Section 7: Prophetic Succession and the Brigham Young Era

Joseph Smith was killed by a mob in Carthage Jail, Illinois, on June 27, 1844. His death created an immediate succession crisis. Multiple claimants argued for leadership of the movement. Brigham Young, leading the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, prevailed in the main body of the church. Other claimants founded separate movements: Sidney Rigdon, James Strang, and eventually Joseph Smith III (who led what became the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, now the Community of Christ).

Brigham Young led the main body of the church on its famous westward migration to the Salt Lake Valley — then Mexican territory — in 1847. Under Young's leadership, the church publicly announced plural marriage (1852), constructed the Salt Lake Temple, and built the theocratic territorial government that would come into extended conflict with the United States federal government. Young's teachings included significant theological material not consistently maintained in later LDS teaching, including the Adam-God doctrine — the teaching that Adam is our Heavenly Father — which later LDS leadership has rejected but which was taught from the pulpit in Young's time.

ERROR IDENTIFIED: The Adam-God doctrine, taught by Brigham Young as doctrine revealed from God, has been quietly dropped from LDS teaching. Current LDS leadership characterizes it as Young speaking as a man rather than as a prophet. But the LDS framework provides no mechanism for a contemporary member to determine, in real time, when the prophet speaks as a prophet and when he speaks as a man. If Young's Adam-God teaching could be received as prophetic and then discarded, the mechanism that was supposed to protect the church from error — living prophetic authority — failed to do so. The correction came from outside the prophetic system, not from within it.

Section 8: The Racial Priesthood Ban — Error Canonized as Revelation

From at least the 1840s through 1978, Black members of the LDS church were excluded from the priesthood and from full temple participation. The basis for this exclusion was teaching developed under Brigham Young that Black individuals bore the "mark of Cain" and were denied the priesthood as a consequence of their pre-mortal choices or their lineage. This teaching was transmitted through LDS leadership for over a century as divinely revealed doctrine.

In June 1978, LDS President Spencer W. Kimball issued Official Declaration 2, announcing that the priesthood was extended to all worthy male members regardless of race. The declaration is presented as a revelation from God.

The LDS church's own Gospel Topics Essay on the priesthood restriction explicitly states that the previous ban was based on "speculation and folk doctrine" rather than actual revelation. It disavows the specific doctrinal reasoning — the mark of Cain, pre-mortal choices — that was used to justify the ban.

ERROR IDENTIFIED: If the priesthood ban was based on speculation and folk doctrine rather than revelation, then generations of Black members were excluded from temple ordinances — which LDS theology teaches are necessary for the highest salvation — on the basis of human error presented as divine guidance. If it was revealed doctrine, the 1978 reversal contradicts a divine command. The system cannot account for both without conceding that the prophetic authority claim — the mechanism designed to protect the church from exactly this kind of error — produced and maintained the error for over a century. This is not a peripheral issue. It is a test of the core claim. The mechanism failed the test.