Download e-book for iPad: The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History by Matthew L Harris

By Matthew L Harris

The 12 months 1978 marked a watershed 12 months within the background of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because it lifted a 126-year ban on ordaining black men for the priesthood. This departure from previous perform concentrated new realization on Brigham Young's determination to desert Joseph Smith's extra inclusive unique teachings.

The Mormon Church and Blacks provides thirty professional or authoritative Church statements at the prestige of African american citizens within the Mormon Church. Matthew L. Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst touch upon the person files, studying how they mirrored uniquely Mormon features and contextualizing every one in the higher scope of the background of race and faith within the usa. Their analyses think about how lifting the ban shifted the prestige of African americans inside Mormonism, together with the truth that African american citizens, as soon as denied entry to sure temple rituals thought of crucial for Mormon salvation, might eventually be thought of full-fledged Latter-day Saints in either this international and the following. all through, Harris and Bringhurst supply an educated view of behind-the-scenes Church politicking ahead of and after the ban. the result's an important source for specialists and laymen alike on a much-misunderstood point of Mormon background and trust.

Show description

Read Online or Download The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History PDF

Best african-american studies books

Black Politics After the Civil Rights Movement: Activity and - download pdf or read online

This significant learn posits a brand new manner of knowing how traditional Black humans used the 30 years following the civil rights move to forge a brand new political truth for themselves and their state. whereas following nationwide developments heavily, it focuses really at the political atmosphere of Sacramento, California, from 1970 to 2000.

Get Black legacy: America's hidden heritage PDF

Drawing on an enormous wealth of facts - folktales, oral histories, spiritual rituals, and tune - this booklet explores the pervasive if frequently unacknowledged impression of African traditions on American lifestyles. the result's a daring reinterpretation of yankee historical past that disrupts traditional assumptions and turns racial stereotypes inside of out.

New PDF release: Negotiating Boundaries of Southern Womanhood: Dealing with

In a time whilst such a lot americans by no means puzzled the basis that ladies will be subordinate to males, and in a spot the place simply white males loved totally the rights and privileges of citizenship, many ladies realized easy methods to negotiate societal barriers and to say a proportion of strength for themselves in a male-dominated global.

Extra info for The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History

Example text

Through these three works Joseph Smith strengthened his role and authority as Mormonism's primary leader. I. 2 The Book of Mormon published in 1830, just prior to the formal organization of the church, does not specifically address race and/or slavery involving blacks. Rather, it details the rise and fall of an ancient American civilization descended from a group of Israelites who migrated from the Holy Land to the New World about 600 BCE. Initially led by a man named Nephi, the “Nephites,” as they were known, built up a complex, urban-based civilization, lasting until AD 400.

Initially, Joseph Smith and other church spokesmen remained aloof from slavery. 3 Three major factors compelled Smith's changing stance. First was a growing Mormon presence in Missouri—a slave state whose population came primarily from the slaveholding South and neighboring border states. 4 Smith's desire to carry the Mormon message to potential converts in the slaveholding South also prompted him to support slavery. 5 By the early 1840s, Joseph Smith shifted his position once more, condemning slavery, promoting this view until his death in June 1844.

The two rebellious brothers led a group of dissidents into the wilderness, where they declined from their civilized state, becoming a barbaric, nomadic people known as Lamanites. God marked or “cursed” these Lamanites with a dark skin. Subsequently, the light-skinned Nephites and dark-skinned Lamanites fought each other in a series of protracted wars until the Nephites were ultimately wiped out, with only the Lamanites remaining. 6 While Book of Mormon references to the Jaredites’ precise ethnic background are somewhat vague, it states that this people originated in a region near the Tower of Babel before moving to the Valley of Nimrod—areas identified with the descendants of Ham.

Download PDF sample

The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History by Matthew L Harris


by Joseph
4.1

Rated 4.41 of 5 – based on 5 votes