Articles/Essays – Volume 51, No. 3

Mormons & Lineage: The Complicated History of Blacks & Patriarchal Blessings, 1830–2018

2018: Matthew Harris, “Mormons & Lineage: The Complicated History of Blacks & Patriarchal Blessings, 1830–2018 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol 51 No. 3 (2018):83–129.

The priesthood revelation of 1978 eased some of the tension when the apostles affirmed that Blacks could now be “adopted into the House of Israel” as full participants in Mormon liturgical rites. But this doctrinal shift did not resolve the vexing question of whether or not Black people derived from the “seed of Cain.”