It was a mistake made by Brigham Young. Stop promoting this racist and completely false doctrine imposed by Brigham Young without revelation. Even the Church acknowledges this fact. And since Joseph Smith ordained black men to the priesthood, either Joseph Smith screwed up and did something he was not supposed to or Brigham Young screwed up and did something he was not supposed to. I believe it was Brigham Young that screwed up and so does the Church. Read the essay and other statements regarding this issue and stop spreading this false doctrine. We need to end this racism.

A lot.

Thank you for your comments. You are absolutely, 100% correct in your analysis. And I also wish people would stop trying to justify the priesthood ban. Brigham Young made a mistake and was very confused about the curse of Cain and the curse of Ham. Even if you believe in such nonsenses, there is no place in scripture that specifically applies the either curse specifically to African Blacks. That is just a false doctrine made up by man. It crept into Mormonism from the Southern Protestants that used it to justify slavery. And almost all of those Churches have come clean about their involved, apologized for it and completely acknowledged it was a false doctrine. I find it odd that this doctrine of connecting the Curse of Cain to African blacks was a Southern American (the deep South) thing. It was not accepted by the Northern Churches, nor the Churches in Europe. Neither the Western or Eastern Catholic Churches accepted this false doctrine. In fact most of Christianity did not accept this false doctrine.

The Church has disavowed the Priesthood ban in the Priesthood essay and in other official statements. We need to accept it as a mistake and stop justifying it.

And again thank you so much for your honest and truth in discussing this matter. It infuriates me when LDS members try to support a false doctrine. Isn’t promoting false doctrines grounds for discipline? LOL.

Ezra 2: 61-63 is not “only Mormon scripture”, and that it describes a group of Israel that had married into an ineligible bloodline, is pretty hard to miss. In keeping with LDS doctrine regarding the “Bible….so far as it is translated correctly…”, the word “eat” in verse 63 clearly should be “partake”. The word “priest” is acceptable as it stands, it being a synonym for “prophet” and even “the Lord” elsewhere in ancient scripture. The term “Urim and Thummim” is impossible to misinterpret, both in and out of LDS culture.

The message of the Tirshatha is just as clear as anything that can be expressed in modern English – “Folks, it’s going to take a revelation from God through his holy prophet, to change this.”

I am nothing less than thrilled by the revelation of 1978, but may we please note that there is no apology for ‘error’ contained in it. I thank God, and no one else. that it came. No mistake.

Regarding racial conjectures, whoever conjured up the idea that blacks were the descendants of Ham (which was originally a Protestant doctrine, used to justify slavery, that predates Mormonism) was ignorant of both geography and history. Ham and his descendants lived in Egypt and modern-day Palestine, nowhere near where the majority of black African slaves who were the ancestors of most modern black Americans came from. Geneologically there is no connection between them at all, so it is not a valid rationale for why the priesthood ban was put in place.

All available evidence simply seems to point to Brigham Young simply having made a mistake when reading the scriptures and having drawn an erroneous concluding by combining together modern scripture with false Protestant doctrine that was commonplace at that time and with which he was probably raised. Since I do not believe in prophetic infallibility (recognizing that the Church does not now nor has it ever taught that prophets are infallible), this is not a problem for me. Why it took so long to correct the mistake remains a mystery, and I could offer some conjectures of my own, but it is sufficient for me that the Lord has his reasons for organizing his kingdom in the way he felt was best, up to the point where that was no longer the case.

At any rate, I wish people would stop trying to rationalize this mistake and instead simply acknowledge it and move on.

@ Anne: Even before 1978, there were exceptions made to the ban. For example, descendants of certain black men who were ordained to the priesthood in Joseph Smith’s day (Elijah Abel, for example) were ordained to the priesthood notwithstanding the general policy. Also, my recollection is that during President David O. McKay’s ministry there was a bit of a change in the administration of the ban: Previously, men seeking priesthood ordination had had to prove that they did not have any black ancestors; but after the change, the onus was on a person challenging a potential priesthood ordination to prove that the candidate did have such ancestry. The only person who can really answer your question is the Lord, through prayer; but my experience is that Satan generally tends to throw up road blocks to keep us out of the temple (car trouble, child care issues . . . ad infinitum, even when there’s no formal policy that would prohibit us us from going. You could very well have simply been a victim of bad luck on the occasions you mention. :-)