Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories

podcast I'm your host John Delin it's Wednesday July 31st 2024 and today we

are going to be talking about the Book of Mormon, the Mormon Church's most sacred

scripture, its teachings about God cursing Native Americans with the skin of

blackness. And specifically this is part of a multi-part series of the LDS

discussions series. So on Mormon Stories podcast we have been covering Mormon Church

claims with a panel of thoughtful and humorous and cool

guests and we're about 50 episodes in you can check us out on all the platforms but we're in the middle of a series on

discussing the Mormon Church's evolving narrative around trying to justify,

make excuses for hand-wave away the Mormon Church's longstanding teachings

from its most sacred text, the Book of Mormon, that God curses people with dark skin because of wickedness so that they

will be perceived as loathsome to white people and that's what the book of

Mormon says last episode in this LDS discussion series we talked about how Joseph Smith and all the

top church leaders around him throughout the 19th century were very clear on the fact that skin means skin, black means

black, or dark, curse means God, God did it, and and that it was the late laymanites or the Native Americans who were the subject of the specific

curse referred to in the Book of Mormon.

So we talked about that as a foundation last episode. This episode

we're going to be talking about how in the 20th century the Mormon Church is trying to move

the goalposts, change the narrative as society becomes less and less tolerant of blatant grotesque racism.

Was that a neutral unbiased introduction panel? I just... I thought that was

great. Well as you could hear... I'll say it depends on who you ask. How about you, Harardo, you're the subject of the curse. I mean, you know...

You was pretty fair to me. That's... Well, you're the authority.

...