(September 14, 2015 at 2:01 pm)drfuzzy Wrote: As an amateur genealogist, I have learned that many of my ancestors owned slaves. I was re-reading my Great-great grandmother's memoir just the other day. At first, she comes across like a genteel, intelligent, proper xtian wife, who is writing about the 1850's. The prose is just drowned in "the good lord ____" and "the good lord blessed us with ____" ad nauseum. And then there was this statement "After the trip to Texas, the weather turned cold. Thankfully we had plenty of Negroes to help build houses." Further reading shows a woman who has been told all her life that slavery was the will of God, and the natural order of mankind. She believed that Negroes were the "children of Ham" who were cursed by God for disobedience, and that they were an inferior species of human that were happiest when they had the guidance of white xtian masters.
(Every time I think of this I feel sick.) She was completely brainwashed. This message came from someone who prayed for hours for her children and her husband, trying to be the "holy wife" God intended her to be. It would have been almost impossible for her to think any other way -- it was the culture of her time and place.
What I don't get is why so many African-Americans are STILL Christian. Why isn't it associated with the religion of the slavers, that they were forced to accept? Why haven't more African-Americans gone on a search for the religion of their ancestors? I would think that, if I were a freed slave, one of the first things I would reject would be "the Massa's" god. ???
Until their new revelation back in the 70s, the Mormons asserted the blacks (and apparently everyone else that was not caucasian) were not only descended from Ham, but also Cain.
Additionally, there is/was some unspecified mischief souls destined to become descendants of Cain/Ham did in their pre-existence that caused them to be cursed and to then be descendants of Cain/Ham.
So, in the Mormon orbit, blacks (well, people of any color but white) were triple fucked.
Interesting fact:
the original version of the polygamy revelation specified the subsequent wives beyond the first were to be Native American (if not all the rest?) so that their offspring would be lighter and therefore more delightful to God than they would be otherwise. It doesn't appear Joseph Smith was terribly impressed with this revelation, direct from God, and perfectly recorded, so it was changed. Brigham Young tried adding 2 native American wives to his 'harem', but wasn't impressed with them at all and abandoned them in Council Bluffs, Iowa, prior to migrating to Utah.
Presumably the revelation/edict/decree (whatever?) that rescinded polygamy covered all the versions of the revelation, although, I'd suspect since the Mormon hierarchy does not acknowledge any revelations being changed, one might argue that polygamy in regards to subsequent wives being native American only is technically still in effect.
Curiously, the FLDS does not acknowledge the original version of the polygamy revelation either, and does not acknowledge the subsequent rescission. I'm not sure how not acknowledging the rescission would be applied if the FLDS was confronted with an potential schism over the matter in regards to Native American wives subsequent to their first caucasian ones.
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.
