1366: Whiteness Theology and the Evolution of Mormon Racial Teachings - Matt Harris
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.6 • 5.2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2020
⏱️ 183 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2014 the LDS Church released an essay entitled "Race and the Priesthood" as part of its Gospel Topics Essays Initiative. This essay was groundbreaking in that it officially renounced past LDS racist teachings regarding blacks and the LDS Priesthood. This essay has been highly controversial. Some see it as groundbreaking positive progress. Some see it as deceptive and/or inadequate. Others lost their faith in the LDS Church because of it.
Today on Mormon Stories Podcast we interview Dr. Matt Harris who recently published an analysis of the Race and Priesthood essay. Matt's essay is entitled "Whiteness Theology and the Evolution of Mormon Racial Teachings." This essay is contained within the newly released book entitled "The LDS Gospel Topics Series: A Scholarly Engagement" published by Signature Books (edited by Matt Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst).
Click here to purchase this very important book: https://www.amazon.com/LDS-Gospel-Topics-Scholarly-Engagement/dp/1560852879
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, |
| 0:03.7 | John Dillin. It's November 24th. We're now in the afternoon. Following up with a second part of my |
| 0:11.4 | interview with scholar Matt Harris, you guys will know Matt Harris because he did that epic series |
| 0:18.7 | with me a month or two ago about Ezra Tap Benson. And then just this morning we did a whole |
| 0:24.6 | episode, several hours on this amazing book. The book is the LDS Gospel Topic series, |
| 0:34.0 | a scholarly engagement published by Signature Books. It's edited by Matt Harris and Nool Bringerst. |
| 0:40.0 | I want to encourage everybody right now as we're beginning to go to Amazon and buy this book. |
| 0:45.0 | I want Signature Books to be heavily rewarded for this amazing book which talks about the LDS |
| 0:51.1 | Church's Gospel Topic essays. It does an in-depth dive into each of the main Gospel Topic essays. |
| 0:59.2 | We're talking a book of Abraham, polygamy, mountain metals, massacre, and violence. |
| 1:05.0 | You know, each of those essays is covered here in the morning interview that I did with Matt. |
| 1:10.8 | We talked about the history that led to the creation of the essays and the process of the creation |
| 1:16.0 | of the essays and the reception of the essays and the quality of the essays. And that was all really |
| 1:21.3 | important. I'm really glad we spent that time. This afternoon what we're going to be covering is |
| 1:27.5 | chapter 10 from this amazing book. The chapter is called Whiteness Theology and the Evolution of |
| 1:34.0 | Mormon Racial Teachings and it's an essay written by Matt Harris. Who is a professor of history at |
| 1:41.1 | Colorado State University, Pueblo and he's amazing historian. And he's also not only is he |
| 1:48.1 | authored several books but he's actually writing several books and one of them I believe is going |
| 1:53.2 | to be an in-depth dive on Blacks and the Priesthood and its entire history of race and Mormonism. |
| 1:59.3 | Matt Harris, welcome back to Mormon Stories. It's so good to have you. |
| 2:02.8 | Thanks John. I appreciate it. I'll go ahead. |
| 2:06.8 | Yeah, no, I just I'm happy to be here. I've enjoyed our conversations and I appreciate the questions |
... |
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