Recently I drove up Little Cottonwood Canyon with my brother and nephew. This is the canyon in which many of your ancestors pulled out the granite for the construction of the salt lake temple. As soon as we passed the granite facings on the side of the canyon my nephew played a song on his iPod by Corb Lund Brother Brigham Brother Young and it brought mental flashes into my mind of men working on the side of the mountain blasting granite out of it. It made me think of the struggles that men and women had even back then with the faith in many ways very similar to our day. From what I have read Mr Lund isn’t LDS but has relatives that are. Im assuming one of his relatives is a historian buff? Its probably safe to presume this song will never be played in a chapel 
but I can’t help liking it! You can listen to his song Here Continue reading…
Archive for the 'blacks' Category
members of the Lemba Tribe
The History Channel has a show called “Digging for the Truth.” In season 1, they did an episode called “The Lost Tribe of Israel”, which highlighted the Lemba Tribe in South Africa. This group claims to be a Hebrew people who were displaced around 700 BC, about 100 years before Lehi left Jerusalem. I couldn’t help but notice many similarities between their story, and the story of Lehi. (This is a short version of my post. The longer version can be found here.)
“For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward. Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, 
and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;” (D&C 58:26 – 27) Continue reading…
“It’s the MOST WONderful TIIIME of the YEARRRRRR.” The leaves are starting to change color. The evenings and mornings are a bit crisper. Even the birds’ singing suddenly sounds sweeter than ever.
General Conference must be coming this weekend.
President Barack Obama met with President Monson on Monday in the Oval Office, thanking President Monson for a thorough history of the first family. Continue reading…
“What if you weren’t a Mormon?” For some reason, this is something that I often wonder to myself. And this post is about how I would answer that question.
When I served a mission in eastern Canada in the early 90s, there were many things I was grateful for (warm boots, wool suits, fairly normal food). But above all, I was grateful that I was sent to a region with very few black people, as I was not looking forward to having to defend something in the Church’s past that had deeply troubled even a relatively immature teenager with a limited knowledge of Church history and doctrine.
Continue reading…
Much has been made of the LDS Church’s unflattering history regarding the priesthood ban. But there are some positive stories. I’d like to address some things that happened prior and during the ban that are more positive in nature to the church.
Much has been said in church magazines and the Bloggernacle about the image of Joseph Smith. Do we know what Joseph Smith really looked like? Are our statues and paintings truly representative of him?
This is not the point of my post here, though. I recently had a conversation with my fiancee about Rastafarianism, mentioning that Rastas believe that Jesus Christ was black. I admitted that, though I personally don’t see much evidence for that, I did concede that Jesus probably looked very different than what most Mormons envision.
Today’s post is by Rachel Maw. I was scanning through the news stories over at cnn.com when I came across this article, “Why many Americans prefer their Sundays segregated”. It started me thinking about my own ward. I live in a state where about 30% of the population is Hispanic, but you wouldn’t know it by going to a Sacrament Meeting Sunday morning. We have a mostly white congregation with a minority member here and there. For a while we had an Asian contingent in our ward. It was so nice to have some diversity. They added a different view point in lessons and 
helped us to learn more about different cultures. Continue reading…
In 1999 a church news paper surveyed its Latter Day Saint subscribers to glean what single event they thought shaped the last 100 years in Latter Day Saint history. The number one event, rated by its subscribers was the 1978 Priesthood Revelation. Percentage wise the second event didn’t even come close. Continue reading…
In Little Rock, Ark on a relatively calm September day in 1957 the all-white Central High School tries to blocked nine African American students from entering the school. Governor Orval Faubus tries in vain to stop the students from attending the school even though 3 years earlier Brown v. Board of Education deemed segregation to be illegal in public schools. It took the actions of The President of the United States of America, Dwight D. Eisenhower, with the help of federal troops and the National Guard to persuade Governor Faubus to allow these nine students to enter the school. The Governor was persuaded by his own, or others, prejudice to take action against these nine students, the court system and the United States Government itself.
Growing up as an African American I have faced discrimination, and prejudice but nothing that hampered me from accomplishing the things I have done and wanted to do. I could not imagine the travesties these and others went through to just to live and breath and just be who God made them.
Fast forward 50 or so years after The Little Rock Nine and discrimination is still disallowing children into schools. No. It’s not about the color of skin this time. It’s about the Flavor of Religion. Namely Mormonism. Continue reading…
I think we’ve now achieved consensus in the United States that without regard to race, everyone should have an equal opportunity to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A century ago, however, our ancestors and the country fell far short of achieving that ideal. 1910 was in the middle of a particularly poor era. In the South, reconstruction had been abandoned and the policies of segregration and disenfranchisement of blacks had been established. The first great wave of black migration from the South to the North had begun. In the North, African Americans found industrial jobs, but they also encountered significant discrimination — often as pernicious as what they’d left, albeit subtler.
But remarkably, 1910 was the year that a black man was called and ordained to be an apostle. His name was John Penn and he was the first African American apostle of the Restoration Era. Continue reading…
In my first post I discussed why God was concerned with creating creeds and using them as a test of one’s allegiance to God. In my last post I explained what it means to not have creeds and gave examples of the LDS Church following that pattern. I am now prepared to tackle the question of “What is Mormon Doctrine?” To outsiders, our doctrines must seem slippery or downright fluid. It’s impossible to pin us down on anything that they care about!
What informed (semi-informed?) outsiders want to know is what our specific teachings are on all the juicy subjects they’ve heard through the anti-Mormon grapevine:
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