Watch out, Brother Brigham. They'll be coming for you soon. This past week, amid the mania of toppling historical statues of people who were racist, slave-holders, colonialists, or just white presidents, someone spray-painted a big "X" over the sign in front of the Abraham O. Smoot building on the BYU campus. Smoot was a slave-owner and the politically-correct ideologues consider that the unpardonable sin.
Never mind things like fornication, gay sex, transgenderism, and all those other sins and perversions that the young Latter-day Saints are championing. The worst thing you could ever have been was a slave owner. That single fact outweighs everything else good you might have done in your life, with the possible exception of voting for Trump.
First they started pulling down statues of Confederate soldiers. Then it was Founders who were slave owners. Then they defaced the Lincoln Memorial: the president who freed the slaves. Maybe they hit Lincoln because he was a white Republican. They want to take down the 555-ft. tall Washington Monument and the National Guard scared them off from the Jefferson Memorial, for now. They burned a flag and pulled down a statue of George Washington in Washington, D.C.
Yesterday, the mobs got new orders from headquarters--go after statues of colonialists. The statue of Teddy Roosevelt is going to be removed from a museum in New York City. A mob attacked and destroyed a statue of a Catholic saint in San Francisco.
So its' only a matter of time before they come for you, Brother Brigham. Brigham Young, the great pioneer, a modern Moses, who led tens of thousands of refugees into the desert West and built a community that survived and thrived from the outcasts of the nations. It's a story of successful immigrants from all over the world that you'd think these radicals would appreciate. However, Brigham Young did use the "N" word on a few occasions and he banned blacks from holding the priesthood. That ban was not repealed until 1978.
Brigham didn't care for slavery. He said that the white race would pay for the crime of slavery. He believe that slave owners should take their slaves to a free state and set them free. But he didn't believe in race mixing. He firmly believed that an Old Testament passage barred the ordination of Africans, who said were the sons of Ham, whom Noah cursed. That same passage from the Bible was used by southern slavery defenders to justify the practice. Phillis Wheatley, an African-American poetess referred to it in her poem "On Being Brought From Africa to America." Today, modern Church leaders disavow the practice and renounce racism.
Prophets aren't always saintly. They are often rough men whom God calls to do work that requires rough men. Abraham was going to sacrifice his son. Jacob stole the birthright from his brother. Baalam beat his beast of burden. David did cruel things like requiring his vanquished enemies circumcize themselves and then killing "while they were yet tender." Jonah ran from God, then went to preach to Ninevah, and eagerly awaited the fireworks from the hillside, only to be disappointed that the people repented and God spared them. Elijah cursed children who teased him about being bald and a bear sow came and devoured them. He also called down fire on the Priests of Baal.
Brigham Young was one such rough man. He held the saints together and preserved the Church through the migration, settling, two near-famines, plagues of grasshoppers, an invasion of Johnston's Army, and the arrival of the railroads and mining concerns. He sent a territorial governor packing, missing at least one testicle, maybe both. The Church might not have survived without him. The millennial kingdom of God will be built upon the foundations that he laid.
But he wasn't fond of black people and he wasn't shy about saying so. For that reason, it's only a short time before his name comes up on their list. Will the Church have to rename the University after BLM-sympathizers tear down the statue in Salt Lake City? Meanwhile, the very civil war he expected to see in his lifetime--the one that destroys the United States government--is even at the doors.
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