit” endeavors. Neilson gave IRS a thumb drive with information about the practices of Ensign, and church is sitting on $100 billion dollars of tithing money.
In an article Edward Kimball wrote, he said that President Kimball gave a number of General Authorities assignments to research the priesthood and temple ban and write a memo. None could find revelatory support and just thin scriptural evidence. It was his way of getting some of the entrenched brethren to take an objective look at it. It’s referenced in footnote 15 of the Race and the Priesthood Gospel Topics essay.
It’s a good read.
Edward L. Kimball, “Spencer W. Kimball and the Revelation on Priesthood,” BYU Studies 47, no. 2 (Spring 2008), 18-20; Marjorie Newton, Southern Cross Saints: The Mormons in Australia (Laie: Hawaii: The Institute for Polynesian Studies, Brigham Young University-Hawaii, 1991), 209-210. Even before this time, President George Albert Smith concluded that the priesthood ban did not apply to Filipino Negritos. Kimball, “Spencer W. Kimball and the Revelation on the Priesthood,” 18-19.