There’s one big reason the usually popular BYU Professor Randy Bott stepped in it big time trying to explain the LDS Church’s longtime denial of priesthood and temple blessings to members of African descent by calling it a “blessing.” Bott and others of that era in the LDS Church were taught these types of condescending “compassionate” racist principles when learning about the LDS Churches ban on blacks decades ago.

Bott was born in 1945 and grew up in Northern Utah. In 1958, the Mutual Improvement Association listed “Choose Ye This Day,” a young adult novel, published by Bookcraft in Salt Lake City, written by Emma Marr Petersen, the wife of LDS Apostle Mark E. Petersen. Ms. Petersen was a popular LDS...