{"id":3882,"date":"2016-05-03T11:16:57","date_gmt":"2016-05-03T17:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/?p=3882"},"modified":"2016-05-03T11:16:57","modified_gmt":"2016-05-03T17:16:57","slug":"ces-reply-more-from-brother-brigham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/ces-reply-more-from-brother-brigham\/","title":{"rendered":"CES Reply: More from Brother Brigham"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continuing\u00a0my reply<\/a>\u00a0to Jeremy Runnell\u2019s \u201cLetter to a CES Director,\u201d with Jeremy\u2019s original words in green:<\/p>\n

If Brigham Young was really a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, would it not be unreasonable to expect that God would give him a hint that racism is not okay, sexism is not okay, blood atonement is not okay and God\u2019s name is not \u201cAdam\u201d?
\n<\/span>
\nGod gave him plenty of hints. He\u2019s given you the same hints, as you both have direct access to the same God. In addition, the scriptures that condemn all these evils were in print while Brigham was still alive. In addition, your condemnation of Brigham in these points is ill-informed, particularly with regard to Adam-God and blood atonement, neither of which infiltrated Mormon theology.<\/p>\n

I want to talk about Brigham\u2019s racism for a moment, however, as this is the flaw in his character I find most troubling and which, arguably, has done the most damage to the Church as a whole.<\/p>\n

A cousin of mine, who wrote his own version of a CES Letter when he left the Church, called my attention to one of Brigham\u2019s most incendiary \u2013 and misinterpreted \u2013 racial statements.\u00a0 I\u2019ll share it with you, although you\u2019ve probably heard it before.
\n
\nShall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2013 Brigham Young, as found in the <\/i>Journal of Discourses 10:111\u00a0<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

Yikes.<\/p>\n

Then I read Brigham Young\u2019s full sermon in which that quote is found, and I had a remarkable experience that made me feel a whole lot better about Brigham Young\u2019s racial attitudes than I ever had before.<\/p>\n

In the preceding paragraph to the one I quoted, Brigham makes the following statement:
\n
\nI am no abolitionist, neither am I a proslavery man; I hate some of their principles and especially some of their conduct, as I do the gates of hell.
\n<\/i>
\nWhat principles and conduct does he hate, then? In this sermon, he makes it clear that he hates how proslavery men feel they can abuse and savage their \u201cproperty\u201d at will. For instance, just two paragraphs after he makes the incendiary statement I\u00a0quoted at the outset, he says this:
\n
\nIf the Government of the United States, in Congress assembled, had the right to pass an anti-polygamy bill, they had also the right to pass a law that slaves should not be abused as they have been; they had also a right to make a law that negroes should be used like human beings, and not worse than dumb brutes. For their abuse of that race, the whites will be cursed, unless they repent.
\n<\/i>
\nI am neither an abolitionist nor a pro-slavery man. If I could have been influenced by private injury to choose one side in preference to the other, I should certainly be against the pro-slavery side of the question.\u201d
\n<\/i>
\nAlready, those past two paragraphs make him far more enlightened than a good chunk of the 19th Century populace. Consider, for instance, this statement:
\n
\nI am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2013 Abraham Lincoln
\n<\/i>
\nBut could anything possibly justify that\u00a0incendiary statement about the death penalty for interracial relations?\u00a0Let\u2019s look at the money sentence, where Brigham says that \u201c[i]f the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot.\u201d<\/p>\n

This comes in the midst of a sermon that, overall, has little or nothing to do with race. Every other mention of race is in the paragraphs I previously shared, and those are clearly derisive of white people who abuse slaves and treat them like animals. So why suddenly bring up the whole issue of a death penalty for interracial marriage?<\/p>\n

Well, wait a minute. He makes no mention of marriage. And he only suggests one party in the group ought to be put to death \u2013 the \u201cwhite man of the chosen seed.\u201d Where is the mention of the black woman being put to death? It\u2019s not there. Why isn\u2019t it there? Because in the act Brigham is describing, those black women are victims who have done nothing wrong.<\/p>\n

In 1863, when this sermon was given, there was no clamor for interracial marriage. The overwhelming majority of whites and blacks were repulsed by the idea, and Brigham would have had no need to rail against it.<\/p>\n

So these \u201cwhite men of the chosen seed\u201d weren\u2019t marrying these women; they were raping them.<\/p>\n

Brigham, thankfully, wasn\u2019t cool with that.<\/p>\n

It was common practice, even among the relative handful of Latter-day Saints who owned slaves, to sexually assault their female slaves, causing some church leaders to decry the idea of men with \u201cwhite wives\u201d and \u201cblack concubines.\u201d After all, the conventional wisdom went, there was no harm in doing whatever you wanted with what was wickedly considered to be mere subhuman property.<\/p>\n

Brigham, again, is here saying that that\u2019s just not cool. He\u2019s saying that raping a black woman will call down the condemnation of God just as surely as the rape of a white woman will.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, who are the \u201cwhite men of the chosen seed?\u201d If it\u2019s all white men, then why does he add that \u201cchosen seed\u201d qualifier? Elsewhere in the same sermon, he rails against the pro-slavery whites in Missouri and their corruption and wickedness.<\/p>\n

So they\u2019re not the \u201cchosen seed;\u201d the Latter-day Saints are. So Brigham Young\u2019s point, then, was that Latter-day Saints who rape their slaves deserve to be struck dead on the spot, and this \u201cwill always be so.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m kinda OK with that.<\/p>\n

Notice, too, that he talks about \u201cthe law of God,\u201d and continually makes that the qualifier. In other words, that\u2019s what these people deserve if God were fully in charge. But in many sermons, he also recognized the fact that the laws of God can only be enforced when God himself rules, and so, in the meantime we\u2019re subject to the law of man \u2013 a law that Brigham himself was pretty much in charge of making.<\/p>\n

So did Utah law call for the death penalty for interracial relationships? Nope. The law, according to an 1860 account, stated the following:<\/p>\n

\u201cSlaves coming into the Territory with their masters of their own free will, continue to be in all respects slaves, but cruelty and withholding proper food, raiment, etc., makes the ownership void. Every master or mistress who has carnal relations with his or her Negro slaves forfeits his or her right to the slaves, who thereby becomes the property of the commonwealth. Every individual man or woman who has carnal relations with a Negro or a negress who is sentenced to imprisonment not exceeding three years, and to a fine from 500 to 1000 dollars.\u201d (A Journey To Great Salt Lake City 1:469-70)
\n<\/i>
\nSo, with this context, suddenly Brigham looks pretty darned enlightened, really. Yes, just like far too many Protestants of his age, he believed black people were descended from Cain and carried a curse, but Brigham\u2019s statement is actually a statement that rises above the prevailing sentiments of the day, a statement that says these slaves are human beings, not animals, and you priesthood holders will be held accountable before God for how you treat them,<\/p>\n

This is not to say Brigham Young wasn\u2019t a racist. Certainly, by today\u2019s standards, he was. And if this quote had originated from a recent leader, I think there\u2019s little question that whoever uttered those words should be removed from office, be it the President of the Church, an Apostle, or the guy who sets up the chairs.<\/p>\n

In 1863, however, I think the Lord would have a very hard time finding leaders who had enough racial understanding to be as shocked by those words as we are today.<\/p>\n

Again, we\u2019re told repeatedly that we learn line upon line; precept upon precept. Hymn #2, \u201cThe Spirit of God,\u201d exults in the fact that \u201cthe Lord is extending the Saints\u2019 understanding,\u201d and I\u2019m therefore very wary of judging social mores of 1852 by the light of what we now know as a church, a nation, and a world in the 21st<\/sup> Century.<\/p>\n

Brigham\u2019s reaction here actually suggests that he was taking a few more hints from God than you\u2019re willing to concede.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow: Kinderhookin’!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Continuing\u00a0my reply\u00a0to Jeremy Runnell\u2019s \u201cLetter to a CES Director,\u201d with Jeremy\u2019s original words in green:If Brigham Young was really a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, would it not be unreasonable to expect that God would give him a hint that racism is not okay, sexism is not okay, blood atonement is not okay <\/span> ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3883,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3882\/revisions\/3883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}