Matt Harris

We bring acclaimed and emerging Latter-day Saint scholars, authors, poets and artists to audiences in the Upstate New York area.

LDS Studies Collective of Upstate New York

Dr. Matthew L. Harris is a specialist in US history with a particular focus in religion and the law, church and state, and civil rights.

473 Mendon Ionia Rd

Title:How President Spencer W. Kimball Lifted the Priesthood and Temple Ban and made the Church a Global ReligionAbstract:Spencer W. Kimball once put a big question mark next to a verse in the Bible where it says that God put a curse on Black people. Kimball's question mark seemed to suggest that he didn't agree with it, and in hundreds of pages of correspondence with church leaders and family members he never once mentioned that Black people bore a divine curse. As then-apostle Kimball visited stake conferences in South America in the 1960s, a startling realization came over him, which is that the priesthood and temple ban was preventing the church from globalizing. To that end, he supported Hugh B. Brown's efforts to lift the ban in 1969 and ordain a Black man to the Melchizedek Priesthood. When Kimball became the church president in 1973, he spent many hours in the Salt Lake Temple praying for guidance about the ban, but it wasn't in the traditional way one might expect. He wasn't asking God if the ban should be lifted; he was asking God to soften the hearts of the Brethren so that they could see the wisdom in lifting it.This presentation will explore how President Kimball achieved a consensus among the Brethren to end the 126-year-old priesthood and temple ban and how it was messaged to the church. I will also explore the stormy aftermath of Kimball's revelation when the Brethren failed to repudiate the doctrinal rationales that had fueled the ban. And finally, I will offer some summary remarks of where I think the church is today with respect to race and priesthood.Biographical Info:Dr. Matthew L. Harris is a specialist in US history with a particular focus in religion and the law, church and state, civil rights, Legal history, Constitutional history, American Religions, and Mormon Studies. He received a BA and MA in history from Brigham Young University and an MPhil and PhD, also in history, from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2024); Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right (University of Utah Press, 2020); The LDS Gospel Topics Series: A Scholarly Engagement (Signature Books, 2020); Thunder from the Right: Ezra Taft Benson in Mormonism and Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2019); The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History (University of Illinois Press, 2015); Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2012); and (with Thomas S. Kidd) The Founding Fathers and the Debate over Religion in Revolutionary America (Oxford University Press, 2012).He is currently at work on two book-length manuscripts: J. Reuben Clark and the Making of Modern Mormonism (under contract; University of Illinois Press); and Hugh B. Brown: Mormonism’s Progressive Apostle. His article “Mormonism’s Problematic Racial Past and the Evolution of the Divine-Curse Doctrine,” published in The John Whitmer Historical Society Journal, won the Vera Jean and J. Talmage Jones Award from the Mormon History Association in 2014. His work has been featured on CSPAN, the Religious News Service, and dozens of social media outlets. In addition, he has been interviewed by Newsweek, Longreads, and several other national news outlets for his expertise on right-wing extremism.

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Matt Harris

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