The Negro Question

"The Peculiar People," as Mormons call themselves, have often found that their peculiar doctrines put them at odds with their fellow citizens—and once again there is trouble in Zion. Today, the problem is the Mormon attitude toward the Negro. Not since the battles over polygamy has the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints faced such a conflict between what it practices and what other men preach.

Mormons believe that Negroes cannot become priests—although Mormons define most active male believers as priests. Non-Mormons are prone to infer from this that Mormons are segregationists. The church replies that it has a right to set the qualifications of its own priesthood, and that excluding Negroes is no more discriminatory than the refusal of many churches (including the Mormons) to ordain women.

Nonetheless, Mormon leaders have been slow to speak up in favor of civil rights. Recently, Negro leaders in Salt Lake City threatened to picket the Mormons' 133rd semiannual conference unless church leaders broke silence and formally denounced segregation. N.A.A.C.P. leaders finally heard what they had been waiting for last week in an address by Hugh D. Brown, newly chosen First Counselor to David O. McKay, 90, who is the Mormons' First President, Prophet, Seer, Revelator and Trustee-in-Trust. "We would like it to be known," said Brown, "that there is in this church no doctrine, belief or practice that is intended to deny the enjoyment of full civil rights by any person regardless of race, color or creed."

Four Sources of Truth. In many ways, Mormons make almost ideal citizens. They are wholesome, industrious and thrifty, devoted to social welfare and higher education. But they are unsympathetic toward the Negro, largely as a consequence of the strange church doctrines formulated by the first Mormon Prophet, Joseph Smith, and amplified by his successors. By these doctrines, Mormons have four sources of divine truth: the Bible, the "continuous revelation" granted to Smith and his successors, and Smith's two pseudo-Biblical works, The Book of Mormon and The Pearl of Great Price.

Mormons believe that they alone are members of the one true church of Christ, although they deny such commonly held Christian doctrines as original sin and the possibility of eternal damnation. The church teaches that man treads a progressive path to perfection: in a pre-existent state as a soul without a body, in the life on earth, and finally in the afterlife. More than most religious believers, Mormons seem to keep busy seeking perfection from the cradle to the grave. Every worthy boy becomes a priest at the age of twelve, and two out of three Mormons work part or full time in serving the church.