Despite early acceptance of black men into the LDS priesthood, the Church, beginning with Brigham Young in at least 1852 (and possibly earlier, with Joseph Smith), taught for more than 100 years that black people bore the Mark of Cain, which labeled them as a cursed and disfavored people in the eyes of God, and unable, therefore, to be part of the LDS priesthood. President Young said the following:

[A]ny man having one drop of the seed of [Cain] … in him cannot hold the priesthood and if no other Prophet ever spake it before I will say it now in the name of Jesus Christ…

Recorded in the Diary of Wilford Woodruff, January 16, 1852

Later, in 1947, the First Presidency of the Church made the following official statement of LDS doctrine:

From the days of the Prophet Joseph Smith even until now, it has been the doctrine of the Church, never questioned by Church leaders, that the Negroes are not entitled to the full blessings of the Gospel.

Statement of The First Presidency on the Negro Question, July 17 1947, quoted in Mormonism and the Negro, pp.46-7

Two years later, the First Presidency again reiterated the doctrinal, non-policy nature of the ban:

The attitude of the Church with reference to Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the priesthood at the present time.

The First Presidency on the Negro Question, 17 Aug. 1949

This LDS doctrine did not age well. The African-American Civil Rights Movement (which roiled the leadership of the Church¹) rolled forward , and the popularity of race discrimination began to wane. In the years prior to the Brown case, the Church attempted to officially explain its reasoning with respect to the racially discriminatory doctrine. In 1951, the First Presidency published the following statement:

The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the church is kept in mind, namely, that the conduct of spirits in the pre-mortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these spirits take on mortality… Under this principle there is no injustice whatsoever involved in this deprivation as to the holding of the priesthood by the Negroes…

[The Church believes that] Man will be punished for his own sins and not for Adam’s transgression. If this is carried further, it would imply that the Negro is punished or allotted to a certain position on this earth, not because of Cain’s transgression, but came to earth through the loins of Cain because of his failure to achieve other stature in the spirit world.

Yes, the Church found itself in a hole created by its doctrine that got deeper and uglier over time. Finally, in 1978, about a decade after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the leaders of the Church felt that it was time for the Church to retire the doctrine. They did so through a letter, read in General Conference, announcing that all “worthy” males, regardless of race could now hold the priesthood.

In the years leading up to the change, Church leaders had made what appear to be efforts to begin preparing the Church for a change, characterizing the priesthood ban as a mere policy, even more vocally and clearly than they did with polygamy. As early as 1954, President David O. McKay was teaching that the priesthood ban was not doctrinal:

There is no doctrine in this church and there never was a doctrine in this church to the effect that the Negroes are under any kind of a divine curse.

We believe that we have scriptural precedent for withholding the priesthood from the Negro. It is a practice, not a doctrine and the practice will some day be changed. And that’s all there is to it.

Letter written by Dr. Sterling M. McMurrin, reported in the Salt Lake Tribune, January 15, 1970

In 1963, Apostle Spencer W. Kimball (who would be President of the Church at the time the ban was lifted) continued to blur the line between doctrine and policy:

The doctrine or policy has not varied in my memory. I know it could. I know the Lord could change his policy and release the ban and forgive the possible error which brought about the deprivation.

Kimball, Edward L., The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball. Bookcraft. p. 448–9

Today, Church leaders seem to lean more toward calling the priesthood ban a policy or practice that was changed, rather than a doctrine. Recently, Jeffrey R. Holland has said that, despite what his predecessors have said in the past, the status of the ban (as doctrine/policy/practice), and the reason(s) for the ban, are now (and perhaps have always been) unknown:²

I have to concede to my earlier colleagues. … They, I’m sure, in their own way, were doing the best they knew to give shape to [the policy], to give context for it, to give even history to it. All I can say is however well intended the explanations were, I think almost all of them were inadequate and/or wrong. …

At the very least, there should be no effort to perpetuate those efforts to explain why that doctrine existed. I think, to the extent that I know anything about it, as one of the newer and younger [apostles] to come along, … we simply do not know why that practice, that policy, that doctrine was in place.

Interview for The Mormons, PBS documentary, 2006

Holland may have just been following Gordon B. Hinckley’s lead:

Helmut Nemetschek (interviewer): Until 1978 no person of color attained the priesthood in your church. Why did it take so long to overcome the racism?

Gordon B. Hinckley: I don’t know. I don’t know. I can only say that. (long pause) But it’s here now.

Interview, ZDF German Television, January 29, 2002

Unlike the retirement of the polygamy doctrine, there hasn’t been an effort among leaders of the Church to rehabilitate, or reconcile the modern Church with, the LDS prophets who originated and promoted the priesthood ban doctrine.  This is probably for the best, given the frankly dispicable things that came out of their mouths during the ban. One Apostle’s response was to make an extremely rare exception to stare decisis and explicitly invoke a Brown-like overruling of the past prophets:

Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world.

Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, CES speech, All Are Alike Unto God, August 18, 1979

Gordon B. Hinckley’s most memorable statement on the topic seems to vaguely imply broad condemnation of his predecessors and even himself (though I don’t think the faithful heard it that way):³

Now I am told that racial slurs and denigrating remarks are sometimes heard among us. I remind you that no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ. Nor can he consider himself to be in harmony with the teachings of the Church of Christ. How can any man holding the Melchizedek Priesthood arrogantly assume that he is eligible for the priesthood whereas another who lives a righteous life but whose skin is of a different color is ineligible?

General Priesthood Meeting speech, The Need for More Kindness, April 1, 2006

The LDS Priesthood ban has gone from a rock-solid, eternal doctrine of the Church, to something that may or may not be a doctrine, or a policy, or just some kind of practice of the Church. A few things are clear, however: From the current Church leaders’ perspectives, the priesthood ban was definitely a horrible thing, and they were thrilled that the Church discarded it (whatever type of rule it was), but in a big, cowardly nod to stare decisis, no leader of the Church has (1) openly repudiated the LDS prophets who were responsible for initiating and perpetuating it, or (2) claimed that the ban was not divinely mandated. And that’s where the issue stands today.⁴

-PWM

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1. See, e.g., D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power. Signature Books. p. 81, describing a struggle between Apostles Ezra Taft Benson and Hugh B. Brown over whether the Civil Rights Movement was part of a communist conspiracy to destroy the United States. Benson, who eventually became President of the Church (1984-94), was insistent (and taught publicly, including in General Conference addresses) that it was a conspiracy.
2. Interestingly, while I basically like Holland’s approach to explaining the issue, it certainly makes him look like he is just as lost as everybody else when it comes to this important topic. Unfortunately for him, he is officially a “special witness of Christ“, and he and his colleagues at the highest levels of Church leadership not only perpetuate the idea that they receive regular instruction from the resurrected Jesus Christ, they also declare to the world, twice a year, that they are “prophets, seers, and revelators“. Jeffrey Holland’s direct line to God doesn’t allow him to be as ignorant as everybody else.
   This illustrates the difficulty of his situation–it’s lose-lose for him. He can ignore stare decisis and disavow the bigotry, but if those dead prophets can be so wrong, what does that say about his own prophetic claims? He can also honor stare decisis, but that means honoring what most of America already thinks is morally and ethically wrong, and what does that say about his prophetic moral compass? He appears to have chosen the former for himself. (What do you expect him to do, deny altogether that he is a prophet who hangs out with Jesus? Yeah, right.  The type of people who end up in the position he is in are not the type who would ever voluntarily relinquish that power.  I would love him to prove me wrong, but he won’t.)
3. In the last sentence of this quote, Hinckley describes the whole Church, including himself, for the entire period prior to 1978, when the ban was lifted. It seems like a subtle statement that the ban was a huge mistake, driven by arrogance. If so, I totally agree with the sentiment, though not the passive, ineffective way it was delivered.
4. Note that this is not where the Mark of Cain doctrine stands now, just the priesthood ban.  The Mark of Cain (or Curse of Ham) doctrine itself–the underlying basis for the priesthood ban–has never been repudiated by the Church, probably because of stare decisis too.  Yeah, I think that’s a problem.  It makes lifting the ban much less meaningful, since the underlying beliefs remain racist.  In fact, it seems almost like the bare minimum a post-Civil Rights American church has to do to avoid being a pariah.  Kind of pisses me off, actually.  But I suppose that’s a topic for another post.

In the nineteenth century, leaders of the Church taught that the practice of polygamy was an inextricable doctrine of Mormonism, and the only way to reach the highest levels of heaven.

President Brigham Young taught:

The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy. Others attain unto a glory and may even be permitted to come into the presence of the Father and the Son; but they cannot reign as kings in glory, because they had blessings offered unto them, and they refused to accept them.

Journal of Discourses, Vol 11, p. 269, August 19, 1866.

Apostle Heber C. Kimball declared:

You might as well deny ‘Mormonism,’ and turn away from it, as to oppose the plurality of wives. Let the Presidency of this Church, and the Twelve Apostles, and all the authorities unite and say with one voice that they will oppose the doctrine, and the whole of them will be damned.

Journal of Discourses, vol. 5, p. 203

Apostle Joseph F. Smith said:

Some people have supposed that the doctrine of plural marriage was a sort of superfluity, or nonessential to the salvation of mankind. In other words, some of the Saints have said, and believe that a man with one wife, sealed to him by the authority of the Priesthood for time and eternity, will receive an exaltation as great and glorious, if he is faithful, as he possibly could with more than one. I want here to enter my protest against this idea, for I know it is false…whoever has imagined that he could obtain the fullness of the blessings pertaining to this celestial law, by complying with only a portion of its conditions, has deceived himself.

Journal of Discourses, vol. 20, pp. 28

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the LDS Church encountered massive rejection of its doctrine of polygamy among the people of the United States, which caused Church leaders to very reluctantly rethink the religion-defining doctrine. The United States enacted and enforced laws that severely punished the Church and its leaders for embracing the doctrine, culminating in the dissolution of the Church as a corporate entity and seizure of all of its assets. The Church made a formal announcement that its practice of polygamy had ended, and after attempts to continue performing polygamous marriages in secret, eventually stopped polygamy altogether in the early 1900s.

That is not to say that the Church completely abandoned the doctrine of polygamy after that time, rather, it merely instituted a policy suspending the practice. Belief in the doctrine as described in the quotes above was not changed.  The doctrine, Mormons believed, would never go away, and the practice would return again. That’s what I was taught when I was a kid. But now, 100+ years after suspension, the practice has never resumed. In fact, a President of the Church has denied, without apology or retraction, that it is a Church doctrine (see below), and the Church has since become America’s most earnest, organized, and outspoken opponent of laws that attempt to define marriage as anything other than a union between one man and one woman.

President Gordon B. Hinckley professed:

I condemn [polygamy], yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal. And this church takes the position that we will abide by the law. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates in honoring, obeying and sustaining the law.

Larry King Live, CNN, 1998

Does this mean that now polygamy is doctrinal only when it is legal?  Possibly.  Nobody really knows.  One thing that it does seem to make clear, however, is that the practice of polygamy has gone from being an essential, permanent, religion-defining doctrine of Mormonism, to a non-doctrinal¹ policy that can be suspended as needed.

So what does all this say about the prophetic chops of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John Taylor, the first three (uber-polygamist) Presidents of the Church, who went to their graves teaching that practicing polygamy was, had been, and always would be, essential to the salvation of humanity?  Were they fallen prophets?  Never prophets in the first place?  How do people still trust these guys when they were so obviously wrong about fundamental LDS beliefs?

Take Brigham Young, for example.  President Hinckley not only denied Brigham’s eternal doctrine of polygamy as anything more than a quirky artifact of LDS Church history, but Hinckley’s tenure as President also saw Church curriculum used to hamfistedly repurpose Brigham Young as a stalwart monogamist.

How could a modern LDS prophet like Gordon B. Hinckley so thoroughly dismiss key beliefs and teachings of Brigham Young without also undercutting Young’s authority as a prophet of God (as well as his own)?  Well, Hinckley clearly made an effort to at least pay lip service to stare decisis–putting forth the appearance of deference to Brigham Young’s prophetic authority, even if it may not have been completely sincere.  Hinckley was not shy about connecting his own authority to that of Brigham Young.  He kept a large portrait of “Brother Brigham” on the wall in his office, and he referred to it often in his speeches and writings:

At the close of one particularly difficult day, I looked up at a portrait of Brigham Young that hangs on my wall. I asked, “Brother Brigham, what should we do?” I thought I saw him smile a little, and then he seemed to say: “In my day, I had problems enough of my own. Don’t ask me what to do. This is your watch. Ask the Lord, whose work this really is.” And this, I assure you, is what we do and must always do.

An Ensign to the Nations, a Light to the World, President Gordon B. Hinckley, General Conference Speech, October 5, 2003

Hinckley was also willing to lean on Brigham Young for words of wisdom, sometimes even taking those words from statements Brigham made about the doctrine of polygamy (and then reworking them to apply to other things Hinckley wanted to emphasize² ).

Even though Hinckley tried to subtly erase much of what Brigham Young taught and believed as a prophet of God, his choice to align himself with Brigham Young and draw from Young’s teachings can be explained by the LDS concept of stare decisis: Hinckley’s own authority was legitimized through his demonstrated respect for the authority and wisdom of Brigham Young.  For members of the Church given to skepticism, who paid attention to the differences between the beliefs and teachings of the two men, Hinckley’s approach made him look like a spin doctor or a slick politician, posing for cheesy pictures with Brother Brigham, while secretly stabbing him in the back.  For most faithful members of the Church, however, Hinckley looked like a humble servant of the Lord providing modern guidance for the Church, while remaining part of an unbroken chain of authority–another in a long line of LDS prophets.

-PWM

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1. Well, it’s a non-doctrine only if you exclude non-physical living/loving arrangements, like my parents apparently had for 20 or so years as a divorced, but still sealed, couple.  Otherwise, Hinckley’s description of the practice of polygamy as a non-doctrine is deceptive doublespeak, and Mormons don’t do that.  (Just kidding.)  And LDS Prophets definitely don’t do that.  (Kidding again.)
2. Here is an example of Gordon B. Hinckley taking a (slightly veiled) Brigham Young teaching about the Gospel principle of polygamy and reapplying it to other Church doctrines:

   [Brigham Young said,] “Every principle God has revealed carries its own convictions of its truth to the human mind, and there is no calling of God to man on Earth but what brings with it the evidences of its authenticity.” (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 9, Jan. 12, 1862)   That’s a remarkable statement, really…I’ve never found a man who paid tithing who had any doubt that it represented a commandment of the Lord…And so I might go on with every principle of the gospel.  Each one, as we observe it, brings convictions of its divine source.

   President Gordon B. Hinckley, July 16, 1995 speech, reported in the LDS Church News, week of July 22, 1995

Stare decisis is a legal concept meant to establish consistency in decisions made by courts. The idea is that once a decision has been made by a court about a certain point of law, future courts should respect that decision and follow suit. This approach conserves judicial resources by obviating the need for people to bring the same legal dispute to court over and over again, because they can look at past cases and reliably predict what a court is going to say about the issue.   It also causes people to take more seriously the decisions of current courts, because today’s decisions are going to hold weight with other courts in the future. Thus, it is a way for courts to legitimize their own decisions by respecting the decisions of their predecessors. Stare decisis is a practical strategy for dealing with the fact that reasonable judges will disagree about what the law means, and even though it sometimes enshrines erroneous decisions into the law, it is generally considered a useful and effective element of the judicial system.

A similar concept is at work for the top leaders of the LDS Church (considered “prophets, seers, and revelators” by believing members of the faith), though the process goes largely unacknowledged. LDS prophets do not openly dispute or dismiss the doctrinal pronouncements of past prophets. This LDS version of stare decisis has an effect similar to judicial stare decisis: the prophets’ doctrinal declarations stay fairly consistent from one generation to the next, and current prophets are legitimized by the idea that the past prophets were always right. LDS stare decisis, however, is not exactly the same as its judicial counterpart, in that it is not presented to the Church as a practical solution for inevitably conflicting doctrinal interpretations of the prophets. As a believer, I knew that the reason the prophets’ doctrinal understandings never conflict was because they each have a special connection to God and are getting Truth straight from the source, not because they always defer to their predecessors.

So how does stare decisis work in a world that is always changing, where yesterday’s answers aren’t always right for today’s circumstances?  In the courts, when that kind of situation arises, judges typically have a couple of different options for handling it: (1) they can be bold, make an exception to stare decisis, and overrule the previous case, acknowledging that it was originally decided in error, or (2) they can pay lip service to stare decisis, but use their mad reasoning skills to make room for a new answer, usually by figuring out a way to relabel the current case as something different from (and therefore inapplicable to) the previous case.   Courts generally prefer option 2, and use option 1 only as a last resort, because overruling a previous case can destabilize the law and harm people who invested resources in complying with the rules established by the overruled case.

A famous example of a court explicitly overruling a clear precedent is the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), which overruled Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), holding that laws segregating blacks from whites violate the U.S. Constitution, and “separate-but-equal” accommodations are not equal in practice. Cases in which stare decisis is not honored often get very uncomfortable reactions from lawyers who value a system that is reliable and predictable. For example, one of my law school professors (who happened to be black) made a point of voicing his dismay at the departure from the principal that Brown represents. Most people, however, seem to think that Brown was a good call–an idea whose time had come.

As hard as it is for a court to overcome stare decisis, it may be even harder for a leader of the Church to overcome the LDS version. How does one go about overturning something that many people believe to be Truth from God? The backlash against attempts to do that could potentially fracture the Church. Additionally (and not insignificantly), current LDS prophets have a very strong incentive to avoid giving anybody the impression that doctrines taught by their predecessors were never really True–doing so undercuts their own claims to the prophetic mantle and the power and authority that comes with it.  Thus, to my knowledge, a Brown v. Board of Education-style doctrinal reversal has never happened in the LDS Church, and I wouldn’t expect one any time soon.  Like the courts, however, LDS Church leaders have found an option 2 for discarding bad doctrine.  Their mad reasoning skills have culminated in the development of two dueling concepts: “doctrine” and “policy”.

-PWM