The Book of Mormon has been controversial since it was first published by Joseph Smith, Jr., in 1830. Today missionaries from the fourteen-million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS/Mormon) challenge prospective converts to read and study what Smith called “the most correct book on earth.”

Over the past 180 years, many have criticized the Book of Mormon and doubted its historicity. To counter such claims, Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT), a Mormon, compiled his support for the scripture that details how ancient Israelites came to America before the time of Christ. The book includes stories of Christ, who is said to have visited this continent soon after His resurrection in Palestine. The result of Bennett’s research is the book Leap of Faith, which he hopes will show how the Book of Mormon is trustworthy.

Bennett, who became a Utah senator in 1992, once served as a public relations director for Howard Hughes; in fact, Bennett was instrumental in detecting two forgery attempts involving Hughes, including a supposedly authorized biography of the billionaire as well as a fake will of the Hughes estate. Admitting that he is not “a scholar of high academic standing” (p. 18) and utilizing the “standard disclaimer” that his book is “neither commissioned nor sanctioned by the (Mormon) Church” (19), Bennett nonetheless uses his background to lend himself credibility in detecting fraud.

Bennett attempts to deal with arguments against the Book of Mormon that LDS scholars and apologists often gloss over. He says he is trying to take an objective approach because previous “authors who have written about (the Book of Mormon) have started out with a firm conclusion regarding it, for or against, and then assembled evidence to support that conclusion” (11). He is right when he says the conclusion one makes is vital: “If the claims regarding the Book of Mormon are accurate, then the book is genuine scripture. If, however, the Book of Mormon is an invention of human origin-in short, a forgery-then the Church itself is a fraud” (9).

Unfortunately, the reader is expected to make a major “leap of faith” in order to disregard the difficult arguments against the Book of Mormon. The result is that Bennett uncritically takes many things for granted and ends up glossing over many inconsistencies.

For one thing, Bennett places far too much confidence in the credibility of Smith (who was called the “author” as well as “translator” in the original edition). Bennett utilizes standard LDS arguments to uphold Smith’s credibility: he was too young with too little of an education, and he compiled it in too short of a time (two months) to come up with the story on his own. Of course, there has been no way to test Smith’s ability to translate the Book of Mormon plates because they were supposedly given back to the angel Moroni.

However, I never saw any mention made of the Book of Abraham, which Smith said was written by the patriarch on ancient Egyptian papyri that the church purchased from Michael Chandler in 1835 in Kirtland, Ohio. Smith claimed that he could translate the hieroglyphics with his special ability. Today the Book of Abraham is found in the Mormon scripture Pearl of Great Price, which includes the important teaching of the preexistence of humanity. The hieroglyphics code was not broken until the mid-nineteenth century, long after the Rosetta Stone (an Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic artifact) was discovered in 1799. This, unfortunately, meant there was no one to question Smith’s translation in his lifetime.

When Smith was killed in 1844, his wife took possession of the original Book of Abraham manuscripts and sold them. They were later thought to be lost and destroyed. However, the papyri were rediscovered at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in the mid-1960s, finally providing scholars the opportunity to determine if Smith understood the Egyptian language. It turns out that the manuscripts are common funeral papyri, and Smith was not even close in his translation of them, a fact that has shaken the faith of many Mormons.¹ If Smith was creative enough to compile the Book of Abraham, why not the Book of Mormon?

While Bennett says that he is open-minded, it is apparent that his presuppositions limit his ability to be objective. He ends the book by saying he has “made the leap of faith.” While faith in the truth is admirable, faith in something with questionable evidence is neither reasonable nor biblical (Heb. 11:1-2).

-Eric Johnson

Eric Johnson is a high school/college teacher as well as a researcher with Mormonism Research Ministry. He is an associate editor for the Apologetics Study Bible for Students (Holman, 2010).

NOTES

1. See Sandra Tanner, “The Oldest Biblical Text? Joseph Smith’s Book of Abraham Examined,” Christian Research Journal 32, 3 (2009): 30-37.

Before 1978, males of African heritage were considered “cursed”¹ and thus were denied the two LDS priesthoods, which meant they could not participate in the “temple blessings” enjoyed by the rest of the Church membership. The Church’s announcement was so earth-shattering that readers who responded to a 1999 poll given by the LDS Church News overwhelmingly voted this as the top news event for the entire twentieth century.²

The Genesis Group, an official LDS group that is comprised mainly of Black members, has celebrated this event every five years since 1978. However, the LDS Church leadership did not participate in these festivities until the thirty-year anniversary took place on Temple Square on June 8, 2008, when about 2,700 people came to the Mormon Tabernacle to hear a variety of speakers and a multicultural choir.

One presenter was Fred A. Parker III, the president of the LDS Atlanta Georgia stake, who admitted to the audience that not allowing Blacks full rights in the Church before 1978 was “unsettling,” yet “Heavenly Father knows best. The Lord may not be inclined to give a simple and universally satisfying explanation.”³

Elder Sheldon F. Child, member of the First Quorom of the Seventy, was the highest official LDS Church representative and the evening’s only white speaker.⁴ While some thought that perhaps an apology was forthcoming, others knew it was improbable. “Since no members of the LDS First Presidency or the Council of the Twelve were scheduled to appear, we were confident that no official apology for the prohibition would take place,” Bill McKeever, director of the Utah-based Mormonism Research Ministry, said.

Folklore or a Doctrine? Darius Gray has been a faithful Mormon for forty-four years and in 1971 helped organize The Genesis Group. While he supports his Church’s leadership, Gray admits that facing the racist history of the Mormon Church is painful. “Before this church can move forward,” he said, “we need to acknowledge the dead mule in the room, clean it out and air it out. For me, an apology isn’t the issue (but) teaching the correct principles is.”⁵

When Marvin Perkins was asked whether or not an apology ought to be given by his Church’s leadership, the co-producer (with Gray) of a two-volume DVD series titled Blacks in the Scriptures responded, “I don’t think so simply because President (David) McKay said it’s not a doctrine. There never was a curse against the blacks. It was a practice.”⁶ Yet despite the fact that Mormon leaders had elaborated on the idea that those who were less valiant in a preexistent world were cursed with black skin,⁷ Mormon Church spokesperson Mark Tuttle stated, “This folklore is not part of and never was taught as doctrine by the church.”⁸

Darron Smith, an outspoken Black Mormon who lost his job as a professor at LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University in 2006, disagrees and feels that he and other Blacks deserve an apology. He believes it is a cop-out to claim that only God knows why it took so long to lift the ban. “We don’t know why the Lord did this?” he asked. “Bull——. It’s called racism.”⁹

The fact is that skin color has played a role regarding a person’s individual spirituality within Mormonism. For instance, when speaking of the dark-skinned “Lamanites”—ancestors of the Native Americans—2 Nephi 30:6 in the pre-1981 editions of the Book of Mormon indicated the Lamanites would become “white and delightsome” as they became more righteous. This phrase was changed to read “pure and delightsome,” which seems to be an obvious reaction to the 1978 course correction, especially since previous leaders had used this as a proof text in support of the teaching that banned Blacks from the priesthood.¹⁰

The structure of the LDS Church also needs to be considered, as Mormons are taught that they are being led by living men who are ordained by God in these “latter days.” In fact, speakers from the LDS general conference pulpit have many times elaborated on the inferiority of Blacks, including second president Brigham Young who bluntly stated, “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.”¹¹

Contrary to the “folklore” argument being used by a Church spokesperson, the First Presidency gave a statement on August 17, 1949, that declared how the priesthood restriction was not just a policy, but “doctrine.” The statement reads in part, “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.”

Reaction from the Membership Today. Having to deal with Mormonism’s racist past causes great consternation for a number of Black members, including thirty-four-year-old Tamu Smith. When she visited the LDS temple in Salt Lake City for the first time to participate in her marriage ceremony, she was confronted by an older white man who angrily asked her what a [racial epithet] was doing there. Instead of reprimanding him, temple workers came to the man’s defense because they said he didn’t know any better.

“I don’t mind defending my faith to my black friends and family,” Smith said, “but I do mind having to defend my race to my fellow Mormons.” She added, “For racism to stop, we need to hear it condemned at Conference as often as pornography or abuse are. The brethren don’t want to open up old wounds, but those wounds have never healed.”¹²

Vanna Cox, who last year was Provo (Utah) High School’s first black student-body president, said that she constantly “heard the [racial epithet] all the time when we were kids at [LDS] church activities by kids who knew us.” Yet she isn’t ready to quit the Church because her involvement is “definitely something that helps me. I do love it. But the priesthood ban is always going to be a question for me. It hurts. It sucks.”¹³ —Eric Johnson

notes

1 For example, see Abraham 1:24 in the LDS scripture Pearl of Great Price, Journal of Discourses 7:290 and 10:250, and Apostle Bruce McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine (1966), 108–9.

2 The Church News, December 19, 1999. ”Proliferation of temples across the world” was a distant second.

3 Catherine Reese Newton, “LDS 1978 Blacks-in-the-Priesthood Decision: Why Did It Take So Long?” Salt Lake Tribune, June 9, 2008, http://www.sltrib.com/

portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?articleId=9525797&siteId=297.

4 In fact, there are no blacks in the highest Mormon leadership called “general authorities.”

5 Peggy Fletcher Stack, “Mormons and Black: Grappling with a Racist Past,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 10, 2008, http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_9497769.

6 http://www.blacksinthescriptures.com/clips.html.

7 For example, see McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine (1966), 527–28, and Apostle Mark Peterson’s “Race Problems—As They Affect the Church,” BYU address on August 27, 1954.

8 “Mormons and Black: Grappling with a Racist Past.”

9 Ibid.

10 See http://www.mrm.org/topics/book-mormon/white-and-delightsome-or-pure-and-delightsome-a-look-2-nephi-30-6.

11 Journal of Discourses 10:110.

12 “Mormons and Black: Grappling with a Racist Past.”

13 “Mormon and Black: Vanna Cox Has Questions,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 10, 2008, http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_9497771.