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| We were living in Redmond, Washington in 1978 |
June 8 in 1978 was a Thursday afternoon. I still remember
that day when we received a phone call from our church friend. We lived in Redmond, Washington at the time
and he told us to turn on the radio. He
said we should prepare ourselves to stand in holy temples and pray with our
black LDS members. We learned that LDS
Church leaders had just announced that all worthy male members were now invited
to be ordained to the Holy Priesthood of God.
From the mid-1800s until 1978—the LDS
Church did not ordain men of black African descent to its priesthood or
allow black men or women to participate in temple endowment or sealing
ordinances. The announcement of June 8th
was received with joy! No more trying
to justify a false tradition that had been passed down since the days of
Brigham Young.
So much has happened since that moment 36 years ago. I was a young mother of three and just 26
years old. I only partially realized the
impact of this historic announcement. I attended
the General Conference on September 30, 1978 when N. Eldon Tanner read the letter
from the first presidency now known as “Official Declaration-2”. We rejoiced that this would no longer be a
divisive issue.
Between 1970 and 1976 I attended BYU-Provo when BYU athletic
teams were banned from playing competitions because of the church’s position on
race and the Priesthood. It was a very
hot political topic and demonstrations against BYU teams were common.
I later found out that my own grandma Moulton from Heber
Valley and Salt Lake City was so concerned in 1948 that her daughter, Maxine,
would be marrying a boy from the state of Nebraska. In her small-minded Utah world, people from
the “east” lived in a place where there might be “negro blood” in their lineage. She was simply concerned for her daughter.
When I attended High School in Portland, Oregon from
1966-1970, the racial mix (white to black) seemed about 75/25 my freshman year
(Washington High School) and about 80/20 my junior-senior years. I just grew up with great black friends and
didn’t think that much about the racial issues.
I thought that was a problem mostly in the southern United States and
maybe over at Jefferson High School.
Now, looking back, I can see we were still working out difficult racial
problems even in Portland, but I was fairly ignorant of the challenges my
black friends were still facing once they left High School.
I do see that cultural intermarriage is a challenge and it would require hard work to create a truly united partnership. Now, however, I see that that it takes hard
work to create unity in all marriage relationships. My pioneer heritage is full of Americans
marrying Danes and Welsh marrying English, etc. These young couples seemed to be able to join the culture of Denmark to the culture of
America and work out their relationship challenges because they loved one
another decided to build the "Culture of God". I have lived long enough to learn the truth
that all of us are children of God and we ought to be “inclusive” in all our
relationships (Ballard, M. Russell - https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2001/10/doctrine-of-inclusion).
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| Cyndy Weiss-Senior Year at Cleveland High in Portland, Oregon |
My senior year in High School (1970), I travelled to Europe
and saw that people were basically the same everywhere on earth. Then I served for a mission for 18 months to
the Italians (1973-74) and grew to love them.
The Book
of Mormon declared that the gospel message of salvation should go
forth to “every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.” (Mosiah
15:28; 1
Nephi 19:17).
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| We have been fortunate to meet wonderful families from all over the world. Here is Ben with a family he taught and loved from Argentina. |
In the last 15 years we have met and loved the people in the
lands where my children have served as LDS missionaries: Chileans, Brazilians, Hispanic Americans,
Euadorians, Taiwanese, Germans, and Argentinians. Recently we returned from a visit to the Holy
Land and saw and felt the tensions between the Arab Palestinians and the
Israeli Jews. It is a sad state of
affairs to see the divisions that have caused such heartbreak and war for
thousands of years.
Because of our travels, it is now my own personal knowledge
that all people from all cultures on the earth hunger for basically the same
things for their families. It is Satan
who has succeeded in dividing us one from another. Christ would help us to
understand that as children of God, there is a place in His church for all
peoples of the earth.
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| 3 generations of Argentines with their friend, Ben Weiss |
And so we celebrate June 8 even in 2014. It has been 36 years since that day and I have
lived through an historic time period. In December 2013, the LDS church put a
document online that clarified the reasons why this false tradition was
changed:
Today,
the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign
of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life;
that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that 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.23
Since
that day in 1978, the Church has looked to the future, as membership among
Africans, African Americans and others of African descent has continued to grow
rapidly. While Church records for individual members do not indicate an
individual’s race or ethnicity, the number of Church members of African descent
is now in the hundreds of thousands.
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”24 and emphatically declares that anyone
who is righteous—regardless of race—is favored 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] denieth none that cometh unto him, black and white,
bond and free, male and female; . . . all are alike unto God, both Jew and
Gentile.”25 (https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood)
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| Sign we saw in Argentina in March 2012 |
Sometimes it is difficult to see the significant
changes that take place during one’s own lifetime. I have lived through this one. I am thrilled that my children and
grandchildren might grow up in a world where the brotherhood of all mankind
will one day become a Millennial reality.
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