Item Detail
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5227
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2
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0
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English
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The Negro Doctrine : An Afterview
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Dialogue : A Journal of Mormon Thought
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Summer 1979
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12
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64-67
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"On June 8, 1978, word of a revelation to President Spencer W. Kimball and the ruling councils abruptly removed one of Mormonism's more uncomfortable teachings and relegated it to the archives. As we bade farewell to this difficult doctrine, I couldn't help but wonder why blacks had been denied priesthood rites in the first place. Did other church members share my uncertainty? What did they think or know about the history of our beliefs? Was the doctrine born of revelation or did it derive from the social and political problems of the early Church? In the absence of any published, 'scientific' surveys, I sought out twelve 'representative' Latter-day Saints, including five in bishoprics, and posed three fundamental questions to them. The following extracts are from their spontaneous anwers." [Author]