As I have stated elsewhere, I think some of the 12 or FP still subscribe to some of the teachings underlying the past practice–curse of Cain, tie to premortality, etc…. I think that many do not. I do not think there will be any repudiation or reconfirmation of those prior teachings until there is unanimity among the Brethren (just as that is what it took for the practive to be changed in 1978 through a revelation that all of them received after lots of spade work by President Kimball).

I do not expect such a repudiation until the passing of most of the generation that spent much of their lives defending the ban. In the meantime, I am grateful that the Church no longer officially or explicitly backs any of those prior teachings or doctrines, and that I and others can fell free to reject them without engangering our church standing.

Joel, I appreciate this, and I think the way you have framed the discussion is more or less correct. If I may, I’d like to offer a couple of suggestions.

First, I thikn we need to ask the right question. It is not a matter of finding out how the ban started. We know how it started; those who placed restrictions on early black members have told us in their own words why they did it, and the record is clear enough, at least to me. The real question is: Why did it continue? Why didn’t God correct it, or how could our leaders have been so out of touch? Or were they? Those are the really interesting questions, but we never get to them, because we still haven’t faced up to the way the ban started. Whenever we start along that line of inquiry, someone can be relied upon to say that we don’t really know, and besides, everything has changed now, and for heaven’s sake, can’t we just be happy and move on? The reason the questions don’t go away is because we continue to try to avoid them.

I have a great deal of sympathy with the idea advanced here by several commenters that we need to be loyal to one another and to our leaders, and to not create stumbling blocks for one another. However, we need to be aware that when we avoid the hard questions, we are creating stumbling blocks for members and investigators of African descent.

There are those among the hierarchy who would themselves like a very clear statement repudiating the idea of the curse of Cain/Canaan, and of any kind of pre-mortal “judgment” which showed God’s disapproval through race. I believe the day will come when such a statement will be made.

The explanations have been repudiated; I hope that continues actively. Since I can think of multiple reasons from multiple perspectives for the implementation, “I don’t know” seems like all that can be said with authority.

Sometimes, the greatest of these really is charity.

I’d bet a dozen doughnuts that there is a copyright restriction on the broadcast performance of that hymn, and that the omission is nothing more sinister than not [yet?] having taken care of legal permissions and royalty payments.

Now if we only had a Mormon blogging lawyer to offer an expert’s opinion …

I’m not a lawyer, but I do serve regularly as an expert witness in intellectual property lawsuits (involving information technology), and I suspect you’re dead on. Broadcast IP issues are among the trickiest; you don’t want to infringe and then get hit after the fact with a demand for royalties, particularly if your broadcast is going out to (potentially) millions of homes via satellite.

So, no, there’s no reason to look for some deep significance that “How Great Thou Art” was cut from the rebroadcast other than, as Ardis noted (good catch, btw!), copyright and royalty issues. ..bruce..