New DVD aims to dispel cloud of racism hanging over LDS Church Nearly 30 years after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced a revelation opening the ranks of its priesthood to "all worthy male members" regardless of "race or color," there's still an elephant in the room. Smaller, perhaps. Almost certainly easier to overlook. Still there? Absolutely.

"I've been a member for 20 years and I don't hear those things spoken about in Sunday School," said Jackie Warren. Warren is a homemaker and mother of two who lives in San Diego. She's also a black Latter-day Saint who cherishes her faith. The thing that's not being discussed in her Sunday School is the enigmatic history that has many convinced, even in 2007, that the LDS Church discriminates against blacks.

As the annual observance of Black History Month begins, there's growing awareness of a new resource that could clear the air. Latter-day Saints Darius Gray and Marvin Perkins, both of whom are black, have created a DVD titled "Blacks in the Scriptures," released late last year, that deals frankly and scripturally with the perception of racial bias that has lingered since the Civil Rights Era, when it became widely known that black males were not permitted to enter the LDS Church's priesthood. The revelation, announced in 1978 when Spencer W. Kimball was president of the church, changed the policy, but didn't change some people's minds.

Perkins, 44, thinks the DVD has value for people who are not LDS but have questions about the faith. The four-part presentation contained on the film's two discs, he said, is "for everybody, whites, blacks, Polynesians, Latinos, Asians -- everybody, both inside and outside the church."

The most important audience, however, is Latter-day Saints. "Our desire is to cleanse the inner vessel first," he said, referring to a metaphor used by the warrior Moroni in the LDS scriptural volume the Book of Mormon. "We're keeping thousands of people out of the church each year because the members don't know the answers."

The question might be as simple as, "Why couldn't black men hold the priesthood in your church before 1978?" Or, "Is is true that Mormons believe dark skin is a curse?"

Amanda Jones, 25, is a lifelong Latter-day Saint and mother of three who lives in Sunnyside, Wash. Jones, who is white, searched out "Blacks and the Scriptures" hoping to find answers to questions that had nagged her husband, Joey, who is black, since he became a Latter-day Saint in 2001, shortly following their marriage.

When they sat down together to watch "Blacks in the Scriptures," Jones said, "The Spirit was just as strong as it's ever been. I can't even put it into words." (Latter-day Saints believe that true principles are affirmed by the Holy Spirit through divinely imparted impressions, feelings and physical sensations.)

As Jones sees it, some church members may not even be consciously avoiding questions about the past and present treatment of blacks in the LDS Church. "I think the problem is that people don't deal with these issues until it affects them directly," she said.

For Warren, seeing "Blacks in the Scriptures" was simply a relief. "I cried," she said. "I feel like it finally puts things in the open. 'It's out, it's here, we can talk about this.' "

More importantly, she said, prospective church members, often called "investigators" by Latter-day Saints, can talk about it. Perkins said that he and Gray have been told that "Blacks and the Scriptures" has been a contributing factor to more than 30 baptisms in the roughly three months it has been available. (People who join the LDS Church are baptized by immersion to formalize their commitment.)

Warren knows why that is. People who see the DVD, she said, "have already met this question we all have to answer. You've crossed that off right away, that's the end of that, and then you're left to enjoy the gospel."

'And then the answers started to come'

The reluctance to talk about the history of blacks in the LDS Church is something that Perkins, a sales executive who's also a spokesperson for the LDS Church-sanctioned Genesis Group (an official black outreach organization), remembers encountering from the very beginning. Convinced at the age of "10 or 11" that there was "one real church," he carried an active interest in religion into adulthood.

In his early 20s, work and family made him decide to find out more about the Latter-day Saints after a client told him she wouldn't be able to hear him sing at a vocal performance that was scheduled to take place on a Sunday. "It turned out to be a religious thing and I asked her what church" she belonged to, Perkins said. "I said, 'My sister joined that church a year ago, and she won't tell us anything about it.' "

Aware that many blacks did not see eye-to-eye with Mormonism, Perkins asked people about the awkwardness, including his sister. "She just kind of clammed up, as do many," he said. "The more people I asked about it, the further I got from the church."

What finally convinced Perkins to set aside his misgivings was a meeting with an LDS stake president who showed him a copy of the Book of Mormon. "He said, 'Marvin, I can't answer these questions for you, but if this book is true, then the church is true,' " Perkins said.

Perkins decided that God would explain things to him in due time and joined the church on Sept. 11, 1988. "I got baptized on faith," he said. "And then the answers started to come."

With the answers came the opportunity to speak about them. As years passed, Perkins's insight and his willingness to speak openly about race and LDS doctrine made him a popular speaker. With Gray, the emeritus president and founder of the Genesis Group, he eventually developed a detailed, four-part lecture to address the questions he always wished had been answered for him.

The two of them traveled to several states to make their presentation before a request from London caused them to think about other, less travel- and time-intensive means of spreading their message. "I thought, 'I'd love to help, but there's no way that we want anyone to spend that amount of money for this,' " Perkins said.

The next step was to hire a camera crew to film a presentation in Salt Lake City. Jed Udall, a Latter-day Saint and resident of Westlake Village, Calif., worked the camera during filming and said that seeing Perkins and Gray give their remarks firsthand was powerful and impactful.

The "Blacks and the Scriptures" DVD may lack the element of immediacy, Udall said, but "there is that beautiful option of replaying it over and over and over until you get the facts straight in your head."

Udall thinks that the DVD's content is enormously important and hopes that every Latter-day Saint will have the opportunity to consider it. He's especially hopeful that the LDS Church itself will acquire the film and take over its distribution.

Perkins would be pleased if that happened. For now, he said, the "Blacks and the Scriptures" team is happy to handle that end of things as best it can. The price tag ($34.95) for "Blacks and the Scriptures" will go down once the cost of its initial production has been recouped, though Perkins said that copies have so far been made available free to those who can't afford to purchase them.

"The DVD is not important," he said. "Marvin Perkins and Darius Gray are not important. It's the doctrine."

• Cody Clark can be reached at 344-2542 or cclark@heraldextra.com.