Official Declaration 2, Doctrine and Covenants

Sources

• Official Declaration 2, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (opens in a new tab)

Objections & responses

Christian churches have an appalling record on race: Southern Baptists split to defend slavery, Dutch Reformed theology underwrote apartheid, and many denominations segregated into the 1960s. Isn’t singling out the LDS restriction a double standard?

The Christian record must be conceded, and plainly. The difference that can be defended is that the LDS restriction was official church policy, presented by prophets as God’s will, and could only be changed by revelation, whereas the Baptist and Reformed failures were violations of their own confessed teaching that all are one in Christ. The question the restriction raises for LDS theology is whether a prophet’s declared will of God can be wrong for a century; the question it raises for Baptists is why they did not obey what they already believed. Both are serious. They are different kinds of problem, and neither excuses the other.

Appears under 1 claim in this case

• For more than a century prophets taught that God barred Black members from the priesthood and the temple, and the church now disavows the reasons given but not the restriction, which leaves the question of prophetic fallibility open.