"Remember" is a significant word in the Latter-day Saint faith. The word is found more than 240 times in the Book of Mormon and scores more in the Doctrine and Covenants and Bible. We remember April 6 as the founding of the church; we remember May 15 as the restoration of the priesthood; we remember July 24th as the day the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley.
Yet, while we institutionally remember the pleasant moments in history, the Mormon Church often ignores the uncomfortable and difficult moments in the past.
I wish my church would remember June 8, the day the temple and priesthood ban was lifted from the black members of the church. This year — the 37th anniversary of the lifting of the ban — as with every year, June 8 came and went without a word spoken by the church.
For many like myself, who were subject to the ban during their lifetimes, June 8 is far more significant than July 24 or May 15. It was not until this date in June 1978 that we, the children of God of African descent, were finally allowed, after over a century and a half, to equally partake in the temple and priesthood ordinances.
Today the church has nearly half a million members in sub-Saharan Africa, three temples on the continent, three more announced and a handful of black Area Authorities. In addition the church has tens of thousands of black members in other areas of the world. Yet we still fail to remember June 8.
History can be ignored, but the hurt caused by the temple and priesthood ban lingers. Black members must reconcile their belief in God with a religion whose doctrine and prophets taught that they were inferior in the eyes of God. For many this proves to be an impossible hurdle to overcome. I urge the First Presidency to help us heal as an institution. It is their responsibility to acknowledge the hurt caused by these racist doctrines and to formally apologize to the membership of the church. Help us heal by remembering our history and publicly apologizing rather than ignoring it.
In recent years, the church has taken steps to clarify the doctrine surrounding the ban. In the Gospel Topics page of LDS.org, an article has been posted stating that the church "disavow[s] the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else" and says that "church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form."
However, this article falls short of a formal and public apology from the First Presidency for the hurt caused by the racism that produced the temple and priesthood ban.
I appreciate Elder Dieter Uchtdorf's step forward when he said: "To be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in the church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles, or doctrine," from his October 2013 General Conference talk "Come, Join with Us."However, this statement is extremely vague as to the errors and does not express sorrow for the damage these mistakes have caused.
Because the church continues to suffer from institutional amnesia regarding the temple and priesthood ban and the hurt it has caused, I fear we are making similar mistakes today towards other groups. Our failure to remember can only result in a painful repetition of the past.
I believe in a church that is unafraid to face the facts of its troubled history, a church that will not forget the past but remember it in order to avoid making similar mistakes.
So for me and my family, we remember June 8, 1978. For us, this is when the restoration of the gospel really happened.
Julienna Viegas-Haws was born in Belgium, where she worked in the LDS Church education system. She has a bachelors degree in international politics from Brigham Young University. She currently works as a freelance French and English translator and lives near Geneva, Switzerland,with her husband and three children.
