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Mormon Stories Podcast

024: Black and Mormon -- The Darron Smith Story Pt. 3

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.55.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2007

⏱️ 43 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In part 3 of a 3 part series, we interview Darron Smith--a black man who joined the LDS church as a teenager in Tennessee. After serving a mission for the LDS Church and graduating from the University of Utah, Darron began a 10 year teaching career at church-owned Brigham Young University. After 10 years of teaching at BYU, Darron's employment was terminated in response to (according to Darron) his public writings and speaking--wherein Darron openly called for the LDS Church to apologize for, and renounce the racists statements of past Church leaders. In this series, Darron discusses his upbringing in the Church, provides a brief history of Blacks within the Church, discusses his termination from BYU, and his hopes for the LDS Church in the future with regard to these issues.

Transcript

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0:00.0

So you see, you see this as, and I'll just use the word repentance.

0:16.7

In your mind, just as people need to repent and ask forgiveness and the basic Sunday

0:23.1

school 10 step program for repentance, you think that maybe institutionally, spirit

0:29.9

virtually, maybe a church needs to go through those steps as well?

0:33.9

Absolutely.

0:34.9

Talk about that for a second.

0:36.9

I don't mean churches are held, or should be exempt from that.

0:40.4

Churches are reflections of people's interests, people's beliefs and people's values,

0:45.9

people's morals, and they should be held to the same standard.

0:49.9

If we're requiring individuals to repent for the sins that they commit, we should also hold our institutions accountable.

0:55.9

That's called democracy. That's what we call that typically.

0:58.9

It's kind of a, it's kind of like a, a Christianized, democratic way of looking at it.

1:07.9

But certainly, I think that we should hold our institutions accountable for the things they do wrong.

1:13.9

And for instance, an example, what about, what about polygamy?

1:17.9

The whole polygamy demo, 1890 polygamy was overturned in the manifesto, right?

1:22.9

And did polygamy harm women? Well, we don't know. I mean, maybe it did.

1:26.9

I mean, I don't hear women complaining about it, but certainly there's something probably out there who are complaining about it,

1:30.9

but their voices aren't being heard.

1:32.9

But let's say, for instance, that women in which is outspoken about polygamy as, you know, people of color seem to be about the priesthood issue.

1:40.9

The church should have, the church should take responsibility for that.

1:42.9

So, you know, that was, that was the wrong thing to do.

1:45.9

So, I'm using that as an example.

...

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