Please, learn about Correlation.

Few things have had such an impact on LDS life as the development of Correlation. Through Correlation, the auxiliaries of the LDS Church, including the women's, children's, and youth programs all lost much of their autonomy as they passed under the more direct control of the Priesthood. Follow this link to "By Common Consent," where a panel of scholars of Mormonism share their views about Correlation. This thread should not be missed.

Mormonism entering the Academy

Mormon Studies continues to be a hot issue on the Bloggernacle. Recently, at Times & Seasons, the news that Claremont has established its first chair for Mormon Studies elicited scores of responses. Understandably, many faithful Mormons are excited by the prospect that their religion has become the focus of greater academic attention. In spite of some reservations regarding placing Mormonism under a secularist microscope, Mormons are cautiously optimistic that more academic attention is a mark of increasing respect for the faith and its founder Joseph Smith.

Unfortunately, discussion of the rise of Mormon Studies is temporarily mired in the question of why D. Michael Quinn cannot land a job. As proponents of Mormon Studies observed, Quinn would arguably have some hurdles regardless of the Church's attitude toward him (although some of these issues are the result of unjustifiable Church actions). So, while we may feel justifiable sadness for his current plight, these problems should not be the predominant focus of the current discussion of Mormon Studies. Having said that, his story raises many of the issues that should cause concern for those interested in the academic study of Mormonism, because it is what his story teaches that makes some of us very uncomfortable.

Nate Oman has called out Hellmut Lotz for being paranoid with regard to the prospects for Mormon Studies in an environment where academic institutions are sensitive to the feelings of the Mormon community, many of the donors for chairs in Mormon Studies are faithful LDS people, and in at least one case the LDS Church was contacted with reassurances about the university's intentions in having a Mormon Studies chair. On the face of it, all of this seems reasonable and no cause for alarm. Add to this the fact that the academic paradise of totally unfettered inquiry and speech is a fantasy, and you begin to wonder why people are the least concerned about LDS influence on the study of its faith.

Are people like Hellmut merely indulging in unwarranted alarmism? Why be concerned about LDS influence on the academic study of Mormonism?

The reasons for concern are rooted in recent Church rhetoric and action. They include 1) the Church's record of anti-intellectualism and hostility to academic inquiry; 2) the political alignment of the Church with groups who seek to remake society on religious models; and 3) broader institutional control over the thought and expression of LDS people through the instrument of temple covenants. The last in particular is both subtle and insidious in that endowed members of the Church make expansive oaths of loyalty to the institution of the Church, thus creating a situation in which the least hint from the leadership is all that is necessary to persuade members to pursue or to avoid a particular line of thought or course of action.

Let's consider a few events in recent LDS history that have caused people like Hellmut and me concern about the Church's regard for academic inquiry into Mormonism. First, in 1981 LDS apostle Boyd Packer gave a paper tellingly entitled "Do not spread disease germs!" about the responsibility of Mormon historians to write faith-promoting history. Evidently anything but historical rhetoric designed to promote the missionary and devotional interests of the LDS Church is comparable to communicable disease. This all sounds perfectly reasonable, no? In this talk, Packer sought to define the proper writing and teaching of Mormon history and thereby dissuade Mormons from pursuing academic perspectives that might challenge a Mormon's belief in the status quo version of official Mormon history.

In 1989 LDS apostle Dallin Oaks cautioned members of the LDS Church against listening to "other voices" and "alternate views," pointing to unofficial LDS publications (Sunstone, Dialogue) that frequently took a critical perspective when dealing with the institutional LDS Church. It should be noted, for the sake of perspective, that in a Church of millions of members, Sunstone has never reached 20,000 subscriptions. One wonders why a worldwide Church with such a large membership should need to call attention to the very few people who read articles espousing critical perspectives, and the even fewer who write them. This was followed up in 1991 by an LDS First Presidency warning against attending certain "symposia," again a swipe at Sunstone.

A decent barometer of the official LDS stance toward academia would be the atmosphere at its flagship institution, BYU. Consider the following: 1) administrators have in the past planted spies in classrooms to make sure that professors were not teaching or promoting certain political views or theories like "evolution;" 2) BYU students have continued to inform on professors voluntarily in a quest to hone their own righteousness or gain the attention of Church authorities; 3) by the year 2000 BYU had seen the firing or resigning of a number of academically competent professors for their political views, research, or philosophies. One English professor was fired essentially for publically airing pro-choice views. Keep in mind that the LDS Church is not officially a pro-life institution.

Consider now the political alignment of the LDS Church. The Church committed many thousands of dollars and its members' time and efforts to the defeat of ERA. One of their sadly amusing tactics was to rile up LDS people by focusing on the horrors of uni-sex bathrooms. The LDS Church now allies itself with the Religious Right in the fight against gay marriage. To this end it has enlisted the help of BYU professors to prostitute their credentials in offering specious expert testimony in court. It has also committed millions of dollars in funds, all of which ultimately derive from tithing moneys, to the cause of seeing that 3% or so of the population do not acquire the privilege of marrying the person they love. The dirty little un-secret of Mormon politics is that they have skewed right for some time. Read "The Mormon Corporate Empire" to see how far in bed Mormons were with the fringe Right up to (and beyond) the mid eighties.

Think of it. The Religious Right is the same group of folks that want to bring their religion into the schools either directly or through the backdoor theology of Intelligent Design. On the local level they bully school administrators and teachers to keep evolution from being taught to the children we hope will one day find a cure to cancer and AIDS, build and pilot rockets to carry us to Mars, etc. Fat chance if the theocrats have their way. These folks also lead the fight in equating human conception with full-blown personhood in a quest to make abortion of any kind (including cases of rape, incest, and danger to the mother) illegal. Thanks to people of their ilk the hands of US scientific researchers have been tied in stem-cell research. If the most extreme of these groups had their way, the United States would be the Western equivalent of a medievalesque Islamic regime like Taliban Afghanistan.

The leaders of the LDS Church have certainly made their point with regard to their position on LDS intellectuals, politics, and scholarship. They have orchestrated BYU firings, and local excommunications, even going so far in the case of Simon Southerton of coming up with a highly questionable pretext to get rid of him. After writing a book about DNA and the Book of Mormon, Southerton was subjected to Church discipline for a long past affair he engaged in while separated from his wife.

Is there any question about how the Church feels when intellectual arguments lead members simply to question contemporary Church teachings? By the same token, is it at all unclear to the faithful member what the Church expects of him or her when investing in a Mormon Studies chair? After all, these folks have probably covenanted in an LDS temple to commit their entire lives to the welfare of the LDS Church.

As far as the institutions taking up Mormon Studies are concerned, given the Church's record of dealing with its ideological foes quite aggressively, is it any wonder that they seek to avoid the Church's and LDS community's ire when bringing the academic study of Mormonism into the university? Is their willingness to bend over backwards to reassure the LDS Church an unqualified positive? I rather think not. The fact that universities are so inclined is more an indicator of Mormon hypersensitivity than it is of non-LDS sympathy.

There is no question in my mind why one should scrutinize the way that Mormon Studies are conducted. Any academic pursuit should be subject to scrutiny. Indiscriminate leftist hate for the military and the Republican party within the academy should be subject to greater scrutiny. Since the LDS Church and its members have, especially in recent years, shown a proclivity to limit speech severely within their own community, to fight against the extension of human rights outside of their community, and to cooperate with groups whose stunning anti-intellectualism is not only shame-inspiring but downright dangerous, surely it is prudent to be concerned about how the LDS Church may influence, directly or indirectly, its presentation and discussion within the world of academia.

Finally, if there is paranoia about the Church's possible role in Mormon Studies, it is surely one that was born in the Church's own paranoid behavior. Any Church that would instruct its members not to take notes in meetings and not to circulate them on the internet clearly has some issues with trust. Any Church that is willing to cooperate with the Religious Right cannot cry foul when it faces the consequences of that choice to its own image. Any academician worth his or her salt would be remiss in their professional duties if he or she was not wary of the influence of such an organization on the academic study of said institution.

William Call on Mormon Testimony

The following is taken from William Call's 2000 book, "The Cultural Revolution":

A Mormon's "testimony" feigns certainty via a supposed knowledge that negates real understanding. He who knows "beyond a shadow of a doubt" has no need to comprehend, discern, or master. The "knowledge" given by the Holy Ghost both precludes and takes the place of understanding. Is anyone as ignorant as he who thinks he has God's knowledge, and is any religion as void of knowledge as one that suppresses understanding with supposed "spiritual" knowledge? A Mormon "testimony," because it has no foundational suport, is a confession of ignorance concerning that which it is supposed to affirm absolutely and without question. It is a declaration that man is completely dependent on God so far as religious questions are concerned. The claim that one can found one's religion on the "knowledge" gained from "prayer and testimony" is a denial that man in and of himself can do anything to gain knowledge concerning religious truth other than to humble himself before his God and submit himself to Church authority.

"Spiritual knowledge" received from a source that cannot be separated from one's own prejudices and which has little or nothing to do with an acquaintance with the matters in question is ignorance. Mormonism's "testimony bearing" is an ackowledgment that the believer does not need to delve into religious questions; all he needs to do is "pray with faith, nothing doubting" and "keep the commandments." The rest can be left to the "still small voice" that "whispers" in his ear and instills "burning testimony" of the truth of whatever the Church claims is true. Mormonism's religious enthusiasm as exhibited in the form of testimony bearing takes the place of doctrinal and ecclesiastical understanding and removes any responsibility one might have to master one's religion. Both rank and file Mormons and their leaders are dependent on their testimonies. They cannot question what they already "know" is true. And so it is that a Mormon testimony is more than a denial of life's uncertainties; it is a denial that a critical evaluation of any kind is effective or necessary so far as discovering religious truth is concerned.

Wanna be like Mike?

D. Michael Quinn is one of the best and most controversial scholars of Mormonism. Dr. Quinn has made discussion of treasure digging and magic an indispensible topic in scholarship of early Mormonism. He wrote a groundbreaking two-volume work on the development of the Mormon Church's hierarchy. According to a Wall Street Journal Online article written by Daniel Golden, he is also finding it impossible to find employment in the area of his expertise.

I have an interesting perspective on this story. Before I explain why Dr. Quinn, one of the foremost scholarly authorities on Mormonism is having a difficult time finding a job, I will share my perspective.

For some time I lurked or posted over at FAIR. FAIR, which is among the links on my blog here, is an online apologist resource. It has a discussion board. In one forum on the board, apologists of all stripes and critics of Mormonism gather to slug it out. I grew tired of the predictable slant in moderating the board. If criticism reached a certain level of pointedness or effectiveness, a thread would get shut down, usually right after someone like professor Daniel Peterson had the last word.

I am capable of being practical. FAIR was created for the purpose of promoting Mormonism. Arguments that call truth claims of Mormonism into question are likely to get shut down. In my last thread at FAIR I made the mistake of bringing up the employment of two men who had written an inept review of Vogel's biography of Joseph Smith. Although men like Daniel Peterson have no problem using the ad hominem when it comes to identifying the atheism of critics of Mormonism, he did have a big problem when I called into question the scholarly objectivity, such that it can exist, of two men who have to hold temple recommends to keep their jobs.

My point was not welcome, and I was put on the 'queue.' This meant that anything I wrote had to be approved by the moderators. I tried to post something through this route once, and my post never saw the thread. I am sure the moderators really are too busy to screen these things, which makes putting people in the 'queue' very similar to putting on the gag. Fair enough. I have learned my lesson.

The apologists had their own day of realization when they abandoned ZLMB, the leading board of the time, because in spite of favorable moderating policies carried out by a team of LDS and non-LDS moderators. They felt they were being victimized by the biting posting of critics. So they left for the safe harbors of FAIR where agressive moderation in their favor made their lives more comfortable and their arguments more likely to seem to prevail.

Now we get closer to the point of this exercise. One of the FAIR board's most prolific posters and moderators is a graduate student at Claremont College. She is studying religion. She likes to crow about how the days of amateur Mormon scholarship by "counter-Mormons" (a 'counter-Mormon' is a secularist amateur scholar who writes Mormon scholarship with a secularist agenda) is drawing to a close, and that people like herself are the vanguard of the future of academic Mormon Studies. Sounds to me like her triumphalism is motivated by something more than guess work.

I had no idea how true this could be until I read the Goldman article. Mr. Goldman briefly documents how it is wealthy Mormons who are funding Mormon Studies chairs, and that these donors' views ultimately influence the hiring process. You pay for the chair, and it happens to turn out that they hire someone you don't find offensive. There's no conspiracy here. We're simply talking about the money of those who are flush and motivated (wealthy Mormons) dictating, to no negligible degree, how the academic study of Mormonism will be conducted.

The Goldman article also shows how people like Mike Quinn are edged out in other ways. Quinn made the mistake of asking BYU prof. and Mormon historian Thomas Alexander for a letter of recommendation when he went up for a job at the University of Utah--a state-funded institution. Alexander cautioned the U against hiring Quinn because his controversial scholarship would cost the university donations. Now, it is clear to me that Alexander stabbed Quinn in the back, but what he said is true, and in the modern, capitalist, corporate university knowledge is controlled by money.

For this reason Mike Quinn has been turned down for at least two jobs he was eminently qualified for. When he had a visiting position at Yale, BYU threatened to withdraw funding for an academic conference on Mormonism hosted by Yale if Mike were allowed to present a paper. In the end, Quinn personally yielded and merely introduced a paper for someone else. Once again, it is the power of money that determines which information sees the light of day.

These are the realities of our world. Don't be fooled. The Academy is not the place where any well-founded argument can have a fair showing in the arena of ideas. It is not the place where any useful question can be asked. And where it concerns different fields of specialty in Religious Studies, expect that the person who teaches your child about Islam, Evangelical Christianity, Mormonism, Catholicism, or New Age spirituality, will increasingly be a person who has an agenda to spin that informaion in a panegyrical manner.

What is at stake here? Honest education. Do we want Religion Departments at major universities to become arenas for proselytizing? Is Religious Studies a valid field of academic endeavor when the people who staff it are well-educated missionaries for their personal faith? It sounds OK when you think of your faith being taught by someone who sees things in a favorable light and teaches accordingly, but what if you are an Evangelical and your child is learning Mormonism from a Mormon, or Islam from a Muslim? Does it seem just a little more like missionary work then?

Apologists argue that if you want accurate information about a religion, you should go to a believer. I say that if you want someone to try to persuade you to join a religion, go to a believer. If conversion is your goal, by all means restrict your exposure to favorable sources. If education is your goal, then consider different perspectives, not just a believer's.

If you are a well-published, Yale-trained scholar like Mike, you may forever remain unemployed in the field of your expertise and fame. If you are a relatively unknown, unproven, brassy polemicist at FAIR with a graduate degree from Claremont, you may just have an eager financial backer. Wanna be like Mike?

"Dogs and cats, living together--mass hysteria!"---Dr. Peter Venkman

Last autumn, my wife and I became the proud parents of a beautiful baby girl. In my opinion, the present age provides the best prospects for women's freedom and happiness. She can obtain an advanced education, pursue a career, find her true love, have access to decent medical care, and avoid starvation. Her income will be closer to equal to that of her male counterparts than previously. Laws protect her from discrimination, harrassment, and violence. In other words, our baby girl can have a bright future.

Still, we have a long way to go before women are given equal consideration. Much of the problem is with perceptions. It is difficult to change people's attitudes, no matter how much you legislate a problem. My conservative friends love to point this out to me. They also think that there is no problem with their attitudes. Fancy that.

Last week I received a wedding announcement in the mail. Normally I would be overjoyed to receive such news. This time my joy was tempered by the realization that only a year and a half ago, the bride to be was sitting in my youth Sunday School class. Not only is this woman quite young to be getting married, she was also by far the most intelligent young person I taught that year. She understood complex concepts and picked up on subtleties most adults miss. When she read something, she did much more than understand the surface meaning of the text. She really grasped what she was reading, rather than simply repeating the Sunday School liturgy.

Before I go on, it is important for me to say that I sincerely hope that her marriage brings her great joy. It is most important that each of us has the freedom to grow and find happiness in this life. If that means getting married at a young age, then bully for the person who is so fortunate. I wish more intelligent folks who treat their fellow humans with true compassion would have more children who will behave as wonderfully as they do.

I guess what troubles me is the exaggerated emphasis that the LDS Church places on getting young women married. This young lady whose announcement I received spent a single year at school at Brigham Young University. One year. Maybe she'll go back. I have no idea, but I sure hope she does. As someone who spent some time with the young people of my ward, and who knows something of what the young women are taught from inside sources, I know that far too many bright young women are being discouraged from pursuing any career by their LDS elders.

The young women in our ward are being warned that the woman who works is supremely unhappy and that she deeply envies her friends who can stay home with the children. Unfortunate is the poor girl who "has to work because her husband does not support her" (you catch the assumption that she would not work simply because she wants to?). Yes, I bet there are these poor souls out there. But there are also the poor souls who married because they felt they had to, who hate being tied down at home, who are miserable as parents, and who raise their children to be equally miserable humans.

You see, the real problem is not working or staying home. The real problem is a society that tells people there is a single way to be happy in this life. Everyone is expected to live by that one plan, and there are to be no exceptions. If you choose something else, you aren't playing by the rules, and you probably won't attain the eternal rewards. The well meaning people of your community look down at you with that self-satisfied illusion of compassion that says, "poor thing, if only she were as fortunate as I am."

We can say that the problem is with the people, not the Gospel. And I hope that when it comes to the REAL fundamentals of the Gospel we are right. But what is fundamental? Faith, repentance, baptism, and enduring to the end. Loving God and your fellow human beings. This is the full extent of the law. These are the requirements.

Some people, including the leadership of the Church, also have a thing about gender, however. And they are deeply concerned that people conform to their understanding of gender so that a very angry Jesus does not come and destroy everything like Sodom and Gomorrah. Except that Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed because mom wanted a job and Balthazar loved Shiz instead of Sariah. The incident that broke it for Sodom was the violation of ancient mores concerning hospitality.

But the LDS Church, grasping at a way to remain relevant to its members without being useful or interesting in the least, came up with the Proclamation to the World on the Family. At the risk of gross oversimplification, I will boil the Proclamation down to what I think were the essentials they were really concerned about when they drafted this thing. If dad doesn't go to work, if mom doesn't stay home with the kids, and if Adam tries to marry Steve instead of Eve, God will rain down blood and horror upon the land.

What if dad stays home with the kids while mom goes to work? What if the whole family is happier that way? What if Adam really loves Steve and never had any interest in an Eve in his life? What if the tiny percentage of people who truly love a person of the same gender get married? Is it true that God will destroy us?

Since my homophobic friends like to bring forward the example of Sodom and Gomorrah, I will try to illustrate something useful using the very same text. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the homophobes are right about the interpretation of the Sodom story. God destroys Sodom because it is thoroughly wicked. This depth of turpitude is reached when street gangs go pink. Consider Genesis 18:

26 And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
27 And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes:
28 Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it.
29 And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty’s sake.
30 And he said unto him, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there.
31 And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty’s sake.
32 And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.

Now, I have no clue what the population of ancient Sodom was. Let's lowball it and say that three hundred people lived in Sodom. I say three hundred because recent estimates of David's Jerusalem are around several thousand. Ten righteous people out of three hundred would be a little over 3%. Recent estimates place the gay population in the United States at roughly the same percentage.

Let's assume that God would be as forgiving today as He was then. What is the likelihood that this 3% would shift to over 97%, thus bringing the wrath of God down upon the heads of all? How likely is it that over 97% of our population will leave dad at home, place mom in the workplace, or be a married homosexual (assuming that this were legalized in all of the states)? I would say it ain't gonna happen.

We have a long ways to go, even if the leaders of the LDS Church are correct about this, before God rains down with blood and horror upon us.

But I have truly digressed. As I ponder about the things I want my daughter to learn, the values I want inculcated in her impressionable mind, the apocalyptic fury of a vengeful God who doesn't like women to work in the outside world doesn't even touch the list. It is no mistake that the Church whose leaders place these kinds of values at a premium sees its young women marrying as soon as they hit 18. I just hope that my daughter doesn't marry so young and for the wrong reasons.

The Power of Stories: Mormon Racism

President Hinckley instructed the men of the priesthood not to discriminate against people of other ethnicities in the Saturday Priesthood session of General Conference. For speaking out against racism, President Hinckley deserves praise. Was this effort, however, sufficient?

Let's consider the problem of polygamy. At one time leaders of the LDS Church taught that engaging in polygamy was necessary to reach the highest degree of exaltation. In other words, to become deified, one needed to live the law of polygamy. It took two official statements of the Presidency of the Church and decades of cooperation with local and federal authorities to marginalize polygamy in LDS culture. Generally it is only the highly dedicated person who reads a lot of the Journal of Discourses that ever considers how odd it is that Mormons think they will be exalted without living the Principle. Some of these folks join the Fundamentalists.

In other words, polygamy is pretty far behind us as a people. My wife would not tolerate me engaging in it. Few LDS women would.

Unfortunately, racism is a more persistent problem because it involves attitudes that many secretly carry in their hearts. No one has to be commanded to be a racist. All it takes is exposure to racist thought coupled with an irrational fear of those who are different to be eligible. As human beings, we are prone to stumble when it comes to reason and courage.

Unlike polygamy, which still manages to lure a few people out of the mainstream Church here and there, racist ideas and practises are very recent phenomena for Mormons. In 1978 the Second Official Declaration, which resulted from the prayers of President Kimball and the other leading authorities of the LDS Church at the time, ended the "practise" side of the equation. The LDS priesthood has been extended to peoples of all ethnicities.

The "idea" side of the equation is still sadly very present among too many members of the LDS Church. What is the "idea"? From as far back as the year after Joseph Smith's assassination, we find Orson Pratt, one of the Twelve of the day, teaching what would essentially become the normative position on race:

"At the time the devil was cast out of heaven, there were some spirits that did not know who had authority, whether God or the devil. They consequently did not take a very active part on either side, but rather thought the devil had been abused, and considered he had the best claim to the government. These spirits were not considered bad enough to be cast down to hell, and never have bodies; neither were they considered worthy of an honourable body on this earth...and hence the negro or African race."

Ordinarily I would not employ an elipsis, but the passage is so long, and the sentiments so vile, that I thought it best to truncate it.

The above quote comes from the year 1845. Essentially the very same teaching can be found in the first edition of Elder Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine, which was published in 1958. I had never known where McConkie could have come up with such stuff, especially when it did not appear in the scriptures. Now I know.

I also understand better why these teachings present a real problem. Pratt, or someone else, went to a lot of trouble to come up with a mythological justification for slavery. He crafted a narrative that fit more or less into the unique theology of Mormonism about the pre-mortal existence. The significance of this fact cannot be overstated. The power of creating such narratives was the gift and responsibility of a seer, and it was exercised mostly by Joseph Smith. His successors exercised it rarely, Joseph F. Smith being the last president of the Church to provide a major narrative about the other world.

Unfortunately, at least in this case, stories are much more powerful than the dry legalistic language of the Official Declarations. One remembers stories long after one has forgotten the wherefores and whatnots of official statements. In this case, the narrative involved is the very foundation of an LDS person's concept of personal identity. Being polluted with Pratt's racist myth as it is, something more dramatic than an Official Declaration or instruction not to be racist is required to combat it. In short, many members maintain a racist perspective because they recall easily the powerful and fundamental story at its roots, a story that continued to be told up to and after 1978.

In the case of Adam-God, the First Presidency issued a statement specifically designed to correct the teaching. At least one apostle fulminated over the pulpit about the falseness of it long after the Presidency corrected it. James E. Talmage was commissioned to write a statement on theology that directly contradicted the theology of Adam-God. It has been made clear that Adam-God is false doctrine, and that those who promote it will be subject to Church discipline.

The result of the Adam-God crackdown is pretty clear. Today, very few people even know that this was once taught by the second prophet of this dispensation as the "Doctrine of the Priesthood." Only a very small, studious minority even bothers to think about the issue in depth. Adam-God is, for the mainstream LDS Church, a dead doctrine.

Since the Church's efforts to marginalize polygamy and Adam-God were so successful, it would seem that similar efforts might be committed quite usefully to ending the widespread "folklore" that black people were cursed for their inaction in the pre-mortal conflict with Satan and his minions. We cannot simply stand on the idea that God finally decided to give these poor people a break by lifting a curse. The people are not poor but wonderful. The curse never happened in the first place.

The Second Official Declaration is inadequate to put an end to the belief in a curse. Official, and highly visible statements, along the lines of the efforts against Adam-God, are necessary to put the matter to rest. People should think that it is sinful for them to believe in the curse. There should be no loopholes. No concept of a curse that was lifted. People should be persuaded to believe that they may face Church discipline for teaching such a thing. Perhaps the matter should be incorporated into the temple recommend interview. If bishops have felt to inquire into people's soda drinking habits in worthiness interviews, why have they not felt similarly inclined on the subject of racism?

In other words, given the fact that the LDS Church, when it is really serious about stamping out something, gives real teeth to its efforts to do so, their efforts to stamp out racism in the Church do not seem to me to be very serious at all. Who has been excommunicated simply for being an unrepentant racist? Why do conservative Mormons proudly crow on the Bloggernacle that the Church is not racist, but that it was God, who could not possibly be racist, that cursed blacks and then extended his grace in 1978, all the while sincere in their conviction that they are not racist for believing such a thing?

Clearly something needs to change here.