"Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over."
For those who don't get the reference, I think this is referring to the Mark of Cain teaching in Mormonism. This resulted in black members of the church being seen as lesser or inferior by many white members. The church officially abandoned it as an official teaching in 1978. But the stigma for black members still persists to some degree unofficially, with some white church members still believing it today.
Technically Mormanism blame people, not God for this, everything in the church is done unanimously, and they had to wait for the last leadership person who was overly racist to die before they could do this.
But also, the belief is that people recieve from God what they are capable of hearing and understanding, God didn't change his mind, people just didn't listen or even ask the right question in the past to get this information. Lastly, both Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young said as prophecy specifically that the church would admit African heritage people into the church and into the priesthood, Smith likely ment it would happen in his lifetime, but he was too busy 'secretly' marrying and having sex with 10 or 12 teenage girls, poor guy must have been exhausting, before someone caught him and he had to get a bunch of revelation on how he wasn't just banging teenage girls because he wanted to, but because you know. God said. Anyway he was busy with the sex and also a group of followers decided after this all came to light to dress up in black and shoot him. So. He never got around to it. Young on the other hand probably ment like ''when pigs fly'' kind of 'it'll happen'. He was pretty deeply racist, his time frame wasn't like SOON.
Here's my advice, don't bother with the theology, just push the whole thing off the table and don't care. Would have saved me a lot of time. When you engage with the actual theology it's just... so fucking time consuming.
Black members of the church didn't exist before 1978. If you had any African ancestry at all they wouldn't even teach you, you couldn't join at all, it was part of the missionary lessons, they asked you if you had any African heritage.
Charitable works, a life of pacifism, poverty and asceticism spent caring for the needy and an on going good-faith attempt to make good on mistakes that deviate from that.
