Mormon teachings on skin color
[citation needed] Several other Mormon denominations, however continue to teach into the present day that skin color is related to curses or personal righteousness.
This belief was also used to justify LDS social segregation and other skin-color-based policies within the church, such as denying Black women and men access to ordinances in the temple necessary for exaltation in the highest tier of heaven.
[3] Early church leaders taught the belief that after death and resurrection everyone in the celestial kingdom (the highest tier of heaven) would be "white in eternity.
By 1844 one of the justifications top LDS church leaders used for discriminatory policies was the belief that some spirits were "fence sitters" when choosing between God or the devil, or were simply less virtuous in the premortal life, and thus, were born with Black skin as a punishment.
Hyrum Smith told Jane Manning James that God could give her a new lineage, and in her patriarchal blessing promised her that she would become "white and delightsome".
[34] Not far into the narrative of The Book of Mormon God marks Lamanites (the presumed ancestors of Native Americans) with dark skin because of their iniquity, an act similar to the Bible's Curse of Cain which some Christians interpreted as the beginning of the Black race.
"[38][39] During the century between 1835 and 1947 the official LDS hymnbook had lyrics discussing a lightening of Native American skin color stating, "Great spirit listen to the Red Man's wail!
"[12] In 1953, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles Joseph Fielding Smith stated, "After the people again forgot the Lord ... the dark skin returned.
"[45][46] Additionally, in a 1960 LDS Church General Conference, apostle Spencer Kimball suggested that the skin of Latter-day Saint Native American was gradually turning lighter.
[38] Kimball, however, suggested that the skin lightening was a result of the care, feeding, and education given to Native American children in the home placement program.
[40]: 71 [49] Thirty-five years later in 2016, the LDS Church made changes to its online version of The Book of Mormon in which phrases on the Lamanite's "skin of blackness" and them being a "dark, loathsome, and filthy" people were altered.
[58]: 42–43 Scholar Bruce Sutton wrote that though they were descended from white Nephites, Pacific Islanders developed darker skin from their ancestors having children with Lamanites and/or exposure to the tropical sun.
