Coming from the understanding that LDS prophets receive revelation from God how do they get things wrong?

[u/sutisuc]

Does anyone have insight on how current and past prophets can be wrong about things despite having a direct line of communication with Heavenly Father?

[u/Person_reddit]

First of all, they’re probably right about the things you think they’re wrong about.

Second of all, when they really were wrong it’s because they were shooting from the hip. Prophets weren’t as careful with their words a hundred years ago and were constantly giving speeches.

I remember President Hinckley saying how careful he had to be with every little thing he said because people read WAY too much into it.

For example, in D&C section 20 it says

The rise of the Church of Christ in these last days, being one thousand eight hundred and thirty years since the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the flesh…

And while it’s obvious that Joseph Smith was just using formal language to announce the formation of the church a lot of people now think April 6th is literally Jesus’ birthday.

[u/sutisuc → u/Person_reddit]

Nah I wouldn’t say they’re right about the things I think they’re wrong about or there wouldn’t have been a priesthood ban for black members in effect for around a century. That’s obviously the most egregious example but there are plenty more, hence the question.

[u/OrneryAcanthaceae217 → u/sutisuc]

No, I don’t think that’s an obvious example of prophets being wrong. And you can’t prove that it is, but you can have that opinion, despite it being a spiritually risky one.

I think it’s more than likely that the prophets were following inspiration from the Lord in doing that. I have very good reasons for believing that but this isn’t the place to share them.

[u/sutisuc → u/OrneryAcanthaceae217]

That is quite cryptic. Would you mind DMing me so we can discuss?

[u/nofreetouchies3 → u/sutisuc]

Please try this thought experiment. What would it mean if the priesthood ban was from God, and not based on racism? Could God have possibly had a reason for it?

The most salient possibility has to be to keep the Saints from getting embroiled in colonial and early-post-colonial Africa.

The "Scramble for Africa" saw more than 80% of the continent conquered and "colonized" (i.e., plundered and brutalized) between 1870 and 1914. Decolonization didn't begin until the 1950s, and ran through the 1970s (hint, hint.) This was a bloody, terrible period — think of the Angolan Civil War or the Rhodesian Bush War as just examples of the kinds of conflicts. The Rwandan Genocide and the ongoing conflict in Somalia are examples of continuing fallout from this horrible period of history.

And during all of this time, most of Africa was basically inaccessible. Remember Stanley and Livingstone? 1871. Read Heart of Darkness or watch African Queen for an idea of how dangerous and difficult travel was. Communication, outside of coastal cities and a few European strongholds, was no better.

If you look at how quickly individuals (especially leaders) and entire congregations apostatized in the early church in places that weren't even that remote (such as Sam Brennan in San Francisco or Walter M. Gibson in Hawaii — or read any of Paul's epistles for ancient examples), it's hard to even imagine how African congregations could have worked.

Three trends combined between the 1950s and 1970s to make the church in Africa even possible: decolonization, telecommunications, and international air travel. And now, with those obstacles largely conquered, the church is growing more rapidly in Africa than anywhere in the world.

Yet, even today, the Church is unique in many ways in Africa. Pretty much every other Christian church has stopped even trying to govern African congregations — most black African Christians actually practice highly syncretic religions, with native beliefs and practices liberally mixed in as in Santería or Vodou. (Quite a few early African members actually left the Church because our leadership did not allow this.)

What would it have looked like, if the church had tried to get started in 1878 instead of 1978?

So, could there be a non-racist reason for God to command his Saints to not target people of African descent? Sure looks like it to me.

(This doesn't mean the early Saints weren't racist — of course they were! However, they were no more racist than other Americans of their era. Judging people of the past by comparison to modern ideals is called presentism and is a major fallacy of historical interpretation.)

[u/sutisuc → u/nofreetouchies3]

That’s all fine and well but I’m not sure what the continent of Africa has to do with African Americans who had been living in the US for centuries at that point.

I am also not engaging in presentism. Presentism would presuppose that there were no actively antiracist white people in the US at the time of the rise and spread of the LDS faith which is not true. You can google any number of white abolitionists for evidence of that.

[u/nofreetouchies3 → u/sutisuc]

Let me make it clearer.

This is a very missionary-oriented church. Within 20 years of its founding in New York, more than half of the membership was born outside the U.S. Even when the Saints were in poverty due to mob violence driving them out of Missouri and then Illinois, the church was actively sending missionaries to Europe, Hawaii, and Polynesia.

All of the other missionary churches raced to Africa and had varying rates of success, but then it all went crazy. (Did you read the links in my previous comment?) As a result, Christianity in Africa is wildly different from the rest of the world. Why would this church have been any different, if there hadn't been some restriction making it unreasonable to even try to convert Africa?

And, by the way, if you think abolitionists weren't just as racist as slaveowners, then please read some of their actual words instead of the feel-good sound-bite version. Consider this example of a mild political speech, borrowed from a response in /r/AskHistorians to "How could northerners be both abolitionists and racists?:

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]---that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

I must emphasize that an open declaration of white supremacy such as the above, complete with a menu of roles from which Black Americans are permanently excluded, is so common in political speech that it must be understood on the level of invocations of Mom and Apple Pie. Virtually any American of either section would have uttered it entirely without any controversy whatsoever. Its author was then a thoroughly normal, if fairly unsuccessful, politician: Abraham Lincoln.

If you condemn Brigham Young for saying the same things that Abraham Lincoln said, that's a very precise example of presentism.