Second-Class Saints Part 3/3 - uncounted losses
Lowell Bennion, from bennioncenter.utah.edu
Read the following excerpt twice — once as it is intended, about the actual racial restrictions prior to 1978. Then read it again, as we wonder whether the same is happening today around LDS LGBTQ policies. This excerpt is from Matthew L. Harris’s book Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality.
Unintended Consequences
Lowell Bennion [was] a highly regarded teacher at the University of Utah Institute of Religion. As early as 1943, Bennion claimed that the “negro doctrine destroys faith” and “produces unchristian feelings, attitudes and practices in the lives of our saints everywhere.” He told McKay, “This negro teaching does not bring the fruit or spirit of the Gospel [because it] breeds hate, envy, pride, humiliation, and rules out mercy, love, and kindness.” Just as troubling, many of his students lost “faith in the mission of the Church,” Bennion lamented, “because . . . of [this] practice of the Church.”
[Bennion] further stated that the ban was pushing away the church’s best and brightest people. On this point, Bennion couldn’t have been clearer: “We are alienating many of our most intelligent and morally sensitive members of the Church. We have had students leave the Church and others not wish to be baptized on account of this practice.”
He regretted that the church contributed “to animosity, hatred and division among men instead of increasing love, respect for human dignity, and democracy.” Bennion thus drew a powerful, unmistakable conclusion: the priesthood and temple ban had to end.
Similar to Bennion, I think that the LGBTQ doctrine “produces unchristian feelings, attitudes and practices in the lives of our saints everywhere.” It “does not bring the fruit or spirit of the Gospel [because it] breeds hate, envy, pride, humiliation, and rules out mercy, love, and kindness.” “We are alienating many of our most intelligent and morally sensitive members of the Church.” I regret that the church contributed “to animosity, hatred and division among men instead of increasing love, respect for human dignity, and democracy.” Maybe we can draw the same conclusion: LDS LGBTQ restrictions have to end. Here’s to equality for all God’s children, where are are fellow citizens and there are no “second-class saints” of any kind.
-Marci
Also see Part 1/3: Second-Class Saints - Invisible change brewing and Part 2/3: Second-Class Saints - Is this how God does business?
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