The Priesthood Ban and the Power and Trust in Saying "I Don't Know"

And some things that I do know.

On the FollowHim podcast, President Ahmad Corbitt shares a conversation he had with Elder L. Tom Perry while writing an essay about the priesthood ban. During the conversation, he suddenly realizes that Elder Perry was present when the revelation to lift the ban was received by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. He asks Elder Perry about that experience and Elder Perry begins to testify to him that the Lord did indeed issue that revelation. He told President Corbitt (who was a stake president at the time--he now serves in the Young Men’s General Presidency) that it was “the most spiritual and significant spiritual experience” he had over the course of his 38 years’ attendance at those Thursday Temple meetings.  He testifies to President Corbitt that he knows the Lord was there and that it reflected his will. Pres Corbitt, who recorded the conversation in his journal, shares his own testimony with Hank Smith and John Bytheway:

“Brethren, I don’t know how the priesthood restriction began. I don’t know that. I don’t have the answer for that. But I know how it ended…I bear witness in the name of the Lord that Jesus Christ revealed his will to those apostles and prophets.” 

President Corbitt testifies that the Holy Ghost testified to him during his conversation with Elder Perry that OD 2 was a true revelation from God. I bolded that part because you can hear him emphasize it in the podcast.

If you haven’t read President Corbitt’s beautiful essay, I encourage you to do so. President Corbitt is not unsophisticated. He studied law at Rutgers and worked as a trial attorney and directed the Church’s Public Affairs in New York. He has spoken on the subject of race in the Church many times (including, recently, in my stake) and he’s aware of the history surrounding the priesthood ban.

To me, this makes it very significant when he claims he does not know why the priesthood restriction began. With all he does know (and it’s a lot by both secular and sacred standards) about the priesthood ban, he does not put forth any theories for either it’s origin or continuation until 1978. As far as I know, none of the current Q12 or First Presidency have done so either, even as the Church has condemned racist attitudes and behaviors and officially disavowed speculative rationales given by early Church leaders and promulgated by members.

A cynic might here point out that of course no one serving in an official capacity for the Church would publicly observe the “true” reasons for the ban (racism simpliciter as Daniel Peterson puts it), since this would undermine their own authority for speaking on the Lord’s behalf. In other words, some are striving to assure the Brethren and reluctant members that the Lord’s work will not be hampered by their being more open and simply admitting the Church’s faults. Indeed, some even claim that owning up to their mistakes will make it easier for members to trust the Church.

Setting aside for a moment the question of who is in a better position to know how to keep people from leaving the Church and the role of rational explanations in maintaining faith, I see no reason to believe the Brethren are not actually quite sensitive to the way Church members are making sense (or not making sense) of the priesthood ban. Their circumspection on the topic of rationales for the ban suggests to me not an ignorance about the available theories or even a fear of the Church having been wrong, but rather a reluctance to offer a narrative that does not fully or properly account for the Lord’s will and purposes. It is one thing to acknowledge certain historical facts, such as the racist views of early Church members (which, though repugnant, were normal for the time and hardly defined these people as Daniel Peterson points out) and the unexplained shift from ordaining Black members to not ordaining them. It is another to say that such facts alone, with a bit of critical thinking to connect the dots, is sufficient for declaring Church leaders, in their issuance of policies and directives for the Church, to have been in errancy.

I’m not saying this because my brain will simply break if I can’t cling to an idea of prophets never being wrong. In the first place, there’s a significant difference between a prophet or Church leader making mistakes and the idea that Christ allows their imperfections to mislead His Church. Christ does not control prophets, and they are human, but it’s equally true and far more important that Christ is perfect, that this is His Church, and that His purposes are not at the mercy of human fallibility. We don’t trust Him instead of his prophets because prophets are imperfect. We trust Christ and his prophets because He is perfect enough to make up for their inevitable weaknesses and failures.

Instead, my concern with insisting that both reason and morality insist on an idea of the priesthood ban being merely a function of human weaknesses is that it closes our eyes to bigger, more glorious purposes that will only be visible to us if we remain open to the possibility that, even amidst the confusion and pain surrounding the ban, God’s mercy and vision were still at work. 

Consider this passage from President Corbitt’s 2012 essay: 

Even though more than three decades have passed since the revelation on the priesthood, some continue to have questions about the priesthood ban. In my experience, some who ask these questions sit in our seminary, institute, and Sunday classes and before our full-time missionaries. Their motivation in asking questions is usually sincere and heartfelt, born of spirit-deep feelings of justice, fairness, and love. They are not unlike some of Jesus Christ’s ancient disciples who once asked questions about a man who had been born blind.

Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus’s disciples queried. Recognizing God to be just, they thought the denial of such a basic blessing as sight must have been a punishment for someone’s sinfulness—either the man’s own, in the premortal world, or his parents’, sometime before he was born.

Jesus’s answer taught a powerful lesson that I believe relates to the priesthood ban: “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”

I hear the Savior’s answer this way: “You’re not asking the right question or thinking from a godly perspective. You’re trying to make sense of a sad situation by assigning blame without knowing all of the facts; but I see this man’s condition as simply an opportunity for me to bless him and show forth the power of God through a miraculous work.”

How does this story relate to the priesthood ban? I believe when we analyze the priesthood ban in a way that seeks to assign blame, either to people of African descent or to early leaders of the Church—and blame has been assigned to both groups—we become distracted. We miss the Lord’s grander, more eternal vision and opportunity. We essentially ask, “Master, who did sin, black people or the early Church leaders, that the priesthood ban was imposed?” I believe if the Savior stood beside us, His answer would be just as forward-looking and glorious as His response to His disciples’ question about the blind man: “Neither have my black children sinned, nor the prophets: but that the power of God should be made manifest through a miraculous work.

Just to be clear, he is not saying 1) that the priesthood ban must have been inspired, in whole or part, 2) that church leaders and members have never indulged in racist reasoning, practices, and attitudes because of the ban, nor 3) that it’s wrong for one’s sense of justice to be aroused by the ban. He is simply saying that God has always had a plan for His black children and that theories which focus on human weakness or quickly closing perceived gaps in God’s justice can compromise our ability to see His larger purposes at work.

The difficulty here, which is a perennial one for people of faith, is that I cannot point to exactly what bigger purposes God has in mind. I cannot offer any intellectually satisfying proof that the priesthood ban, steeped as it was in incorrect and even condemnable attitudes, may in fact play into some grander purpose known only to God at this time and which may even have made the ban necessary. What I can say is that in my darkest times, when I believed that God was looking on helplessly as I grappled with the consequences of other peoples’ choices or my own random genetics, I was wrong. He was not helpless. He was not unaware. He was perfectly and deftly using those circumstances, which he had long foreseen and for which he had long planned, to bring about changes in me that are nothing short of miraculous.

This did not mean either that nothing I did mattered nor that other peoples’ decisions do not matter. It just means He matters more. His intimate involvement in my development through these painful events did not become apparent to me until long after I accepted that those trials had a purpose--far in advance of anything making any sort of sense. That’s why holding back either our trust or obedience until such a time as things make enough sense is to damn oneself; it is to become a hostage to one’s own finite, severely underdeveloped reasoning.

It could be that the Church eventually says the ban was a mistake. If so, I will trust that this too serves some purpose known to the Lord. But I will only accept that idea if it comes from the Lord’s spokesman, who alone is authorized to speak on behalf of the Church, because I believe not only that the Lord alone is in a position to say when His organization for administering salvation to the world is in error, but also that nothing except his own judgment could prevent him from doing so.

If Nephi and Laman/Lemuel teach us anything, it’s this: what for one man seems too implausible to be God’s will is to another an opportunity for the Lord to take him--tenderly and intentionally-- by the hand.