Comments on: Did church members own slaves?

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 15:41:00 +0000

My family is from the south and owned slaves. One day doing genealogy I found the receipt of purchase for one of my families slaves. I felt impressed to ask my yule who works at the temple if I could do the work for him. I was pleased to hear that this is allowed and that even though he was a slave on Earth he could finally receive the blessings of the gospel in heaven.

By: JD

JD — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 02:50:00 +0000

In reply to Silhouette. Joseph was said to have not known Elijah Able was black. Brigham Young fiercely believed "the negro to be the cursed descendant of cain", relegated to "an inferior race due to rebellion in the pre-earth existence." He went on to say if someone had even one drop of "negro blood", his blood should be spilt. Despite Elijah Able remaining valiant and true he was not allowed to do his own Temple work. His descendants also remained true to the church and secretly intermarried with white families until they were indistinguishable from other white members.

By: John

John — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 05:41:00 +0000

I agree with Robert. It was a mistake. It should have never happened. It was not divinely inspired. And the revelation in 1978 was to correct this wrong.

By: Backroads

Backroads — Thu, 21 May 2015 12:20:00 +0000

In reply to LH Smith. That's a neat tale.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 18 May 2015 16:19:00 +0000

On the topic of the restriction of African blacks to the priesthood: Since there really is no evidence that suggests otherwise, nor doctrine to support it, nor any known reason that was ever given by Brigham Young for the institution of the restriction on African blacks, it was quite clearly the social custom of the day that was to blame. Further, it was left up to the membership to interpret the meaning of the restriction, giving rise to an unfortunate display of supposition and “doctrinal folklore” to shore it up (for example, assuming that blacks were not valiant in the premortal realm or that the curse of Cain involved being given black skin, neither of which are supported by revelation). As a result, these suppositions then perpetuated and traditionalized the restriction until the Lord directly intervened to correct what should have been recognized as a rather embarrassing violation of existing revelation, and thus rendering the restriction a mystery as to how it came to pass. I submit that the restriction on African blacks was never instituted by way of revelation, and the lifting of the restriction in the 1970s was the Lord directly intervening to correct a rather obvious and doctrinally backwards error that was nothing more than a pervasive social custom of the era.

By: LH Smith

LH Smith — Thu, 14 May 2015 14:35:00 +0000

My ancestors John and Caroline Butler (he served as a body guard to Joseph Smith) were given slaves on their wedding day by her parents, and they freed them the same day because they didn’t believe slavery was a good thing. This was before they encountered the LDS church. The two freed slaves stayed voluntarily with the family through all of church history and even came out to Utah with them as members of the family, not regarded as slaves or servants at all.

Joseph Smith taught that slavery was wrong.

By: Silhouette

Silhouette — Thu, 14 May 2015 12:03:00 +0000

So if Joseph Smith himself bestowed the Priesthood upon a black man, where and when did it come down that black men couldn’t hold the Priesthood?