Was Brigham Young wrong about the priesthood/temple ban? I'll ask Dr Paul Reeve & Christopher Rich, and we'll discuss the showdown between Orson Pratt and Brigham Young over whether blacks are guilty of the Curse of Cain and Curse of Ham. Check out our conversation...

https://youtu.be/iofIambKwQI

Don’t miss our other conversations with Paul Reeve! https://gospeltangents.com/people/paul-reeve/

Copyright © 2024

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.

Understanding Curse of Cain

GT: Okay. Well, let’s dive into the 1852 legislative session when An Act in Relation to Service was passed. [There was] a big debate between Orson Pratt and Brigham Young over whether this should be passed. And it’s also where Brigham Young articulates a race-based ban for priesthood. So, I know we’ve talked about this before, Paul, but remind people that didn’t see our first interview from eight years ago, what’s the debate between Orson and Brigham?

Paul:  Well, so they’re debating this Act in Relation to Service and Orson Pratt is once again, if it’s not free, it’s slavery. He’s calling it this abominable slavery. He proposes that the bill be rejected outright and gives a really strident anti-slavery speech. But theologically, there’s a mixture of religion and politics in this legislative session. And Brigham Young has created, and will create in a couple of his speeches, a cursed racial identity for people of Black African descent. He will suggest that they are cursed descendants of Cain. Cain killed his brother Abel, Brigham Young says, and because he kills Abel, all of Abel’s descendants, who he presumes to be white people, will need to receive the priesthood before any of Cain’s descendants can be allowed to receive the priesthood, and he presumes them to be people of Black African descent.

GT: Were they going to die out at sometime?

Paul:  Well, right. But those are the terms that he creates. Right?

GT: I mean, it’s a strange thing to say, you know? I mean, we’re going back to Adam and Eve, basically. These kids are going to have descendants forever, Black and white, right? So how are all the white people going to get the priesthood before the Black people do?

Paul:  Right. And did that finally happen in June of 1978?

GT:  So there’s no more descendants of Cain anymore?

Paul:  Well, Brigham Young is borrowing from the broader Judeo-Christian tradition, this story, this notion that black skin comes from the Curse of Cain. It’s the mark that God places upon Cain and therefore his descendants. That predates the founding of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by several hundred years. Then it gets mixed with the curse of Ham/Canaan, which is later, also in the Book of Genesis. Noah is found naked and drunk in his tent. Ham supposedly makes fun of him, and then the, the curse is, servant of servants you will be to Ham’s son Canaan. Right? Servant of servants you will be to other of Noah’s children. And that is overtly stretched and used to justify enslavement of people of Black African descent because the standard interpretation is that descendants of Cain, Ham, Canaan are people of Black African descent. Brigham Young comes into Mormonism with that idea. In 1852, he then gives it theological weight in his faith. Right? So he says that’s justification for barring people of Black African descent from priesthood ordination.

Paul:  So he is defining people of Black African descent as inherently guilty, and Orson Pratt will describe them as innocent. Shall we take the innocent African? So, you have two theological visions of who people of Black African descent are. And in 1856, Orson Pratt will also reject Brigham Young’s notion that they are descendants of Cain. He says we have no proof that Africans are descendants of Cain. It’s the only justification Brigham Young ever gives for the racial restriction, and Orson Pratt rejects it outright. So that is the nature of the debate. Orson Pratt is defining them as inherently innocent, and Brigham Young is defining them as guilty. It’s a violation of the Second Article of Faith that Joseph Smith establishes that human beings will be punished for their own sins, not for Adam’s transgression. And yet, Brigham Young holds the supposed descendants of Cain accountable for a murder in which they take no part. And Orson Pratt does not buy that. He argues against multi-generational curses. God may have, in fact, administered curses in the Old Testament. That’s fine. That’s specific to that given time and place. It has nothing to do with what’s happening in 1852 Utah territory. We have no commandment from God to do this. He’s speaking of slavery. Right? And we have no commandment from God to do this. He argues against any notion of a revelation, and he finds it abhorrent that Utah would even, or his fellow lawmakers would consider sanctioning what he considers to be slavery in Utah territory.

GT: Okay. because one of the things I remember, I had an episode titled Becoming a Fanboy of Orson Pratt because I was so impressed. When we talked about this before, he not only advocated banning slavery in Utah, which service/slavery, he was equating the two.

Paul:  Right.

GT: But he also advocated for Black voting rights, which just blew my mind.

Paul:  Yes.

GT: And so I think he should definitely be lauded for those two stances. But I have to say, after reading your book, I was disappointed to find out that he supported a priesthood ban. So, can you talk about that?

Paul:  Yeah. He does.

GT: That was a surprise because I was like, how can you be so anti-slavery, but still accept a priesthood ban on Blacks?

Paul:  Right. So in 1853, so a year later, he is publishing, a Latter-day Saint newspaper in New York called The Seer. And in that, he posits an alternate explanation to justify a racial priesthood restriction. He never buys Brigham Young’s justification, because of the reasons that we just articulated. It’s a violation of agency in the Second Article of Faith. Agency must have been at play. And he’ll borrow Book of Abraham language and suggest that perhaps people of Black African descent exercised agency poorly in the premortal realm. And therefore, they are barred from the priesthood in the mortal realm. He uses more circumspect language than Brigham Young does. “If.” He uses very cautious language, if-then language. Right? And “perhaps.” Those are the words that he’s using.

GT: So he’s not saying this definitely happened, but it might have happened.

Paul:  He’s suggestive. And remember, Brigham Young is very adamant. Right? Black people are cursed descendants of Cain, he says. I know they are. Right? And I firmly believe that’s in response to a speech that Orson Pratt gave on the 4th of February. Tragically, that speech is not captured. But I think he’s responding to Orson Pratt. Right? Brigham Young is responding to Orson Pratt. We know he’s responding to Orson Pratt’s proposal that Black men be allowed to vote. That’s evident in Brigham Young’s 5th of February speech. But in any case, Brigham Young is very adamant in terms of his position on defining Black people theologically, and Orson Pratt, when he publishes that article in The Seer in 1853, is much more circumspect. And, interestingly, LaJean looked through all of her transcripts. I looked through all Orson Pratt known speeches in the Journal of Discourses. Did he ever return to that position? 1853 is the only time we ever find him in any way trying to substantiate the racial priesthood restriction. We find no evidence of him ever returning to it, no evidence of him ever going back to this explanation of poor choices in the premortal realm. He never defends it again.

GT: So, it’s a one-off.

Paul:  It’s a one-off for Orson Pratt, at least as far as we can tell. Will there be some future speech that comes to light? I don’t know. None in the Journal of Discourses, none in any of LaJean’s transcribed speeches ever have Orson Pratt returning to this. I don’t know why he does in 1853, but really, what we have then are the two competing explanations for a racial priesthood restriction that develop out of this debate between Orson Pratt and Brigham Young. And those two competing explanations continue to exist all the way to the 20th century.

GT: Okay.

Paul:  Even into the 21st century, I still hear those notions sometimes shared amongst Latter-day Saints. And so, they established the terms of the rationales that justify a racial priesthood restriction.

GT: Okay. So, so the two explanations are curse of Cain/Ham. That’s one. That’s the Brigham Young explanation.

Paul:  Correct.

GT: And then the other explanation is they must have done something before they were born.

Paul:  Correct.

GT: And so that’s why they’re born Black.

Paul:  Yeah.

GT: And so even though Pratt only mentioned this one-time, other people latched on to it. I think John Taylor did. Is that right?

Paul:  Well, so it develops across the course of the 19th century. The first person to articulate it, not in relationship to a priesthood restriction, is 1845 Orson Hyde. He says it just in relationship to where does Black skin come from? They must have made poor choices, been less valiant in the war in heaven, or the premortal realm. Right? So, less valiant or evil, or, in some sort of way, agency is at play. They made poor choices in the premortal realm, or in the pre-existence. But Orson Pratt will link that to priesthood. And then you have B.H. Roberts later in the 19th century. You have John Widtsoe in the 20th century who will actually grapple with the two competing explanations. He doesn’t find any substantial rationale for Brigham Young’s explanation. So he says agency has got to be at play. You have Joseph F. Smith at the turn of the 20th century,