Joseph Smith taught that Black people are cursed as “sons of Cain” but also could be saved. Brigham Young, his successor, was harsher: “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the White man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 10). Since dark skin was a divine punishment for sin (rather like Eve’s curse, which causes women to suffer in childbirth), Black men could not be ordained into the priesthood of the LDS church, a designation open to any White male age 12 and older who is “morally upright.”
During the Civil Rights Movement, the LDS Church came under pressure as such teachings became offensive to a growing number of people. Simultaneously, the church expanded its missionary efforts into Brazil where almost everyone has some slave ancestors. How pureblooded did a light-skinned man have to be to receive ordination or enter the temple? In this context, Spencer Kimball, who was now Church president, announced a new revelation in 1978, and Black men were granted the priesthood. But in Mormon sacred texts, the old racism remained.
Over the years, ordinary Mormons and church leaders have struggled with this heritage. One racist passage in the scripture—2 Nephi 30:6 —has simply been fixed by Mormon authorities. Originally reading that conversion to Christianity creates a “White and delightsome people,” in 1981 the Church adopted a variant that now reads, “a pure and delightsome people.” (Joseph Smith had used each of the phrases.)
Now, with 2013 winding down, Church authorities have decided to tackle the problem head-on. In a 2000 word document posted Friday, officials emphatically renounced the racist teachings of the past:
The church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavour or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that Blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.