Coming to terms with my racist past

 Does the fact that a man is a racist slave-holding person preclude him from being a righteous god-fearing man seeking to redeem Zion.

In the United States today there are men and women forming mobs and tearing down statues.  Most of these statues are of men who at some point in their lives owned slaves. Among these statues are men who lived and died seeking to create the world we now inhabit. Men like Thomas Jefferson, and Francis Scott Key, and Ulysses Grant. Grant by the way emancipated his one slave before emancipation was an acceptable thing and this caused him trouble with his in-laws.

For a long time, there has been a need to recognize and come to terms with our racist heritage. Many of my personal heroes have a racist past. Let me tell you about one racist slaveholder from my past.

This man was a Methodist preacher who turned to full-time missionary work when his wife died and left him with two young children. He left his children with his best friend's wife and went on preaching circuits spreading the Methodist faith with no purse or script.

He later discovered and helped promote a major American Religion. He served two missions to England and was responsible for bringing tens of thousands of English converts to America to strengthen this society. He led tens of thousands of religious refugees from the United States to form a new society in the Great Basin of the then Mexican Territory.

After he founded this territory, he worked to create slave laws protecting the right to own slaves in this territory. As a trustee for this faith, for a short time, he became the owner of at least one slave. As a religious and civil leader, he worked to hold the United States Army in central Wyoming, for a winter, to further his political and religious agenda.

He worked for and actively pursued a policy that prevented negro men and women from holding priesthood office in that faith.  That policy continued for nearly 130 years.

Knowing his racist past would you join a mob to tear down his statue?

Occasionally the people we know, and love does things that we do not approve of. My relationship with my mother was troubling and always a dance. She made many mistakes as she learned to be a better mom. It is only after I became a father that I learned to understand some of the choices she made.  Because my mom made many mistakes and did many things to harm her children in the process of learning to be a mom should I then take all of her pictures and burn them?

I think we need to use the same hindsight with our leaders and their racist past that I have used to understand my mother’s choices and mistakes.  I have learned from her mistakes.  I am learning to avoid the errors in parenting that she committed.

This racist Methodist preaching I am speaking about is Brigham Young, who as trustee in trust for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints did hold title to at least one slave. This slave had been donated to the church by one of the Mississippi Saints who donated it in partial payment of their tithing.  Green Flake was one of the vanguard 144 pioneers who first arrived in the great basin area of the future Utah Territory in 1847. During the winter of 1857, Brigham Young did capture and hold the United States Army in the Fort Bridger area of the Wyoming Territory while he sought a negotiated settlement between the Mormon Church and the United States Government.