One of the highest-ranking black Mormon leaders said Friday that Latter-day Saints in Africa are at peace with the religion's past ban on the lay priesthood.
The steady growth of church membership in Africa since the ban was lifted in 1978 is proof, Joseph W. Sitati of Kenya said during a speech at a University of Utah conference.
Sitati, who is in a second-tier Mormon governing body called the Quorum of the Seventy, said the number of Mormons in Africa has increased to nearly 449,000 in 2014, up from 7,600 in 1978.
They realize the ban is in the past, have found understanding and "choose to look forward to the future with faith and assurance that all things are before the eternal father," said Sitati, a convert who joined the faith in 1986.
Sitati said that many Africans relate the ban with the bygone era of Colonialism in Africa when other injustices occurred. He said he can't speak about the experience of being a black Mormon from the U.S, but recognizes after living here for six years that the ban remains a sensitive topic.
Sitati's comments came during a series of panels at the University of Utah exploring the status of blacks in a religion that no longer has the priesthood ban but still has a void of black leaders.
Issues of race and diversity within the Mormon faith bubbled up again after the church selected three white men last weekend to fill vacancies on a high-level governing body, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles — a disappointment to many who hoped for an infusion of diversity.
The conference, which is part of the university's Mormon studies initiative launched in 2010, is aimed at having conversations about race that don't often happen at the congregational level, said Paul Reeve, a University of Utah history professor who helped organize the event.
In December 2013, the Salt Lake City-based Mormon church published an essay that offered the most comprehensive explanation of why it previously had barred men of African descent from the lay clergy. It was the first time church leaders disavowed the ban that was lifted after the church president said he had a revelation it was time for the change.
Luis Belchior, a Brigham Young University student from Mozambique, said that essay gives him peace that the church acknowledges it happened and has moved on. But Darius Gray, a pioneering black Mormon, said while a seminal document, it has not been widely distributed or read by enough Mormons.
Belchior and Gray spoke on a panel about the experience of black students at Mormon-owned BYU. Panelists expressed dismay about the lack of black students and professors at the university.
Paulette Payne, a Mormon TV personality in Atlanta who moderated a panel on race and Mormon women, said she hopes the conversations going on at the conference continue at churches.
"I think there is a level of fear in exposing the truth behind the racist history of the church. When you fear something, you don't necessarily want to expose it for what it is because it then becomes a reflection of you."
She, like many others, said more black leaders are needed in the faith.
The top 15 leaders of the religion — including the president, his two counsellors and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles — are all white men. Only one, Dieter F. Uchtdorf, is from outside the U.S. He was born in Czechoslovakia and raised in Germany.
There aren't any blacks either on the next-level leadership group, the seven-member presidency of the Quorum of the Seventy. But there are two minorities: Ulisess Soares of Brazil and Gerrit W. Gong, an Asian-American.
In the body of the first Quorum of the Seventy, two men are black: Sitati and Edward Dube of Zimbabwe. There are no black leaders from the U.S.
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