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Why did it take until 1978 for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to extend its priesthood to "all worthy males"? It's an "unsettling question," Fred A. Parker III, president of the church's Atlanta Georgia Stake, said at a Sunday devotional commemorating the 30th anniversary of the policy change.
"But Heavenly Father knows best. . . . The Lord may not be inclined to give a simple and universally satisfying explanation," he said.
Mormons believe God ordered the policy change in a revelation to then-church President Spencer W. Kimball. Since that day in 1978, the church, like the rest of the nation, has become "so much less color conscious," Catherine M. Stokes, a former Illinois Department of Health official now living in Salt Lake City, told an ethnically mixed crowd of nearly 2,700 in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.
Quoting former LDS Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, she urged any church members still harboring racist ideas to "repent and get in line."
Rather than fixate on the things we do not understand, it is better to "believe in God; believe that he is . . . believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in Earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend," Parker said, quoting Book of Mormon king Benjamin.
"My faith is not limited by what I cannot understand," he said. "The power and ordinances of the priesthood are real, compelling and true."
Ahmad S. Corbitt, president of the church's Cherry Hill New Jersey Stake, challenged listeners to increase in unity and "teach what unites us." A blessing he received as a young adult promised him that he would one day teach the gospel "among your people." Excited at the prospect of serving as an inner-city missionary, he was surprised to be assigned to a Spanish-speaking mission in Latin America - and even more surprised when, at the end of his mission, "my heart had become Latino. The Latinos were my people." Later church service taught him that white members, Polynesians, Asians and others were all his people.
"As we seek unity," he said, "we become one with the saints."
Elder Sheldon F. Child of the LDS Church's First Quorum of the Seventy, the evening's lone white speaker, related his experiences presiding over the faith's New York City mission and, later, its Africa West Area. Five months after the June 1978 revelation, Child said, 19 Nigerians were baptized into the church. Since then, the church's membership has grown to 146,000 in West Africa and more than 250,000 on the continent.
"Ye are no more strangers and foreigners," he said, quoting the biblical apostle Paul, "but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God."
The evening also included music from a multicultural choir and soloist Alex Boyé, as well as a brief video presentation featuring perspectives of several black Mormons.