Comments on: A Review of Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons

By: David Clark

David Clark — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:41:57 +0000

It’s fine with me. Good luck with the new cover.

By: Margaret Young

Margaret Young — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:03:36 +0000

David, Darius and I are meeting soon to redesign our cover and might use some of your words. Hope that’s okay.

By: Chris H.

Chris H. — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:19:23 +0000

“now this might cause you to want to keep up a discussion with this”

No, I was just looking for clarification and I think you did that. While I am very liberal politically, I think that when it comes the the basics (the Savior, Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon) we probably have a lot in common. That is why I love belonging to (and serving in) the Church.

Come back and follow-up on your comment after you watch it, I would love to hear what you have to say. I will do the same.

By: Marsha Lavin

Marsha Lavin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:21:28 +0000

I had the impression that mostly Liberal Mormons were quoted on the DVD, and of course the Black members who are sharing their beliefs .I can’t seem to find that reference… anyway, I’ll have to see the DVD first, but generally, I’ve had many experiences over the years with liberal and conservative members of the Church. i’ve found that those black converts who have strong ideologies and also strong testimonies, tend to be more conservative… the black members in our current Ward are very conservative.. I’m speaking of values and politics. White liberal members, I think, seem to be critical of others and attempt to label other members as “racist”, much more so than any members who are conservative, and I guess I’m emphasizing their political views, which include values different from liberal members.. now this might cause you to want to keep up a discussion with this, but I was just traveling thru the blogs and have to focus on cooking for the 4th.. also, I’m not great at expressing my point of view in a forum such as this. I was attempting to change my comment but my letters were getting gobbled up, so this will have to suffice… I think members from the left to the far right will have problems agreeing on a lot of subjects, just that we have such varying beliefs on the basics… I can say this with some confidence since I was very liberal before converting to the Gospel.

By: Chris H.

Chris H. — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:08:16 +0000

Marsha,

“I think my opinions of the ban, the Revelation, and now the DVD that depicts the process, would be quite different from the opinions of a Liberal Mormon.”

In what way? I think this is an issue the conservatives and liberals can easily find common ground.

I still need to watch the DVD. Is it on netflix?

By: Marsha Lavin

Marsha Lavin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:47:37 +0000

I plan to order the DVD Monday, after the holiday. We are a Conservative family and have adopted black children… We also had to deal with African Americans not holding Priesthood when we were investigating the Church in 1978. I think my opinions of the ban, the Revelation, and now the DVD that depicts the process, would be quite different from the opinions of a Liberal Mormon. I’m bringing this up, because I’d be reticent to have other religions and universities believe that what they see on the DVD is an overall LDS view. I’d want there to be other points of view presented in conjunction with the DVD, as I’ve just suggested, they’d be a bias presented with only the DVD offered and I’d be sad for that to happen. I expect to enjoy the DVD nevertheless, and believe it is an important addition to all Mormon video collections.

By: Margaret Young

Margaret Young — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:55:07 +0000

Thanks for this review, David. You make excellent points. It was quite something to make the hard decisions of what we’d include in the doc, what we’d move to “special features” and what we’d not include at all. We do talk about Brazil in Special Features, but we don’t go into more depth about the denial of temple privileges. The film has a couple of minutes devoted to that as we talk about Jane James’s petitions for the endowment, but we don’t explore it further.
Why isn’t it longer? Darius has what he calls the “butt factor”. He takes note of when people start fidgeting in their seats and starts editing so that we’re not at risk of losing our audience. The second factor was money. We did this for an obscenely small amount of money (revealed in the upcoming issue of _Dialogue_). And we did interview some conservative white Mormons. Frankly, they just didn’t say much we could use. Often, they said things which others had already said better.
It’s always interesting to me to read what other people would’ve done with the film. I’ve also heard complaints that we didn’t spend enough time on the pentecostal events of June 1st, 1978 in the temple.
Ultimately, this became a three-person project, with lots of support from donors. It was Darius, me, our editor (Danor Gerald, who was replaced by Jim Hughes when Danor took an acting job). And it was a lot of love.
Anyway, this is an excellent and thoughtful review, David.
I hope we speak not just to liberal Mormons and Blacks but to other audiences as well. Some Mormons we’d consider conservative have surprised us by their positive response to the film. And we had a lot of success showing it in Black film festivals, and even aired it on WHUT, the PBS station from Howard University. We plan on marketing it to universities all over the U.S. because, frankly, it’s the only full-length documentary around which addresses this particular religion and the race issue. That narrow focus provides insights into the larger issues of race and of other religions, and at the very least, opens the door for further conversation.

By: BrandonE

BrandonE — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:19:53 +0000

Very interesting movie. Maybe approaching other outside influences would have been interesting to see. (Rev. France Davis’ lawsuit on the church and boy scouts during the same time period, etc.)

By: BrianJ

BrianJ — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:32:30 +0000

Excellent reviews. The one thing I wanted to see more in the film was an exploration of the priesthood ban as it extended to a temple ban; As you say, the film could have been longer and this would have been a good addition.

By: smallaxe

smallaxe — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:16:15 +0000

Clean Cut,

On policy vs. doctrine/truth, it would be helpful for you to discuss how we recognize the distinction between the two. IMO, such a distinction is helpful in explaining things such as the priesthood ban, but I’m not sure how well the distinction actually works if we can’t recognize the difference between policy and doctrine.