Racism – The Righteous Cause

A Faithful Black Saint, an Unprecedented Temple Ordinance, and the Unhealed Wound of Mormonism’s Racial Theology

Posted on June 13, 2026June 13, 2026 by Dennis Robbins

The 1894 “Servitor” Sealing of Jane Manning James: A Theological and Historical Examination ❦ ❦ ❦ Introduction: A Question Echoing Across the Centuries On a December day in 1884, an aging Black widow in Salt Lake City dictated a letter to the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She had walked…

Harvard Law School’s Enrollment Puzzle: It’s Not Just About the Supreme Court

Posted on December 19, 2024December 19, 2024 by Dennis Robbins

Mike LaChance, Legal Insurrection: Harvard Law Enrolls Fewer Black Students After SCOTUS Ruling on Affirmative Action The racial bean counters on the left are deeply distressed by this news. A year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled affirmative action in college admissions unconstitutional, the law schools at both universities named as defendants—Harvard University and the…

2 Corinthians 11:13-15: For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.

Romans 3:20-24: For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

Email: dennis@novus2.com

Death in Tunnel 13: The DeAutremont Brothers and the Birth of American Forensic Science
Image: Wanted poster, distributed June 1, 1924. Courtesy Southern Oregon Historical Society 1988.11-8.5, MS 672 (via Smithsonian) A Narrative History of the West’s Last Great Train Robbery ❖ ❖ ❖ On the morning of October 11, 1923, engineer Sidney Bates had exactly one day of work left in him. […]
FROM A PUSHCART BY THE TRACKS: The Improbable Rise of Dutch Bros Coffee
A Narrative History of Brotherhood, Loss, and a Coffee Empire Built on Kindness The railroad tracks ran through downtown Grants Pass like a seam stitched into the floor of southern Oregon, and on a gray morning in 1992, two brothers wheeled a pushcart up beside them and waited to see whether anyone […]
THE LAW WEST OF THE PECOS: Judge Roy Bean and the Strange Equity of the Frontier
The True Story of the Hanging Judge Who Never Hanged Anyone A Saloon on the Edge of the Map Picture the place first, because the place explains the man. Three hundred miles of the Chihuahuan Desert lie between San Antonio and El Paso, and somewhere out in the middle of that emptiness, the Pecos […]
The Long Roll Call of Liberty: A 250-Year Narrative of American Freedom
An American Journey Through Liberty ❖ ❖ ❖ Introduction: A Republic Still Being Written On the reverse of the parchment Declaration of Independence, in a plain clerk’s hand, someone wrote a single docket line so the document could be identified when it was rolled up for storage: “Original […]
The Gospel of the Gun: John Wesley Hardin and the Myth of the Frontier Shootist
The True Story of John Wesley Hardin: A Narrative History (1853 ~ 1895) ✦ ✦ ✦ A Preacher’s Son in a Burning Land He was named for a man who spent his life trying to save souls, and he spent his own taking lives. The irony was not lost on the people of Texas, and it would not be lost on the […]
Born to Save the World: Tom Cruise, Scientology, and the Smile That Sells
Stardom, Faith, and the Price of the Hero Myth ❖ ❖ ❖ Introduction: The Man Who Refused to Fall On a warm August evening in 2024, a sixty-two-year-old man leapt from the roof of the Stade de France, abseiled into a packed Olympic stadium, took an American flag from a gymnast and a mayor, and rode […]
Chick Corea, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Long Argument Between Belief and Art
Between the Keys and the Cosmos Prelude: A Child at the Piano When Armando Anthony Corea first sat down at the piano, he was four years old, and the instrument had been set before him by his father, a Boston trumpeter who led a Dixieland band in the 1930s and 1940s. That domestic scene—an […]
Joey Sampaga: The Courageous Compassion of Christ, Luke 13:31-35
Delivered by Pastor Joey | East Valley International Church | Gilbert, Arizona Text: Luke 13:31-35 (ESV) Abstract and summary of the pastor’s sermon: The Courageous Compassion of Christ — Luke 13:31-35 This sermon on Luke 13:31–35 casts Jesus as utterly ungovernable by human threats and […]
Letters To A Mormon Elder: Chapter 8
Letter 8 — The Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham Vision Letters To A Mormon Elder by James R. White Thursday, July 5 Dear Elder Hahn, I received your note yesterday morning. I have considered just how to respond, and feel that I should indeed continue on and address the topic of the Book […]
EVIC Sunday School – Lesson 4: How the Bible Was Made and Preserved
Lesson 4 The Incredible Cost of Preservation of the Bible Introduction and Purpose of the Study Our study is a six-week informational series intended to strengthen the class’s confidence in the Bible as God’s Word before transitioning to a longer “real-life discipleship” […]
EVIC Sunday School – Lesson 5: How the Bible Was Made and Preserved
Lesson 5 The Dramatic Journey of the Bible to Modern Believers Introduction and Purpose of the Study Our study series has been to strengthen the class’s confidence in the Bible as God’s Word before transitioning to a longer “real-life discipleship” study. The aim is not deep […]
“Ye Shall Be as Gods”: The Serpent’s Promise as the Blueprint of LDS Cosmology
The Garden’s Oldest Whisper: How LDS Cosmology Repackages Genesis 3:5 ❦ ❦ ❦ I. The Architecture of an Older Whisper Of all the doctrines a religion must defend, the doctrine of God is the one upon which everything else turns. As Latter-day Saint Apostle Dallin H. Oaks once told an audience at […]
Restoration or Appropriation? How Mormonism Borrows Its Bible, Its Art, and Its Credibility from “Apostate” Churches
The LDS Church claims to be the only true restoration of Christianity, Yet it can’t stop borrowing from the very traditions it condemns. Image: Side‑by‑side, it’s hard to miss! If this is a uniquely “restored” church, why does its official emblem look like a line‑drawing photocopy of a […]
THE PROMISE THAT CANNOT KEEP ITS WORD: Are “Revelations” Still Being Revealed in Modern Mormonism?
A Theological and Historical Examination from a Traditional Christian Perspective ✦ ✦ ✦ INTRODUCTION There may be no claim more central to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints than the claim that the heavens, sealed shut for nearly two millennia after the death of the apostle John, were […]
A Faithful Black Saint, an Unprecedented Temple Ordinance, and the Unhealed Wound of Mormonism’s Racial Theology
The 1894 “Servitor” Sealing of Jane Manning James: A Theological and Historical Examination ❦ ❦ ❦ Introduction: A Question Echoing Across the Centuries On a December day in 1884, an aging Black widow in Salt Lake City dictated a letter to the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day […]
The Seal That Never Was: Why Isaiah 29 Does Not Foretell the Book of Mormon
Joseph Smith’s Golden Plates, and the Anatomy of a Repackaged Prophecy ❦ ❦ ❦ A Critical Theological Examination INTRODUCTION: A PROPHECY IN SEARCH OF A FULFILLMENT In the centuries since the Latter-day Saint movement first appropriated the twenty-ninth chapter of Isaiah as a foretelling of […]
An Island Among Continents: Why the Latter-day Saint Movement Remains Largely Unaccepted by the World’s Religious Traditions
The Doctrinal Architecture That Keeps the LDS Church Alone Introduction: A Quiet Standoff in the World’s Religious Landscape Few religious phenomena of the modern era are as instructive — or as misunderstood — as the relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the […]
Conjured into Existence: Joseph Smith’s 1842 Temple Ordinances
Image: A digitally enhanced photo by this author of the Gilbert, Arizona LDS Temple. A Historical and Theological Examination of the Most Sacred Mormon Rituals ❦ ❦ ❦ Introduction: A Cathedral Built in Seven Weeks On the second floor of a modest mercantile building in Nauvoo, Illinois, on the warm […]
THE MORMON GODS OF MANY WORLDS: The Unresolved Contradiction at the Heart of Latter-day Saint Exaltation
A Theological Examination of Eternal Progression, Premortal Life, and the Eternal Presence of Heavenly Father I. Two Promises, One Soul: The Knot at the Center A faithful Latter-day Saint who has knelt at a sealing altar in a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been given […]
Summary and Analysis: The Book of Mormon Verified (A. B. Phillips, 1912)
Bibliographic Context The pamphlet, No. 231 in the Herald Publishing House series (Lamoni, Iowa — then the RLDS headquarters), was written by Elder A. B. Phillips and printed in 1912. Phillips’s central thesis is that forty “eminent archaeologists and authors” had, by the early […]
The Latest on the Mindanao Earthquake.
A powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck offshore Sarangani province in Mindanao, Philippines, on Monday, June 8, 2026, at 7:37 AM Philippine Standard Time (PST). The epicenter was located approximately 32 km west of Maasim, Sarangani (or roughly 8–26 km southwest/west-southwest of General Santos […]
Joey Sampaga: The Narrow Door, Luke 13:22-30
Delivered by Pastor Joey | East Valley International Church | Gilbert, Arizona Text: Luke 13:22-30 (ESV) Summary of Expository Sermon: Luke 13:22–30 Strive to Enter the Narrow Door Opening Review and the Growth of the Kingdom Pastor Joey begins with a review of the prior week’s text (Luke […]
The Garden, the Cross, and the Finished Work: Where Was the Atonement Really Accomplished?
A Christian Examination of the Latter-day Saint Doctrine that the Atonement Was Accomplished in the Garden of Gethsemane ✦ ✦ ✦ Introduction: A Tale of Two Gardens Ask a hundred traditional Christians where the atonement of Jesus Christ was accomplished, and ninety-nine will point to a hill outside […]
158 Temples and Counting: What the LDS Church Isn’t Telling You About Its American Building Boom
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is in the middle of the most aggressive temple-building campaign in its nearly 200-year history. Under President Russell M. Nelson, who has personally announced 200 new temples in just seven years, the Church has transformed the American landscape — […]
Why the LDS Missionary Is Not a Biblical “Elder” — and Why a Plastic Name Tag Is Not a Priesthood
A Traditional Christian Examination of LDS Missionary Authority ❖ ❖ ❖ Introduction: The Doorstep and the Title Almost every American adult has met them. Two young men in dark trousers, crisp white shirts, conservative ties, and bicycles leaning against the curb. Pinned over their left breast pocket […]