The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is the largest Latter Day Saint denomination, tracing its roots to its founding by Joseph Smith during the Second Great Awakening. The church is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, and has established congregations and built temples worldwide. According to the church, as of 2023, it has over 17.2 million members of which over 6.8 million live in the U.S. The church also reports over 99,000 volunteer missionaries and 350 temples.
Early Mormonism had a range of doctrines related to race with regards to Black people of African descent. References to Black people, their social condition during the 19th and 20th centuries, and their spiritual place in Western Christianity as well as in Mormon scripture were complicated.
Elijah Abel, or Able or Ables was one of the earliest African-American members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and was the church's first African-American elder and Seventy. Abel was predominantly of Scottish and English descent and appears to have been the first, and one of the few, black members in the early history of the church to have received Priesthood ordination, later becoming the faith's first black missionary. Abel did not have his ordination revoked when the LDS Church officially announced its now-obsolete restrictions on Priesthood ordination, but was denied a chance to receive his temple endowment by third church president John Taylor. As a skilled carpenter, Abel often committed his services to the building of LDS temples and chapels. He died in 1884 after serving a mission to Cincinnati, Ohio, his last of three total missions for the church.
During the history of the Latter Day Saint movement, the relationship between Black people and Mormonism has included enslavement, exclusion and inclusion, and official and unofficial discrimination. Black people have been involved with the Latter Day Saint movement since its inception in the 1830s. Their experiences have varied widely, depending on the denomination within Mormonism and the time of their involvement. From the mid-1800s to 1978, Mormonism's largest denomination – the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – barred Black women and men from participating in the ordinances of its temples necessary for the highest level of salvation, prevented most men of Black African descent from being ordained into the church's lay, all-male priesthood, supported racial segregation in its communities and schools, taught that righteous Black people would be made white after death, and opposed interracial marriage. The temple and priesthood racial restrictions were lifted by church leaders in 1978. In 2013, the church disavowed its previous teachings on race for the first time.
No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith is a 1945 book by Fawn M. Brodie that was one of the first significant non-hagiographic biographies of Joseph Smith, the progenitor of the Latter Day Saint movement. No Man Knows My History was influential in the development of Mormon history as a scholarly field. However, scholars have since criticized the book for its methodological deficiencies, factual errors, and overt hostility to Smith.
The teachings of Joseph Smith include a broad spectrum of religious doctrines as well as political and scientific ideas and theories, many of which he said were revealed to him by God. Joseph Smith is the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement and is recognized by multiple Latter Day Saint churches as the founder. Beginning in 1828, Smith began dictating the text of what later became the Book of Mormon, and also began dictating written revelations he said were inspired by God.
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the priesthood is the power and authority to act in the name of God for the salvation of humankind. Male members of the church who meet standards of worthy behavior and church participation are generally ordained to specific offices within the priesthood.
Joseph Freeman Jr. is the first man of black African descent to receive the Melchizedek priesthood and be ordained an elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after the announcement of the 1978 Revelation on Priesthood, which allowed "all worthy male members of the Church" to "be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color."
The 1978 Revelation on Priesthood was an announcement by leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that reversed a long-standing policy excluding men of Black African descent from ordination to the denomination's priesthood and both Black men and women from priesthood ordinances in the temple. Leaders stated it was a revelation from God.
Warner "William" McCary was an African American convert to Mormonism who was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1847 for claiming to be a prophet. Some researchers have suggested that McCary's actions led to the Church's subsequent policy of not allowing people of black African descent to hold the priesthood or participate in temple ordinances.
From 1852 to 1978, temple and priesthood policies in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prohibited both Black women and men from temple ordinances and ordination in the all-male priesthood. In 1978, the church's highest governing body, the First Presidency, declared in the "Official Declaration 2" statement, that the restriction had been lifted. Between 1830 and 1852, a few Black men had been ordained to the Mormon priesthood in the Latter Day Saint movement, under Joseph Smith.
Since Mormonism's foundation, Black people have been members; however, the church placed restrictions on proselytization efforts among Black people. Before 1978, Black membership was small. It has since grown, and in 1997, there were approximately 500,000 Black members of the church, mostly in Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean. Black membership has continued to grow substantially, especially in West Africa, where two temples have been built. By 2018, an estimated 6% of members were Black worldwide. In the United States, approximately 1% of members are Black.
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, marriage between a man and a woman is considered to be "ordained of God". Marriage is thought to consist of a covenant between the man, the woman, and God. The church teaches that in addition to civil marriage, which ends at death, a man and woman can enter into a celestial marriage, performed in a temple by priesthood authority, whereby the marriage and parent–child relationships resulting from the marriage will last forever in the afterlife.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Darron Smith is an African-American scholar, author and blogger. His research and scholarly writing focuses on social injustices impacting African Americans and other marginalized groups in the US. His work includes the study and impact of race on US health care, the practice of white parents adopting black and biracial children, religion, sports, politics and other pertinent subject matters of present time.
Newell G. Bringhurst is an American historian and author of books and essays. Most of his writings have been about Mormonism— particularly topics and figures of controversy, such as blacks and the priesthood, Fawn Brodie, polygamy, and schisms within the LDS movement
This is a bibliography of works on the Latter Day Saint movement.
This is a bibliography of literature treating the topic of criticism of Mormonism, sorted by alphabetical order of titles.
Joseph Smith's views on Black people varied during his lifetime. As founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, he included Black people in many ordinances and priesthood ordinations, but held multi-faceted views on racial segregation, the curses of Cain and Ham, and shifted his views on slavery several times, eventually coming to take an anti-slavery stance later in his life.
