Church says it was an "error" that their Come Follow Me manual called the black skin curse a... black skin curse

[Red Ryder]

The ghost of Boyd K Packer strikes again!

[Corsair]

I saw an interesting theory on reddit. The church found the error in the printed manuals but still sent them out. Then it changed the online manual. This was the older members, who are more likely to use the printed manual, get to see the same doctrine they have always known. The younger members, who are more likely to use the online manual, don't see the offensive doctrine.

Whether or not if this is true, this will be one result. Most Sunday School classes will not address this discrepancy.

[Jeffret]

If they would just make a big public announcement that we are sorry for early doctrine that got into the church because it was started at a time when many people including early church leaders, and that it was false doctrine when Nephi wrote it down and it was false doctrine when Joseph Smith translated it. It was false doctrine when Brigham Young made doctrine that kept blacks out of temples and kept priesthood from them.

They're stuck in a conundrum of their making and they really can't do anything like this. Their prime directive is the preservation of their own authority. Their authority is based on the claim they make to being sole, direct spokesmen for god, through Joseph's claim to that same authority. Mormonism is intensely focused and based on their foundational story. The missionaries don't preach how amazing the Church is today; they preach a uniqueness claim based on their foundational story. Mormon doctrine, Mormonism's claim of only-trueness, and the unique authority of leaders is all directly tied to the foundational story. To come out and make such a statement undermines their authority greatly.

It's not just a little thing they can say. It's not a simple matter of saying the printer got it wrong. Racism is a central tenet of the BoM and is woven throughout it. It's not simply a matter of saying that Nephi was a little confused or Joseph misunderstood. Once they start openly going down that route the walls start crumbling down.

So what they have done is tucked away little essays that nobody is supposed to read with wishy-washy information that doesn't really address the issues. They do the magician's redirection trick to try to get everyone to look the other way. They do everything possible to avoid addressing it directly. It works pretty well, but then inevitably you get situations like this where not everyone has gotten the word and someone states directly what was supposed to be ignored or finessed.

[blazerb]

I saw an interesting theory on reddit. The church found the error in the printed manuals but still sent them out. Then it changed the online manual. This was the older members, who are more likely to use the printed manual, get to see the same doctrine they have always known. The younger members, who are more likely to use the online manual, don't see the offensive doctrine. I would not put it past the COB minds to purposely go down this path.

That's giving the Church credit for a lot more savviness than I've ever seen them display. I've seen them mess up only to respond and handle it even more poorly. I can't think of a time I've seen them do something that slick. (Although, admittedly, this one isn't really turning out all that well I would say.)

You're right. Although, I think the church knows it just needs to wait a week or so for this controversy to be all but forgotten. The fact that Mormonism includes racist doctrine is hardly new or surprising.

[græy]

I really hate this whole conversation the church is trying to have in order to uphold BoM legitimacy. It just feels dishonest and frustrating. Especially so when current members blindly nod and think "Yup, no problems there!"

The BoM clearly refers to skins of blackness. You can't spend 200 years telling everyone they need to love and live by the "most correct book on Earth" only to then declare that words don't mean what they mean when you don't like what they mean!

I originally wrote a longer post, but Palerider and lostinmiddlemormonism nailed my thoughts already. Well said, friends!

The article mentioned that the doctrine had been "denounced" but I wasn't too sure of that.

To openly and cleanly apologize would mean naming names and that means that "someone", some past prophet, led the church astray for quite awhile. And then later prophets just bobbleheaded along with the mistake. That means everyone up until Kimball was guilty. What a can of worms!

To me the really interesting part of this is that you now have church leadership openly saying that part of the Book of Mormon isn't true. That it doesn't actually mean what is there in plain text.

So if we can't trust what the Book of Mormon says, then what other parts are inaccurate? Perhaps Nephi wasn't really following the commandments of God when he murdered Laban. I mean I know the Book says he was, but we can't really trust the Book, can we? Maybe Jesus didn't really appear in the New World, it was just allegorical after all.

For a religion that insists it is either all true or it is nothing, this is a dangerous tightrope to try to walk.

[Mackman]

It doesn't matter to me as I am an admitted racist!!!!

[fetchface]

Interesting, apparently they committed the big sin of saying the obviously racist part of the Book of Mormon out loud. You're supposed to pretend that part doesn't exist!