Appearance
Priesthood & Temple Ban
The claim:
"For close to 130 years blacks were not only banned from holding the priesthood but black individuals and black families were blocked from the saving ordinances of the Temple. Every single prophet from Brigham Young all the way to Harold B. Lee kept this ban in place."[1]
The CES Letter also argues that the 2013 Gospel Topics Essay disavowed "the 'theories' of yesterday's Prophets, Seers, and Revelators," that 2 Nephi 5:21 contradicts the Church's own disavowal, and that the 1978 revelation had "absolutely nothing to do with" IRS threats, BYU boycotts, or civil rights pressure -- it was pure political capitulation.[2]
This is the hardest topic in this section. Harder than Adam-God. Harder than blood atonement. The priesthood and temple ban caused real suffering to real people for over a century. Any honest treatment starts there.
But does the CES Letter tell the full story -- or only the version that supports its conclusion?
Further Reading
The Church's Gospel Topics Essay "Race and the Priesthood" is the authoritative Church statement on this topic. It disavows past racial theories and provides historical context.
What the CES Letter gets right
The ban was real. It lasted roughly 126 years. It denied Black men ordination to the priesthood and denied Black men and women access to temple endowment and sealing ordinances. The theories used to justify it -- the curse of Cain, premortal unworthiness, the curse of Ham -- were wrong.
The CES Letter is right that this is painful. It is right that the theories were racist. It is right that the Church has disavowed them.
Where the CES Letter goes wrong is in what it leaves out, what it distorts, and the conclusion it draws.
Joseph Smith ordained Black men to the priesthood
The CES Letter mentions this in passing. It deserves more than passing mention.
During Joseph Smith's lifetime, there is no evidence that any Black man was denied the priesthood on the basis of race.[3] Several Black men were ordained and participated fully in the life of the Church.
Elijah Abel. Born around 1808, Abel was ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood in 1836 by Ambrose Palmer. He was washed and anointed in the Kirtland Temple and received his patriarchal blessing from Joseph Smith Sr. He was ordained a Seventy in 1836 by Zebedee Coltrin and inducted into the Third Quorum of Seventy. He served three missions for the Church and remained faithful until his death on Christmas Day 1884.[4]
Walker Lewis. A prominent Black abolitionist in Massachusetts, Lewis was baptized by Parley P. Pratt in 1843 and ordained an elder by William Smith (Joseph's brother) by 1844. Brigham Young himself praised Lewis in March 1847 as "one of the best Elders, an African."[5]
The founding prophet of the Church ordained Black men without restriction. The ban was not original to the Restoration. It was introduced later -- by a successor, not by the religion's founding revelations.
How the ban began -- Brigham Young, 1852
The CES Letter says "Brigham Young bans blacks." True. But it skips the context.
On February 5, 1852, during a debate in the Utah Territorial Legislature over slavery and suffrage, Brigham Young made his most forceful articulation of a racial priesthood restriction. The debate pitted Young against Orson Pratt, who argued that Church leaders couldn't impose a curse on Black people "without the voice of the Lord speaking to us."[6]
Young disagreed. He declared that Black people, as descendants of Cain, "can't bear rule in the priesthood."[6:1]
W. Paul Reeve, chair of the History Department at the University of Utah, has produced the most thorough academic account of the ban's origins. He identifies fear of miscegenation -- interracial marriage -- as the most likely and best-documented primary motivation. Young's views shifted sharply between March 1847 (when he praised Walker Lewis) and late 1847 (when he reacted strongly to reports of interracial relationships).[7]
The ban emerged in a political context -- a legislative debate over slavery -- not through the established revelatory process (D&C 26:2, D&C 28:13). It was never presented to the Church for a sustaining vote. Never canonized. Never added to the Doctrine and Covenants.
And Orson Pratt -- the same apostle who challenged Adam-God -- publicly opposed this as well. There was always internal dissent.
The theories that propped it up -- all disavowed
Over the following decades, Church leaders constructed theological justifications for the ban. The Gospel Topics Essay identifies them plainly:[3:1]
| Theory | Origin | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Curse of Cain | Based on Genesis 4; circulating among American Protestants since the 1730s | Disavowed |
| Curse of Ham/Canaan | Based on Genesis 9:20-27; used widely to justify American slavery | Disavowed |
| Premortal unworthiness | Theory that Black people were less valiant in the premortal life; developed in early 1900s LDS materials | Disavowed |
| Divine timing | Argued God had His own timetable for extending blessings | Still open as a possible framework |
The Gospel Topics Essay is unambiguous:
"Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else."[3:2]
The CES Letter frames this as the Church "throwing yesterday's prophets under the bus." Here is the distinction it misses: these were theories offered by leaders to explain a policy -- not revelations. No canonized scripture or revelation established any of these theories as binding doctrine. The disavowal targets folk theological justifications, not a revelation -- because there was no revelation to disavow.
As with Adam-God and blood atonement, the CES Letter conflates personal opinion, cultural assumption, and binding revelation into a single category called "doctrine." Elder D. Todd Christofferson drew the line: individual leader statements "often represent a personal, though well-considered, opinion, not meant to be official or binding for the whole Church."[8]
2 Nephi 5:21 -- what the text actually says
The CES Letter quotes 2 Nephi 5:21 -- "he did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them" -- and presents it as a gotcha: the Church disavows racist theories but its own scripture teaches them.[1:1]
Multiple scholars have examined this passage and concluded it is more complex than the CES Letter presents.
Body paint, not genetics. Gerrit M. Steenblik's research in Interpreter argues the "skin of blackness" likely refers to self-applied body paint and stains -- practices well-documented in Mesoamerican archaeological evidence. Maya and Aztec warriors darkened their skin with charcoal-based paint for war and ceremonies. The related Amlicite passage (Alma 3:4) describes people who "marked themselves" with red foreheads -- self-application, not divine pigmentation change.[9]
Covenantal marker, not racial identity. BYU Religious Studies Center scholars have argued the "skin of blackness" functions as a covenantal identity marker distinguishing insiders from outsiders. In the text itself, the "mark" and the "curse" are separate things: the curse is separation from God's presence; the mark distinguishes the groups.[10]
Clothing, not skin color. Brant Gardner and others argue "skin" may refer to animal skin coverings -- clothing -- that distinguished cultural groups. John Sorenson concluded: "It is unlikely that the mark or curse had anything to do with pigmentation."[11]
The Book of Mormon's actual theological statement on race is 2 Nephi 26:33: God "denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God."
And no Book of Mormon passage was ever cited as the basis for the priesthood ban. The ban was justified through the curse of Cain/Ham tradition from Protestant theology -- not from the Book of Mormon.
The 1981 edition changed 2 Nephi 30:6 from "a white and a delightsome people" to "a pure and a delightsome people" -- restoring the reading from the 1840 edition, which Joseph Smith personally edited.[12]
The 1978 revelation -- what actually happened in the room
The CES Letter reduces the 1978 revelation to political pressure. The primary source record tells a different story.
Spencer W. Kimball didn't arrive at this question in 1978. As early as 1963, while still an apostle, he acknowledged "the Lord could change his policy" regarding what he called "the possible error."[13]
As Church president, Kimball kept a binder of notes and clippings on the issue. In June 1977 -- a full year before the revelation -- he asked at least three apostles (Bruce R. McConkie, Thomas S. Monson, Boyd K. Packer) to submit memos "on the doctrinal basis of the prohibition and how a change might affect the Church."[13:1]
He spent months praying alone in the upper rooms of the Salt Lake Temple: "Day after day I went alone and with great solemnity and seriousness in the upper rooms of the temple... I wanted to do what he wanted."[13:2]
On June 1, 1978, Kimball gathered his two counselors and ten of the twelve apostles in the Salt Lake Temple. After more than two hours of open discussion, Kimball led them to the altar and was voice in prayer.
What happened next:
| Witness | Account |
|---|---|
| Bruce R. McConkie | "The Spirit of the Lord rested mightily upon us all; we felt something akin to what happened on the day of Pentecost and at the dedication of the Kirtland Temple."[14] |
| Gordon B. Hinckley | "There was a hallowed and sanctified atmosphere in the room... It was a quiet and sublime occasion... There was a Pentecostal spirit, for the Holy Ghost was there."[15] |
| David B. Haight | "President Kimball arose from the altar... He put his arms around me, and as I embraced him I felt the beating of his heart and the intense emotion that filled him."[16] |
Both Presidents Kimball and Benson confirmed they had never "experienced anything of such spiritual magnitude and power."[16:1]
On September 30, 1978, the membership voted unanimously to sustain what became Official Declaration 2.[17]
"Forget everything I have said"
Two months after the revelation, Bruce R. McConkie -- who had previously defended the ban -- stood before CES religious educators at BYU and said:
"Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world."[14:1]
A senior apostle publicly stating that prior leaders -- including himself -- were wrong. The CES Letter treats the Church's willingness to correct course as evidence of fraud. It is evidence of institutional honesty.
Did external pressure cause the revelation?
The CES Letter implies the answer is obviously yes. The timeline doesn't support it.
| Event | Date | Years before OD 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Black 14 / Wyoming incident | October 1969 | 9 years |
| Stanford severs athletic ties with BYU | 1969-1970 | 8 years |
| University of Washington Faculty Senate boycotts BYU | 1970-1971 | 7 years |
| IRS pressure on Bob Jones University (not BYU) | 1970s | Not directed at BYU |
| Sao Paulo Temple announced | 1975 | 3 years |
| Official Declaration 2 | June 1, 1978 |
If the Church were bowing to political pressure, why wait nine years after the boycotts? The most intense public pressure came in 1969-1971. By the mid-1970s, the athletic boycotts had waned. The Bob Jones University v. United States case wasn't decided by the Supreme Court until 1983 -- five years after the revelation.[18]
Scholar Jan Shipps -- a non-LDS historian -- observed that "answers were not forthcoming in the '60s when the Church was under pressure from without, nor in the early '70s when liberal Latter-day Saints agitated the issue from within." The revelation came, she argued, "in the context of worldwide evangelism rather than domestic politics."[19]
The Brazil situation was real. The Sao Paulo Temple, announced in 1975, was being built in a country where centuries of intermarriage made racial lineage determination functionally impossible. Faithful Brazilian Saints who had donated to build the temple would be barred from entering it. But wanting to extend saving blessings to faithful members is not cynical capitulation. It is exactly the kind of pastoral concern that would motivate a prophet to seek revelation.[20]
Internal advocacy was real too. Hugh B. Brown, counselor in the First Presidency under David O. McKay, pushed to end the ban in the 1960s. In 1969, Brown persuaded McKay to ordain a Black man -- but Harold B. Lee blocked it. The Church was not monolithically racist. There was always internal tension and advocacy.[21]
The CES Letter also claims the Church should have "led the Civil Rights movement" and was "the last major church on the planet in 1978 to adopt it." The Southern Baptist Convention didn't formally apologize for its support of slavery until 1995. Many denominations had segregated congregations well past 1978. "Last major church" is a significant overstatement.[22]
The "yesterday's doctrine" framing
The CES Letter's refrain -- "yesterday's racist doctrine and revelation is now today's 'disavowed theories'" -- appears here, after Adam-God, and after blood atonement. It is the rhetorical core of the Prophets section. The counter-arguments are covered in more detail in the Adam-God article. The short version:
Policy is not doctrine. The ban was never canonized, never added to scripture, never sustained by the membership as revelation. The racial theories were explanations offered for the policy, not the policy's foundation. The Church disavowed the theories. That's not the same as disavowing a revelation, because there was no revelation to disavow.
Ongoing revelation is a feature, not a bug. Article of Faith 9: "We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God." A church that claims ongoing revelation should be expected to update, correct, and refine over time. The CES Letter treats change as evidence of fraud. Latter-day Saints see it as evidence the system is working.
The Bible has its own "yesterday's doctrine." Peter's vision in Acts 10 overturned the longstanding restriction against preaching to Gentiles -- a dramatic policy reversal driven by revelation. Paul publicly corrected Peter for perpetuating exclusionary practices (Galatians 2:11-14). The Mosaic dietary and ritual laws were superseded by the new covenant. "Yesterday's doctrine became today's superseded practice" is not a uniquely Latter-day Saint phenomenon. It is the biblical pattern.
The honest difficulty
The hardest version of this argument isn't about the 1978 revelation. It's about the 126 years before it.
If Joseph Smith ordained Black men without restriction, why did God allow His Church to impose a race-based ban for over a century? Why didn't He correct it sooner? Why did faithful members like Elijah Abel and Jane Manning James suffer under a policy that the Church now says was based on wrong theories?
Worth Acknowledging
The Church's own Gospel Topics Essay does not claim the priesthood ban was commanded by God. It says the origins are unclear, that the justifying theories were wrong, and that the ban was ended by revelation. This is a more nuanced position than either "God commanded it" or "it was purely racist" -- and it is the position the Church has publicly committed to.
The ban lasted 126 years. Real people were genuinely harmed. Faithful Black members were denied temple blessings for generations.
Jane Manning James walked 800 miles from Connecticut to Nauvoo in 1843. She lived in Joseph and Emma Smith's home. After the ban was in place, she repeatedly petitioned Church leaders for her temple endowment. Each time she was denied. She remained faithful until her death in 1908 at age 85. Her endowment was performed by proxy in 1979 -- one year after the ban was lifted.[23]
The honest approach is not to minimize the harm. It's to acknowledge it while recognizing that the institution corrected course through revelation -- which is what a divinely guided but humanly administered church would be expected to do.
The positive case
Joseph Smith's original Church was racially inclusive for its time. The ban was not baked into the Restoration.
The 1978 revelation was accompanied by spiritual experiences powerful enough that seasoned apostles compared it to Pentecost. Kimball's years of prayerful preparation demonstrate this was not a hasty political decision.
The Church has been willing to publicly disavow racist theories -- something many institutions have never done. The 2013 Gospel Topics Essay is not a quiet footnote. It is a public document that names the errors and repudiates them.
Black Latter-day Saints who endured the ban years -- Elijah Abel, Walker Lewis, Jane Manning James, and hundreds documented in the University of Utah's Century of Black Mormons database -- bore witness through their faithfulness that the gospel's truth was larger than the institution's failure.[24]
The trajectory since 1978 is unmistakable. The Church has funded scholarship on this history, published it in official curriculum, and partnered with the NAACP on racial harmony initiatives.[25]
What the CES Letter's framing misses
| CES Letter framing | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| The ban was always Church doctrine | Never canonized, never added to scripture; origins remain unclear even to Church historians |
| Joseph Smith started the ban | Joseph Smith ordained Black men without restriction |
| The 1978 revelation was political capitulation | Peak external pressure was 1969-1971; the revelation came in 1978. Multiple eyewitnesses describe a Pentecostal spiritual experience |
| The Church hides this history | The Church published a Gospel Topics Essay, funded the Century of Black Mormons project, and teaches this history in official curriculum |
| The 2013 disavowal contradicts the Book of Mormon | The Book of Mormon's theological statement on race is 2 Nephi 26:33: "all are alike unto God." No BOM passage was ever cited as the basis for the ban |
| The Church was "the last major church" to end racial exclusion | The Southern Baptist Convention didn't formally apologize for its support of slavery until 1995 |
Bottom line: The priesthood and temple ban was a real institutional wrong, maintained for over a century and justified by theories the Church now disavows. The CES Letter is right to raise it. But it omits Joseph Smith's inclusive practice, ignores the eyewitness accounts of the 1978 revelation, misrepresents the timeline of external pressure, and builds its case on the assumption that prophets must be infallible -- a standard the Church has never claimed and the Bible has never modeled. The ban is the hardest test of progressive revelation. It is also evidence that the framework works -- slowly, painfully, but finally.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Prophets," no. 4, p. 65. ↩︎ ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Prophets," no. 4, pp. 65-66. ↩︎
"Race and the Priesthood," Gospel Topics Essays, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
"Elijah Able," Church History Topics, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/elijah-able?lang=eng. See also Century of Black Mormons database entry: https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/able-elijah ↩︎
Connell O'Donovan, "The Mormon Priesthood Ban and Elder Q. Walker Lewis," John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 26 (2006): 48-100. See also Century of Black Mormons: https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/lewis-quack-walker ↩︎
Brigham Young, speech to the Utah Territorial Legislature, February 5, 1852. For Orson Pratt's opposition, see W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 134-139. ↩︎ ↩︎
W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), ch. 5. Reeve is chair of the History Department at the University of Utah. The book won three best-book awards. ↩︎
D. Todd Christofferson, "The Doctrine of Christ," Ensign, May 2012. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2012/04/the-doctrine-of-christ?lang=eng ↩︎
Gerrit M. Steenblik, "Demythicizing the Lamanites' Skin of Blackness," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/demythicizing-the-lamanites-skin-of-blackness ↩︎
"The Lamanite Mark," BYU Religious Studies Center. https://rsc.byu.edu/book-mormon-second-nephi-doctrinal-structure/lamanite-mark ↩︎
Brant A. Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon, vol. 2 (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2007). John Sorenson: "It is unlikely that the mark or curse had anything to do with pigmentation." See also BYU Studies: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol62/iss3/8/ ↩︎
The 1840 edition of the Book of Mormon, personally edited by Joseph Smith, changed "white" to "pure" in 2 Nephi 30:6. The 1981 edition restored this reading. See Royal Skousen, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part 2 (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2005). ↩︎
Edward L. Kimball, "Spencer W. Kimball and the Revelation on Priesthood," BYU Studies 47, no. 2 (2008): 4-78. https://scripturecentral.org/archive/periodicals/journal-article/spencer-w-kimball-and-revelation-priesthood ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Bruce R. McConkie, "All Are Alike unto God," address at the CES Religious Educators Symposium, Brigham Young University, August 18, 1978. https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-r-mcconkie/alike-unto-god/ ↩︎ ↩︎
Gordon B. Hinckley, "Priesthood Restoration," Ensign, October 1988. Hinckley was present as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on June 1, 1978. ↩︎
E. Dale LeBaron, "Official Declaration 2: Revelation on the Priesthood," BYU Religious Studies Center. https://rsc.byu.edu/sperry-symposium-classics-doctrine-covenants/official-declaration-2-revelation-priesthood ↩︎ ↩︎
Official Declaration 2, Doctrine and Covenants. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/od/2?lang=eng ↩︎
Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574 (1983). The Supreme Court ruled five years after the priesthood revelation. The Church has stated: "The federal government made no such threat in 1978 or at any other time." ↩︎
Jan Shipps, as quoted in Armand Mauss, All Abraham's Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003). Shipps observed that the revelation came in the context of worldwide evangelism, not domestic political pressure. ↩︎
Mark L. Grover, "The Mormon Priesthood Revelation and the Sao Paulo, Brazil Temple," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 23, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 39-53. ↩︎
Matthew L. Harris, Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024). Brown made a civil rights statement during the 1963 General Conference and in 1969 persuaded McKay to ordain a Black man, but Harold B. Lee blocked it. ↩︎
The Southern Baptist Convention formally apologized for its role in supporting slavery in 1995 -- seventeen years after the LDS priesthood revelation. See Resolution on Racial Reconciliation on the 150th Anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention (June 1995). ↩︎
"Jane Elizabeth Manning James," Church History Topics, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/jane-elizabeth-manning-james?lang=eng. See also Quincy D. Newell, Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). ↩︎
"Century of Black Mormons," W. Paul Reeve, ed., University of Utah. https://exhibits.lib.utah.edu/s/century-of-black-mormons/page/welcome ↩︎
"Church of Jesus Christ and NAACP Announce Initiatives to Help Combat Racism," Newsroom, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, June 14, 2020. https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-and-naacp-collaboration ↩︎