(RNS) — Several Black clergymen who are alumni of Morehouse College, a historically Black men’s college, have written an open letter to their alma mater objecting to a new portrait of Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith hung in the campus chapel. The chapel, named after famous civil rights activist the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., should not feature a portrait of a man who once sought to appease slave owners and who practiced polygamy, the men argue in their letter.
“We represent three generations of Morehouse Men (graduates from the Classes of 1967, 1984 and 2012) who are publicly expressing opposition to the college’s recent decision to install an oil portrait of Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” wrote the Revs. C. Vernon Mason Sr., Mark L. Chapman and Rashad Raymond Moore, in an op-ed published Thursday (Feb. 26) in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“What lesson are we teaching when we elevate a man because he ostensibly shifted his stance on slavery late in life — during a political campaign — while minimizing or overlooking his exploitation of women and children?”
Mason is a civil rights leader and minister in residence at a Baptist church in Harlem, N.Y.; Chapman is a pastor of a Presbyterian Church in Manhattan and an associate professor at Fordham University; and Moore is the pastor of a Baptist church in Brooklyn.
Others have welcomed the portrait of Smith that was unveiled on Feb. 1 at a vespers service attended by descendants of the Smith family who “sponsored the commission” of the portrait, The Church of Jesus Christ o …
