Lds General Authorities Quotes

As a General Authority, it is my responsibility to preach general principles. When I do, I don't try to define all the exceptions... I only teach the general rules. Whether an exception applies to you is your responsibility. You must work out individually between you and the Lord.

Mormon Thought, the first appearing in 1969 and the second in 1973. In his 1969 essay “A Commentary on Steven G. Taggart’s Mormonism’s Negro Policy: Social and Historical Origins,” Bush excoriated Taggart for his limited, incomplete research.7 Bush systematically dismantled Taggart’s central thesis that Joseph Smith initiated black priesthood denial in response to Latter-day Saint difficulties in Missouri. Bush supported his refutation with extensive documentation.8 Bush further developed his arguments in a second in-depth Dialogue article entitled “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview” published in 1973. His fifty-seven page essay containing some 219 footnotes constituted by far the most comprehensive examination of Mormon racial policy up to that time.9 Bush’s essay drew heavily from a four-hundred-page compendium of primary and secondary documents compiled over some ten years. Covering the period from the 1830s to the 1970s, Bush’s “Compilation on the Negro in Mormonism” contains First Presidency minutes, Quorum of the Twelve meeting minutes, and other General Authority interviews and writings.10 Bush’s carefully written text found minimal evidence to support the LDS Church’s official position that the priesthood ban resulted from divine revelation—thus contradicting a major justification for its existence. Seeking to undermine its legitimacy and thus prod the Church toward change, Bush summarily dismissed the ban as the unfortunate product of socio-historical forces present in the larger nineteenth century American society. The scholarly studies of Stephen Taggart and especially Lester E. Bush Jr. greatly influenced my own work, which commenced as