church leaders still advised members in the strongest of terms to marry within their own races

What is interesting is that in the mid-70s there was a Church pamphlet on that subject that made the argument purely on cultural terms (that is, the closer people are together culturally and background wise, the easier it is to be harmonious) and not on racial terms.

It was heavily influenced by BYU Hawaii’s perspective, where kids would meet, fall in love, marry, and then suffer a good deal of prejudice in the outside world.

I think we do not fully understand what was going on.

I am in general agreement with the idea put forward by RT in comment # 36. I think it is useful to thing of the priesthood ban and the temple ban separately, at least for the purpose of understanding how they came about. It is my belief that the priesthood ban grew out of an unwillingness to have black people participate fully in the temple.

The story of Elijah Abel is instructive. He received the priesthood in 1836 and exercised it throughout his life until his death in 1884. He served as a missionary, seventy, and presiding elder, and travelled about preaching, baptizing, confirming, and presiding over branches. We have documentary evidence that Brigham Young respected him in that capacity because he called him one of the finest elders in the church. Yet we also have documentary evidence that BY thought miscegenation was a serious crime.

I think (and this is total speculation) that as early leaders gradually began to understand that the temple ordinances are crafted for the purpose of creating relationships and binding ourselves to one another in ways that are intimately familial, they could not overcome their reluctance to allowing black people into the family. Brigham Young was pleased with Abel’s work as a missionary, but he would never have allowed him to marry one of the Young daughters. The notion of pure bloodlines and defiled bloodlines is ridiculous to us now, but they really believed it.

Even as Abel exercised the priesthood in the sense of presiding over branches of the church, he was barred from participating in the priesthood as defined by the endowment and sealing ordinances. We should also note that Jane James, after years of asking, was finally allowed to participate in a sealing. She was sealed to Joseph Smith’s family, not as a daughter but as a servant, which supports my conclusion about reluctance to think of people of other races as close kin.

My thinking is that the leaders got tired of dealing with the inconsistencies of restricting priesthood in some instances but not others, so they just worked backwards and restricted black men from everything. (I realize this does not address the question of black women, or of women overall. I don’t know whether they were considered and rejected, or simply not thought of, at all. I don’t know which option is more likely to be true, or less problematic.)

Even though Utah’s anti-miscegenation law was done away with in 1968, when the ban was lifted in 1978, church leaders still advised members in the strongest of terms to marry within their own races. That advice gradually became more moderate in tone until today we don’t even hear it, and it is no longer an issue. I can’t even count the number of mixed race couples in my ward, and I think most wards in urban areas are like mine.

That’s fine. It makes these discussions worth having.

Here’s a fun experiment to test how the term “priesthood” is generally applied in Mormon parlance: mention to your average member that it’s a shame black women didn’t used to have the priesthood. If they struggle to make sense of your intended meaning–black women didn’t used to be allowed in the temple–then perhaps a more encompassing term is needed.

Until temple-married women are being called as bishops since they hold the Melchizedek priesthood by virtue of having undergone sealing ordinances, I think there’s a very useful distinction to be made.

Surely at the very least there’s a difference between undergoing priesthood ordinances and administering them? After all, an infant doesn’t have the priesthood by virtue of a baby’s blessing, any more than a woman really “has” the priesthood by virtue of having been sealed by priesthood authority (residing in a male).

I think the confusion arises because even we members sometimes equate “the Priesthood” with the public administration of the Church – since, as you say, that is the view / definition of the rest of Christianity. It makes sense from that perspective to distinguish between the Priesthood and the exalting ordinances of the temple (the sealing ordinances of the Melchizedek Priesthood), but the distinction essentially is meaningless in Mormonism – since the ordinances are tied directly to the Priesthood that administers them. They really can’t be separated in practical reality, since without one you can’t have the other.

So, if we want to rename the ban so that it conveys the totality of its effect to those who don’t understand Mormonism, perhaps “Priesthood Ban” doesn’t convey the full effect. However, for those people, “Priesthood-Temple Ban” wouldn’t convey it any better – since those same people would have no idea what the term “temple ban” means anyway.

I agree completely with both Lynnette and amelia that barring access to exaltative ordinances is actually more disturbing than denying people the priesthood, but I’m sure Lynnette is right that the priesthood receives the most air time simply because it has corollaries in other faiths.

as john’s (#65) question was whether there was a non-racist reason for keeping a worthy black woman married to a worthy white man from entering the temple, i don’t think the point about women and the priesthood in the temple answers his question as it’s simply a subsection of a larger racist policy.