The Real Story of the Priesthood-Temple Ban

12/10/21 • 52 min

As we approach the portion of the Come Follow Me curriculum that addresses Official Declaration 2, we thought we’d re-release a classic episode of the podcast that many of our newer listeners may not have heard — a conversation between Terryl Givens and Paul Reeve that explores the history of the Church’s priesthood-temple ban that concluded in 1978.
In this episode, Paul and Terryl go both wide and deep on the priesthood-temple ban. Among other historical details, they discuss how the church was broadly criticized as being too inclusive in its early years—critics claimed that it wasn’t “white” enough. This became a factor in Brigham Young’s 1852 decision to ban Black people from the priesthood and temple.
They also explore some of the explanations that developed in the church to explain the ban during its 126 year duration—and how each of these explanations have since been rejected and disavowed by the church.
Paul Reeve is the Simmons Professor of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah. His award-winning book, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness, is considered by many the best book written to date on the subject.
Dr. Reeve has also written a fantastic essay that addresses how to make sense of our history of denying priesthood and temple blessings to our Black brothers and sisters. It’s a fascinating read—and you really shouldn’t miss it.
We think this is an incredibly important and insightful episode. We suspect you’ll enjoy it.
Paul Reeve's essay: https://faithmatters.org/making-sense-of-the-churchs-history-on-race/

Previous Episode

96. Healing a Divided Country — A Conversation with Dan Vallone

This week, Faith Matters was delighted to welcome Dan Vallone, the US Director for More in Common, a nonprofit foundation whose mission is to build a more united and inclusive America that is resilient to the profound threats posed by our country’s polarization.

Dan has a super impressive background, including serving six years active duty as a US Army infantry officer, with one tour in Afghanistan. He is a graduate of West Point and earned a Master’s degree from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore on a Fulbright Scholarship, and later an MBA from Harvard Business School. He also spent time as a special advisor on innovation to the US Department of Education.

In this conversation, Dan spent time helping us understand why it seems we have become so divided politically in the United States. He shared some really interesting research that shows that the large majority of Americans are proponents of listening, compromise, and good-faith engagement with those on the other side of the aisle.

Dan left us with several practical takeaways about how we can be active healers in our communities, and how faith institutions like the Church can play vital roles in helping us come together.

We want to extend a huge thanks to Dan for his thoughtfulness and leadership on this issue and hope you enjoy!

Next Episode

97. Gospel Meets Dharma — A Conversation with Thomas McConkie

Many of you are familiar with Thomas Wirthlin McConkie. For those of you who are not, here’s a very cursory thumbnail sketch of his story:

Coming from a very prominent Latter-day Saint family (with apostles on both sides of the family), Thomas left the Latter-day Saint faith as a teenager, eventually moved to China and for two decades deeply immersed himself in Buddhism. Eventually, he found his way back to the his native Latter-day Saint faith, and today finds himself integrating ideas and practices from both traditions in remarkable and important ways.

If you’d like to hear the story of Thomas’s journey in more detail, you can listen to a fascinating multi-episode deep dive on the Faith Matters podcast starting in episode 15.

Thomas has just created a truly beautiful online course called Gospel Meets Dharma. The course description says it this way: “Gospel Meets Dharma represents a sacred encounter between Christianity and Buddhism, two traditions that have shaped and formed countless millions of minds and souls over the millennia. In this ‘interspiritual dialogue’, the unique fruits of each path come into clear relief, while also giving rise to a Beauty that transcends and includes them both.”

We invited Thomas back to our studio this week to talk about what inspired him to create this course and to explore some of its key themes. As always, we loved our conversation with Thomas and imagine you will as well.

By the way, you can find the course at gospelmeetsdharma.com. Thomas is offering a 20% discount on the course to the Faith Matters audience. Just type the code LAUNCH20 when you enroll.