Mormon Coffee

On 4 February 2006 the Reno Gazette-Journal carried an article about a black couple in the Mormon Church, Moons become pioneers of local Mormon church, by Geralda Miller.

The story is about Bill and Jane Moon, African Americans who moved to Reno in 1969 only to find a community filled with racial prejudice. They spent the next ten years involved at Second Baptist Church, a black church that provided them friendship and relief from daily discrimination.

In 1979, when the mood of the country had changed, Bill got restless and began looking for a church that was not segregated. He and Jane ended up at the LDS Church, where they remain today.

Bill told the Gazette-Journal,

“I know when we joined [the Mormon Church] people always said that the church was prejudiced against blacks but we wanted to find out for ourselves if that was true. And we found that not to be the truth. No one ever called us the big ‘N’ or anything like that.”

For a point of reference, keep in mind that it was in June of 1978 that the LDS Church extended full membership privileges to people of African descent. Before this date blacks were not allowed to hold the LDS priesthood, nor were they allowed to enter LDS temples. Since temple ordinances are necessary for Mormons to reach a higher level of heaven, keeping blacks out of the temple was equivalent to keeping them out of the Celestial kingdom.

But when Bill and Jane joined the LDS Church things were different. So Bill is now a Mormon elder, has served as a high priest, and even spent five years on his stake’s High Council. About his High Council calling Bill said,

“I am the only black who has served in that capacity in this area. I don’t know of any others that have served. We are pioneers with the church.”

Bill is also pleased that he and Jane can go to the Reno Nevada Temple. He said,

“A lot of them have never seen a black person go to the temple because you have to be worthy. Everybody can’t go to the temple. It is a special place.”

According to the Gazette-Journal, Bill and Jane would like to see more African Americans in the pews. Bill said,

“Our ward isn’t all white now. We’re there and there are other blacks that go there on a regular basis. We’re all happy being there.”

I dunno. Is it me or does it sound like there are still some racial problems remaining in the LDS Church?

• After twenty-five years Bill Moon is the only black man who has ever served on the High Council of his stake?

• A lot of people have never seen a black person go to the temple because (it’s implied) blacks are generally not worthy?
• Bill and Jane’s ward isn’t all white now?

Poor Bill and Jane. Twenty-five years after joining the LDS Church in search of racial integration and almost twenty-seven years after the Church’s promise of spiritual equality for blacks, they remain an anomaly.

Philip Barlow, in Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion cites late LDS Apostle Bruce McConkie on the alleged corruptions that today plague the Bible: “[Our present Bible] contains a bucket, a small pail, a few draughts, no more than a small stream at most, out of the great ocean of revealed truth that has come to men in ages more spiritually enlightened than ours” (page 193).

When I read that I couldn’t help but think of
First, God’s ability and promise to preserve His Word (Psalm 12:6-7); and
Second, Paul’s encouragement to Timothy that the Scriptures are sufficient, containing everything we need to know for faith and practice (2 Timothy 3:15-17).

Paul also charged Timothy to “Preach the word!” To “convince, rebuke, exhort” because “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables” (2 Timothy 4:1-5).

Is it possible that the “great oceans” of revelation that have “come to men in ages more spiritually enlightened than ours” could be some of the fables of which Paul warned?

(Quote from Philip Barlow’s book cited by Gerald R. McDermott in Saints Rising.)

Tuesday’s Deseret Morning News reported on the new Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ temple currently under construction: “FLDS temple appears complete, Polygamous sect remains silent about its edifice in Texas.”

“On a dirt road just a few miles outside of the tiny town of Eldorado, the temple stands out amid the surrounding ranchland. It has a limestone facade. Arched windows around the building lead up to turrets, which surround the roof. Atop it all is a short-domed steeple, reminiscent of the Nauvoo, Ill., temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Above the doorway is the “all seeing eye” and an inscription that reportedly includes the phrase, “Holiness to the Lord in the House of the Lord.”

The story caught my attention because of the photo, because of how much the FLDS temple resembles LDS temples. (see Nauvoo LDS temple at left.)

“‘The temple, it’s magnificent from the outside,’ said JD Doyle, a local pilot who has documented the FLDS construction from the air.”

This is exactly what non-Mormons say about LDS temples, reported frequently in LDS newspapers and magazines.

A couple more things about the FLDS temple that sound similar to LDS temples:

“[Schleicher County, Texas, Sheriff David] Doran said he maintains contact with FLDS members on the YFZ [Yearning for Zion] Ranch, who told him members will flock from all over the United States to Texas as a retreat. ‘They said they’ll do their temple work and return home,’ he said. Asked what kind of temple work will be performed, Doran said he had no idea.”

“[Washington County Sheriff Kirk] Smith said he has tried to inquire about the temple among FLDS members in Hildale [Utah]. ‘They’re pretty close-mouthed about the whole thing,’ he said. ‘You certainly sense that it’s special to them, but they won’t talk about it.’”

I understand that the FLDS Church is not part of the LDS Church. Yet it seems a bit of a stretch to accept the official LDS statement found on lds.org:

“Polygamist groups in Utah, other parts of the American West and elsewhere have nothing whatsoever to do with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” (emphasis mine)