2 Nephi 2: 25-27
Romans 8: 18
To me the most beautiful and poignant verses of scripture we have are those that speak of liberation and exaltation. That the motivation and drive of our Savior and our divine Heavenly Parents is directed towards the liberation, freedom, and joy of their children and that we may be as free and joyous as They are.
Especially because the authors of the books of scripture in the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, and the Book of Mormon are people who have faced the weights of oppression and felt it’s violence keenly, who have been attacked and faced genocide, enslavement, and horror from monarchies arisen among their own people and colonizing empires from outside nations. Outside forces who saw them as Other due to their ethnic heritage, their religion, and cultural traditions and thus subject for either extermination or enslavement to the building of empire.
And that the most beautiful and powerful scriptural verses we have within Abrahamic religions are a bold and unwavering stance against extermination. A refusal to lose more of their identity, their beliefs, and their traditions in the face of adversary. They are testimonies of resistance, of rebellion, of the burning hope for liberation and joy in the face of systemic injustices, corruption, and supremacy.
This speaks especially to my identity as a Queer Black disabled Latter-Day saint who has studied the church history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and seen how leaders and members reproduced and continued the usage of white supremacy Christian ideology that had been used to justify antisemitism, the enslavement of my ancestors from West Africa, ablesim, and later homophobia and transphobia.
And how I needed that fierce and burning hope of liberation when faced with seeing how the words of Brigham Young led to the brutal lynching, murder, and mutilation of Thomas Coleman- a Black Mormon who was seen courting a white LDS woman- in 1866 and how his existence and other Black pioneers have been erased from the LDS curriculum. I needed that knowledge of my Heavenly Parent’s fierce love and goals towards justice as I sat in a BYU library and trying to not lose my stomach learning of the countless LGBTQ folk who endured electroshock and aversion abuse and other forms of conversion therapy in the basement of the same building I took my classes. And I needed that strength and willingness to follow the Spirit into the wilderness as Alma the elder and those under King Noah’s reign did when I realized BYU was going to destroy me as I witnessed students and even teachers in my classes talking badly about the BSU protests against racism on campus and students of USGA asking to be treated like human beings, and knowing that i needed to leave to a safer and more welcoming place.
This decision was verified after witnessing the comments from various BYU alumni cheering on and celebrating the murder of Jeremy Sorensen in 2019, then how they reacted to the racism that occurred at a BSU led forum in February 2020 as well as the Honor Code reversal of March 2020. These are those who are “to go forth and serve the world”.
While I no longer physically attend church services, in my own waters of Mormon I study the words of my Savior and my Heavenly Parents. I have found community with others who are in exile, many of us longing for a home we wish we could return but knowing it is unsafe to do so. I have felt the love and reassurances of my Heavenly Parents and I know more now than anything that if our theology isn’t pointed towards justice, to liberation, and to the exaltation of all our Heavenly Parent’s children on Earth, than we have major repenting to do.
That we must be joined in our Heavenly Parents in abolishing any systems, cultural practices, and polices that oppress and lead into captivity based on their sexuality, their gender, their age, their ability, their economic status, their ethnicity, and their faith. And that my Savior- who isn’t the blue eyed, fair skinned attractive white men in Church media- gives us the power and grace and strength necessary to keep fighting, to keep dreaming and, most importantly, to keep loving and keep hoping even in the face of insurmountable odds so that we can find small moments of joy and happiness to keep us going until the end.