Race & Mormon Scripture Pt 2

hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Mormon stories podcast LDS discussions Edition I am John delin uh one of your hosts for today uh we are in sort of the middle of what is a heart-wrenching episode um within the LDS discussion series the title of today's episode is race and the LDS or Mormon scriptures part two um and uh yeah this is the second half of a really really difficult painful embarrassing and heart-wrenching discussion about the history of race in in Mormon scripture in LDS scripture and racism in uh Mormonism and in in Mormon scripture from the time of Joseph Smith uh to the present um we are in part two because in part one uh you know we covered that last time uh to begin with uh I just want to make sure everybody knows that all of this is coming from the amazing work of a man we call Mike his website is ldsdiscussions.com and he has a series of essays there amongst other um pieces of content but in this case the essay is all these discussions.com race that's the essay we're basing these two episodes on and if I were to summarize uh what we covered last time in a minute or less uh and I would just encourage everyone to please go and watch that episode before you watch this one you really uh these episodes really to build on each other so but just as a way to recap what we covered last time we talked about how uh three of the main examples or products of scripture that Joseph Smith the founder of the Mormon Church created including the Book of Mormon the book of Abraham and the Book of Moses all three rely on deeply racist narratives uh that fit perfectly into 19th century Frontier America and Mike and I were very committed to making episodes that aren't felt or experienced as as overly angry or overly biased against the LDS church because we don't want to be an echo chamber we want sincere questioners and even since they're believers who are just interested in evidence to feel comfortable as comfortable as possible talking about really uncomfortable difficult things so when we say racism here we don't say it lightly but but you know when we talk about the the racist narratives in in the books of Mormon Abraham and Moses what we're talking about is this main narrative that appears in all three books which is that dark skin is a curse from God based on wickedness um and the purpose the main purpose of making someone's skin dark other than to curse them for their wickedness is to make them dark or loathsome or you know unappealing to the more righteous white people and that that's the narrative you know our thesis is that's the narrative basically in all three books um so in addition to three of of I guess four uh Joseph Smith's founding examples of scripture containing the super racist narrative the next uh point is that the Mormon prophet series and revelators and apostles from the time of Joseph Smith to the present day um have affirmed these these racist teachings as Doctrine uh including multiple first presidency statements and when I say a first presidency statement that means the the president or prophet of the Mormon church and his two counselors signing a statement um affirming a particular you know thing as Doctrine and we we showed an example of that uh last episode The the next Point uh for part one was that uh the Mormon church has made some attempts over the years to alter this this narrative including slight alterations to the Book of Mormon um but those those alterations those minimal alterations to the Book of Mormon still left a lot of these racist teachings in and even though the curriculum has been updated and the gospel topics essay on race and the priesthood has come out trying to denounce these racist teachings or dismiss them as like opinions or as theories of men um the church has fallen far short of correcting the Book of Mormon the book of Abraham the book of Moses and eliminating the racist teachings uh from those books and they've even Fallen far short of re of removing these racist teachings from their official curriculum and we showed examples how as recently as one or two years ago the church was still teaching that interracial marriage is is bad or Evil based on these teachings um and and uh you know other types of of of other examples of perpetuating these race his narratives and then finally we talked about we ended last episode talking about how the Mormon Church did lift the priesthood and Temple ban on uh Mormons of African descent in 1978 but we showed uh clear examples of how that was primarily driven by a concern about baptizing Brazilian members into the church uh and um and of course out of social pressure from protests at various universities against the BYU Athletic program and we we lightly touched on that last time um that's what we covered last time we're going to jump right in to today's episode and before I bring Mike on I'm just going to say two final things one is that we were really grateful to have a few um ex-mormons who also identify as black or or as people of color to uh to weigh in at various points during last episode we've invited several members of the community back into this live stream we hope they'll join we don't know if they will but we were just so honored to have um have them appear at various points during last episode to kind of validate and in some sense Express gratitude that these things are being discussed the only other thing I just want to say in this introduction is that this whole series on LDS discussions it's now available in both audio and video form on Spotify as its own Standalone podcast so you can consume it there in succession it's also available on you know iTunes or apple podcast as its own Standalone podcast in case you want to binge listen to these episodes and wherever you consume your podcasts and then finally if you want to watch it on YouTube or listen to it on YouTube you can actually listen to YouTube videos now if you pay for the premier subscription you can you can actually start a YouTube video and then do the screen lock on your on your Android or Apple phone and it lets you listen even with the screen locked and closed anyway there's a playlist on YouTube of the entire LDS discussion series um that you you can access as well um so that is all the housekeeping and introduction that we have for today now I would like to welcome the brilliant uh the amazing uh the courageous mic of LDS discussions hey Mike hey guys how's it going welcome back thanks it's good to be back uh like you said you summarized well and uh we just we got to a point where we wanted to take a break and and that way it wasn't too long of an episode and and so you know this one's as John said is is uh obviously a very delicate one it's one that has a lot of emotion to it and it's one that is you know it's gonna get worse as we go through this so uh we're gonna do our best to be you know as gentle as we can and uh you know get through it and it's we've talked a lot about informed consent and this whole idea of we're putting out data and people are going to do with it what they want and I think this is a topic that needs to be discussed um because of for me uh we talked on a lot of the episodes about putting the pieces of the puzzle together and so I always think of it that way like uh if you take the way the church frames you know the priesthood ban and the lifting of it and it's kind of this clean thing and and it started with Brigham Young and then ends and when you really put those pieces you pull the puzzle apart and you look at the pieces you can see that uh the way the church frames it is just not how it happened and so these things as we talk about in the first episode they're all in the scriptures the priesthood band is doctrinal from the book of Abraham and the Book of Moses say both um the book of Moses starts by saying that those with with African descent and black skin are cursed by God and then the book of Abraham takes that step further by saying they don't have the right to the priesthood so this idea that it starts with Brigham Young is is just patently false it is absolutely something that is in the scriptures today and so this episode is going to build off of that and really get more into the Apologetics a little bit more into the church's essay and just to kind of look at how leaders have approached race and the church since the founding and how the church frames that today to kind of look at kind of how the church tells you it happened versus how it actually happened and it's really uncomfortable it's really painful for a lot of people and I just hope that those who are listening who haven't heard this before um can at least uh understand we're trying to be as gentle as we can and I promise you I'm not picking the worst quotes there are way worse quotes that I left off I was not trying to find the most shocking salacious quotes these are I tried to pick quotes from the leaders I mean top leaders we have quotes from Apostles that would make your skin crawl um and so as we jump in we're going to go through this and it's going to be it's going to be rough but it it needs to be out there and everyone one's going to do with this whatever they want but at least it's out there in a way that we can show is documented these are real quotes a lot of more from very well covered talks whether General Conference or with Brigham Young to the Utah legislature so we're not making this up and and you can verify it and go to the website and um so I guess we'll just get going now with uh part two and and kind of diving back in okay so let's go to uh let's go to the first slide of part two which is apologetic responses skin does not actually mean skin yeah and so this is one where we talked in the first episode about the come follow me kind of brouhaha in 2020 where the printed manual had a quote that absolutely said that skin meant you know human skin and the church had to put out some quick news articles from people who are faithful to the church they fixed it obviously in the electronic version and then they reprinted the printed one to try to get rid of the the quote which is a real quote and this is an article that came out that the church a lot of people within the church were pushing to try to get away from this problem and it was from Holly Richardson uh it was in the Salt Lake Tribune and that the headline of the article was called what if skin doesn't mean human skin and it's a common apologetic which is to say that the cursive of dark skin in the Book of Mormon isn't really um dark skin it's more of like your aura or your clothes and so this is from the article by Holly Richardson she says what if our interpretation was a cultural artifact of the mid-1800s when slavery was still legal in the United States what if we have misunderstood words like skin and black and dark could there be another interpretation I believe there is in 2015 Ethan Sproul a professor of English at Utah Valley University published an article in the Journal of Book of Mormon studies that explored the idea of skin or skins referring to clothing and not to human skins pointing to the verses in Alma 3 5 through 6 he shows us why we can interpret skin as clothing first the lamanites were naked save it where the skin which was girded about about their loins and then the skins of the lamanites were dark he asks as we should ask do they not refer to the same thing clothing or garments surely that is a possibility yeah yeah it's it's it's it's it's it's an argument that's being made out of necessity we've talked about this in a lot of these episodes this is not an argument anyone would have made until like the last really 20 to 40 years I would argue this wouldn't even be an argument that was made in 1978 because again this is Book of Mormon this is Native Americans um and so the church has always kind of had that double edge sword Native Americans were allowed to get baptized uh they were allowed to go to the temple whereas members of African descent with black skin could not and so there has always been this weird kind of um difference between the way the church treats the two so I don't even think this is an argument that would have been made even until maybe 15 20 years ago and um it's just it's it's a it's a bad argument and obviously we'll go over that in a second but I just yeah and I'll just say like oddly if someone would try and if someone this argument is so bad but what's Preposterous about it is if you had gone back 50 years and tried to make this argument you probably would have gotten in trouble yeah because there were multiple first presidency statements affirming the the priesthood ban um you know as Doctrine based on skin color and and unworthiness of of black people in the pre-existence and and the Book of Mormon curse on on the lamanites so so the the argument that's now offered is an apologetic to try and get the church out of a bind would have gotten you in trouble 50 years ago because you're contradicting Doctrine but it's also it just shows it's kind of it's insulting and it it takes a form of gaslighting because when you've done something wrong the church taught us how to make it right you you own up to your mistake you admit it you apologize for it you do your best to make reparations and then you don't do it again and then you move forward but but this attempt to make really bad to to not take responsibility to not take ownership of it and then to make bad um bad excuses for it it adds insult to injury and it shows a lack of Contrition and responsibility and then it adds more more lies on top of it and it's it's just so disheartening to see you know arguments like this yeah and and before we get into the next slide to look at her specific argument we talked about this in the first episode if you believe that Joseph Smith was getting Revelations from God God told Joseph Smith to have Oliver and some of the early members go preach to the lamanites where does God tell them to go where the Native Americans are so if you're going to say skin doesn't mean skin then why in the world is God giving Joseph a revelation to tell Alvin then to go find people with darker skin to go preach to like you cannot have it both ways that's why we talked in the first episode the revelations from God confirm that skin means skin in the Book of Mormon all the early leaders confirm that and so to say that um and we'll get into this in a few minutes uh to say that skin doesn't mean skin means that Joseph Smith had no idea what he was doing that the Mormon framing of God had no idea what he was doing and and so you're creating more problems and the only reason like you said are doing this is because now it is so deeply racist to say that the Native Americans uh basically got dark skin because God cursed them because they were not you know obedient enough and so if Holly wants to make this argument then you have to answer then who is God sending Oliver and them to preach to because if it doesn't mean skin and you're identifying them by skin as God does in that Revelation by telling him to go preach to unto the lamanites on the border of Missouri you've got problems and and this is why we talk a lot in these episodes about going through them in order because they do they pile on top of each other and these are common threads where you want to fix one problem with apologetics while completely ignoring the fact that you're now creating three more and that's why apologetics is about you know divide and conquer where you take one problem at a time and then just pretend none of the other problems exist but in reality in in the real world it doesn't work that way and so that even before getting into our actual argument that would be my first response to say well then who in the world is God telling them to go preach to it's it's a nonsensical argument yeah I think it's also important just to give for those who who aren't really familiar with how the Mormon churches worked regarding apologists um you know because this is going to be relevant to kind of today's entire conversation what the church has has done at least since the early 20th century is they they fund academics at BYU or at Church headquarters and pay them for their degrees and for their reputation and for their titles and for their knowledge of academics to then put forth plausible answers um and we even have people like Donald H Oaks saying on record we don't need good answers we just need answers because if you get someone like Hugh Nibley with a PhD in ancient scripture from UCLA talking a bunch of Egyptian goggle gobbledygook but but with the churches you know or BYU's stamp of approval then members who don't really want to dig into the stuff and don't really want to spend a lot of time in the history or just don't want to deal with the discomfort of the issue they'll just go oh well Spencer fluman or John Gee or uh Hugh Nibley or you know Carrie molstein or whoever the scholar happens to be well they're really smart they have a degree they work for BYU and they have an answer and so it's okay and so in the example of this quote we just need to make really sure everyone understands this isn't a prophecy or Revelator making this really bad excuse that maybe skin actually means clothing it's a paid employee of the church you know in other words um or it's paid staff at BYU publishing the response and so you know people who don't know the the Journal of Book of Mormon studies is a publication provided by the Maxwell Institute at BYU to provide these sorts of non-academic species bad apologetic arguments it's not Prophet series of Revelator is offering the bad arguments because it makes them look dumb and because they need plausible deniability if the if the responses are bad but it is an academic who's faithful to the church who publishes through a BYU publication so that then that can be cited as a source for questioning members and so you know this is all a multi-decade orchestrated heavily funded um a way to deal with inconvenient embarrassing or existentially threatening problems um through paid professors paid you know non-profits that are Shadow funded by wealthy Mormons and by staff at BYU or faithful members who call themselves academics okay I just I just want to give that context as well uh the next slide is let's take a closer look at Alma 3 5-6 yeah and so this is the you know kind of the Crux of her argument is if you look at Alma three through six it gives Z and I'm putting in quotes a possibility that skins being worn over their loins equates to skin that was darkened by the curse and so I want to read Alma 3 5-6 in its entirety and I this is a little bit tricky but so it says now the heads of the lamanites were shorn and they were naked save it with her skin which was girded about their loins and also their armor which was girded about them and their bows and their arrows and their stones and their slings and so forth and the skins of the lamanites were dark according to the mark which was set upon their fathers which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and the Rebellion against their Brethren who consisted of Nephi Jacob and Joseph and Sam who were just in holy men and so which she's saying is when he's uh when I'm sorry when she says that in verse 5 it says save it with save it where their skin which was girded about their loins she's saying that equates the same thing as and the skins of the lamanites were dark in verse six and what I would point out is if you read verse 5 after it talks about the skin about their lungs it mentions armor bows arrows Stones slings and so forth so you've got five other things plus the and so forth before then it goes back to the fact that their skins were darkened so she's trying to say they're the same thing and I think if you read it and you weren't trying to impose your own view I think to try to make that connection is kind of silly because why in the world would the author um not mentioned you know the skin that was good about their loins and then get immediately to say that they're dark because of the curse and and then go you know I mean like it's out of order so you would say for example and they were naked save it where their skins would trigger about their loins which were dark according to the mark and then they had the bow zeros blah blah instead it's talking about the Skins they have which are closed because they did call that skins because it could be like animal skins that are up on their loins and so it would make a lot more sense in that context for it to be say animal skins that they were wearing as clothes and then all the other stuff they have and then go back to say their human skin was dark because of the mark it this is an area where she's trying to force a meaning to the text it just isn't there even by a simple reading I don't think they would list all these other things and go back to it if they were not different things and so it's a little bit confusing when you read it um I just um want to point out too this also is an alma 3 5-6 and so if she wants to make this connection you'd have to believe they're still wearing the same skins from their fathers or that every piece of clothing that they create instantly turns dark and so that's a you know one of those things where this is where it gets silly because to make the argument that it's animal skins and not their human skin means that every time they kill an animal and get the skin to make you know something to protect themselves God instantly turns it dark the moment they touch it and that is it's nonsensical and so she's trying to make this magical argument without making without thinking about everything that would take for it to have happen and so I know this slide's a little bit confusing but I would argue that in verse five they are talking about the Skins about their loins because people wore animal skins but then in verse six they're being very explicit to say the skins of the lamanites themselves were dark because that confirms the earlier texts and so to impose a different meaning in five and six I I really think is disingenuous to the fact that it's confirmed everywhere else in the Book of Mormon that their skin meant human skin yeah and I think it I think just it reiterates why we have to watch these episodes in succession because if you just watch part one we showed instance after instance where you just can't make the argument that they're saying other anything other than dark curse honest in because of wickedness so it ignores all the scriptures and all the prophetic utterances of modern-day Mormon prophets that make it really clear we're talking about skin really skin number two this type of research is funded by the Mormon church so that it's not objective research or analysis it's literally funded by a billion dollar organization trying to protect it and defend itself from embarrassing uh prior positions and then it so it's clearly motivated reasoning where there's a scholar trying to come using their credentials using their reputation using the academic process to just try and make a religiously motivated argument so it's motivated reasoning and then finally it the reason why I sometimes have gotten mad at apologists and Neil apologists in the past is they they're enabling the Mormon church to not have to take responsibility for their past racism by by making such terrible arguments okay so let's get to the next the next Slide the idea the black clothes makes one unattractive is also nonsense yes I just want to point out and this is something that never occurred to me as a believing member because like I mentioned the first episode that this was one of the first things I came across because it was just made no sense why um God would curse people with dark skin and that that would be held against them throughout the generations and so Holly Richardson in this article talks about how you know they're talking about it being their clothes that skin means close and I I think it's first of all it's insulting to tell members that God would curse the the clothes as a way to not be enticing to other white and delightsome people and just think about this for a split second have you ever found someone in your life to not be attractive because they were wearing black or dark red clothing or something like that it's so stupid to make that argument and all you need to do is go to a lingerie store and look at how many of the different varieties they sell that are in Black in dark red in dark colors because if if dark clothing made people unattractive then you would see that today in some possible way and it is just not the case and so you would I don't know how to say it's insulting to just common sense it's insulting to reading the book of Mormon it's insulting to looking at the teachings of the early leaders all the way up until it became so toxic to say it publicly now now they're trying to change course and the problem is they know all this I don't have to sit here and tell you guys or tell everybody listening how black clothes would not make someone unattractive yet we've got these articles because they're trying to in a lot of ways it's almost like a thought stopping technique because I think it feel like if they can make that argument to you before you think a little bit below the surface you'll put it on the shelf or you kind of just set it aside and I don't know how else to say it this argument is is nonsensical because we can see every day in our lives that people with dark clothing are just as attractive to people with white it's it's it's almost so ridiculous we probably don't need to spend too much time on no that's all I need to say it's just it's so stupid and and um and I know people I don't want to be loaded on these terms but that argument is just it's ridiculous and so then Ali Richardson in her article uh basically asks members to reinterpret The Book of Mormon and so she says for Latter-Day Saints who truly believe that God is no respecter of persons doesn't it make sense to ask ourselves if there could possibly be other interpretations from a translator record written over 2 000 years ago then the one passed down through the lens of Civil War and then civil rights culture that perhaps our lens of white privilege has colored our view I believe we can and should be asking those kinds of questions especially as members of a church that began because of a counter-cultural question asked by a teenage boy and this ending is so ridiculous to me because Richardson is actually making the point we've been making in a lot of these episodes and critics have been making the Book of Mormon is written as if the author is only familiar with 19th century ideas and so as we talk about in the first episode this is what you'd expect and so what she's saying is you know is it is it possible that we're viewing the text through a 19th century lens well yeah because that is the lens It Was Written In And so there's nothing in the Book of Mormon that matches ancient history there's nothing there's nothing that matches any future events unknown to the author we talked about that in the last episode there's no Revelations that go beyond the Revolutionary War Columbus and all that everything tells us this is a 19th century text Richard Bushman tells us it's best understood that way Dan McClellan says the same thing a lot of the the scholars are out there saying yes you need to read this as an 19th century text so for her to say you know could there be other interpretations no because once you get the context of the text which is that it's a 19th century text incorporating 19th century ideas that is why critics of the church are saying that this is a 19th century idea of racism because that is what all of this text is is taking ancient writings from the Bible and from Christianity and then reinterpreting it through a 19th century Christian lens of white settlers in America and I so I mean in a lot of ways she's making the point for us but I just also want to point out that you see this in the DNA episode DNA essay as well where the church is kind of telling you like if you just reinterpret what the Book of Mormon is actually saying you can make this work but once you reinterpret what the Book of Mormon is saying what are you left with now because now all of a sudden everything that you were raised to say is ancient text kind of falls apart if you have to reinterpret it to make it work I I hate these arguments because it's always like you'll always see those weasel words like possibly could be maybe perhaps against all the evidence that's saying yes this is why this is DNA studies show this um all of the leaders are confirming it in the early days all of those things are data points that are confirming it and now we're being told well if you just maybe ignore all those and maybe possibly could be it's frustrating because it's so misleading and I really believe they know full well that the argument against them is overwhelming and so that's why they use those words because they know they know that they can't say this is what it is so they have to use these words so that the reader who is a believing member almost takes it if as if it's truth while the writer knows full well it is the most unlikely possibility yeah yeah and and if you can if you can redefine what skin means can you redefine what sin means can you redefine what a term means what belief means what faith means as soon as you as soon as what you know what apologists do is they're reduced to redefining words um and it's actually one of the signs of a high demand religion when you have to develop your own meaning of words and your own vocabulary for it all to make sense that's a red flag if you go to Luna Lindsey Corbin's book on um on uh on high demand religions within a Mormon context uh you you'll see that that's one of the one of the flags one of the triggers uh because because what apologists do is they they make the English language pretty useless and they they reduce to almost eliminate the value of scripture because all of a sudden translation doesn't mean translation skin doesn't mean skin and once you're there what what's the value of scriptures at all yeah and that's not to mention what we've covered in past episodes which is you know we've got this tight and loose translation tell us about how this applies to that conversation yeah and this is why that episode is so important because we did the episode on like the arguments about the tight translation of the book commandment versus the loose translation and so we've discussed this in a lot of episodes but this creates problems on both sides of the Book of Mormon and so Holly Richardson now wants to say that skin doesn't mean skin as Joseph would understand it and so she's saying that skin means this ancient version of skin which is animal skins and clothing and so if you want to then do that you now have to claim it's a tight translation which now all of a sudden opens up all sorts of other issues as we talked about anachronisms using the King James Bible in there all of the references to things that happened to Joseph Smith personally whether it's the Charles anthon visit in the Book of Mormon his father's dream and so we talk about that in episode because now all of a sudden to get around this dark skin problem they're trying to go with the tight translation because they're trying to say well it's actually an ancient meaning that we just don't understand through a 19th century context but now if you want to claim it's a loose translation as most apologists will do because we talk about this Michael Ash has a book about Joseph Smith basically being a co-author Cheryl Givens calls of bricolage where Joseph Smith is taking all the surrounding ideas so if you want to go that route then absolutely Joseph would use the word skin as he knows it which is human skin and so this creates another type versus loose translation problem it's like pick your poison because either way you go you're opening up other problems and so that's why I keep saying when Ali Richardson in this article I know she's citing other writers wants to say perhaps we're looking at the word skin wrong if you really want to go down that route you then have to go with a completely tight translation method and then you've got all sorts of other issues that tell you the Book of Mormon isn't true so either way here you're going down a road that is going to lead to us knowing that the Book of Mormon is not what it claims to be and so this is why they try to keep you on the surface it's just a really bad bad faith argument they're making and it's why this series it's why this series is so important because you have to be able to see the forest you can't just see the individual trees you got to see the whole Forest another word that is coming up more and more these days is pseudopigrapha and that's a fancy way of saying you create um writings of an ancient person as if you're that person and then tell everyone that the writings aren't yours but they're the writings of that ancient person because for some reason writings of an ancient person that's already accepted as a prophet is way more likely to be respected than if just some 19th century farm boy who's who's in some ways not super literate writes it and so I just saw recently a clip with Dan Vogel saying you know if I had to summarize what Joseph Smith did he basically liked to write write his own ideas into allegedly historical figures some of them actual like Abraham well some would argue Abraham never existed but right the Christian World Moses existed and to the Christian World Abraham existed so in the cases of the book of Moses in the book of Abraham that's pseudopigrapha Joseph writing as if he were Moses or Abraham so that he could inject new ideas into Christianity and then with the Book of Mormon he's come up with some new historical figures like Alma mosiah Nephi Benjamin Etc but then he's also putting Jesus Into the Book of Mormon and so that way he's he's doing what's called pseudopigrapha all across the board and um and but as soon as but as soon as you go there and you hear Richard Bushman using the term pseudopigrapha you'll hear Terrell Gibbons and others use it then then it starts it starts to beg the question what's the difference between pseudopigrapha and just outright fraud when we know Joseph claimed that these were ancient records and then we actually apply scientific scrutiny to whether or not the book of Abraham the book of Moses and the Book of Mormon were indeed ancient records versus uh plagiarisms and works of uh you know inspired christian fan fiction or Bible fan fiction that that's when all of a sudden this house of cards potentially collapses and I'm just gonna ask one question Mike we're giving Holly Richardson a lot of time and I you you've probably sensed with me a little bit of impatience for giving her so much time and I guess I I guess I need to ask because I I haven't been inactively participating Mormon since 2014. are you are you doing this because Within the modern Mormon LDS church Consciousness that these arguments are having are being used a lot and are having traction yes this is just a dumb isolated bad apologetic excuse published in a in a journal article that's sort of obscure I don't want to spend any more time on it but if you're saying to me that this is what the church is is advancing in the membership to help them make sense of it all then I can see why you're spending so much time yeah no this is one if I post something like on Twitter I will get responses all the time that says skin doesn't mean skin so this is absolutely a response that is getting mainstream traction from uh the church I don't think I've seen like an apostle say that because they they're the apostles are so guarded uh that they don't want to go out there and talk when they are going to me you saw the that um q a with I think uh was it Bednar at the Washington Temple press conference I mean they're very careful when they go out because they know these questions are going to come up with people who know what they're talking about and it's really difficult for them so no this is a definitely a mainstream um you know 2022 response and in 2020 it was this this argument was being written by about by other people um it's being um trying to think of the names I'm drawn a blank but there's a few people that have written about it extensively um so yeah no this one needs to be covered because of the fact that a lot of members are absolutely going to come across it um as they're as they're going through and trying to figure out why the Book of Mormon is telling us that what about Americans that skin means clothing is that an argument that's got a lot of traction yeah okay yeah okay so they'll say they'll say this that he actually cursed Their Skin So basically um Everybody Was the Same race so it would be like if you and I if you're a lamanite I'm a Nephi all of a sudden my skin is pure white and all of a sudden God makes your shirt black so I know you're a bad guy and that's why I was talking about the lingerie things it's like it's stupid to think that that would make you unattractive it's just it's it's really it's a bad argument and it's but it is one that's being it's being pushed by a lot of people so I mean it's not it's certainly not just one person writing an article in the Salt Lake Tribune it's it's more much more established than that so the argument that I'm more familiar with and maybe we'll be getting to this is The Curse of Darkness is on their countenance on their Spirit not on their clothing are we going to be talking about that I think so I think we've got some slides on that too yeah I mean that's what the skin doesn't mean skin it means countenance yeah I've heard that but again that's one of those things where it's like well we'll go through the verse too it's just it means it's like he's Joseph's looking at a rock yeah it's telling him what's on the plates yeah God could have just put countenance on the Rock not skin and solve this entire problem in a gazillion times and then Prophet series of revelators use Skin a gazillion times to then change it in 2022 when the internet makes things convenient to either clothing changing skin to clothing or changing skin accountants that's that's just ridiculous okay yeah and again we'll I'll hammer this one more time if if skin does not mean skin why is God telling Joseph Smith to go preach to the lamanites exactly where the Native Americans are it there is absolutely no way around this and and so I I don't even know you know like you said it's I feel bad giving this much time but it is an argument here so just to hammer this home here's a few more verses from first Nephi and second Nephi and it came to pass I beheld after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark and low summative filthy people full of idleness in all manner of Abominations so there they would say dark main accountants but again we we know the skin issue and then it says and I beheld the spirit of the Lord that was upon the Gentiles and they did prosper and obtain the land for their inheritance and I beheld that they were white and exceedingly fair and beautiful like unto my people before they were slain and then second Nephi 36 this is the original 1830 Edition before they change it and then they sh and then shall they Rejoice for they shall know that it is a blessing unto them from the hand of God and their scales of Darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes and many generations shall not pass away among them save they shall be a white and Delight some people and so this is an argument where they'll say that it means countenance because they'll say the scales begin to fall from their eyes so it's like their eyes their countenance is falling away but again this is one where you take this verse and you compare it to the quotes we had last episode when church leaders were talking about literal pigment changing as the Native Americans join the church so it's one of those areas where if you really want to make the argument that it means countenance you have to answer for all of these verses then you have to answer for all the prophets who are talking in the name of God about how these Native Americans were getting whiter after joining the church I I there's just too much like pigment right yeah they usually they're using words they usually show they literally said that the pigment was changing and so yeah I don't know how to get around it and so this is one we'll just spend one slide on this is one um Jim Bennett wrote a reply to the Cs letter which I think is a lot better than fair reply although it still has a lot of issues but um it's one that gets talked about a lot and he was on with you and Bill real and he will freely admit that the priesthood ban was wrong but who'll say is that the reason it took so long is because the prophets were racist and they just weren't asking the right questions so effectively what he was saying is the early prophets believe that people with black skin were cursed and so why would they ask God to remove it because they thought it was right and so um I just want to point out when you make this argument then you have to ask yourself what in the world is the point of having a profit to receive Revelation it really goes to show you that this argument I think is a lot in a lot of ways it's it's basically trying to preserve the fact that God isn't telling them that this is wrong and to preserve them as prophets because they can only get answers to what they're curious about but that would then mean that like in today in 2022 when you have Russell Nelson in 2015 saying that they felt the revelation of God say that you know um those who are in same-sex relationships or apostates and then three and a half years later say that God gave another Revelation saying that they're not apostates that they're allowing those policies to come in because that's a world view and if I just at some point this episode is showing that the leaders of the church the prophet seers and Revelations of the church they cannot tell what is basically they cannot discern what is from God versus what they already believe and so if if prophets can only get Revelation to what they already believe what they already think about those with dark skin or those who are LGBT um or women and the priesthood all of these different things if they can only get what's in the world view then what is the point of having a profit because clearly they can't tell what's coming from God and what's coming from their own beliefs and if they can't tell then they're no better they're no better to follow than any other person on average and these episodes are showing us without any question that they cannot tell what is from God versus what is coming from them yeah absolutely yeah um if profits can tell us don't drink tea and don't drink coffee which are beverages that are at minimum benign if not healthy for you if they'll tell you you know don't you know like Mormon prophets don't have more than one ear piercing don't show your shoulders uh if there can be such a level of specificity to what profits are telling us um you know don't don't watch rated R movies don't drink caffeinated beverages if they're gonna tell us with that level of control and specificity um but then on the really really big issues like systemic racism slavery uh the treatment of LGBT people and gender identity um War famine you know if they're going to be silent on the big stuff but like super controlling including telling Joseph to have 30 30 wives and 14 year old girls like it it really does it really does challenge the model that these men actually speak to God and if they do actually speak to God well then I've got a problem with God because the things that God is telling Joseph Smith to focus on go sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon you need to go make some money and then he tries to sell it and he can't why is God that specific but but he can't even get the skin color and racism thing right yeah I mean that's just it it comes down to the fact that you know we want to throw we want to preserve God we want to preserve the framing of God but we also preserve the leaders and so they'll say well the leaders just weren't asking the right questions but if they're not asking the questions that are the hot topic of the day this is not some small thing during the time when Brigham Young was profit and we're going to kind of get to him in a minute the Civil War was was about to happen uh obviously slavery is becoming a boiling point for the whole country and you're going to tell me that Brigham Young isn't praying to God to know what to do so the fact that Brigham Young is going to come out and say he knows these things because of God tells you that either he doesn't actually have a connection to God which is what I would agree with or that God just confirms that Brigham Young wants to hear and I think either way you want to go with that is horrible or the third option as you said is that God really did condone these policies uh and really did confirm to Brigham Young that Utah should be a slave state and that they should believe in slavery and that they should preserve this ban and in that case God first of all God's changing then because God apparently would change because of social pressure which is something that I don't think anybody would agree with in any form of Christianity uh or he's just really bad at what he's doing and so when I say that I'm talking about the Mormon framing of God not God in general but the Mormon framing of God is one that is very indecisive uh confused at times um inconsistent and a lot of times I'm caring because you have Society taking care of of certain groups of people before the church does especially when it comes to lifting the priesthood band so that families with dark skin could be with their families together it's just all of these things point to the fact that prophet seers and revelators cannot tell what is from God versus what is from them which to me tells me that none of it is from God because if it was from God um and they did not understand God would send an angel with a drawn sword and say I don't know how many times I have to tell you this slavery is wrong and what in the world are you doing Banning members with black skin from being able to come back to me are you crazy but instead the only time the angel is sent down is when Joseph Smith is trying to get women to accept his proposals and we'll get into that with polygamy but when we talk about pseudopigrapha Joseph Smith's Revelations are pseudopigrapha because you have to remember think of all of the revelations we've already talked about in these episodes 116 Pages getting Martin Harris to finance The Book of Mormon all of those Revelations are getting people to do what Joseph needs to get done because if Joseph Smith went to um someone and said hey 116 Pages lost but I think I have a plan uh there's actually a second set of plates I forgot to tell you about everybody like yeah sure Joseph but if you say God told me this it gives it more credibility so it's not just the Book of Mormon the book of Moses the book of Abraham that are pseudopigrapha the revelations are because he's speaking in the voice of God in order to give what he's saying enough credibility so that the followers will go with what he says and so yeah and so just basically if if Joseph Smith can't tell what's from God and what's from himself and none of the other leaders can the why in the world in 2022 should we believe a word that the leaders are saying yeah let me ask you a question that I don't know you've planned on discussing here but it's also it's another apologetic that I'm hearing and just stop me if we're already going to talk about this but one of the more nuanced sophisticated apologetics I've heard recently is that Nephi was racist and King Benjamin was racist and Amma was racist that they were also products of their time and that even though they say in the Book of Mormon that God cursed the skin you know based on wickedness that that wasn't actually God doing it that was just God allowing the racism of the Book of Mormon prophets to come through and that that was done by God so that we today could look at not just the modern racism but the racism of ancient Mormon prophets and I guess of of Abraham and of Moses in the book of Abraham in the book of Moses and that would be a catalyst for us working through our own problems this is the same sort of apologetic that is applied to the Old Testament when all the genocide happens that instead of it being God that commands the genocide um it's Tribal Warfare that attributes the genocide to God but that's part of scripture God lets scripture be messy he lets scripture be a reflection of the culture of the day um so that so that we can learn and and because he lets men see through a glass Darkly and he lets men and women you know have their messiness and bigotry and biases spill out into scripture are we going to talk about that and do you have an answer to that okay so I don't have any slides for that I've heard the argument I think it's really really um bad and the reason is because if you want to make the argument that it was really the racism of the early prophets then you kind of almost have to go to a tight translation because the loose translation is where Joseph is kind of being filtered in this information then can apply it and then again if you go to a Thai translation it opens up to all those other problems uh the bigger problem though for me with that argument is you are now claiming that the Book of Mormon is historical which we know is not the case we could show with every field of study that the Book of Mormon is not historical and it has to be historical for that to work because it just happens to line up with the Revelation Joseph Smith is getting from God about where to go to preach and so to say that Nephi is just being racist and that God wasn't really changing the skin color then again I'm going to keep pointing this leaves open the the real simple fact that God is telling Joseph Smith to go where there are people with darker skin to go preach to them and calls them the lamanites and so I don't think you could make that argument without reconciling how in the world the revelations just happen to line up with with where the people with dark skin are the Native Americans as to where God is telling him to go preach the lamanites you know I mean like I can understand the argument that like the leaders like Spencer W Kimball was just a guy who had no idea what he was saying but you are taking direct Revelation from God to Joseph Smith saying go preach the late nights on the borders of Missouri which is where the Native Americans were I there's no way to separate that because we have the idea that dark skin is um what identifies the lamanites being cemented by Revelation I I don't see any way around that unless you want to say Joseph Smith was getting the Revelation wrong which as we've already talked about I don't know what you're left with at that point yeah yeah if all of a sudden profits God is allowing prophets to encode deeply harmful bigotry into the scriptures as God's will as scripture you've really lost me on the value of scriptures at that point okay so we referenced this last time yeah there is one really good verse in the Book of Mormon about you know God loving everyone and God being no respecters of persons and this seems to be the number one go-to for people trying to explain book more or explain away Book of Mormon racism yeah and so you hear this all the time and this is from the essay that the church put out which says the church proclaims that Redemption through Jesus Christ is available to the entire Human family on the conditions God has prescribed it affirms that God is no respecter of persons and emphatically declares that anyone who is righteous regardless of race is favorite of him the teachings of the church in relation to God's children are epitomized by a verse in the second book of Nephi the Lord denies none that cometh unto him black and white Bond and free male and female all are alike unto God both Jew and Gentile and as we just said this quote is used all the time to deflect from the entire Book of Mormon story being one that is incredibly racist to try to explain the origins of the Native Americans but this quote is in no way speaking about the curse in this verse God is saying that anyone can come back to Christ even if the even if you happen to be a filthy lotham person with dark skin as the Book of Mormon says I'm using quotes remember that the Book of Mormon claims to be written to bring the Native Americans back to Christ so of course this verse needs to be in there to tell the Native Americans even though you're dark and you're filthy and you're Savage you could still come back to Christ and God will welcome you the Book of Mormon is creating a problem for Native Americans by giving them their origin story in order to sell them the solution which is to join the church and so of course this verse is in there I I always kind of laugh when I hear because like of course they're going to tell you that God welcomes anyone because he want they want the the Native Americans to joined the church to come back to Christ but it does not in any way excuse or remove or explain away the fact that the entire Book of Mormon narrative is racist in the sense that it's trying to explain why there are people with dark skin living in the 1820s I I think that it's such a misleading verse to use because it's two completely separate issues this is an issue of who God welcomes it has nothing to do with the curse whatsoever yeah because even if you even if you stipulate that the Book of Mormon God says that he loves everyone equally right you've still got Mormon scripture that says things like blacks won't receive the pre the black people won't receive the priesthood until all the whites have received it in the Millennium and so it's kind of like the George Orwell animal speak all animals are equal but some are more equal than others because you you saying that the Book of Mormon God says that all are like unto God and that all are welcomed by God still doesn't explain why curses are being given right like skin by God is being viewed as loathsome why priesthood and Temple blessings are being denied why salvation is being denied until the very very end it's kind of like okay God loves everyone but he's certainly going to favor people who are white or have white skin so it doesn't remove the racism it just says everyone ends up equal but there was a lot of racism and bigotry along the way which which it doesn't solve the problem and and you just have to scratch a centimeter down to see that this is just uh it's a PR attempt to to whitewash the Mormon God yeah and it's just like I said this is just it's to to use this verse as if it somehow is answering about the curse of dark skin it just is nonsensical because this verse is saying that anybody can come back to God anyone can believe in God so as I said earlier it's like the Book of Mormon is telling Native Americans hey your ancestors were really wicked people and because of that their skin was dark and that's why your skin is dark but guess what we're gonna sell you the solution with this Book of Mormon and if you join the church and you do what we need you to do your Skin's going to turn white again and that sounds horrible but that's what they taught that's literally what we mentioned in the first episode where the prophet of the Mormon Church in general conference was talking about how they were doing the Indian placement program where they were pulling Native Americans into Mormon families and was saying their skin was turning whiter than the other Native Americans on the same reservation and so the Book of Mormon here this quote has nothing to do with the curse it is just saying that anybody can can come to God and so they're they're using a really bad deflection here to try to get away from the fact that the Book of Mormons racism is still there no matter who can go back to God it's just it's a really bad argument and it's one that as we'll get into later I think I have their quote on honesty later it doesn't match their own definition of honesty and it's frustrating when you hear it yeah okay so the next slide is everyone else was racist during those times too yep and this is more from the gospel topics essay so this is a long chunk and it says this is this is basically another apologetic response that they offer and if I had to summarize it's basically hey yeah Mormon prophets were racist in the 19th century and 20th Century But but so was everybody else right yeah yeah this is this is the product of their time argument that you hear all the time so from the essay it says in 1850 the U.S Congress created Utah territory and the U.S appointed a Brigham Young to the position of territorial Governor southerners who had converted to the church and migrated to Utah with their slaves raised the question of slavery's legal status in the territory and two speeches delivered before the Utah territory legislature in January and February 1852 Brigham Young announced the policy restricting the men of black African descent from priesthood ordination at the same time president said that some future day black church members would have all the privilege and more enjoyed by other members and I'm putting that in yellow because remember that line the justifications for the Restriction echoed the widespread ideas about racial inferiority that had been used to argue for the legal legalization of black servitude in the territory of Utah according to one view which had been promulgated in the United States from at least the 1730s blacks ascended from the same lineage as the biblical cane who slew his brother Abel those who accepted this view believe that God's curse on Cain was the mark of dark skin black servitude was somehow sometimes viewed as a second curse placed upon Noah's grandson Kanan as well as or as a result of hams in discretion towards his father although slavery was not a significant factor in Utah's economy and was soon abolished the restriction on priesthood ordinances remained okay yeah so what camera do you want to give there you know what let's just go to the next slide because okay yeah that that part of the essay is just it's so bad and well just if you had to give a one sentence summary what's your one sentence summary that the church is supposed to be led by God the church made choices and the church chose wrong I mean you can you can't blame the racism everybody else in this day it would be like saying today that everyone in the church drinks coffee because most people drink coffee or everyone you know I mean like you can't say it's the whole thing that I heard growing up you know when you say I want to do something my mom would say no you can't do that and they'd say oh I really want to do it and she go well if everybody else jumped off a bridge with you and I'd go no I guess I wouldn't I mean it's just it's so we're supposed to expect better when I was a convert I was told these are the leaders that can lead us through the latter days because they speak directly to God and they know how to deal with these problems and we're showing time and time again that they cannot do it and when they have to make choices when they are able to make the choice between right and wrong they choose a side or wrong just as much as as anyone else does because they are it's not just that the men are products of their time the church is a product of this time and it always will be and that's why yeah we're going to see in 30 to 40 years they'll soften up in some way on same-sex marriage but it'll be 50 years after the country did and it'll be will be because the church is effectively a product of its time in order to survive this is the same thing we're seeing here yeah it's just yeah yeah it undermines the entire value proposition of Mormonism because what Mormonism is supposed to give you is better than what the world has yeah because the prophets are speaking to God and because the scriptures come from God and so if you're not if you're not only not getting better from the church leaders and the Church of scripture you're actually getting worse uh you know in in the cases of like 1960s uh Apostles fighting the Civil Rights Movement condemning Martin Luther King as a communist if you're actually or Brigham Young you know bringing bringing slavery to the Utah territory when there were several slaves that had abandoned or abolished slavery when you get profits and Mormon scripture Mormon prophets Mormon scripture doing worse than the average it just simply undermines the entire value value proposition of organism and so your summary slide here let's let's go to that yeah it just says you know to me this sums up the problem for the church's claim to being led by God so well Brigham Young was the first leader of Utah territory and he made a deliberate choice to make it a slave state as a living prophet of God Brigham Young chose to make Utah a slave state so apologists can argue that Brigham was a product of his time all they want but the fact is that his decisions had tremendous impact on the church and almost every one of his major contributions to the doctor the church have been proven horribly wrong including the Adam God Doctrine blood atonement and the ban on members of African descent and what I want to point out is again this is something this was a decision made in what 1850 or 1852 to make Utah a slave state slavery is going to and 13 to 15 years later you would think that if you're a prophet of God you'd get a revelation from God and says um you know my servant Brigham slavery is going to end in this country in the next 13 to 15 years do not make the state a slave state because you're going to be on the wrong side of History this is not what how it should be and instead Brigham Young gung-ho slave state and no angel with a drawn sword saying don't do this no visitation from an angel or if there was Brigham apparently didn't listen so we have all of these issues of inconsistencies between how God acted with Joseph Smith with Brigham Young with today's leaders and that inconsistency tells you it's because the leaders are acting within their own worldview within their own um set of beliefs there's no leadership from God here because they could not see 13 years out to know slavery was going to end anyways it's just a really easy way to show there's no foresight yeah okay so uh this is going to be probably a really powerful and impactful part of the interview for people who are interested or paying attention we're going to now share an actual an odd audio Recreation of a Brigham Young address that he gave in Utah do you want to set it up yes so in the up in the slide a couple slides ago I I read the quote and I'm gonna read it again and there's a part in yellow I'm going to emphasize it again because this is from the church's essay in two speeches delivered before the Utah territorial legislature in January and February 1852 Brigham Young announced the policy restricting men of black African descent from priesthood ordination at the same time Brigham Young or president young said that at some future day black church members would have all the Privileges and more enjoyed by other members and so that's the quote they're pulling from the speech and what we're going to play for you is like the first five minutes or so of this Recreation from Jonathan Streeter and I want you to to understand this is the same talk that this quote is from and we're going to basically play it until that quote happens so you could see all of the things that the church is not telling you about what Brigham Young said here because when you listen to these first five minutes the context of what Brigham Young is saying here is 100 different than what the church is portraying it as and they know the speech exists because it's obviously well documented yeah and I'm just going to give a shout out to Jonathan Streeter he has an amazing YouTube channel called thoughts on things and stuff or toe tests t-o-t-a-s and he's just a brilliant thinker and content creator that has done so much amazing work so she's she's amazing if you if you've never come across this channel after this episode go to his channel he has so much good stuff lots of videos of old members talking or leaders talking he has a lot of videos where he talks about some of the issues he came across and he does it in a very I would argue a very gentle way uh he's got a really good way of processing this information how we think about things so yeah absolutely love the work he does okay so let's roll the clip of Brigham Young speaking at an address in 1852 to the Utah territorial legislature um about about uh people of black African descent about the priesthood and is it did you say slavery as well yeah so he this basically is about slavery and kind of why he believes in slavery okay so this is a audio Recreation of Brigham Young talk I Rise to make a few remarks the items before the house I do not understand the principle of slavery I understand at least I have self-confidence enough and confidence enough in God to believe I do I believe still further that a great many others understand it as I do a great portion of this community have been instructed and have applied their minds to it and as far as they have they agree precisely in the principles of slavery my remarks in the first place will be upon the cause of the introduction of slavery long ago Mama Eve our good old mother Eve partook of the forbidden fruit and this made a slave of her Adam hated very much to have her taken out of the Garden of Eden and now our old daddy says I believe I will eat of the fruit and become a slave too this was the first introduction of slavery upon this Earth and there have been not a son or daughter of Adam from that day to this but what were slaves in the true sense of the word that slavery will continue until there is a people raised up upon the face of the Earth who will contend for righteous principles who will not only believe in but operate with every Power and faculty given to them to help to establish the kingdom of God to overcome the devil and drive him from the earth then will this curse be removed this was the starting point of slavery again after Adam and Eve partook of the curse we find they had two sons Cain and Abel but which was the oldest I cannot positively say but this I know Cain was given more to evil practices than Abel but whether he was the oldest or not matters not to me Adam was commanded to sacrifice and offer up his offerings unto God that placed him into the Garden of Eden through the faith and Obedience of Abel to his Heavenly Father Cain became jealous of him and he laid a plan to obtain all his flocks for through his perfect obedience to father he obtained more blessings than Cain consequently he took it into his heart to put Abel out of his mortal existence after the deed was done the Lord inquired to Abel and made Cain own what he had done with him now says the grandfather I will not destroy the seed of Michael and his wife and Cain I will not kill you nor suffer anyone to kill you but I will put a mark upon you what is that Mark you will see it on the countenance of every African you ever did see upon the face of the Earth or ever we'll see now I tell you what I know when the Mark was put upon Cain Abel's children was in all probability Young and the Lord told Cain that he should not receive the blessings of the priesthood nor his seed until the last of the posterity of Abel had received the priesthood until the Redemption of the Earth if there never was a prophet or Apostle of Jesus Christ spoke it before I tell you this people that are commonly called Negroes are the children of old Cain I know they are I know that they cannot bear rule in the priesthood for the curse on them was to remain upon them until the residue of the posterity of Michael and his wife receive the blessings the seed of Cain would have received had they not been cursed and hold the keys of the priesthood until the times of the restitution shall come and the curse be wiped off from the earth and from Michael's seed then Cain's seed will be had in remembrance and the time come when that curse should be wiped off now then in the kingdom of God on earth a man who has the African blood in him cannot hold one jot nor Tittle of priesthood why because they are the true Eternal principles the Lord Almighty has ordained and who can help it men cannot the Angels cannot and all the powers of Earth and Hell cannot take it off but thus saith the Eternal I am what I am I take it off at my pleasure and not one particle of power can that posterity of Cain have until the time comes he says he will have it taken away that time will come when they will have the privilege of all we have the privilege of and more in the kingdom of God on Earth okay so I just want to say number one that was so deeply disturbing and number two it's mind-boggling to me that that the LDS the Mormon Church's Flagship universities Brigham Young University Provo Brigham Young University Idaho Brigham Young University Hawaii that they still bear his name given that he held beliefs like this it's just I I can't believe that 30 40 years ago they didn't Rebrand the universities you know yeah and and so this is I don't mean how are you gonna it's no it's true I mean that's the thing like this one of the things I you know we all have our opinions on the leaders and what they know what they don't know what the old leaders were with the old you know how they were Brigham Young uh to me was a monster and um Lindsey Hansen Park had put together this thread a while back and just detailed it he said horrific things and this um episode or the speech that Jonathan Streeter talks about 17 minutes we played about five so if you want to go back go to his channel listen to this it gets worse I mean like what he says is horrific he talks about blood atonement and if you mix seeds you'd be better off you know being killed and and you know those are things we'll talk about in future episodes may talk about profits and all that but it just shows that either you believe this is what God told him because he speaks directly to say that God has this is what God declares this is what God wants and this is the prophet of God on Earth so either God believes this or these men don't speak for God and you can't say well Brigham didn't speak for God but Russell Nelson does today you can't have it both ways either both of them did or neither did because we are told that God will not suffer the prophets to lead the church astray so either Brigham Young was approved by God because he lived to a very nice old age or these men are making it up and this is a horrific speech it gets worse and to me um you know the biggest takeaway is just the fact that the church cites the speech to make it sound so prophetic and so positive and you listen to it in context it is horrible and the church is lying about what Brigham Young said and so um if you've got any I don't know if you have any other thoughts otherwise let's go to the next slide yeah so as I said earlier from the church's essay it says in two speeches delivered before the Utah territorial legislature in January and February of 1852 Brigham Young announced a policy restricting men of black African descent from the priesthood ordination ordination at the same time president young said that at some future day black members would have all the privilege and more and I'm not going to read both paragraphs of speech because you just listened to it this is the church trying to explain away the the talk we just heard right yeah yeah I mean they're basically sitting all they mentioned is that the Brigham Young is saying that at a future day the blacks would would have all the Privileges and more black church members not yeah black church members yeah and so there the church's essay is basically saying Brigham Young gave these two speeches to explain why they're doing slate why you tell us a slave state but he's also prophesying that at some future day they'd have all the privilege and more enjoyed by other members and what they don't tell you is that Brigham Young specifically says that the time will come when they have all the privilege and more when every white person on Earth has the priesthood so he's not saying 1978 he's saying when every single white person has had their chance then people with black skin will have their chance it is so different this is so important because if you think about it like like the the church why in the world the Civil Rights you know the Civil Rights some attribute the Civil Rights Movement to sort of beginning around the 1850s 1855. well some say it began really heavily in in the 1940s when when um you know black black Americans were integrated in the military uh with white Americans and so it starts with World War II and then the Korean War but then there's the Emmett Till stuff that happens in the mid-1950s and that's that's when Martin Luther King starts emerging but of course it culminates in the Civil Rights Act of eight of 1964. and and then of course all the 1960s it gets picked up by the Kennedys and by Lyndon B Johnson and so like why in the world would the Mormon Church wait until the full like two decades later 1978 to lift the the priesthood and Temple ban on black members and the answer is it's talks like this yeah when it's in the Mormon scripture when it's in three of the four unique Mormon scriptures Book of Mormon Moses and Abraham and when you've got Prophet series of revelators like Brigham Young saying written down that no black man no black Mormon will receive the priesthood until all the whites receive it right yep where can the church go and that is why they it took them so long to change it because you can you can say Mark E Peterson was a monster you can say Joseph Fielding Smith was a monster you can say um you know Ezra Benson and Harold B Lee were super racist but really all they were doing was was exhibiting their belief in Mormon scripture and in the prophets that preceded him so in some sense they're all victims of believing the religious teachings that are as core to Mormon Doctrine and theology as anything could be yeah and and that's why in the last episode I was talking about how the thing you're going to hear over and over again when you talk about the problem with race in Mormonism is they'll say it started with Brigham Young and I always say no it didn't and and this the five minutes we just played for you Brigham Young specifically mentions that Cain was told that they would never have the priesthood because of this well that's in the book of Abraham and so Joseph Smith puts into the scriptures in the book of Moses that the Cur you know the curse of Cain is black skin and he puts into the book of Abraham that that's the lineage that can't have the priesthood and so to argue that Brigham Young implemented the ban yeah he's the one that formalized it but it's off of scripture it's not like he created out of thin air we've already we've already completely proven that okay so the next slide says follow the footnotes yep and so on the website I had I did a page a while back like a year or so ago called follow the footnotes because one of the problems I have with the gospel topics essays are when they have these citations that lead you to believe one thing and then you read the actual actual citation and it's completely different and so we just showed you that saying that Brigham Young was prophesying of the time when the priesthood Banner be lifted is beyond misleading because Brigham Young was saying it would not be lifted until every single white person had it and so I would just say when you're done with this check out Jonathan streeter's YouTube channel subscribe to it because it's awesome but then listen to that full 17-minute speech because it gets a lot worse and I was listening to it last week when I was getting ready for this and I was gasping out loud it is horrific and it's worse as you get through this the episode um that speech includes Adam God references blood atonement um and if the church wants to then cite this as a source that it's a prophecy you also have to then accept every everything else in that speech as well you can't just pick you know this this like one sentence which doesn't even say what they say it does without accepting the rest and and you know we've talked about this a lot in previous episodes but this is in the church's official manual how they describe being honest and it says when we speak on truths we are guilty of lying we can also intentionally deceive others by a judge or look by silence or by only telling part of the truth whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true we are not being honest and they are not being honest this is a pattern in the essays it's a pattern with apologetics in this case they are being blatantly dishonest with members to try and scrub and whitewash the horrific um beliefs that Brigham Young had and that early leaders had and the absolutely damaging um policies and Doctrine and positions they took regarding members with with African uh descent or or dark skin because it's just yeah yeah it's so frustrating to watch that yeah and and even in the gospel topics essay in an apologetic since 2014 to present they will say things like well sometimes like we just said in a previous slide profits are are people of their time or their products of their time or these were just theories of men not Doctrine not only have we shown that that's not true but they still won't say Brigham Young we condemn the things Brigham Young said we condemn the things in the Book of Mormon books of Mormon Abraham and Moses that are racist we condemn what Spence W Kimball said about massage you know about interracial marriage we condemn what Marky Peterson said they won't condemn actual statements made by actual prophets there's a revelators the closest they'll come when forced is to make these generic statements about men's theories about products of their time about the difference between policy and Doctrine or culture and it's all dishonest but but it's also just trying to escape real accountability and we get why we've already you've already said it several times in the series because once you start admitting that Prophet series of revelators not only get it wrong but get it wrong sometimes worse than on average yeah and the whole Mormon priesthood Authority and Prophet speaking to God narrative comes collapsing down like yeah of cards let's go to the next slide which is the fact that uh not everyone during during the 1900s or the 1800s not everyone was racist right yeah and there were a lot of people fighting against slavery and I want to stick with within the church because I think we always are told oh they're a product of their time well so here's a really cool thing I came across and this is from the um was it keep like I can't remember the name of the blocks like keep a catching on or something like that but um that's the one yes yeah so I found this and I heard about this long time ago I Googled it I found it and so um Orson Pratt was fighting against slavery he didn't want to make slavery uh didn't want to make Utah a slave state and so in 1852 they've got this debate in the Utah legislature and um Orson Pratt actually argues against passing this bill to make it a slave state and he says that legally legalizing slavery in a territory where it did not already exist was enough to cause the angels in heaven to blush and Pratt argued in favor of black males voting rights in 1852 and Brigham Young salary rejected Pratt's arguments we we just as well make a bill here from mules to vote as Negroes or Indians young said what we are trying to do today is to make the Negro equal with us and all our privileges my voice shall be against it all the day long young insisted now he's acting as Governor but he's also the prophet of God fighting against people who are trying to do the right thing because remember Utah was not a slave state originally so they're going out of their way to make it a slave state and Orson Pratt is right to say that this is bad enough to make you know to cause the angels in heaven to blush and Brigham I was like nope we're doing it and I'm going to keep doing it until you know for all day and so and for Brigham Young to compare of black Americans to mules yeah that's a way to justify not letting them vote yep and shouting down one of his own leaders that I don't I don't know the more condemning slide that you've shown in the in this you know last episode in this slide that's just yeah it's unsafe we've got a prophet of God yeah I mean I just I it like I said when I was doing these it just it you read that and you're like this can't be real and it is because that's that's who Brigham Young was and you know furthermore uh the strangites which was an offshoot of of what we consider the the mainstream LDS church they allowed uh those who have black skin to be ordained in 1849 and the rlds did that in 1886 so we have two different offshoots of the Mormon Church who did it long before the the mainstream LDS church finally reversed course so to say their product of their time ignores the fact that there were people fighting against it and there were people within the church or within kind of the the uh Universal Mormon uh different branches doing it long before them and these are if we believe this is the church that has the the true prophet of God why in the world are we lagging behind the offshoots yeah yeah absolutely and that when I found out that the reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I didn't know about the string lights doing it like in in 1849 but when I found out that the reorganized tragedies of Christ Latter-Day Saints now called Community of Christ got it right I I don't know 90 years before we did I I was just like wow that's that's really yeah okay next slide is the curse of Cain and the church's framing of it yeah and so this is again from the church's essay and I think I'd read this earlier but this is a quote from the essay it says according to one view which had been promulgated promulgated in the United States from at least the 1730s blacks ascended from the same lineage as the biblical cane who slew his brother Abel those who accepted this view believe that God's curse on Cain was the mark of a dark skin for just a second yeah go ahead Mike something that I have just learned in the past year that I did not know is that using and I know you were quoting so I'm just gonna make make it clear saying the term black like as you know blacks the blacks right is deeply offensive to black people yep and I I I've made this mistake we probably have made this mistake on this episode but I'm gonna just take a moment to share what I've learned don't say the blacks yep don't say blacks when you're referring to people you can say black people but not the blacks or blacks and I'm not calling you out Mike right and sharing something that I didn't know until recently yeah it's considered deeply racist okay yeah no it's weird when you read the essay and you see that and and so what I want to point out is this is not just one view this is the view and doctrine of the church they literally teach in their scriptures in the book of Moses that those are the people with black skin descended from Cain and thus had dark skin and so I don't know how else to phrase this because they're sitting here saying according to one view as if that's not the what the church's view was and so this also as I've been saying over and over the church is telling you right now that this view started in the 1730s what in the world is it doing into the book of Moses which is supposed to be this ancient writing of Moses how is Moses incorporating ideas that were in the United States from the 1730s on in an ancient Texas book of Moses this is a huge admission by the church even if they didn't want to make it that these scriptures by Joseph Smith are modern they're not ancient because what in the world is this doing in an ancient text and so um the church is being dishonest by saying it's just one view when the church has it in their Doctrine but it's also admitting the fact that the church is writing doctrines or Joseph Smith was writing ideas that started in the 1730s into ancient scriptures so you know apologists when they say that prophets were a product of their time they have no idea how accurate they're being yeah yeah and I never thought of the the the Cain Doctrine the cursive cane Doctrine as being grossly and wildly anachronistic so we talk a lot about horses and steel and chariots in the Book of Mormon being anachronistic but this idea that that Cain was cursed with black skin that's not in the Bible and it's yeah completely anachronistic for for the times when Abraham would have lived or Moses would have lived or you know up until a relatively modern era yeah and that's just it I mean in the first episode I think it was Sabrina might have been Schnell and she had talked about the fact that you know when you walk into church and you see the the photos of Jesus or you see artwork of the the Bible they're always like super white in reality they would have been darker skinned um and so the fact is they wouldn't have probably viewed uh people with dark skin as being cursed because they all had dark skin in the Bible because they were you know from the Middle East and um as we talked about in the first episode a lot of Scholars would argue um that the the race the way we view race today was not how you know they thought of it back then so there the fact that the modern kind of way we look at races and Mormon scriptures tells you it's a modern text and not an ancient text I mean there's again we've talked about this so many times but there's so many different ways to show that these these scriptures of Mormonism are not ancient and at some point there's just an abundance of evidence that tells you there's no way so let's go to the slide the scriptures that led to the priesthood band being viewed as Doctrine yeah and so we mentioned these in the first episode but the book of Abraham is what creates the justification for the priesthood ban in a still doctrine of the church today so these two verses are going to be what basically allows the Brigham Young to create the ban and do it in the name of God so Abraham 124 says when this woman discovered the land it was underwater who afterwards settled her sons in it and thus from Ham sprang that race which preserved the curse in the land that's saying that that preserved the curse of ham which is obviously as we've talked about having dark skin and then Abraham 127 says now Pharaoh being of that lineage by which he could not have the right of priesthood notwithstanding the Pharaohs would claim it would would feign claim it from Noah through ham therefore my father was led Away by their idolary um idolatry and so um these two verses are in the book of Abraham and Joseph Smith took a very racist idea that Justin was used to justify slavery and wrote it directly into the scriptures through the gift and power of God and I'm just pointing out you cannot have it both ways either this is from God or it's not and if it's not from God then as I've said before we talk about in the preset up so once you realize that this stuff is not what it claims to be it's a house of cards there's there's nothing left this is the foundational these are the foundational scriptures of Mormonism and we're showing without any question they're using modern racism because it's being written in a time where that was the belief of the time and so you can't have it both ways either this is from God or it's not and if it's not from God we don't we don't need to be a part of this you know I mean they have no Authority if this is not from God and and we could show over and over and over again these are not Ancient Ancient uh scriptures they're they're modern creations yeah absolutely so it starts with Joseph it always starts with Joseph yeah yep okay this the next the next uh slide is the scriptures of Mormonism and white supremacy which is yeah which is a strong word right this is a super strong phrase and I was going back and forth on whether or not to include it but I'm going to do it and we're gonna do it in the most technical sense and so if you look up the definition of white supremacy in the Oxford dictionary it says the belief that white people are superior to those of all of their races especially the black race and should therefore dominate Society and I just want to point out it is incredibly difficult to come to terms with this but the Book of Mormon holds a white supremacist belief it teaches that white skin is delightsome while those who have dark skin is considered filthiness it's considered loathsome um and so while we're gonna also say that you know God loves everybody equally as you mentioned earlier God absolutely in the Book of Mormon favors those who have white skin because those with white skin are the Righteous ones and those with dark skin as we learn in the Book of Mormon will have their skin turn white when they turn back to God and so the Book of Mormon is absolutely using skin color as the delineation between those who are good and those who are not and um the Books of Moses and Abraham set the priesthood ban Emotion by declaring that black skin this occurs from God which as we've just mentioned that's a textbook way to show that God is favoring those with white skin because if you don't have white skin you cannot be with your family together forever you cannot concealed in the temple you cannot get saving ordinances you cannot hold the priesthood um and and so I don't know what more to say outside of just you know if you want to make the argument that it's anything besides the textbook definition of white supremacy you're going to have to show me um how they're none of the all of these textures are telling us that and the fact that in the Book of Mormon they teach if you turn onto Christ your skin will turn white again I think is a pretty good way to show that this is what the church's doctrines are which is that white skin is favorite of God and we've we've discussed this in past episodes with uh Thomas Murphy and others if you actually study our our history objectively and this isn't to sort of get into like white hatred or white self-loathing but you know Western European countries have been colonialistic whether it's Portugal or Spain or the you know England um you know we you know the those countries sent out explorers all throughout and colonized Africa colonized Asia colonized you know North and Central and South America that's just a fact and when you're colonizing uh people of Darker skin or when you're in the case of the the slave trade in the United States in the 1617 and 1800s when you're taking ships to Africa literally enslaving um Africans and then bringing them back to do forced labor you need some sort of justification for treating humans this way and so this is where these racist doctrines are always born it's it's recognizing that you're doing something super wrong to an entire race of people based on their skin and then feeling bad about it and then feeling like you need to justify it and so whether it's whether it's the mound builder myth that we've talked about in past episodes both with Simon sutherton and with you whether it's uh the the you know Cain cursive cane Theory it's what humans do colonizers do and largely white colonizers do when they're trying to justify displacement genocide or slavery and that's where this comes from yeah that's why calling it white supremacy is 100 accurate yeah I mean it's difficult but technically that's right and and so we're going to look at some quotes here and these are really not great but this is from the Improvement era which is a church-run magazine uh this would be like getting it this would be like getting something in the liahona today or the enzyme up until a couple years ago so this is in there and it says this is an entry kind of in this section of the magazine which is just a bunch of like random tidbits and it says Indian turning white a Winnebago Indian Louis armelle living on the reservation is said to be the object of scientific observation because for many years his skin is gradually been gradually turning white he is now 54 years old he still has pop copper patches but Physicians believe that if you live if he lives a few more years he will become entirely white so this is of Interest sounds like the skin condition that Michael Jackson had right it does but and within the yeah what's like alopecia yeah I think it's alopecia yeah yeah and so I think that's what it is but um in the content this is in the context of Mormonism this would be like what they believed in the Book of Mormon which is what as he turned to Christ your skin begins to turn white again and so this is like again this would be like receiving this Emilia hona today if you read that you'd be like this is insane this is what they were publishing from the church in 1928. okay I'm sorry I got that wrong it's called the alopecia I think might be the hair thing uh that Vitiligo okay Vitiligo is a long-term condition where pale white patches develop on the skin yeah caused by the lack of melanin which is the pigment in skin Vitiligo can affect any area of skin but it's common but but it commonly happens on the face neck and hands and in skin creases so clearly this this gentleman Louis Armel I'm theorizing had the skin condition of the tiligo and then Mormon prophet series of revelators through their own formal Church Publications were erroneously um attributing Book of Mormon prophecies as the explanation of lamanite skin turning white as they blossom as a rose they're attributing that yeah what later becomes known as a skin pigment disease yes and that's awful and it makes perfect sense exactly that's just it so this is another publication through the Mormon church this was from 1868 and this is an article uh you know as you can see on the left the Negro race with a horrific uh drawing and it says we understand that when God made man in his own image it pronounced him very good that he made him white we have no record of any of God's favored servants being of a black race All His prophets and apostles belong to the most handsome race on the face of the Earth that's why it's something like that is literally the textbook definition of white supremacy we showed you a few slides ago and this was going out to the church through a publication that was you know sanctioned by the church and I believe by this is from 1968 and I think by the late or sorry 1868 I think by the late 1860s it was like almost overseen by the church whereas I think it started out as a group of members so this is just it's horrible and and a shout out to mist in Sunday yeah mistinday.com or Mr Sunday school project we we referenced it last time but it's this Amazing Project where images are shared with just a few sentences to really drive home key points and one of the attributions is really critical because because apologists are going to say well that's just a publication you can't put that on the leaders of the Mormon church but in the in the subtitle on this image it says uh the juvenile instructor was published and edited by Mormon Apostle George Q cannon in 1868. so again it's all as Prophet Sears and Mormon prophet series and revelators who are Behind These Church Publications they edit it they approve it oftentimes they direct it and so you can't write this off as just the opinions of some random member yeah and so when I was looking at those missing Sunday things I was trying to make sure I was looking at the source because I wanted to make sure I didn't pull something that was out of context and so I read this article it gets a lot worse and so I want to read you this article because this is where that last slide is from and this just shows kind of where the church's views were on race in 1868 which again is when the Civil War is happening you know slavery just ends all that stuff is happening all at once and so um this is from the full article I just read from it says All His prophets and apostles belong to the most handsome race on the face of the Earth Israel who still is represented in the scattered tribe of Judah bear the Empress of their former Beauty in this race was born his son Jesus who we are told was very lovely and in the express image of his father's person and every Angel who ever brought a message of God's mercy to man was beautiful to look upon clad in the purest white and with accountants bright as the Noonday sun when God cursed Cain for murdering his brother Abel he set a mark upon him that all meeting him might know him no Mark could be so plain to his fellow man as a black skin this was the mark God placed upon him in which his children bore After the flood this curse fell upon the seed of ham through the sin of their father and his descendants bear it to this day the Bible tells us but little of the races that sprung from Ham but from that little and from the traditions of various tribes we are led to believe that from him came the Canaanites the Philistines the Egyptians and the most and most of the earliest inhabitants of Africa we are told in the book of Abraham in the pearl of great price that Egypt was discovered by a woman who was the daughter of ham the son of Noah this was probably the first portion of Africa inhabited by men After the flood it being the nearest to the land where the ark rested and the children of Noah first settled from Egypt the families of men gradually spread out to the Southward up the Nile River and along the borders of the Red Sea and Westward by the shores of the Mediterranean the pure negro as represented by the people of Guinea and its neighboring countries is generally regarded as the unmixed descendants of ham our engraving of a negro is of this type their skin is quite black their hair their hair Woolly and black their intelligence stunted and they appear never to have Arisen from the most Savage date of barbarism so that's in again a Mormon church publication yeah edited by an apostle it just sounds like Eugenics kind of it does and I I feel so bad saying this over and over again this comes from Mormon Doctrine he even references the fact that this comes from the book of Abraham which is to say that you know Egypt was originally populated from someone who was cursed by God with with black skin so it's it's horrific it's not something that originated with Brigham Young Brigham Young didn't write the Pearl a great price he didn't write the book of Abraham Joseph Smith did so you could say that people took it too far go ahead and do that if you want doesn't excuse the fact that the foundation of this Doctrine the foundations of these horrible ideas began with Joseph Smith either by himself or through God so as I said earlier you either have to believe this is from God and God didn't bother to correct the prophets or that Joseph Smith made it up and people took it too far and I think the evidence is very heavily telling us that Joseph Smith made it up but either way you're really in a no-win situation here because either it's from God and God was okay promoting this kind of racism uh through His prophets and through his scriptures or these people were making it up with a 19th century worldview of race okay we've got another quote here or image from missed in sunday.com yeah the scriptures that say dark skin is from God are still Doctrine yeah and we covered this earlier I just wanted to show this because I I love how missing Sunday does these Graphics because it shows the gospel topic quote on the top which says today the church disavows the theories advance in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse and then right below it it has second Nephi 521 which says and he had caused the cursing to come upon them yay even a sore cursing because of their iniquity for behold they had hardened their hearts against him that they had become like unto a flint voyaphor as they were white and exceedingly fair and delightsome that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of Blackness to come upon them and it just shows like the essay is telling us that they disavow these theories but they're not telling us that they're still in the scriptures today they're still in your scriptural Canon yep then you haven't disavowed it unless you remove it and thanks to this series with you we've we know that that the scriptures can be things can be removed things can be edited things can be added to so there's ton of precedent for scripture being changed in all sorts of bad ways why wouldn't you know if the church wants to say in a in a gospel topics essay that it's it's been fixed now we've we've disavowed it they haven't done that until they fix the scripture and they haven't figured scripture and we've said this a million times because if they did then Mormons would say well if we're going to throw out major passages in the Book of Mormon that literally are foundational to the entire narrative Narrative of the Book of Mormon well let's throw out the live Chastity let's throw out the word of wisdom let's throw out anything that's inconvenient and let's throw out prophecies the revelators and the value of scripture and because Mormon leaders can't have the whole house of cards collapse right then they feel like they can't actually disavow the things that they claim to be disavowing yeah and we we played this video in the DNA episode but I want to play it again because the idea that Native Americans or Polynesians have anything to do with the Book of Mormon has been disproved by DNA studies migration studies archeology and as I mentioned earlier just about every area of study tells us the Book of Mormon is not historical and yet the church is going to use these these racist teachings that we just showed in the last slide that people with dark skin are um cursed by God and that they are the today's Native Americans are the descendants of these Book of Mormon people they steal the identities of Native Americans and Polynesians because they have darker skin and I just want to play this video this is from a church video I think called like some something of Destiny or somebody play in the DNA episode and this is a woman talking about joining a church and and what the church has told her about her ancestors so this is from your YouTube channel yeah I just clipped the it's it's I'll look it up while the video is playing I'll look up the title it's I'm reading it right now the Mormon Church's people of Destiny oh yeah it's on there okay good yep picking away the identity of Polynesian population yep so it's called people of Destiny okay we sit around the kitchen table every morning and read from his Pages as a family we have learned about a man named Lehi about his son Nephi and Jacob we have grown to love these men very much and learn from The Book of Mormon that we are their descendants that we come from them and because we love them so much we have named our sons after them this is Lehi he is a very special young man and this is Nephi we are grateful for these men because we have given their names to our sins so that our sons can remember them yeah yeah that's pretty significant yeah we we talked about a lot in the DNA episode we don't have to go through it all here but I just I feel like using these ideas that are bad from a historical standpoint obviously from a moral standpoint to tell people this is your true history is really bad and it's it's if someone had done that to you know if you go to people that have Pioneer ancestry and you try to tell them what their Pioneers are really like and and you know you take away their history and say no the Pioneers were actually these Savage barbarians they would never have it and it's just one of those things where nobody would like to have their their history and their identity taken from them especially in a way that is demonstrably false yeah um so it would be it would be like basically uh so as as my understanding the politically correct term for people that are born let's just say far shorter than average my understanding is the politically correct term for that is little people um and so I'm going to use that term as my best understanding for you know a group of people that previously maybe were referred to in other terms that are now considered uh derogatory like let's say dwarfs as a bad example of what to refer to these people so calling telling Native Americans or Latin Americans that they're lamanites uh or Nephites would be akin to teaching little people since childhood about The Wizard of Oz and the fact that they were munchkins and teaching them that they're the descendants of the munchkins from the the Wizard of Oz and that they should be proud to be a munchkin um because the munchkins were instrumental in defeating the Wicked Witch of the West I mean that's the bet it's taking fiction right it's kind of insulting if you apply it to real life people and then teaching people that they're actually literally descendants of these fictional stories instead of what ever there are actual inspiring courageous authentic history might be I don't want to beat a dead horse yeah no and the thing is what you said to a believing member will come off as such a loaded thing and such a they'll I mean I'm assuming I would have as a Believer I would have thought that's the most mean-spirited thing to compared The Book of Mormon to The Wizard of Oz but the reality is neither of them are historical so using that to tell somebody that that is their their lineage that that's their their ancestors history is just it's it's wrong and these are prophet seers and Revelations that did it for I mean we have in the DNA app so we have quote after quote from them doing it up until like 15 10 15 years ago so I think they even still do it now when they have like leaders go do it like area talks and they'll refer to the fact that they can see lamanites or you know this is the people you know it's just it's bad if you go to Latin America right now or Polynesia and you ask your average Mormon you know in the pews you go to Peru or you go to Guatemala yeah or you go to to Samoa and you say are you a lamanite they would say absolutely I'm proud to be happening tonight and the church is still they're teaching it privately they're teaching it locally but stop mentioning it publicly because they're trying to do that dance of of not disrupting what's been taught throughout the church but not saying what's uh what's politically let's just say socially repugnant today and the other only other thing again I'm going to call attention don't trust us I did an entire series called losing the lamanites on Mormon stories where we interview formerly believing Native Americans or Latin Americans about how they feel having been taught that they were lamanites or descendants of lamanites trust them you don't need to trust two white guys just go watch those episodes to get a really good point of view of how awful this is okay the next slide is look at how the essay frames the abolition the abolition of slavery actually go back one slide I think all right okay today the church wants to have their cake and eat it too yeah and so this is uh they're in 2020 there was a you know the uh Mormon church did a partnership with the NAACP it was highly publicized and they released a statement and in the statement Russell Nelson said the following Prejudice hate and discrimination are learned and I just again what I want to point out is that what he doesn't mention here is that those ideas are learned through the scriptures of Mormonism and the prophets of the Mormon church and are still Doctrine today so not only are those ideas learned but they are taught by the very Church making the statement and then Nelson later in the statement says any of us who has Prejudice towards another race needs to repent and so my advice to the church is to take its own command and do the right thing and actually repent and apologize for the racism that's in their scriptures make those changes and finally just do what they ask every member to do which is to make a actual um statement of Contrition and take the steps needed to fix the problems the foundational uh reasons that this racism existed through the early leaders because it's in the scriptures and so if Nelson wants to get up there and release a statement telling people to repent they need to be the leaders don't tell people to do something you're not willing to do yourself and I and I've spoken with um you know friends who are either uh black members of the church or former members of the church and it's hard my understanding is it's hard for them to conceptualize the LDS Church's Outreach to the NAACP as anything other than sort of purchasing um good PR in other words donate a bunch of money to the NAACP in exchange for the NAACP doing a few photo opportunities or photo ops with top church leaders to be able to then send those photos all around the church and say hey see we're we're good now we've kind of we've kind of figured uh We've figured we've solved our racist problems without actually changing the scripture and denouncing past prophetic utterances and it's window dressing it's it is well and and I don't want to we don't need to do too much of a tangent here but the church did that big announcement I think it was last year it might have been this year where they announced they were doing this 10 million dollar donation to the NAACP to create scholarships I believe it's one million dollars a year for 10 years and you think wow that's amazing that's 10 million dollars the church's investment fund um the enzyme peak in medicine fund averages 24 million dollars per day in gains so the church puts out this massive PR campaign about this partnership with the NAACP but the reality is they're not even donating half a day's worth of gains from their investment fund and so if you really want to make amends you fix first need to fix the scriptures but if you want to um make these PR statements about these donations you make they should be um I would say a lot more generous considering the fact that the church on average makes 24 million dollars a day from their investment fund alone so I just want to point out how the the pr statement is put out there is this massive Grand donation but in reality for the church it's be the equivalent of you know the average worker you know donating something like you know 80 bucks yeah yeah it's nothing okay the next slide is look at how the essay frames the abolishment of slavery yeah and so this is from the essay again it says although slavery was not a significant factor in Utah's economy and was soon abolished the restriction on priesthood ordinations remained and so this is again something that people might say you're splitting hairs a bit but the reason slavery was abolished had absolutely nothing to do with the Mormon Church Utah or Brigham Young it was soon abolished because the US government abolished slavery and we mentioned earlier the Utah government was where Brigham Young was a leader and he made the choice to bring slavery to Utah it was not a slave state and I believe um a lot of the states that were around Utah not all of them did not do slavery so they were uniquely racist and and um this is another area where the church is going to put out this vague statement that kind of is technically true and almost makes it sound like you know slavery wasn't a big deal it was soon abolished but they're not really giving you the fact that the church went out of their way to make slavery uh make Utah a slay State and had absolutely nothing to do with the removal or abolishment of it yeah by saying that it was quickly abolished is deceptive because number one it wasn't a it was abolished by the government but you know through the Civil War and and the sacrifices of of the millions of people who died in the Civil War and it succeeded or was abolished it not you know not not only not because of the Mormon church but probably in spite of the Mormon church because because of Brigham Young or his successors had been allowed to continue slavery given Mormon scripture Mormon racism Mormon scripture and and the subsequent racist prophetic utterances uh they probably would have continued it for as long as they could have so it was abolished in spite of Mormon prophet series of revelators not not in any way because of them yeah pretty much I think that's uh so that makes this essay extra extra deceptive okay the next slide is the church disavows the theories of racism in the past yeah so this is just we we've talked about this a few times now but they say from the essay today the church disavows the theories advance in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a primordial life that mixed race marriages are a sin or that uh blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism past and present in any form and we've been saying this throughout these two episodes but the church will never move on until they remove the racism from their scriptures because those are not theories those are doctrines and so this is another one of those word games sorry excuse my dog for a second yeah yeah they're they're they're uh there are they're The Gatekeepers here but anyways this is a word game that they play which is to try to say that these racist ideas are merely this kind of like I don't want to say casual because it's obviously not casual I don't think the church is trying to make it sound like a casual team but the way they frame it is almost like oh it's just a few people with a few bad ideas these are racist ideas that are Doctrine today because they're in the scriptures and as we talked about earlier in this episode in the last episode the first presidency called it Doctrine because they believed as Prophet series and revelators that God declared it to be Doctrine yeah yeah if you want if you know you don't disavow the theories of racism in the past until you've altered your scripture yeah there's no way around it and denounce the specific statements by specific people yep you haven't done it yeah I haven't done it no they haven't gone through the same steps of you know um making things right that they would expect out of us and so this this is another missing Sunday slide and basically it is um don't worry about it the dog okay okay so you know basically it's just showing the juxtaposition between the church's essay um talking about how it says church leaders believe that a revelation from God was needed to alter the policy um of the ban and that they made ongoing efforts to understand what should be done and then you know the statement we just talked on the last slide this is the first presidency saying the attitude of the church with reference to the Negroes remains as it always stood it is not a matter of the of the Declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord and I know the church would say that these leaders kind of got it wrong but when you have profiteers and revelators calling it direct command from the Lord and they're wrong how do you believe any leader today and we we talked about this yesterday but there there's the church is admitted today that it doesn't know what Doctrine is anymore other than like modern Jesus and priesthood Authority and obey the prophet kind of thing but anyone who's been raised in the Mormon Church knows that one way in the past we've all been taught to identify true Mormon Doctrine is when there's a signed first presidency statement and my understanding is there are two not just the one we're showing here but there are at least two sign statements from first presidencies reaffirming the the priesthood Temple ban and the black um you know the the curse on on black Mormons uh based on the curse of Cain and so when the when the gospel topics essay does this kind of like hand wavy marketing sleight of hand saying it's just a policy um that that doesn't that doesn't apply anymore it's a discarded policy basically yeah they are not being honest that this was affirmed as Doctrine by Prophet Susan revelators multiple times it's totally dishonest yeah and you know that letter it's caused tens of thousands of modern LDS church members to leave the church and to lose their faith yeah because hundreds of thousands or millions of Mormons went out to North Carolina went out to Africa served their missions and and when they were asked even Brazil and when they were asked gosh Mormon missionary in the 1970s or 80s or 90s why is it that you had a ban on on black members both for the priesthood and Temple they would say well you know it's it's hard but that's that's the doctrine that the scriptures and Mormon prophets have always taught us and so when these members are taught this as Doctrine and they go turn around and teach it as Doctrine to the world to then be told in a gospel topics essay that it was never Doctrine all along that causes shelves to break in one moment and I would say the the the gospel topics essay on race in the priesthood has probably been responsible for more Mormons losing their faith than any other gospel topics essay that's my I can see why yeah and you know the thing I would point out and we'll move on because we're you know we're kind of reiterating some of this stuff but take the now the the Lowry Nelson letter from 1947 the one the first presidency sends where it calls it a commandment I would I would love to go on a time machine take the church's gospel topics essay and send it to that first presidency because they would absolutely disavow that gospel topics and say and you'd be considered an apostate for basically taking the stand that the church takes in 2022 because this was considered Doctrine this was in I'm gonna say as many times it needs to be said until it's removed from the Scriptures it is Doctrine today the everything that led to the justification is still there in the scriptures and so I just like you said it this there's a reason shells break over this because you're not taught it and once you realize how entrenched the history is in the actual scriptures and in the early leaders the the essay becomes incredibly disingenuous and dishonest quickly yeah the next slide is down they chokes current member of the Mormon church first presidency he puts the blame solely on God for the priesthood band this is a really disturbing technique apology Mormon apologetic technique these days and so this is Dallin H Oaks who is the next in line to be Prophet right now and he said if there be one event which was celebrating 40 Years of the church not Banning members of black skin to the priesthood and to having saving saving ordinance does uh saving ordinances done in the temple he said I observe the pain and frustration experienced by those who suffered these restrictions and those who criticize them and sought for reasons I studied the reasons then being given and could not feel confirmation of the truth in of any of them as part of my prayerful study I learned in general the Lord rarely gives reasons for the Commandments and directions he gives to his servants I determined to be loyal to our prophetic leaders and to pray as promised from the beginning of these restrictions that the day would come when all would enjoy the blessings of priesthood and Temple now on June 8th 1978 that day had come and I wept for Joy so not only is Oaks putting the blame on God by saying I didn't understand it but that's what God wanted he tells us that he was determined to be loyal even though he knew it was wrong and that is a horrific and it's a cowardly thing to do you know we're told all the time in the church choose the right let the consequence follow Dallin Oaks put his um his his ladder to the top of the church ahead of the fact that he knew it was wrong he is first of all misusing the line about that the day would come when all the enjoy the blessings because we talked about that earlier but he's telling us all that he's a coward because he would not stand up for the right thing because he didn't want not want to jeopardize his position in the church it's also you know just look up the Stanley Milgram experience on obedience to Authority and the shock you know the the the the shocks that were given as part of a um an experiment out of Yale University to show how far people will go just to obey Authority just as a total side note to me it's super disturbing for him to reinforce this idea that you override your own conscience that it's a virtue that it's a virtue that it's virtuous to override your own conscience yep uh if you're if you're obeying your priesthood leadership and this is really self-serving for Oaks to say as well because he's the next prophet and so he's saying at an event knowing he very well maybe profit soon basically hey even if you disagree with all the crap I've said and Oaks has a lot of horrible things he said um stick with it because if you don't then you're going to jeopardize your spot in the church and this is um you know one of the things I've I've heard a lot and you just basically references that high demand religions can make really good people do really bad things and high demand religions can make the best people believe in really horrible things because they believe that the need to obey leadership overrides their own moral conscience their own moral compass and this is Oaks basically telling the membership just that and as you said um it you know to me this to me this tells me down Oaks is a coward because he knew it was wrong and he stood by because he didn't want to jeopardize his spot and the fact is you know in his mind he made the right choice because now he's going to be the next Prophet if the time comes but if he had done that then he might have been ostracized and risked it yeah there's there's that quote that you know people good people will usually do good things bad people often do bad things but sometimes it takes religion to make good people do bad things that's that's what what we're seeing here we're seeing Oaks kind of reinforcing that mindset but I'm also going to speak out on behalf of my you know faithful Christian and even you know people of other Faith they get really angry when when God is blamed for Mormon racism or for polygamy or other sorts of things because they they feel like God's name is being stained that God's reputation is being stained and I don't think it'll be lost on our listeners that over half of the people who leave the Mormon Church oftentimes end up identifying long term as atheist or agnostic and it's it's many of my Christian friends who feel like the staining of God blaming God for racism blaming God for sexism blaming God for homophobia for transphobia blaming God for genocide is a key reason many people who leave Mormonism just decide I'm leaving Faith altogether because if if this is what God does then then I'm not interested yeah and the one thing I'll the last thing I'll say about that slide is because that event really bothered me because that was right when I first started reading about church history and stuff right when I got into it I saw this I'm like you've got to give me this is such a self-serving event for the church and so you've got Dallin Oaks and he's willing to throw God under the bus because he knows that the moment you admit that church leaders cannot discern between God and their own prejudices is the moment that your obedience to leaders is going to fizzle away because once you realize that they can't tell what's from God and what's from themselves I don't need to obey Russell Nelson because he clearly can't tell what's from God and what's from him is evidenced by the revelations he's claimed with regards to both LGBT and the whole um you know course correction on the name so Dallin Oaks knows full well that the moment he allows for leaders to be wrong he is jeopardizing everyone in the church obeying him and so he would rather throw God under the bus than water down his own authority and I think that's one of those things you see from certain leaders in the church not all of them where they will absolutely throw God under the bus before they will do anything that will jeopardize The Obedience that they can get from members is because of their High position in the church and as I said earlier I I cannot tell you how cowardly of a statement this is from Oaks yeah yep yep so the next slide is the priesthood band gives a glimpse into I don't want to say God's priorities I'm going to say Mormon God yeah and I think I say that somewhere but yeah if I didn't I mean the god of Mormonism so for me the biggest takeaway of all of this is that in the Mormon Church we're told that God sent an angel with a drawn sword to tell Joseph Smith to practice polygamy and I quote fully which he told teenage girls in order to get them to subject to his command in the Mormon framing of God we then have to accept that God was willing to send an angel down to make sure Joseph Smith could marry and have sex with other women but was okay allowing prophets to propagate horrific racism for over 120 years and so it also tells us that God's Revelations within Mormonism always seem to fit the needs in world view of the people who claim to receive them which becomes incredibly problematic when you realize that today's leaders will be disavowed in the decades to come and so and then the final point I'll make on this is we're taught in the church that if you get bad feelings reading something it's from the devil so what does it say when you read the scriptures that include this racism or you listen to the quotes or you read the quotes that we showed today and you get bad feelings and they're from the people who claim to be the prophets of God I'll I'll add to that what does it do when you read the book of Mormon or the book of Abraham or the book of Moses because the beginning of my faith crisis like my serious Faith crisis was when I was a Mormon Seminary teacher and I'm asked to you know read the book of Mormon and teach the Book of Mormon to all these students and so I'm you know working for Microsoft studying my Seminary you know lessons to prepare to teach it and you know I was I was having questions about my faith pretty seriously and of course we as Mormons are always told hey one of the best ways to strengthen your faith is read the scriptures well you read the book of Mormon where you're actually paying attention to the words and you read about lamanites being cursed with dark skin once you care about issues like systemic racism and and colonialism and genocide you read those Book of Mormon verses and you feel sick to your stomach the last thing you want to do is go teach it to high school kids and if if the holy if the whole if if sick feelings are the Holy Ghost then that condemns The Book of Mormon yeah however what that also condemns is Mormon epistemology because epistemology good feelings equals the Holy Ghost bad feelings equals Satan yeah that just shows that you can't trust feelings as a way to discern truth which again becomes a house of cards where Mormonism collapses because so much of Mormonism these days is built on feelings yeah and so I wanted to kind of if we start to wrap up here I just want to show this there's four quotes we're going to show they're all from General Conference and so Russell Nelson in 2019 got up and he said we need we may not always tell people what they want to hear prophets are rarely popular but we will always teach the truth and I'm going to read you four quotes from Mormon prophetsiers and revelators from General Conference and I want you to see if they're teaching truth so this is from um actually you know what there's three quotes in general conference this one is um the quote we'd already talked about before which called it a direct commandment from the Lord so Russell Nelson and Saint prophets are really popular but they always teach the truth and a prophet in 1949 said the attitude of the church with with reference to the Negroes remains as it has always stood it is not a matter of the Declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord which is founded which on which is founded the doctrine of the church from the days of its organization um then we have Spencer W Kimball who is a prophet of the Mormon Church saying the little member girl 16 sitting between the dark father and mother and it was evidence she was several Shades lighter than her parents these young members of the church are changing to whiteness and delightsomeness um let me go to the next slide there's just two more and then um these are two other quotes from General Conference this is from Apostle George F Richards he says I cannot conceive Our Father consigning his children to a condition such as that of the Negro race if they had been Valiant in the spirit world in that war in heaven and then Spencer W Kimball again from General Conference said the day of the lamanites is nigh for years they have been growing delightsome and now they are becoming white and delightsome as they were promised and so if Russell Nelson is right and that prophets only can speak truth then these quotes have to be true otherwise Russell Nelson is um saying that in a self-serving way because he wants people to believe in um privilege what he has to say um and just put down Oaks he is not willing to do the work he expects members to do when it comes to making amends for past mistakes well just to just to clarify or just to reiterate if Russell and Nelson who's the current profits here in Revelator is saying that prophets will always teach the truth we've got um you know we've got the Mormon church first presidency saying that basically the priesthood ban is Doctrine that's the first one yep second one is we have Mormon prophet Syrian Revelator Spence W Kimball teaching that when you get more righteous your skin turns from dark to light right yep then you've got um Mormon Apostle George F Richards saying um that uh you know basically I cannot conceive Our Father consigning his children to a condition such as that of the Negro race if they had been valued in the spirit of prison so basically Apostle George F Richards just saying what so many other prophets have said including the first edition of of Bruce R mcconkey's Mormon doctrine that that that that black more black people uh were were less than Valiant spirits in the pre-existence and that's why they were assigned black skin and then and then finally um yeah again Spencer B Kimball saying that lamanites will become white and Delight some someday it can't be that that basically shows Russell Nelson is lying yeah he's saying they always teach the truth yeah but we know they'd always teach the truth because now the church is denouncing what they did in the past yeah he shows Russell Nelson as he's undermining himself yeah allowing himself to be not honest and not truthful yeah and Russell Nelson's playing that game where basically he's trying to privilege he wants everybody to listen what he has to say he wants Russell Nelson wants everyone to a and I know members are going to be upset by this but he wants everyone to obey him he wants everyone to be loyal to him they love him and adore him and the only way you could get people to believe in you is if you can make sure you establish that Authority that's what we talked about in that pre-set episode where Joseph Smith constantly did stuff to make sure his authority couldn't be questioned and the problem is Russell Nelson wants you to believe that prophets are only capable of speaking truth he there's a really kind of creepy video he's talking to some young kids in the church and he's like prophets can only speak the truth and he talks in that really Grandpa way they have spoken untruth since the day this church started we have documented it over and over these are not my opinions these are well established facts um we could show it through history we could show it through their own words we could show it through I mean the fact that they disavowed these earlier teachings so Russell Nelson is playing this game in 2019 where he's saying we can only speak truth because he wants you to listen to him but what he doesn't want you to know is every Prophet before him has been shown to be speaking untruth which means his statement is false and once you realize his statement is false you realize and we'll get into Russell Nelson a lot more in a future episode he's made up some miracle stories on his own he's lied quite a bit and um once you realize that they don't teach the truths their Authority crumbles and once their Authority crumbles then you have no reason to give them your tithing to where the church required underwear to do all of the work cleaning the churches all these things to your mission sir to your missions giving two years of your life yeah you're coveting the law of consecration yeah a lot of obedience to love sacrifice yeah all the hours of service to the church you you're basically you know getting married young when you don't really know your spouse and deciding to have more kids than you might and foregoing your education if you're a Mormon woman to be a stay-at-home mom when maybe you wouldn't choose that all that that's critical to why we're doing not just this LDS discussion series but also just that's core to the Mormon stories podcast project and to the entire mission of the open stories Foundation is if people are going to give their lives their time their money their reputation education their marriages and their children if they're going to build all of that around and on uh the doctrines and the and the Theology and the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ the Latter-Day Saints they deserve to know the truth yeah and they can make an informed decision yeah like we've said this so many times these episodes you listen to this episode if you're not a Believer would you ever join the Mormon church and uh for me I was a convert if I knew this stuff there's no way I'm joining because I can see just by looking at the data that this is absolutely ridiculously bad uh it's horrifically bad from a moral standpoint and as we know it's historically just Incorrect and so when you see that and then you compare to the leaders today constantly um working more to establish their own authority than to correct the problems of the of the church that tells you where the priorities are and once you know the priorities are about establishing and maintaining authority over members then I don't I don't see any value in the church they do good things there are members the members of the church do good things but the problem is they also do a lot of things that cause harm and a lot of the things as John just said that you have to do to maintain good standing in the church are things that are all foundationally on incorrect scriptures on non-historical scriptures and so yeah just view this as you would a church you didn't belong to and tell me that this is from God and Mike I think this is personal to you you know the amount of effort you've put into LDS discussions.com is is massive and someone would ask why is Mike doing this I think it I think Mike my psychoanalysis of you is that you converted to Mormonism without all the information and now in your life that has significant implications for you and so you number one feel that it was wrong that you were converted without all the information and so now you want to make sure this doesn't happen to other people yeah and to be I think we talk about maybe in the first episode but it's a really short way to frame it the web site started because I was going through um so I was at my in-laws house and everybody was talking about going to BYU our missions and that was the first time that really I was in that position where I'm looking at my kid and going you're going to be there someday and I really need to know one way the other and so I had my work computer with me I went to the other room I opened the laptop and I had always had a problem with polygamy and the ban on the priesthood because those are the only two things I really knew about as a member and I was too afraid to look elsewhere because you're told not to and so I hopped on and I googled polygamy first I think and after a page or two I came across the CES letter and then I brought that up to my wife and I made all of the mistakes everybody makes which is to just machine gun everything emotional angry all that stuff and she asked me to read the fair Mormon response which I did and I thought well that that makes some sense and then I read the Cs Letter's response to the firm woman response and then the pheromone response to the cso's response so you get the idea and I kept going back and forth and I started taking notes because I was trying to figure out how to get to the bottom of these issues and then I started sharing what I had put up at these bullet points with people and people were like you should put that together because it would be helpful because of the fact you get lost between the critical material and the apologetic material and so that really is what started the website and then the essays happened because I came across um somebody through a family member um who had done the the four on the website that I would argue with by far the best book of Abraham DNA polygamy and Book of Mormon translation then that opened up a whole new world view and so then it was about putting the data together in a way that made sense to me and my I had a family member ask me they said you really believe you can prove the Mormon church is false and I said I believe you could prove the truth claims are false demonstrably so they said put it all together I want to read it I said it's going to take me months they said put it all together I want I want to see it if you think you can do it I want to read it I want to know so that is really what led to the overview project that's why um I tried to do it in a way that was chronological that had callbacks to the previous this one so that you just make clear this is not a one issue thing this is not something where one Prophet did something and it was an outlier this is something that's foundational um and so that's really what led to the website being the way it is is just I was asked to do it and so 40 pages later in the overview project um that really is what led to it and in doing the series with you I kind of held back on it for a while because I just felt kind of awkward doing it but I had a lot of people who reached out and said it was helpful to them and they asked if I'd ever considered doing a podcast and I said no not by myself because I'd feel really weird um and I reached out to you because we had talked over the years about maybe doing something and um so yeah it's really about this is how I was able to make sense of it all for me and this is how I hope it can make sense for other people and if you want to take all this and say you're full of crap and and I don't believe you I can't do anything about it if you want to read it and say I still believe that's your choice but to me this is what the data shows this is what the abundance of of accounts and history and science and all the shows and and to me it's so overwhelming to show that this is not what it was claimed to be that I believe fully that if you were to give this presentation to somebody who was not involved in the church or even somebody who was and you could frame in a way that didn't make them know it was a church they would tell you without any hesitation that this is not from God because there's so many inconsistencies and problems it's overwhelming it's not just one thing and yeah it's so yeah I guess the main reason to do it was because I put the work in yeah and um and then I wanted to make sure it was available to people and so we're doing this series so it'll be there for people when they get to it maybe it's next week maybe it's in five years but it'll be there and hopefully it helps people in the way that I wish it had been there for me and um the last thing I'll say is so many people have done things like this you know not just a CES letter not just you um but there's some Dan Vogel John Hamer um you know John Larson All all these people and I'm going to forget a whole bunch of people Lindsay Parker yeah go ahead yeah um so there's actually there's actually an amazing resource called letter for my wife yeah letter for my wife.com that's a great one that some like better than CES letter in terms of yeah more gently written you know more comprehensive more thorough more well-designed PDF now I love Jeremy runnels and I love CES letter and he's a legend and it's a classic but letter for my wife is amazing there's also the Mormon think website which is which inspired CES letter there's also the Mormon stories truth claims essays if you go to Mormon stories.org claims Mike Brown put together a series of essays there's the Mormon expression podcast with John Larson um there are so many of these and you know uh repositories of of sort of like Mormon synthesizing their experiences yeah yeah Fair discoveries with the truth claims there's probably hundreds of these yeah because this experience just keeps get repeating over and over and over and over again and I think your polygamy is Lindsey Hansen Park's attempt at doing the same thing through the polygamy yeah yeah and and all of those everything you mentioned were things that for me were so helpful and so for me it was about trying to piece it back together in a way that made sense to me because there are areas of the overview project that are not in the Cs letter or letter for my wife um because I found out about a bomb later like Anthony Miller was the one who kind of turned me onto biblical scholarship and Mormonism and I was like this is hugely important and something I never thought of and so to your point it's like there are all these repositories all over that most members don't know about I had no idea they existed and once you find them it's like it's it becomes almost overwhelming at first and so for me I was hoping the overview project would be something where if somebody came to me and I've had people who've come to me and said you know how do you do how do you approach this and I'd say read the overview project go topic by topic and hopefully um take it slow and hopefully it'll help to make more sense as you go through the topics like they do build upon each other and when you're ready to talk to your family when you're ready to talk to your loved ones about the problems you're having um you'll have a resource you can show them that is I really try to make a gentle I don't want it to be antagonistic I don't want it to be you know a lot of people don't like the Cs letter because it does come off antagonistic at points um and so I wanted to be like blunt but not you know I want it to be as gentle as I can without without sugar coating it and um and I know a lot of people have been helped I also know it's a very small like the Cs letter is going to always be the go-to document and you know Mormon stories all the so LDS discussions is way down there on the list but hopefully um with it being there kind of as a you know just a a database of information will be helpful going going through it and it's not you know if I was trying to destroy the church or Burn It To The Ground I would take a much different approach this is like this is what the info says this is where I'm at do with it what you will um you could do a lot of different ways if your intention was to just basically try to take people away from the church and to destroy the church trust me there are a lot about I I have a lot of better ways to do it than this this is more uh this is this is for people who want it this isn't for people who aren't looking for it I'm not trying to go around yelling at people online saying you're believing something that's factually untrue or if they if I see a post on Facebook um about a quote from church I don't reply and say did you know what this quote really means it this is about if you're ready for it here it is if you're not ready for it don't even bother it's for people who sincerely want to learn the facts learn the uh review the evidence and decide the truth yeah and and these episodes are really as we've talked about they're really sensitive they're very delicate the polygamy ones are going to be as well so we're trying to do it in a way where we're not like picking the most salacious details and then saying yeah all these are horrible people is this is like this is this is what it is and like I said at the start of the episode Marky Peterson has quotes that are horrific I didn't use one of them because I'm not trying to just pick the worst things I'm trying to pick the ones that are the most important so totally all right well let's come to the final slide because we've this is the end of a two-part series on race or racism and the LDS or Mormon scripture and so what's what's the summary yeah to me I think the big takeaways like I said we could spend 10 hours probably more going over all the quotes from church leaders that explicitly state that dark or black skin is occurs from God and that it you know leads to the you know ban on priests and all that um and these episodes were difficult for me to put together just because I know how sensitive it is to hear myself and I cannot even imagine how much it could be painful to those who are um you know either African-American Native American Polynesian and you know to me this shows that the leaders just do not have the power of discernment because they cannot tell what God wants against what they want and I think once you start to see that pattern we've started to show it and we're going to continue to show it through these historical different episodes once you realize they can't tell what they want versus what God wants there is no reason to believe that it's any different today with Russell Nelson or Dallin Oaks and um these scriptures are still Doctrine today we've talked about that a lot and down Oaks made clear that obedience to leaders should always override your own conscience and that to me is a very dangerous thing and it's a very unhealthy thing that we still see happening today we still see it in talks especially to the youth and that drives me insane because it leads to very bad um beliefs it leads to excusing bad behavior and um one thing we've talked about a lot is these problems in the scriptures of Mormonism and the way the early leaders talked about it this is exactly what you'd expect to see from a church founded in the 19th century and so everything here screams out that these are not ancient scriptures but 19th century ones and so just as with the word of wisdom the book of Abraham translation this is another chance that the church could have shown it was truly led by God and once again they failed to get it right and they actually made deliberate choices that we now know were horribly wrong and so it just shows we don't expect the leaders of the church be perfect but you expect them to at least be better than average and instead they are just like every other person from their milieu from their time frame making the wrong choices that other people made and at some point that's a big red flag that this is not a church led by God I love it all right Mike this has been epic and amazing I'm also just gonna throw in their there's been a new uh series of channels that have come out recently um from some some black BYU students who are who are Mormon they're called the black black menaces and you can find them on Instagram uh with the handle black menaces you can find them on Tick Tock black menaces and there's even a podcast for the black menaces we will include a link to them as well but they're doing some really interesting and Powerful work in the short video and they've gotten National coverage over the past several months so just as a as a way to kind of pass the mic check out black menises I also want to say my my friend Spencer Nugent he's got an amazing he does he has a handle called sketch a day I think on YouTube but you know his handle on Tick Tock do you know Spencer's handle no Spencer he it's like it's basically it's black smoke it's like but I don't know how it's spelled it's like BL a-x-x ml I think but I'm not positive all right we'll we'll in the show notes we'll put a link to Spencer Spencer's Spencer's awesome so Instagram as well definitely check him out because he's a legend all right Mike great job today thank you so much for all your work and I guess next we're going to be doing I I guess it's Temple endowment and Masonry yeah then we're going to go into polygamy is that right yeah yeah so it's gonna get even you know this was an uncomfortable serious episode I think the next batch will be uncomfortable too but like I said we'll do our best to be gentle and to be respectful but to also lay out the data and lay out the facts and and people can do what they want but yeah it doesn't get any easier from here all right Mike thanks thanks so much you're a legend thanks everybody all right the website is ldsdiscussions.com uh you can check out this series either on Mormon stories podcast integrated into the regular feed or you can go to Spotify for LDS discussions podcast uh audio and video on Spotify you can go to the Apple podcast app or wherever you consume your podcast by Audio and you can uh consume it there in sequence and of course we have a YouTube channel where on Mormon stories podcast YouTube channel we have a playlist that is uh that Aggregates all the LDS discussions episodes into a single feed thanks for your support thanks for making this possible um please share this with everyone you can thanks for your donations and your support that makes everything uh possible uh again we're grateful to Mike and we're grateful to all of you please uh be good to each other be kind to each other love each other send us your feedback at Mormon stories gmail.com comment 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