Mauss argues that the restriction developed after Brigham Young took charge and need not have originated in revelation simply because revelation ended it. He gives greater weight to the practical demands of international growth, especially in Brazil, than to domestic protest in explaining the timing of 1978, while distinguishing policy from its changing doctrinal justifications.
- Armand L. Mauss, “The Fading of the Pharaoh’s Curse: The Decline and Fall of the Priesthood Ban Against Blacks,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 14, no. 3 (1981).
- Armand L. Mauss, All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (University of Illinois Press, 2003).
I have argued that inside pressures from outside Utah were probably more compelling than outside pressures from inside Utah.