From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #608 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Monday, February 11 2002 Volume 01 : Number 608 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 09 Feb 2002 15:43:34 -0600 From: Major Productions Subject: Re: [AML] Race Issues in Mormonism As the mother of two adopted biracial children of elementary school age, I have thought long and hard about this very topic. It has been especially interesting of late as my kids and I have read both of Cain and the Lamanites in the scriptures. My theory on dark skin--based not on deep scholarship admittedly!--is that it is not a curse, but a consequence. Cain made choices and was set apart with a mark, as were the Lamanites. The sins of Cain, and of Laman and Lemuel, were visited upon the heads of their children. (I believe whole-heartedly that this is what that scripture means! Each of us with children sees how our choices have results in our children. In my family, there's a legacy of clutter, for example. My grandmother was a housekeeping disaster. Her daughter, my mother, is compulsively neat in reaction. I am like my grandmother, in direct reaction to my mother's hyper neatness. The "sin" of a too-tidy house is being visited on my head.... And, of course, I like putting it that way rather than saying I'm messy and slothful.) What I'm trying to say, and not very well, is that those who go around spouting how blacks were less valiant in the premortal existence and similar such asinine theories have obviously got it all wrong. When Cain begat his little Cainlings, were they born bad? Absolutely not! But they were born into a home where the father contributed genetic material which resulted in the combination of eye color/skin color/hair color/etc AND, more importantly, they were born into a home where they were taught the doctrines of their father, and learned their take on life by watching and learning from his actions. I have green eyes. Who do I blame this on? God? Or genetics? Two additional thoughts, at random: I found it very interesting that, when my husband and I were living in California (where we adopted our son) there were a great many more Church members who had a hard time covering up their disapproval and/or shock at our "brown" baby than there were non-members. The lady in the LDS bookstore who said it was just wonderful how "those" people were accepting the gospel. The woman in our ward who practically shrieked, "But he's so dark!" The other one who said, "He doesn't look like your group." The man who said to his granddaughter, "They adopted a brown baby because there aren't enough white babies to go around." I have lots of instances where my maternal feathers got badly ruffled. Church members saw skin color first. Non-members saw his beautiful dimples, the light in his eyes. Or at least that's what they remarked on. Maybe they were just better actors. Or maybe, in California, nothing is that mind-boggling, since minds are boggled there every day. Random thought #2: I read Dean Hughes' THE WRITING ON THE WALL and it was a profoundly moving experience for me. I strongly recommend this book to any who have not yet taken the time. It will probably make you squirm. I know it did me. But it has some very important things to say about children of our Father in Heaven. All of His children. (I'm not a deep thinker like the rest of you guys, but there are a few things I feel passionately about. "Race" is one of those things. So maybe some of the early leaders of the Church were racist. My grandparents were bigots, but my mom made another choice and taught HER children to be otherwise. And now she has biracial grandchildren. So racism CAN be inherited, but it doesn't HAVE to be.) Robbin Major Sugar Land, TX motto: There is no Equal..... - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 16:15:17 -0800 From: "Levi Peterson" Subject: [AML] re: Missionaries Returning Home I can't help adding the following to the discussion. I was with my last companion in Liege, Belgium, for three months. I stood up under the ordeal because I knew I was going home soon. He was exceedingly belligerent, obviously having come under duress. He slept in till noon, went off by himself when he wished, and, when he did go out proselyting with me, was surly and mean about it. One day I became aware that he was trying to tip my bicycle over while riding a little behind me. Another day, a Sunday morning when I wanted very much to visit a sick member in the hospital before Sunday school and needed my companion to go with me, he wouldn't. I got mad, went over to the nearby chapel and told someone I wouldn't be there for opening exercises, went back to the apartment, and had an hour long fist fight with my companion. It wasn't total war because we both pulled our punches when it came to the face, but we thumped each other in the chest and abdomen as hard as we could. That combat cleared the air for him and he was reasonable for about a week. After I went home, an idealistic district president asked to have this fellow assigned to him. He was going to love him into obedience. I was told the district president had a nervous breakdown. This fellow stood behind him at doors while they were tracting, and while the district president spoke to people at the doors, the fellow punched him in the kidneys. The last I heard of him, he had abandoned his mission and joined the US army in Germany, where I imagine he got some discipline that had a little bark to it. Why did he join the army? Maybe because he didn't have any money to buy his passage home. As I found out when I tried to leave my mission after being out for ten months, the church won't pay your way. Levi Peterson althlevip@msn.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 23:51:46 -0600 From: "Angela Hallstrom" Subject: Re: [AML] Race Issues in Mormonism My name is Angela and I am new to this list. I have spent the last couple of weeks reading and enjoying what many of you have had to say, but the topic of race and the Church has been particularly meaningful to me, since it is a part of our history that has always puzzled and disturbed me. I am so relieved to read that many of you think and feel the same way I do, and still consider yourselves to be faithful and dedicated Latter Day Saints. I was born in 1972, so I have only a vague memory of the priesthood being given to all worthy male members. I do remember a well loved Black man in our ward crying in sacrament meeting, saying how glad he was that this happened before his sons turned twelve; he had so dreaded having to try and explain why something so sacred was available to all of the other 12 year old boys in the ward but them. I grew up in the church subtly influenced by, but never understanding or embracing, both the "fence sitting" theory and the "mark of Cain" theory. By the time I was in my early twenties, I had decided that it was wrong for me to believe in either of them if God was, in fact, no respecter of persons. I decided that it was much more difficult for me to believe that the God I so loved and trusted was a respecter of persons, "marking" our potential or our former valiency on our faces by the color of our skin, than it was for me to believe that our prophets and leaders were also men, products of their lives and times, influenced by the prejudices that surrounded them. I decided that, until President Kimball, the prophets may have simply never asked, and because God allows his children to make mistakes--even the leaders of his church--this wrong had been allowed to go on. I often felt somewhat guilty for believing this, because it seemed as if I wasn't being faithful to the leaders of the church, wasn't believing in everything they said or did. But, in my searching, I found it to be much easier to reconcile a prophet--a man--making a misake, then forcing my whole understanding of who God was and how he saw his children into what I believed to be a racist philosophy. I would love someday for a church leader to clarify this history. There is so much speculation in the church, so many false doctrines still being (often innocently!) taught in Sunday School and Relief Society, so many good Black men and women who--understandably--don't want to hear the gospel message because of what they perceive to be a racist history. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I learned a lot, and felt some much needed like-mindedness. Angela [Hallstrom] - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 11:13:56 +0000 From: "Andrew Hall" Subject: [AML] re: Race Issues in Mormonism I was hoping to write a nice comprehensive essay, but it doesn't look like I'll have any time in the next couple of days. Several others have already expressed much of what I was thinking of saying, in any case. So I'll just give you a series of random notes. As far as I can tell, before 1978, the idea of "the Blood of Israel" was a big deal in the Church. There really was an idea that some people had it more than others, and that they were the ones the missionaries were going to teach. Also, certain ethnicities were assumed to have more the blood of Israel. Europe, America, and the South Sea islands in particular. A lot of the pre-1978 ideas came from the Old Testament and general 19th century Protestant theology, both of which I see as flawed on the subject. The Old Testament was a time when tribal allegiance was everything, and blood lines were emphasized for practical reasons. Also, as others have mentioned, 19th century leaders like Brigham Young and Orson Pratt were influenced by racist Protestant ideas about which were part of the conventional wisdom at the time, and which seemed to fit in with some of the Restoration ideas like the gathering of Israel. Although some don't see the idea about the importance of lineage and the priesthood ban as linked issues, I think that they are. The New Testament, on the other hand, does not seem to emphasize race much at all. Paul in particular emphasized the universality of the gospel. Thankfully, the Church has now moved in a New Testament direction in regards to race. I read with fascination and sadness D. Michael Quinn's (quite sketchy) outline of racism among past Church leaders in an article in the latest Dialogue, "Prelude to the National 'Defense of Marriage' Campaign Civil Discrimination Against Feared or Despised Minorities." These include mission president and soon-to-be general authority John Morgan's 1881 sermon at Temple Square, in which he spoke approvingly of lynchings, and the policy of the Church owned Hotel Utah not to allow blacks to stay up through at least 1955. It was all pretty much the same as American society as a whole, but still disappointing. I pretty much throw out everything about race taught by Church leaders before 1978. Bruce R. McConkie's 1978 talk "All Are Alike Unto God" even gives me a good authoritative source to back up my tossing out this big chunk. "There are statements in our literature by the early brethren which we have interpreted to mean that the Negroes would not receive the priesthood in mortality. I have said the same things, and people write me letters and say, 'You said such and such, and how is it now that we do such and such?' And all I can say to that is that it is time disbelieving people repented and got in line and believed in a living, modern prophet. Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world. We get our truth and our light line upon line and precept upon precept. We have now had added a flood of intelligence and light on this particular subject, and it erases all the darkness and all the views and all the thoughts of the past. They don't matter any more. It doesn't make a particle of difference what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June of this year (1978). It is a new day and a new arrangement, and the Lord has now given the revelation that sheds light out into the world on this subject. As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them." While the revelation (and Elder McConkie's comments) seemed to destroy the idea of black inferiority in Mormon theology, ideas of the superiority of certain groups that have more of the "blood of Israel" have not been officially discredited, and still float about in the ether. I find it interesting the Church leaders, especially recently, do not appear to be interested in cleaning up the theological speculations of the past very much. President Hinckley, when asked about past practices like polygamy and the priesthood ban, usually says something like, "It's in the past." I think I can see why he chooses to do that, but it does result in some confusion about whether doctrines which accrued around these past practices still belong in the theology. Anyways, it seems like Mormon doctrine has some kind of half-life nature to it. If it hasn't been mentioned in general conference for a number of years, we can assume that it not something that we do not need to be concerned with at all. It would be interesting to study how long it has taken doctrines that are allowed to wither away to be abandoned by the mainstream Church population. Am I correct in assuming that there aren't any active theologians among the General Authorities today? By that, I mean people like Orson Pratt, B. H. Roberts, Joseph Fielding Smith, and Bruce R. McConkie, people who would try to synthesize the various scraps of scripture and comments by past leaders into logical and consistent doctrines. Honestly, it is fine with me, the focus in the current Church seems to me to be more like the New Testament than the Old, stressing Christ more than other theology, and that's the way I like it. I was born in 1968, so the more overtly racist aspects of Mormon culture had disappeared to a large extent while I was growing up. Even the “racialist” ideas of the superiority of those with the blood of Israel no longer came up much. For those willing to look, however, you certainly could find a lot of it in Church-related literature. I think it stuck most firmly in my mind around middle school, when I read Cleon Skousan's commentaries on the Old Testament, The First Two Thousand Years, The Third Thousand Years, and the Forth Thousand Years. My parents were pretty careful about not teaching the attitudes they had grown up with to us, I appreciate them for breaking that chain. My grandmother, for example, certainly felt uncomfortable around black people. I once saw her react strongly after a black salesman had knocked on the door. My dad says that he had to teach her not to use the word "nigger" sometime in the 1960s. They had lived in Compton from around 1940 to 1962, when the previously white middle/ working class city began changing to the black-dominated slum that it remains today, and I think that seeing that deterioration had something to do with her attitudes. But she was not a complete racist. She served a Spanish-speaking mission in Mexico and Texas around 1920, and kept her strong love of Mexican people (and her Spanish skills) all her life. She served for years as the Whittier California Stake Relief Society's liaison to the Spanish Branch/Ward, and many of the members of that congregation spoke lovingly of her at her funeral. So, I think she did pretty well in some things, but not in all. Except for some remarkable individuals, that is the norm. I also discovered late in her life that my grandparents had never kicked their coffee habit, even though they were active temple-goers all their lives. The Church did not get serious about making the Word of Wisdom a temple requirement until the 1930s, I think, and it appears that older people like my grandparents were "grandfathered" into not having to live by all of it to keep their temple blessings. With a few exceptions, I never spent a lot of time around black people until I moved to Pittsburgh in 1991. The Pittsburgh 1st Ward is one of my favorite groups of people in the world, and my main reference point when I think about Mormon society. It covers about three quarters of the city, and contains a lively diversity of members, including very wealthy bankers and doctors, lots of graduate student couples, and unemployed ghetto residents. A few years ago the Church built a new meeting house near the bus lines in the central city, largely to make it easier for the inner city members to get to meetings. I had the privilege to work with many black members through my callings as a home teacher and in the youth. Mostly the past was not brought up, but it was interesting to see the different reactions when it was. Brother Thomas, certainly the most powerful speaker in the ward and a shepherd for the many older black sisters who found it difficult to get to Church, often proudly mentioned his lineage as a "descendent of Ham" in his testimonies. I never did approach him with my strong doubts about the truth of that idea. I leant him my copy of _Standing on the Promises_, which he said he enjoyed. I also talked to our close friend Maesha Davis about reading it, but she had no interest. She was a very well-educated, artistic woman, and I think she bristled a bit about being lumped in with many of the other black members, who tended to be less educated. She said she had no interest in being a "black Mormon", just a "Mormon". Not that she avoided her ethnicity, she often wore African clothes to Church. Her son, one of our Deacons, on the other hand, seemed to be less connected to black culture than I was. Another family which often wore bright African clothes to church were the McBrides, whom I home taught for a year just after they were baptized. Vickie McBride seemed to take it as her personal challenge to bring diversity to the Ward. One of my favorite Pittsburgh memories is when Vickie's sister, a choir director at a Baptist Church, led the three McBride kids (as well as my wife and another young white woman) in a gospel rendition of "I am a Child of God" for a musical number in sacrament meeting. It included a call and response section, "Who are you?" "I am a child of God!" While most everyone appreciated their spirit, the format took many aback. One very conservative member told me that he felt a bad spirit during it. The McBrides moved away, but after six years they moved back to Pittsburgh. One of her daughters has a baby that she gave birth to when she was 15. The whole family reacted in unfeigned horror when we told them about how we adopted our son from a teenage mother through LDS Social Services. They said they could not imagine giving up a baby that way. She said their Bishop brought the option up to them, but they immediately shot it down. Another black member was a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh, whose white husband was a dental student. Naturally, the black members were as diverse a group amongst themselves as they helped make the ward as a whole. Finally, a literature tie-in. The ward hosted a performance of "Daughters of Eve," an amateur production by a group of local black Christian women, only one of whom was Mormon, Sister Thomas. It was a series of monologues about the experiences of women in the Bible, with by black gospel music sung between each scene. Situated as it is, and with the leadership in the ward, I have high hopes that the new building will continue to act as a place for exchange with the local community, and the site of further positive developments in Mormon culture. Andrew Hall Fukuoka, Japan _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 12:51:01 -0800 (PST) From: "R.W. Rasband" Subject: [AML] re: Race Issues In Mormonism The ban on blacks holding the priesthood was not because of any pre-existence fault in African-Americans, but because American society as a whole (and by extension, Mormons as a sub-culture) was so racist that it was until the 1960's that we were unable to see them clearly and simply as human beings (let alone in positions of priesthood authority.) Perhaps Martin Luther King, Jr. was foreordained to prepare the way; to call America to repentance so that the full blessings of the gospel could be extended to all (a very far cry from his being "a Communist agent" as some prominent LDS said, very loudly.) ===== R.W. Rasband Heber City, UT rrasband@yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings! http://greetings.yahoo.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 14:09:07 -0800 (PST) From: "R.W. Rasband" Subject: Re: [AML] "National Review" on The Mormons Oops, that link didn't work. Try this one: - --- "R.W. Rasband" wrote: > Writing in the conservative Catholic magazine "National Review Online", > columnist Dave Shiflett has a sardonically funny but not unsympathetic > take on "The Mormons and the Olympics." It's at: http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend/culture/culture-shiflett020920.html ===== R.W. Rasband Heber City, UT rrasband@yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings! http://greetings.yahoo.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 16:23:34 -0800 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: Re: [AML] Race Issues in Mormonism Thanks, Jonathan, for opening up the discussion of race issues. It gives me a chance to finish a post that's been in my drafts folder since Oct. 14, addressing something I wanted to talk about since 1997. On Thu, 11 Oct 2001 Tony Markham ( [AML] Gen. Conf. Music) writes, of the Table Nicker Choir's performance of "Could You Say Hi to Kolob?": > Any arrangement that can obfuscate the lyric, "there is no end to race," > is wonderful. How the choir, GA's, congregation, and church sing this > without going cross-eyed is beyond me. > Try "There is no end to _GRACE_" Or "There is no end to _my > embarrassment over this lyric in an otherwise sublime song_" Why the embarrassment? It echoes the embarrassment expressed when we discussed this song in 1997. I've been thinking about this off and on since then, curious about the underlying assumptions of the embarrassment. I'll say why the embarrassment puzzles me in a moment, after I quote a couple of posts from the 1997 thread. >>>>> Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 23:36:23 -0600 From: Jonathan Langford Subject: Re: PHELPS, "If You Could Hie to Kolob" I remember an interesting conversation about the line, "There is no end to race," at the end of verse 3, with the editor who taught me at BYU. She was appalled by the line, which she thought meant that members of different racial groups would remain eternally identified in that way. I countered that I had always thought it had reference to the human race as a whole. I think she bought my interpretation, which apparently had never occurred to her before. Yet another example of how different people can read the same words completely differently. (Just for the record, this editor is generally one of the sharpest, more perceptive readers I know.) Jonathan Langford Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 15:19:36 -0700 From: "Eric R. Samuelsen" Subject: RE: Poetry Polls / PHELPS, "If You Could Hie to Kolob" -Reply The new tune for If You Could Hie to Kolob works great sung as a quartet or double quartet, a capella. That way, you can break up the "There is no end to"s by giving each to a different voice. The only one that bugs me is "there is no end to race" which I usually change to "nor to the human race." PC, but it makes me more comfortable. Otherwise, I'm with Steve; a wonderful, weird hymn. Eric Samuelsen <<<<< I never replied, but I've wanted since then to write an essay called, "There is No End to Race?" I keep thinking about how deeply our sense of self is tied to our language and our ethnic or racial background. Think about the 60s slogan, "Black is Beautiful," about the assertion that your body, your color, your heritage is beautiful, despite everything others might say otherunwise. I think of all the wonderful expressions of Black heritage, like Countee Cullen's "Heritage," or "What is Africa to Me?" or Nikki Giovanni's "Ego Tripping," or the voice of someone like Darius Gray's mother talking about the preacher power that came from deep down inside Elijah Abel, and how he wouldn't return Heber C. Kimball's "brother" because the way he said it, Elijah understood that the man he had worked beside on two temples wasn't really addressing him as a brother. I think of many wonderful and painful and joyous expressions of life that are tied to the experience of living in a particular color of skin or seeing through a particular shape of eye socket, or being able to plant a seed, or grow and deliver that seed from your own earth. So much of our identity is tied up in the particulars of our bodies that it is surely worth asking what happens to that part of our identity if there is an end to those particulars. So also is much of our experience tied to our language. Indeed, people who can't oppress others based on their skin color may choose to destroy their language. I remember our uide in Moscow, New Year's, 1971 (we got on the train in Oulu, Finland, where my father was Fulbright professor at U of Oulu, just after Christmas and headed for Helsinki, then boarded a train for Moscow--which train became rather more somber as it crossed the border) saying, "I am not Russian. I'm Estonian," and explaining how Stalin had exiled him and his countrymen and women after the war, forbidden them to speak their language (of course he was our guide because Estonian and Finnish are cousins). Stalin was not the only person who has tried to wipe out a culture by destroying its language. Hal Borland's novel _When the Legends Die_, is about the effects on one boy of the US attempt to destroy Indian cultures and languages by taking students away from their families and sending them to schools where they can't speak their languages or practice their culture. (Interesting, I'm listening to Talk of the Nation (1/7/02) where someone called in to decry the rodeo that is part of the Cultural Olympiad. Borland's character becomes a horse killer on the rodeo circuit--taking out on the animals all his rage at the white destruction of his culture. And yesterday I was helping a woman in Heber get her house ready for 19 Olympics renters and she told me her ex-husband was a rodeo cowboy and she stopped going to see him, and letting her children see rodeo, after a calf's neck was broken in a practice. "I was the only one who was upset," she said. Her husband's reaction was, "It happens all the time." Her refusal to support his rodeoing hastened the demise of their marriage, but "It turned out animals weren't the only thing he liked to beat up on," she said.) Michael Fillerup's "The Last Code Talker" also explores the effects of being taken away from your family to a place where you can't express your culture. I gather from the reviews I've read that Brady Udall's _The Dream Life of Edgar Mint_ explores similar themes. But why am I including language with race? Partly because I have heard the same thought, that language is not eternal. Once in a Scungebone presentation (don't remember the topic) I mentioned a passage from Duane Crowther's _Life Everlasting_ which talks about a bishop named Glen Wood who was apparently summoned to the other side in June 1933 because his knowledge of Samoan was needed to preach the gospel. He told his father (president of the Calgary Alberta Canada temple) that he had had a vision to the effect that he wasn't going to recover from his illness because he was needed. His father wrote, "Near the end he began speaking in Samoan to Saints in the Spirit World, then died" (207). I didn't give as much detail as here (didn't have the book with me), but was interested in how glibly one woman in the audience dismissed the idea that we might still speak our languages in the next life. But again, what does it mean if we lose our language? There is a very strong longing in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition for a perfect language, for the language we apparently lost at Babel. (I like Ann Chamberlin's take on that in _The Virgin and the Tower_ where the slaves at work on the tower agree amongst themselves that at the moment Mahonri Moriancumr pronounces his curse on the tower they will no longer speak Gilgamesh's Babylonian tongue, but will speak only their own languages.) That longing for a pure language seems a longing for utter clarity. That is, the longing for a pure utterly clear language is tied to a rejection of ambiguity, even the ambiguity of the rich wordplay throughout the scripture, things like "he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile" (2 Ne. 26:33). You can get a sense of the richness of that passage if you consider that the conjunction it uses can function both to join opposites and to suggest that the conjoined nouns are both things at once, that people are both bond and free, both male and female. We are both bond and free because our existential condition is freedom and we bind ourselves to each other physically, emotionally and through covenants. Biologically every person is both male and female because we have genes from both a male and a female. And we are all black and white because the words come from the same root. Terry Blodgett, a linguist at Southern Utah University, had a fascinating article in the Feb. 1994 Ensign called "Tracing the Dispersion," looking at the influence of Hebrew on European languages. There's a table of some Hebrew words and their English descendants. I particularly cherish one root 'BLK' parent of words such as the Hebrew BALAK, BILEK, BLIYK, the English BLACK, BLEAK, BLEACH, and BLANK and the French BLANC (white). So there it is, black and white come from the same root. Given the richness of language, I'm skeptical about claims that we won't use particular languages or even language at all in the next life. It's possible (or it would make an interesting premise for a speculative story) that the language our Father spoke as a mortal was something like Hebrew, or Proto-Indo-European, and he taught that language to Adam and Eve, and that mortals in this world who become exalted will teach their children Urdu or Cakchiquel or whatever language they spoke here. Hmm, speaking of speculative fiction, it might make an interesting premise for a alternate universe or alternate history if the chosen people were black, like the God who chose them, but they suffered great persecution, and under the pressure of the persecution fell into apostasy and when their God decided to restore all things to the earth he noted that once again they were being persecuted, so he withheld them from the priesthood--refused to let the rest of the world be blessed through their priesthood--until the rest of humanity made some progress toward not persecuting each other. But I digress. The question of whether there is an end to race is complicated by our belief that resurrection is a permanent state defined by the union of the spirit and our physical body. Physical characteristics include skin tone and other things that define difference, like hair color and eye color and handedness. I don't see why I wouldn't still be left-handed in the resurrection. (It might be interesting to be ambisinister.) Why shouldn't there be exalted beings who are black, or yellow, or red, or green (surely on some world the people are green, maybe even chartreuse? Because resurrected bodies are physical they will have physical properties, so what color will they be? Why not the same color they were in this life? If the embarrassment at assuming that race or skin color continues after this life comes from the shameful way the human race handles race, it may be worth noting that we seem to have a knack for finding differences among ourselves and oppressing each other based on those differences, yet I don't hear other LDS professing embarrassment at the idea that we continue throughout eternity as separate beings, independent and with separate personalities. Harlow S. Clark - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 15:10:16 -0700 From: margaret young Subject: [AML] Scott and Maurine Proctor [MOD: If anyone has information on this, please email Margaret directly.] Jonathan--Since I am basically illiterate in computer technology, I can't seem to find an address for Scott and Maurine. (BYU changed my computer and I lost all previous addresses.) They're on the AML list, aren't they? I received a note from someone Maurine had referred to me, but when I responded, it came back as undeliverable. If you don't have an address for them, could you post this on the list so the Proctors can get back to me and we can answer this sister's questions? - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 05:15:23 +0000 From: "Andrew Hall" Subject: [AML] SLOVER, "Hancock County" (SL Tribune, Deseret News) 'Hancock County' Weighs Justice,Values, Revenge Sunday, February 10, 2002 BY CELIA R. BAKER THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Tim Slover was commissioned by Brigham Young University to write something that should "not just interest Mormons, but others too." The theater and media arts department of the LDS Church-owned university wanted to make a contribution to cultural events surrounding the 2002 Winter Games. Slover came through with "Hancock County." Set in the 1840s, it is more, Slover says, than a Mormon history play. "Hancock County" is a drama about the trial of five men accused of conspiring to murder Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but, Slover said, it also is a study of the conflicts that arise in any time when different groups of people live side-by- side. "To me, it's about any community, like Salt Lake City, that has the potential to be divided by competing interests," Slover said. "Are we too hung up about revenge, and even justice, to make peace? The hope is, we're not." In 1844, Smith and his brother Hyrum were under state protection at Carthage Jail in Hancock County, Ill., when the jail was overrun by a mob. The Smiths were murdered. It was impossible to determine which mobster's bullets felled the two men, but a grand jury found sufficient evidence to charge five prominent citizens with conspiracy to commit murder. "Hancock County" opens Friday on the BYU campus in Provo. It is underwritten by a Discovery Grant funded by Don Oscarson. Slover's characters -- a legal defender, prosecuting attorney, judge, defendants, witnesses and Smith's successor Brigham Young -- each show sympathetic qualities and noticeable warts. Earlier, Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill chronicled the little-known events of the trial in the book Carthage Conspiracy. The play was inspired by the book, but not drawn from it. Slover stresses that his finished product is distinct, maintaining that plays have a different purpose than history books. He explains: "I think it's important to hew to the line of the known facts, but there are plenty of places where there aren't known facts. There are a lot of things we don't know, and that's where I can make my best guesses. . . . That would be the kind of thing where a historian or lawyer would say, 'There is no evidence.' My answer would be, 'Right. Exactly.' " Faculty members at BYU and the authors of Carthage Conspiracy gave the play intense scrutiny and offered input, but "nobody made any demands, and it ended up improving the script," Slover says. He is pleased that BYU is producing the play, even though it contains "material about church history that hasn't been aired much before." Slover says that examining places like Hancock County, where neighbors were unable to live harmoniously, can be instructive. "In Hancock County, they failed. If you go to the play, you can look at what happened there and do better." "Hancock County" is directed by Tim Threlfall; the cast includes Marvin Payne, J. Scott Bronson, Anna McKeown, Stephanie Foster-Breinholt, R. Jeremy Selim, Bob Nelson and Robert Gibbs. At BYU Brigham Young University's department of theater and media arts presents Tim Slover's "Hancock County" in the Pardoe Theatre in BYU's Harris Fine Arts Center, Provo, starting Friday at 7:30 p.m. The play continues Tuesdays through Saturdays until March 2. Half-price previews are this Wednesday and=20 Thursday. Tickets are $12; $9 for students and BYU faculty. Call (801) 378-4322. Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune 'Hancock County' opens this week By Ivan M. Lincoln Deseret News theater editor Only one major production is opening locally this week =97 Utah playwright Tim Slover's historical drama "Hancock County." "HANCOCK COUNTY" is Tim Slover's original drama chronicling the trial of five prominent citizens in the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in Illinois in June 1844. This is Slover's first fully staged play at Brigham Young University since "Joyful Noise" (1998). (The latter has been produced not only by Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake but at several regional theaters in the United States and Canada, including a successful off Broadway run.) "Hancock County" is set during the 12-day trial in the aftermath of the assassination of Joseph Smith, founder and first president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his brother, Hyrum, by a mob at Carthage Jail. Two of the play's seven characters are key witnesses for the church =97 Brigham Young and Eliza Graham. Slover, in his production notes for the play, comments that some of the material in the play is based on the book, "Carthage Conspiracy," by Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill. The drama is centered on redemption =97 and told through the stories of the men who murdered Joseph and Hyrum. Tim Threlfall is directing the production. The cast includes Marvin Payne as dissipated prosecuting attorney Josiah Lamborn, a disgraced former attorney general; J. Scott Bronson as Brigham Young, Stephanie Foster as Eliza Brown, Anna McKeown as Ann Fleming, R. Jeremy Selim as Orville Browning, who leads the defense team; Bob Nelson as Richard Young and Robert Gibbs as Thomas Sharp, editor of the Warsaw Signal, the newspaper that had called for the "extermination" of Smith and the forcible removal of the Mormons from the county. Performances will be Tuesdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. in the Pardoe Theatre of BYU's Harris Fine Arts Center. There will be half-price preview performances on Feb. 13 and 14. Tickets for remaining performances are $12 for the general public and $9 for BYU faculty, staff or students. For reservations, call 378-4322. Copyright 2002 Deseret News Publishing Company _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #608 ******************************