Richard Abanes contends that the church tries to hide past racial practices, citing the 1981 change in the Book of Mormon, which stated that the Lamanites had become "a white and a delightsome people" to "a pure and a delightsome people" (2 Nephi 30:6). In 1840, the "white and delightsome" of the original Book of Mormon text was changed by Joseph Smith to "pure and delightsome" in the third edition; it reverted to "white and delightsome" after Smith's death in subsequent editions, as editions were based on one published in England. In 1981, the First Presidency approved a change that adopted the 1840 version by Smith, as saying that converts would become "pure and delightsome".The wording "white and a delightsome" was introduced in the 1st edition of the Book of Mormon in 1830.
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Just think how delightsome that would be, she ended teasingly.
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And the burdensome one is toilsome, while the delightsome one is pleasurable.
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Is it not delightsome that we are all together at last, Peggy?
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But if these are expressions of thankful love, they are delightsome to Him.
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It is because joy is fugitive that it leaves us a delightsome memory.
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It is so quiet, and my thoughts now and tan be so delightsome.
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Who knows not that the first scene of infancy is far the most pleasant and delightsome?
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His manor was so fair and so delightsome that all the world did not contain its peer.
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Laurie's eyes followed her with pleasure, for she neither romped nor sauntered, but danced with spirit and grace, making the delightsome pastime what it should be.
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Mormons considered Native Americans to be a higher race than black people, based on their belief that Native Americans were descendants of the Israelites, and they also believed that through intermarriage, the skin color of Native Americans could be restored to a "white and delightsome" state. On July 17, 1831, church founder Joseph Smith said he received a revelation in which God wanted several early elders of the church to eventually marry Native American women in a polygamous relationship so their posterity may become "white, delightsome, and just." Though he believed that Native American peoples were "degraded", and "fallen in every respect, in habits, custom, flesh, spirit, blood, desire", Smith's successor Brigham Young also allowed Mormon men to marry Native American women as part of a process that would make their people white and delightsome and restore them to their "pristine beauty" within a few generations, However, a Native American man was prohibited from marrying a white woman in Mormon communities. Young performed the first recorded sealing ceremony between a "Lamanite" and a white member in October 1845 when an Oneida man Lewis Dana and Mary Gont were sealed in the Nauvoo Temple.
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Several black Mormons were told that they would become white. Hyrum Smith told Jane Manning James that God could give her a new lineage, and in her patriarchal blessing promised her that she would become "white and delightsome". In 1808, Elijah Abel was promised that "thy soul be white in eternity". Darius Gray, a prominent black Mormon, was told that his skin color would become lighter.
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These church leaders' views stem from racist "biological and social" principles. One exception was intermarriage with Native Americans, who Mormons believed to be Lamanites, a race descended from ancient Israelites. Intermarriage with Native Americans was actually encouraged as a way to fulfill a Book of Mormon prophecy that the Lamanites would become white and delightsome. Church publications have also contained statements discouraging interracial marriage.
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This was changed to "pure and a delightsome" in the 3rd edition in 1840. The 1841 and 1849 European editions of the Book of Mormon were printed in England by the Twelve Apostles, and were the Kirtland 2nd edition with Anglicized spellings. Future LDS editions were based on the European editions until the church issued a major reworking in 1981. Gregory Prince and William Robert Wright state that these leaders were a product of their time and locale.
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Marvin Perkins, "How to Reach African-Americans" , ldsgenesisgroup.org. Several Book of Mormon passages have been interpreted by some Latter Day Saints as indicating that Lamanites would revert to a lighter skin tone upon accepting the gospel. For example, at a 1960 LDS Church General Conference, apostle Spencer W. Kimball suggested that the skin of Latter-day Saint Native American was gradually turning lighter: That view was buoyed by passages such as 2 Nephi 30:6, which in early editions of the Book of Mormon, read: "[T]heir scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a white and a delightsome people." In 1840, with the third edition of the Book of Mormon, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, Joseph Smith, who adherents believe translated the writings of ancient prophets to become the Book of Mormon, changed the wording to "a pure and a delightsome people," consistent with contemporary interpretation of the term "white" as used in scripture.
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The Church has asked for the lawsuits to be dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, arguing that the alleged abuse took place outside the reservation. In 1981, the church published a new LDS edition of the Standard Works that changed a passage in The Book of Mormon that Lamanites (considered by many Latter-day Saints to be Native Americans) will "become white and delightsome" after accepting the gospel of Jesus Christ. Instead of continuing the original reference to skin color, the new edition replaced the word "white" with the word "pure", emphasizing inward spirituality.
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Early church leaders believed that souls of everyone in the celestial kingdom (the highest degree of heaven) would be "white in eternity." They often equated whiteness with righteousness, and taught that originally God made his children white in his own image. A 1959 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that most Utah Mormons believed "by righteous living, the dark-skinned races may again become 'white and delightsome'." Conversely, the church also taught that white apostates would have their skins darkened when they abandoned the faith.
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Giedion-Welcker: Klee, p. 161 Novelist and Klee's friend Wilhelm Hausenstein wrote in his work Über Expressionismus in der Malerei (On Expressionism in Painting), "Maybe Klee's attitude is in general understandable for musical people—how Klee is one of the most delightsome violinist playing Bach and Händel, who ever walked on earth. […] For Klee, the German classic painter of the Cubism, the world music became his companion, possibly even a part of his art; the composition, written in notes, seems to be not dissimilar."Giedion-Welcker: Klee, p.
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This was during a period when LDS Church leaders were justifying the practice and origins of plural marriage, particularly to Mormon splinter groups who did not agree with the practice. The key portion of the revelation proclaims: This wording is comparable with the portion of the 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, which corresponds to today's 2 Nephi 30:5–6, which states that when Native Americans receive the gospel they will become a "white and a delightsome people." Unlike the 1831 revelation, the 1830 version of the Book of Mormon does not specify that the Native Americans would become "white and delightsome" through plural marriage. A note from Phelps in the same document explains how the conversion of the Native Americans coincided with Smith's plan for a new system of marriage: A reference was made to this revelation five months after its alleged date in a letter by Mormon apostate Ezra Booth to the Ohio Star on December 8, 1831, in which he refers to the "revelation [that the Mormon Elders] form a matrimonial alliance with the Natives", but the letter makes no reference to polygamy.Ezra Booth, letter dated December 6, 1831, Ohio Star (Ravenna, Ohio), December 8, 1831.
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He argued that by doing so, they could educate them and teach them the gospel, and in a few generations the Lamanites would become white and delightsome. Mormons often referred to Indians as Lamanites, reflecting their belief that the Indians were descended from the Lamanites, who were a cursed race discussed in the Book of Mormon. Chief Walkara, one of the main slave traders in the region, was baptized into the church, and he received talking papers from Apostle George A. Smith that wished him success in trading Piede children. Mormons also enslaved Indian prisoners of war.
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Greenway is located on the eastern bank of the tidal River Dart, facing the village of Dittisham on the opposite bank. The estate is two miles from Galmpton, the nearest village, and is in the South Hams district of the English county of Devon. Greenway is three miles north of Dartmouth. An early history book of Devon described Greenway as "very pleasantly and commodiously situated, with delightsome prospect to behold the barks and boats". Greenway was first mentioned in 1493 as "Greynway", the crossing point of the Dart to Dittisham. In the late 16th century a Tudor mansion called Greenway Court was built by Otto and Katherine Gilbert, members of a Devon seafaring family.
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Member of the Shivwits Band of Paiutes, in 1875, being baptized by Mormon missionaries. In the Book of Mormon, Lamanites are described as having received a "skin of blackness" to distinguish them from the Nephites. The "change" in skin color is often mentioned in conjunction with God's curse on the descendants of Laman for their wickedness and corruption: "And he had caused the cursing to come upon [the Lamanites], yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, and they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them" (2 Nephi 5:21).
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Richard and Joan Ostling point to the church's practice, continued until 1978, of refusing the priesthood to blacks as evidence that past LDS Church policies were racist in nature. Before the change in policy, most other adult males in the LDS Church were given the priesthood; church policy precluded blacks from officiating in ordinances and from participating in church temple ceremonies. Jerald and Sandra Tanner cite quotes from church leaders such as Brigham Young, who said, "You must not think, from what I say, that I am opposed to slavery. No! The negro is damned, and is to serve his master till God chooses to remove the curse of Ham". (New York Herald, May 4, 1855, as cited in Dialogue, Spring 1973, p.56) The Tanners also illustrate church racism by quoting sections of the Book of Mormon which describe dark skin as a sign of a curse and a mark from God to distinguish a more righteous group of people from a less righteous group, and by citing passages describing white skin as "delightsome" while dark skin is portrayed as unenticing ().
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