Whiteness Theology and the Evolution of Mormon Racial Teachings - Matt Harris - Mormon Stories #1366

Whiteness Theology and the Evolution of Mormon Racial Teachings: What the Church's Essays Leave Unsaid

The LDS Church's 2013 essay on race and the priesthood ban represents one of the most significant institutional acknowledgments of a painful historical record. Yet according to scholar Matt Harris, speaking on the Mormon Stories podcast, the essay's careful language obscures as much as it reveals, particularly regarding whether racial restrictions were doctrine, policy, or mere cultural prejudice. Understanding this distinction matters profoundly for members seeking to reconcile their faith with historical truth, and for researchers examining how religious institutions process uncomfortable pasts.

When Spencer W. Kimball announced the priesthood revelation in 1978, the LDS Church gained the ability to move forward, but it never fully reckoned with what had come before. Harris argues that this unresolved "racial residue", the curse narratives, less-valiant theology, and institutional justifications, never fully disappeared from Mormon discourse. The question of what to call these teachings, and who was responsible for them, remains contentious nearly fifty years later.

Background: From Joseph Smith to Brigham Young

The historical record presents a puzzle that the Church's official essay attempts to navigate carefully. Joseph Smith, according to the essay and corroborating historical evidence, did ordain Black members to the priesthood in the early Church, including Elijah Abel and at least one other person whose name remains uncertain.

In 1852, Brigham Young announced a priesthood restriction on Black members. Yet here lies a critical interpretive problem: Young never formally recorded this as binding doctrine. Instead, it emerged as a practice, supported by various theological theories about African ancestry, lineage through Israel, and pre-mortal spiritual choices. For over a century, different Church leaders articulated different justifications, some rooted in scripture, some in folk theology, some in explicit racial pseudoscience.