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Un-Christian & Unsound. The doctrine most under fire within the church is the traditional teaching that Negroes, the cursed sons of Cain, are not eligible for the priesthood, which is open to males of every other race.when they reach the age of twelve. (Negroes, however, can join the church and are not excluded from the Mormon concept of heaven.) Williams calls it "unChristian and theologically unsound," says that the teaching "looks so anachronistic that it engenders hostility in the world around us."
Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, a Mormon who describes himself as "deeply troubled by the issue," says that the church's policy "is like granting citizenship and saying 'you can't hold office.'" The nation's best-known Mormon, Michigan Governor George Romney, has refrained from calling for a change in the doctrine, in deference to the authority of his church's elders. But Romney's own civil rights record is so impeccable that his percentage of Michigan's Negro vote has gone up in each of his three gubernatorial campaigns. Williams also believes that "the doctrine will be changed, and in my lifetime." The problem is that Mormon belief cannot be redefined by convention or popular vote but only by a direct revelation from God to the President, Prophet and Seer of the church. Although he insists that most Mormons are not prejudiced against Negroes, President McKay has declared that he sees no possibility of a new revelation on the teaching. McKay's probable successor, Joseph Fielding Smith, 90, president of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, has also said that he thinks a new revelation unlikely to occur soon. Unwilling to create a church schism over the issue, many Mormon liberals are confident that the continuing pressure of the civil rights revolution will sooner or later provoke a new divine dispensation—just as changing social conditions and government pressure led eventually to a "revelation" in 1890 that Mormonism should abandon polygamy.