By: SRR

SRR — Thu, 26 May 2016 15:59:00 +0000

I don’t believe the actually history of the Church has been altered. But the way the Church has presented the material over the years certainly has left out significant historical information. I grew up in the Church in a small rural, all Mormon community. I could count the number of non-Mormon on one hand. I went to seminary. I attended Church. And I was a good student – searching for knowledge. And in all those years I was fed a sanitized version of Church history. I was fed a version of Joseph Smith and polygamy that was far from accurate. I was taught all the great things about Brigham Young without any of the “real negatives of the man”. I was taught the curse of Cain doctrine. I fully believed in the priesthood ban. I was taught the white and delightsome theory about righteous living. And I can go on and on.
I don’t think the Church changed its history, but they certainly buried it and concentrated on the points they wanted the members to believe.
As I got older, I continued to study and to learn. Unfortunately instead of strengthening my testimony, the opposite happened. And I am not talking about anti-Mormon materials. I was simply reading the approved texts of the Church itself. But I was digging deeper into the history and really getting behind some of the doctrines that were taught at the time of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, but that are rejected by the Church today. I applaud the Church for rejecting some of the vile teachings of the past, but the Church seems to fall short of fully explaining and apologizing. The three main historical issues (there are many but I will limit my conversation to these three), that I believe have been whitewashed by Church are as follows:
1) Joseph Smith’s wives and the circumstances surrounding the marriages. Joseph Smith struggled with polygamy, yet he violated the very law that he wrote in D&C 132. He took under aged brides, married a Mother and daughter and the wives of other men, while they were still married. Yet, the story I was taught of the wives of Joseph Smith was a completely sanitized version. This chapter of Joseph Smith’s life is very seedy and now it is front and center because people no longer are dependent upon the Church publications. The source information is widely available. I accept that Joseph Smith handled the responsibility of polygamy poorly, but I do accept the sanitized version of the story that I was fed as a youth.
2) The curse of Cain doctrine and the Priesthood ban are the single greatest source of concern for me. It was not an original idea of Brigham Young. He borrowed it from the American, Southern states evangelical churches, who simply made it up to justify slavery. It was never accepted broadly by Christians around the world. Brigham Young was a racist and he forced his racism on members of the Church for 130 years and that racism still exists as many members still believe the Priesthood ban was a revelation from God. It was not. It is untrue. It was a false doctrine. We need to accept this truth, we were duped by a racist.
3) And the last issue regards the American Indians. They are not descents of the Israelites. They are of Asian descent. And there is little doubt of that today. That is a big deal to me. So the Lamanites, as described in the Book of Mormon, are not the forefather’s of the American Indians. As a young child and young adult I was taught that they were the descents of the Lamanites which were less valiant. The story is almost like the cowboy and Indians of the old west. The entire white and delightsome theory is repulsive and is certainly not of God.
So, yes the Church did not destroy the original history, but certainly influenced and presented what they wanted the members learn and what to ignore. And much of that learning left out some of the more serious issue. And there is no denying that members were taught in Church, some doctrines that were untrue and wrong. And that are not accepted today.

Comments on: Has the LDS church ever ex-purged its historical record and supplanted a more benign version?

By: SRR