Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Roel van Leeuwen’s statement regarding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is particularly offensive to some of my friends (who were “raised Mormon” and happen to be Maori or Polynesian), so they urged me to comment on this as soon as possible to ensure the facts can be separated from the fabrications. Van Leeuwen writes: “While the LDS admitted blacks into the Church from the 1830s, it wasn’t until 1978, well after the period in which Bolton was associated with the Church, that black (and brown) skinned men could be admitted into the priesthood.” His reference is Alan Cherry and Jessie L. Embry, ‘Blacks’ in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Daniel H. Ludlow(ed.),(New York: Macmillan, 1992), pp.125-127

There are two things that are very surprising about this comment. The first is that one of Roel van Leeuwen’s supervisors for his thesis was Margaret Coldham-Fussell from the Philosophy and Religious Studies department at the University of Waikato. Her profile lists her Undergraduate papers taught in 2008 as being RELS101 World Religions, RELS209 Ancient Mythologies, RELS213 Contemporary Spiritualities. As a supervisor of theses and a lecturer, it would seem that it is not necessary to have any understanding of mainstream religions in New Zealand, so perhaps she was unaware that van Leeuwen’s statements were misleading (to say the least).

A quick search via Google turns up an articles from the Latter-day Saints website entitled “Maori Traditions and the Mormon Church” by R. Lanier Britsch

It is clear from this article that Maori were enthusiastically encouraged into the LDS Church in New Zealand from relatively early colonial days. For example, this article states that “[b]y the end of 1884 the missionaries had firmly established the restored gospel among the Maori people. The next several years were very satisfying to most of the elders and sister missionaries (several couples were sent to New Zealand beginning in 1885). In August 1885, there were 16 Maori and 4 pakeha branches of the Church, and this number continued to grow steadily for the next 15 years. At the close of 1887, there were 2,573 Latter-day Saints, and by the turn of the century there were nearly four thousand members of the Church in New Zealand. Most of the Maori tribes, including large numbers in the north, around Whangarei and the Bay of Islands, had been introduced to the gospel. In 1901 there were 79 branches. Clearly, since the early years in Hawaii, the Church had not enjoyed so much success with a Polynesian people.”

The reason for acceptance of the Maori and Polynesian people is given in a later paragraph: “Although the relationship between the Polynesian peoples and the adventurer Hagoth (see Alma 63:5–8) is not clear—he being a Nephite and the Polynesians appearing to be Lamanites—Church leaders have time and time again referred to the Polynesians as children of Lehi. In the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 4, father Lehi blessed the offspring of his evil sons Laman and Lemuel and promised them that their posterity would one day have all the blessings promised to Abraham. The Latter-day Saints believe this refers specifically to the blessing of membership in the Lord’s church and of holding the priesthood. Latter-day Saint missionaries believed and taught that the Maoris were chosen sons and daughters of Abraham. The elders expected the Maoris to accept easily the restored gospel and to assume their rightful place as leaders in the Church. There was almost no racial prejudice on the part of the Mormons toward the Maoris.”

I don’t currently have time to access Roel van Leeuwen’s claimed source of the quote regarding the exclusion of black (and brown) skinned men being admitted to the priesthood. However, the Wikipedia article “Blacks and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” has background information and citations which are in line with what I understand of the history of the LDS Church. He is correct that in the United States black skinned people were prohibited from entering the priesthood, but only after the leadership of Joseph Smith. What relevance this has to Mr. Bolton seems quite contrived. Roel van Leeuwen writes, “It is tempting to speculate on what influence exposure to Mormonism in Bolton’s formative years may have had on his subsequent political, spiritual and racial views.” And it seems that temptation was too much to resist, demonstrating either a willful attempt at slandering “Mormonism”, lack of research (hard to believe given that information is plentiful on the internet, and van Leeuwen appears to primarily use internet resources for this citations), or a deliberate ignoring of the facts relating to the New Zealand history of the LDS Church.

Kerry Bolton, on his expose of “Dreamers of the Dark”, writes: “The Naenae Ward I attended had many Polynesians and Maori with whom I associated on cordial and social terms. Leeuwen states that the Church only admitted ‘dark races’ in 1978, ‘well after my involvement in the Church’. Given that it was probably 1978 that I was in the Church for around three months, and that there were abundant Maori and Polynesians in the Church, none of this makes sense. In addition, if I was supposedly raised a Mormon, left well before the admission of ‘dark races in 1978’, and was born in 1956, even the basic arithmetic does not add up.”

If there is more wild speculation and similar lack of research (or worse still, ignoring facts and fabricating “evidence”) such as this section on the LDS Church, what other wild speculation (and fantasy?) has Roel van Leeuwen provided as the basis for a Masters level thesis. Given than news reports state that Professor Bing claimed that “[t]he thesis was assessed by two senior academics from other New Zealand universities” it would appear that there is no one in New Zealand capable of assessing a thesis on even mainstream religions, let alone one cobbled together from internet sources, speculation, fantasy, and personal bias claiming to show a synthesis of Satanism and neo-Nazism (yes, I have read it thoroughly – which is painfully slow going given that it is not very logically structured and jumps around between years, groups, and authors to try and prove points which seem tenuous).

Tags: Kerry Bolton, Latter-day Saints, Mormonism, Roel van Leeuwen, Waikato University