Damn, old cartoon shows how Mormons are racist as fuck
- Thread starter Mr. Met
- Start date
Man, you would be surprised how much of this type of misinformation is out there.
The messed up this is that they took real history and changed it to fit their needs.
The talk of El, Eloah, and Elohim is real talk. Just not like how they distorted it.
Last edited:
Mormons Grapple With Church's History Of Discrimination Amid Wider Racial Reckoning11:04
September 22, 2020
A statue of Brigham Young, second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stands in the center of Salt Lake City with the Mormon Temple spires in the background 19 July 2001. (George Frey/AFP via Getty Images)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are also known as Mormons, has a troubled history with racial discrimination.
Black Americans were among its earliest converts and even served in leadership roles — but for over a century, they were barred from being ordained to the priesthood or from entering Mormon temples, where the faith’s holiest rituals are performed.
06:23Nov 10, 2020
Get the editor's can't miss stories of the week, and tips for navigating life – and weekends – during the coronavirus outbreak. Sign up now.
That position wasn't reversed until 1978.
Now that recent protests have forced a racial reckoning throughout American society, many Mormons are taking a renewed look at racism in their own faith.
The LDS Church announced an official partnership with the NAACP in 2018, but it may not be putting words into action, says LaShawn Williams, a licensed clinical social worker and an assistant professor of social work at Utah Valley University.
“I think that one of the best ways to show leadership is to do what you ask your members to do,” says Williams, who co-founded the Black LDS Legacy Committee, which puts on a yearly conference about Black Mormons. “And as a membership, we are told that whenever we harm our brother, you go and make good with your brother first and then you go off into the rest of the world.”
While some Mormons are a “little resistant” to anti-racist efforts by fellow church members, the majority are very open to it, says Diana Brown, co-founder of a study group on race and The Book of Mormon, one of the church’s scriptural texts, along with the Bible.
“I think a lot of them have questions as well about how to reconcile some complex aspects of the church history,” she says, “and how … they [can] maintain their faith and testimony in the church while acknowledging the pain that people of color experience due to certain policies and cultural norms and what to do about that.”
Interview Highlights
On the Mormon church's official partnership with the NAACP
LaShawn Williams: “I think it runs the risk of being a symbolic partnership as opposed to a practical partnership. [The church] offered, in the Medium piece where they initially spoke out for racial unity, that they would explore ways together to work together to improve self-reliance and upward … mobility for inner-city and minority families. And so one of the spokespeople for the NAACP said that those were minor efforts, and they don't befit the stature and magnitude of what the LDS church can and should do and how they were looking forward to the church doing more to undo the 150 years of damage they did and how they treated African Americans in the church.”
On whether the church should apologize for barring Black people from receiving the priesthood or entering Mormon temples
Williams: “I would love to see the church issue a number of statements. They came close. They released an essay that disavowed any previous practices, folklore, thoughts or ideas that were perpetrated by church leadership about the reasons for the ban. They did not go so far as to call the ban wrong or to call the ban racist. But they disavowed all of the explanations that were given and said that they currently disavow racism and that it is not connected to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
On the origins of the Black LDS Legacy Conference, and on Black Mormon heritage
Williams: “The Black LDS Legacy Conference came from the broken hearts of Black women after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in 2013. … We were having interactions with other Black members, wondering, ‘Why is no one saying anything from the pulpit? How can we go to church on Sunday and it feels like we're the only ones who care about what's happening to Black people here in the U.S. in the wake of police brutality?’ And so we created the conference on Wakanda weekend, when Black Panther opened, to be able to say, ‘We have a place here. We've always had a place here. We'll continue to carve out space for our place.’
“A few Black members that are inspiring to us are ... first pioneers, the first people to be baptized into the church or the first ones to hold the priesthood, or the first one to join the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or the first ones to be baptized outside of the United States, and we listed all of their names on a T-shirt to go along with so many of the other Black history pioneers, [Malcolm X] and [Martin Luther King Jr.] and me, and we took that same energy and applied it to the church experience for Black members in Black history in the LDS church, because holding onto ancestors, standing on the shoulders of giants, is what allows us to continue moving forward. And there's work to be done in every place where Black people set their feet.”
On her call to action for ward (local congregation) members
Williams: “For the ones who served a mission and it's international and they come back and say, ‘I really grew to love the people in this location’ — show me. When you come back from a place like continental Africa, you come back from Afro-Latino countries, you come back from the Caribbean and from the West Indies, do you translate that learning into your actions here back in the U.S.? Are you out marching and engaging in conversations for Black Lives Matter? Are you addressing structural, educational and employment inequalities in Black communities, or do you reserve your love for the people you served because you felt like they needed you and you had something to give? For my members in wards and congregations, you've got the privilege, you've got the power, and with great power comes great responsibility. And we need to be using it more to make reality, equality and freedom happen for others.”
On white Mormons’ reactions to anti-racist efforts by fellow church members
Diana Brown: “There is certainly a faction of people who I think are a little resistant to this, who see this as part of revisionist history, but I would say that the majority of people that I see are very, very open to it. We had everybody answer a quick question: Why do you want to take part in this? And I think what I find really remarkable is how I'm seeing people really seamlessly blend language that we're drawing from this anti-racist movement that, you know, is largely happening outside of our church, with rhetoric about personal change, ministering, building Zion, building community that's very common in the church. For the most part, I'm really not seeing those things come in conflict. I've seen people bring these two aspects of themselves, these two moral projects, so to speak, together into one place.”
On the conversations Brown’s group has facilitated
Brown: “We've brought different speakers and scholars to come based on either their professional or personal expertise in this topic, and so it ended up being a blend of, sort of, their scholarly work, personal experience and then … wherever the conversation goes from there.
"We’ve had Brother Ahmad Corbitt come. He's a first counselor in the General Young Men's Presidency for the church, so a pretty high leadership position. He also is African American. He sort of talked about his initial draw to the church and to the Book of Mormon as, to use his terms, the most racially unifying book of scripture out there. We had an Indigenous scholar, Farina King, come in and talk about a passage in the Book of Mormon that's often interpreted to be referring to [Christopher] Columbus, and she was just sort of raising the question: Are we wanting to glorify Columbus at the expense of our Indigenous members of the church?”
On the questions participants commonly ask
Brown: “The goal is to ... have it be like an academic Sunday school. This wasn't a fringe group of people who ended up coming to this … based on the comments that we were getting and the questions that we were receiving. These are people who are pretty central in the church and involved in church leadership and things like that, and I think their common questions are just wanting to really understand the perspectives of minorities and people of color in the church for pastoral reasons, wanting to know how to do better outreach [and] administering.”
On what drew her to co-organize the study group
Brown: “Growing up, I was taught to take the church very seriously, and I took very seriously this idea that there were all children of God and that everybody comes to Earth to grow and learn. And this idea that no human life and no human experience is wasted, that somehow all of this fits into the bigger story of how God is working with humanity. I've just always been a fan of being brave to take our doctrines really seriously and to go to the margins and really amplify those voices and to be thinking … more deeply and broadly about how we're all connected to each other and how … we absolutely need these stories, and they're all a part of us, and we just should not be afraid of them and should not be afraid of challenging our perspectives. If we're taking our most core doctrine seriously, we should be the most engaged in causes like this, not the least.”
On how the church can move forward in a more inclusive way
Brown: “I do think that people are really hungry for a theological reckoning with the church's past, something that is ... not just saying, … ‘Now we're all one, now that [the] policy is gone.’ Something that is saying, ‘How do we make sense of the fact that this happened?’ And … maybe there aren't answers to that. Maybe it's just more sitting with it. But I think that people are really wanting to lean into that space, and I feel like as a community, we need more spaces to hold that question together [with] whatever comes from it. And I think that's kind of what's necessary before we would be able to move on.”
www.wbur.org
September 22, 2020
A statue of Brigham Young, second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stands in the center of Salt Lake City with the Mormon Temple spires in the background 19 July 2001. (George Frey/AFP via Getty Images)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are also known as Mormons, has a troubled history with racial discrimination.
Black Americans were among its earliest converts and even served in leadership roles — but for over a century, they were barred from being ordained to the priesthood or from entering Mormon temples, where the faith’s holiest rituals are performed.
06:23Nov 10, 2020
Get the editor's can't miss stories of the week, and tips for navigating life – and weekends – during the coronavirus outbreak. Sign up now.
That position wasn't reversed until 1978.
Now that recent protests have forced a racial reckoning throughout American society, many Mormons are taking a renewed look at racism in their own faith.
The LDS Church announced an official partnership with the NAACP in 2018, but it may not be putting words into action, says LaShawn Williams, a licensed clinical social worker and an assistant professor of social work at Utah Valley University.
“I think that one of the best ways to show leadership is to do what you ask your members to do,” says Williams, who co-founded the Black LDS Legacy Committee, which puts on a yearly conference about Black Mormons. “And as a membership, we are told that whenever we harm our brother, you go and make good with your brother first and then you go off into the rest of the world.”
While some Mormons are a “little resistant” to anti-racist efforts by fellow church members, the majority are very open to it, says Diana Brown, co-founder of a study group on race and The Book of Mormon, one of the church’s scriptural texts, along with the Bible.
“I think a lot of them have questions as well about how to reconcile some complex aspects of the church history,” she says, “and how … they [can] maintain their faith and testimony in the church while acknowledging the pain that people of color experience due to certain policies and cultural norms and what to do about that.”
Interview Highlights
On the Mormon church's official partnership with the NAACP
LaShawn Williams: “I think it runs the risk of being a symbolic partnership as opposed to a practical partnership. [The church] offered, in the Medium piece where they initially spoke out for racial unity, that they would explore ways together to work together to improve self-reliance and upward … mobility for inner-city and minority families. And so one of the spokespeople for the NAACP said that those were minor efforts, and they don't befit the stature and magnitude of what the LDS church can and should do and how they were looking forward to the church doing more to undo the 150 years of damage they did and how they treated African Americans in the church.”
On whether the church should apologize for barring Black people from receiving the priesthood or entering Mormon temples
Williams: “I would love to see the church issue a number of statements. They came close. They released an essay that disavowed any previous practices, folklore, thoughts or ideas that were perpetrated by church leadership about the reasons for the ban. They did not go so far as to call the ban wrong or to call the ban racist. But they disavowed all of the explanations that were given and said that they currently disavow racism and that it is not connected to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
On the origins of the Black LDS Legacy Conference, and on Black Mormon heritage
Williams: “The Black LDS Legacy Conference came from the broken hearts of Black women after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in 2013. … We were having interactions with other Black members, wondering, ‘Why is no one saying anything from the pulpit? How can we go to church on Sunday and it feels like we're the only ones who care about what's happening to Black people here in the U.S. in the wake of police brutality?’ And so we created the conference on Wakanda weekend, when Black Panther opened, to be able to say, ‘We have a place here. We've always had a place here. We'll continue to carve out space for our place.’
“A few Black members that are inspiring to us are ... first pioneers, the first people to be baptized into the church or the first ones to hold the priesthood, or the first one to join the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or the first ones to be baptized outside of the United States, and we listed all of their names on a T-shirt to go along with so many of the other Black history pioneers, [Malcolm X] and [Martin Luther King Jr.] and me, and we took that same energy and applied it to the church experience for Black members in Black history in the LDS church, because holding onto ancestors, standing on the shoulders of giants, is what allows us to continue moving forward. And there's work to be done in every place where Black people set their feet.”
On her call to action for ward (local congregation) members
Williams: “For the ones who served a mission and it's international and they come back and say, ‘I really grew to love the people in this location’ — show me. When you come back from a place like continental Africa, you come back from Afro-Latino countries, you come back from the Caribbean and from the West Indies, do you translate that learning into your actions here back in the U.S.? Are you out marching and engaging in conversations for Black Lives Matter? Are you addressing structural, educational and employment inequalities in Black communities, or do you reserve your love for the people you served because you felt like they needed you and you had something to give? For my members in wards and congregations, you've got the privilege, you've got the power, and with great power comes great responsibility. And we need to be using it more to make reality, equality and freedom happen for others.”
On white Mormons’ reactions to anti-racist efforts by fellow church members
Diana Brown: “There is certainly a faction of people who I think are a little resistant to this, who see this as part of revisionist history, but I would say that the majority of people that I see are very, very open to it. We had everybody answer a quick question: Why do you want to take part in this? And I think what I find really remarkable is how I'm seeing people really seamlessly blend language that we're drawing from this anti-racist movement that, you know, is largely happening outside of our church, with rhetoric about personal change, ministering, building Zion, building community that's very common in the church. For the most part, I'm really not seeing those things come in conflict. I've seen people bring these two aspects of themselves, these two moral projects, so to speak, together into one place.”
On the conversations Brown’s group has facilitated
Brown: “We've brought different speakers and scholars to come based on either their professional or personal expertise in this topic, and so it ended up being a blend of, sort of, their scholarly work, personal experience and then … wherever the conversation goes from there.
"We’ve had Brother Ahmad Corbitt come. He's a first counselor in the General Young Men's Presidency for the church, so a pretty high leadership position. He also is African American. He sort of talked about his initial draw to the church and to the Book of Mormon as, to use his terms, the most racially unifying book of scripture out there. We had an Indigenous scholar, Farina King, come in and talk about a passage in the Book of Mormon that's often interpreted to be referring to [Christopher] Columbus, and she was just sort of raising the question: Are we wanting to glorify Columbus at the expense of our Indigenous members of the church?”
On the questions participants commonly ask
Brown: “The goal is to ... have it be like an academic Sunday school. This wasn't a fringe group of people who ended up coming to this … based on the comments that we were getting and the questions that we were receiving. These are people who are pretty central in the church and involved in church leadership and things like that, and I think their common questions are just wanting to really understand the perspectives of minorities and people of color in the church for pastoral reasons, wanting to know how to do better outreach [and] administering.”
On what drew her to co-organize the study group
Brown: “Growing up, I was taught to take the church very seriously, and I took very seriously this idea that there were all children of God and that everybody comes to Earth to grow and learn. And this idea that no human life and no human experience is wasted, that somehow all of this fits into the bigger story of how God is working with humanity. I've just always been a fan of being brave to take our doctrines really seriously and to go to the margins and really amplify those voices and to be thinking … more deeply and broadly about how we're all connected to each other and how … we absolutely need these stories, and they're all a part of us, and we just should not be afraid of them and should not be afraid of challenging our perspectives. If we're taking our most core doctrine seriously, we should be the most engaged in causes like this, not the least.”
On how the church can move forward in a more inclusive way
Brown: “I do think that people are really hungry for a theological reckoning with the church's past, something that is ... not just saying, … ‘Now we're all one, now that [the] policy is gone.’ Something that is saying, ‘How do we make sense of the fact that this happened?’ And … maybe there aren't answers to that. Maybe it's just more sitting with it. But I think that people are really wanting to lean into that space, and I feel like as a community, we need more spaces to hold that question together [with] whatever comes from it. And I think that's kind of what's necessary before we would be able to move on.”
Mormons Grapple With Church's History Of Discrimination Amid Wider Racial Reckoning
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, popularly known as the Mormon church, has a troubled history with racial discrimination.
I heard about it before, but still 
When Mormons Aspired to Be a ‘White and Delightsome’ People
A historian looks at the legacy of racism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
EMMA GREENSEPTEMBER 18, 2017
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The Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings in Salt Lake in 2015.JIM URQUHART / REUTERS
One group, however, has taken a slightly different path: Mormons. While a majority of Mormons voted for Trump in the 2016 election, he fared far worse than previous Republican presidential candidates among the minority religious group. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, many in Mormon-heavy Utah doubted the president’s moral character and strength as a role model.
Like other religious groups, Mormons have a complicated history around race. Until a few decades ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints taught that they “shall be a white and a delightsome people,” a phrase taken from the Book of Mormon. Until the 1970s, the LDS Church also restricted black members’ participation in important rituals and prohibited black men from becoming priests, despite evidence that they had participated more fully in the earliest years of the Church.*
Max Perry Mueller, a historian at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, argues that Mormonism is a quintessentially American religion. The Book of Mormon re-centers the story of Jesus on the Americas, and the faith, which was founded in the 19th century, also tells the story through a very American lens. Yet, while the story of race and the LDS Church is similar to other American experiences of race, it’s also distinctive, leaving Mormons to grapple with the legacy of racism and white supremacy in their own way.
I spoke with Mueller about his new book, Race and the Making of the Mormon People, which focuses on a few important figures in Mormon history. One of them, Jane Manning James, was part of the first black community in Salt Lake Valley. Despite her close relationship with the family of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, she was denied access to important religious rites during her lifetime because of her skin color.
Janan Graham-Russell wrote about her personal struggle with the LDS Church’s legacy of racism for The Atlantic in 2016. Lilly Fowler also reported on controversies over the Church’s Indian Student Placement program, which encouraged members to foster and adopt Native American children. My conversation with Mueller, below, has been edited for clarity and length.
Emma Green: There’s been talk about an emerging Mormon alt-right, populated by Mormon white nationalists. Much of this has focused on a Utah woman who blogs under the name ‘Wife with a Purpose,’ who created a “white-baby challenge” for fellow Mormons to perpetuate their putatively white heritage. What do you make of this?
Max Perry Mueller: Within Mormonism’s history is this concept of whiteness as Godliness and purity.
Issues of Christianity are often seen as linear, marching towards a certain direction. But actually, that’s not how history, especially theological history, works. The kind of white supremacy that’s at the heart of a lot of Mormon history, and the contemporary church that rejects white supremacy, both embody the same space.
Green: In what ways does white supremacy manifest either explicitly or implicitly in Mormon culture?
Mueller: Politics of respectability is huge. Mormons engage in respectability campaigning that is not unlike a lot of black church-going communities in the early 20th century. They’re trying to present themselves to mainstream, white, partisan gatekeepers as pious, patriotic, family-oriented, hardworking, contributing to the society, and willing to fight for the American flag in war. But unlike black Americans, Mormons were more easily accepted because of their skin pigment.
Green: You describe a black woman, Jane Manning James, who leads a conflicted life of aspiring to be a full member of both the Smith family and the Mormon church. She wanted to be bound eternally with her family, which is an important part of Mormon theology, and yet she was denied this privilege during her lifetime.
She seems to have a complicated relationship with her race. There’s a line you included where she says, “I’m white with the exception of the color of my skin.”
Why would somebody say that, or want to be a part of a culture that makes them aspire toward a different skin color?
Mueller: The question you just raised is one that I still think about and will probably think about for the rest of my life. Why would this woman—who is clearly full of incredible intelligence, skills, and perseverance—throw her lot in with a community that would not have her as a member? I really do believe, at the end of the day, she had faith in the gospel that she dedicated her life to.
She was from Connecticut. Her mother was a slave, and she kind of had a liminal existence—the line between slave and free was not so clearly demarcated in the North. She was a servant girl in a rich household. Apparently, she had some kind of relationship, and a mixed-race child came about. And so maybe she saw a way out of this situation or was looking for a community that would not care about this relationship. She converts, she moves to Nauvoo, Illinois, where she lives with Joseph Smith. She was promised, not just by the church, but by Joseph Smith’s brother, that she could be a full member of the community. He told her, “You can actually overcome your lineage and join a pure lineage.”
Obviously, today, hearing that kind of message makes us squirm because we don’t understand race that way. But more importantly, James really took to this promise. She isn’t looking to save her people. She’s looking to save her family. And to her that means finding community with people that I think she believed would last into the hereafter into the kingdoms to come. I think she heard this message of redemption, of racial redemption, and she held onto that story for the rest of her life—even as the church, once she gets to Utah, begins to reject people of African descent.
Green: You write about how the text of Book of Mormon helped to create a racialized culture—based on the text, Mormons aspired to being “a white and delightsome people.” How do these notions of white purity end up in a sacred Mormon text?
Mueller: Whatever you want to say about the origins of the Book of Mormon, it fits its time period really well. It’s very American. It tells a story of racial schism and how it came to be, dividing the world into a hierarchy of races, and that’s a standard American story—especially the idea that people born to a so-called darker-skinned race could not be redeemed.
The story of the Book of Mormon is not a black-white story, as Americans know it, where white is European and black is African. It’s an interfamily story. According to the Book of Mormon, an Israelite family came to New York in the 6th century B.C.E. The two main populations there are the light-skinned population called the Nephites and the dark-skinned population called the Lamanites, and the book traces this elaborate story of the rise and fall rise and fall of their civilizations. The Lamanites, according to the book, become Native Americans. They’re the native peoples who early European colonizers of America encounter.
For a long, long time, Americans have wondered: To whom do these Native Americans actually belong, in terms of lineage? So the book really fits the 1830s notion that Indian-ness is irreconcilable with whiteness.
Green: Conflicts over race in the Mormon church have lasted well into the 20th and 21st centuries. Black men were only allowed to become priests starting in the 1970s, and black men and women could not participate in sacred Mormon temple rites until that point. The Mormon church didn’t repudiate its past teachings on race until 2013.
Why did it take so long for these reforms to emerge?
Mueller: When Mormons disavow their past, it’s not simply disavowing institutional history. It’s pointing out what’s wrong with past leaders. Because of continuing revelation—the Mormon belief that their leaders are speaking messages directly from God—it’s really hard to disavow the prophets. If you start disavowing the prophets of the past, that undercuts the whole premise that God provides revelations to his people in the present day.
Green: The LDS church historically encouraged its members to buy Native American slaves or to adopt native children and raise them in their homes.** The latter practice extended into the 1990s with a program called the Indian Student Placement Program.
What do you make of these practices, exactly? Were they racist?
Mueller: The first official Mormon mission in history was at the end of 1830, when Joseph Smith sent his most important lieutenants to the Delaware Indians who had been pushed west to what is contemporary Kansas. In other words, the first Mormon mission was to convert Native Americans. That urge to “redeem” the native people of America remains a key feature.
The Indian Student Placement Program was an institutional project, and I do think it was a racially tinged project to “civilize” large numbers of Native American children. That said, at an individual level and at the family level, it’s hard to overestimate how much love and devotion these families felt for their children, and the love and care they provided—not only to the native children but to the native children’s families.
Green: In recent years, other conservative religious groups have pushed for what they call “racial reconciliation.” Are there similar efforts in the Mormon context?
Mueller: Their version of racial reconciliation is what I call “multi-cultural Mormonism.” There was an ad campaign called ‘I’m a Mormon’ from 2011 to 2012. This was explicitly presenting a multi-cultural face of Mormonism to the world: multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-lingual. The church acknowledged that it did have a problem as a white church.
But not a lot of kids are raised to save up for years and years to fund a mission to go to places that are often very difficult to live in, where they’re going to get doors slammed in their faces, where they might not speak the language. Kids from Utah are sent to Africa and South America. That’s a huge investment of their lives, and it’s supported by their families and institutional communities. I’m going to sound like a missionary here, but it is very much a message of unifying the world.
Unity is very important for Mormons. Religious unity used to be mapped onto racial unity. Today, it’s celebrating racial difference and racial history as a key part of the church.
Green: In recent months, people have called on conservative white Christians to grapple with issues of race, in part in response to a perceived resurgence of white nationalists and alt-right groups. What role do you think Mormons should play in this grappling?
Mueller: I’ve been predicting that Mormons will occupy spaces abandoned by white evangelicals: spaces of patriotism, family values, and morality that, unfortunately, some white evangelicals [have abandoned] because they have thrown in their lot and reputation with Trump and his white-Christian-nationalist project in such large numbers.
There are more Mormons outside the U.S. than inside. It’s likely that there are more non-white Mormons than there are white Mormons in the global church. So the church has its own future. It’s no longer an American project. It’s a global and international project. In the face of a U.S. political regime that puts white people and America first, a church that has a global identity has to reject that.
www.theatlantic.com
A historian looks at the legacy of racism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
EMMA GREENSEPTEMBER 18, 2017
Enjoy unlimited access to The Atlantic for less than $1 per week.
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The Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings in Salt Lake in 2015.JIM URQUHART / REUTERS
One group, however, has taken a slightly different path: Mormons. While a majority of Mormons voted for Trump in the 2016 election, he fared far worse than previous Republican presidential candidates among the minority religious group. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, many in Mormon-heavy Utah doubted the president’s moral character and strength as a role model.
Like other religious groups, Mormons have a complicated history around race. Until a few decades ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints taught that they “shall be a white and a delightsome people,” a phrase taken from the Book of Mormon. Until the 1970s, the LDS Church also restricted black members’ participation in important rituals and prohibited black men from becoming priests, despite evidence that they had participated more fully in the earliest years of the Church.*
Max Perry Mueller, a historian at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, argues that Mormonism is a quintessentially American religion. The Book of Mormon re-centers the story of Jesus on the Americas, and the faith, which was founded in the 19th century, also tells the story through a very American lens. Yet, while the story of race and the LDS Church is similar to other American experiences of race, it’s also distinctive, leaving Mormons to grapple with the legacy of racism and white supremacy in their own way.
I spoke with Mueller about his new book, Race and the Making of the Mormon People, which focuses on a few important figures in Mormon history. One of them, Jane Manning James, was part of the first black community in Salt Lake Valley. Despite her close relationship with the family of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, she was denied access to important religious rites during her lifetime because of her skin color.
Janan Graham-Russell wrote about her personal struggle with the LDS Church’s legacy of racism for The Atlantic in 2016. Lilly Fowler also reported on controversies over the Church’s Indian Student Placement program, which encouraged members to foster and adopt Native American children. My conversation with Mueller, below, has been edited for clarity and length.
Emma Green: There’s been talk about an emerging Mormon alt-right, populated by Mormon white nationalists. Much of this has focused on a Utah woman who blogs under the name ‘Wife with a Purpose,’ who created a “white-baby challenge” for fellow Mormons to perpetuate their putatively white heritage. What do you make of this?
Max Perry Mueller: Within Mormonism’s history is this concept of whiteness as Godliness and purity.
Issues of Christianity are often seen as linear, marching towards a certain direction. But actually, that’s not how history, especially theological history, works. The kind of white supremacy that’s at the heart of a lot of Mormon history, and the contemporary church that rejects white supremacy, both embody the same space.
Green: In what ways does white supremacy manifest either explicitly or implicitly in Mormon culture?
Mueller: Politics of respectability is huge. Mormons engage in respectability campaigning that is not unlike a lot of black church-going communities in the early 20th century. They’re trying to present themselves to mainstream, white, partisan gatekeepers as pious, patriotic, family-oriented, hardworking, contributing to the society, and willing to fight for the American flag in war. But unlike black Americans, Mormons were more easily accepted because of their skin pigment.
Green: You describe a black woman, Jane Manning James, who leads a conflicted life of aspiring to be a full member of both the Smith family and the Mormon church. She wanted to be bound eternally with her family, which is an important part of Mormon theology, and yet she was denied this privilege during her lifetime.
She seems to have a complicated relationship with her race. There’s a line you included where she says, “I’m white with the exception of the color of my skin.”
Why would somebody say that, or want to be a part of a culture that makes them aspire toward a different skin color?
Mueller: The question you just raised is one that I still think about and will probably think about for the rest of my life. Why would this woman—who is clearly full of incredible intelligence, skills, and perseverance—throw her lot in with a community that would not have her as a member? I really do believe, at the end of the day, she had faith in the gospel that she dedicated her life to.
She was from Connecticut. Her mother was a slave, and she kind of had a liminal existence—the line between slave and free was not so clearly demarcated in the North. She was a servant girl in a rich household. Apparently, she had some kind of relationship, and a mixed-race child came about. And so maybe she saw a way out of this situation or was looking for a community that would not care about this relationship. She converts, she moves to Nauvoo, Illinois, where she lives with Joseph Smith. She was promised, not just by the church, but by Joseph Smith’s brother, that she could be a full member of the community. He told her, “You can actually overcome your lineage and join a pure lineage.”
Obviously, today, hearing that kind of message makes us squirm because we don’t understand race that way. But more importantly, James really took to this promise. She isn’t looking to save her people. She’s looking to save her family. And to her that means finding community with people that I think she believed would last into the hereafter into the kingdoms to come. I think she heard this message of redemption, of racial redemption, and she held onto that story for the rest of her life—even as the church, once she gets to Utah, begins to reject people of African descent.
Green: You write about how the text of Book of Mormon helped to create a racialized culture—based on the text, Mormons aspired to being “a white and delightsome people.” How do these notions of white purity end up in a sacred Mormon text?
Mueller: Whatever you want to say about the origins of the Book of Mormon, it fits its time period really well. It’s very American. It tells a story of racial schism and how it came to be, dividing the world into a hierarchy of races, and that’s a standard American story—especially the idea that people born to a so-called darker-skinned race could not be redeemed.
The story of the Book of Mormon is not a black-white story, as Americans know it, where white is European and black is African. It’s an interfamily story. According to the Book of Mormon, an Israelite family came to New York in the 6th century B.C.E. The two main populations there are the light-skinned population called the Nephites and the dark-skinned population called the Lamanites, and the book traces this elaborate story of the rise and fall rise and fall of their civilizations. The Lamanites, according to the book, become Native Americans. They’re the native peoples who early European colonizers of America encounter.
For a long, long time, Americans have wondered: To whom do these Native Americans actually belong, in terms of lineage? So the book really fits the 1830s notion that Indian-ness is irreconcilable with whiteness.
Green: Conflicts over race in the Mormon church have lasted well into the 20th and 21st centuries. Black men were only allowed to become priests starting in the 1970s, and black men and women could not participate in sacred Mormon temple rites until that point. The Mormon church didn’t repudiate its past teachings on race until 2013.
Why did it take so long for these reforms to emerge?
Mueller: When Mormons disavow their past, it’s not simply disavowing institutional history. It’s pointing out what’s wrong with past leaders. Because of continuing revelation—the Mormon belief that their leaders are speaking messages directly from God—it’s really hard to disavow the prophets. If you start disavowing the prophets of the past, that undercuts the whole premise that God provides revelations to his people in the present day.
Green: The LDS church historically encouraged its members to buy Native American slaves or to adopt native children and raise them in their homes.** The latter practice extended into the 1990s with a program called the Indian Student Placement Program.
What do you make of these practices, exactly? Were they racist?
Mueller: The first official Mormon mission in history was at the end of 1830, when Joseph Smith sent his most important lieutenants to the Delaware Indians who had been pushed west to what is contemporary Kansas. In other words, the first Mormon mission was to convert Native Americans. That urge to “redeem” the native people of America remains a key feature.
The Indian Student Placement Program was an institutional project, and I do think it was a racially tinged project to “civilize” large numbers of Native American children. That said, at an individual level and at the family level, it’s hard to overestimate how much love and devotion these families felt for their children, and the love and care they provided—not only to the native children but to the native children’s families.
Green: In recent years, other conservative religious groups have pushed for what they call “racial reconciliation.” Are there similar efforts in the Mormon context?
Mueller: Their version of racial reconciliation is what I call “multi-cultural Mormonism.” There was an ad campaign called ‘I’m a Mormon’ from 2011 to 2012. This was explicitly presenting a multi-cultural face of Mormonism to the world: multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-lingual. The church acknowledged that it did have a problem as a white church.
But not a lot of kids are raised to save up for years and years to fund a mission to go to places that are often very difficult to live in, where they’re going to get doors slammed in their faces, where they might not speak the language. Kids from Utah are sent to Africa and South America. That’s a huge investment of their lives, and it’s supported by their families and institutional communities. I’m going to sound like a missionary here, but it is very much a message of unifying the world.
Unity is very important for Mormons. Religious unity used to be mapped onto racial unity. Today, it’s celebrating racial difference and racial history as a key part of the church.
Green: In recent months, people have called on conservative white Christians to grapple with issues of race, in part in response to a perceived resurgence of white nationalists and alt-right groups. What role do you think Mormons should play in this grappling?
Mueller: I’ve been predicting that Mormons will occupy spaces abandoned by white evangelicals: spaces of patriotism, family values, and morality that, unfortunately, some white evangelicals [have abandoned] because they have thrown in their lot and reputation with Trump and his white-Christian-nationalist project in such large numbers.
There are more Mormons outside the U.S. than inside. It’s likely that there are more non-white Mormons than there are white Mormons in the global church. So the church has its own future. It’s no longer an American project. It’s a global and international project. In the face of a U.S. political regime that puts white people and America first, a church that has a global identity has to reject that.
Mormons Once Aspired to Be a 'White and Delightsome' People
A historian looks at the legacy of racism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Opinion | Why Race Is Still a Problem for Mormons (Published 2012)
The Mormon Church should explain its past racist policies.
Why Race Is Still a Problem for Mormons
By John G. Turner
- Aug. 18, 2012
Brigham Young, who established the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City and whose statue stands beside it, relegated blacks to second-class status in the church.Credit...Lowell Georgia/Corbis
Fairfax, Va.
“I BELIEVE that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people,” sings Elder Kevin Price in the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon.” The line is meant to be funny, and it is — in part because it’s true.
In a June 1978 letter, the first presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaimed that “all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color.” Men of African descent could now hold the priesthood, the power and authority exercised by all male members of the church in good standing. Such a statement was necessary, because until then, blacks were relegated to a very second-class status within the church.
The revelation may have lifted the ban, but it neither repudiated it nor apologized for it. “It doesn’t make a particle of difference,” proclaimed the Mormon apostle Bruce R. McConkie a few months later, “what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June of this year, 1978.”
Mr. McConkie meant such words to encourage Mormons to embrace the new revelation, and he may have solemnly believed that it made the history of the priesthood ban irrelevant. But to many others around the country, statements of former church leaders about “the Negro matter” do, in fact, matter a great deal.
They cause pain to church members of African descent, provide cover for repugnant views and make the church an easy target for criticism and satire. The church would benefit itself and its members — and one member in particular, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — by formally repudiating the priesthood ban and the racist theories that accompanied it.
Mormonism wasn’t always troubled by anti-black racism. In a country deeply stained by slavery and anti-black racism, the church, founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, was noteworthy for its relative racial egalitarianism. Smith episodically opposed slavery and tolerated the priesthood ordination of black men, at least one of whom, Elijah Abel, occupied a position of minor authority.
It was Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, who adopted the policies that now haunt the church. He described black people as cursed with dark skin as punishment for Cain’s murder of his brother. “Any man having one drop of the seed of Cane in him cannot hold the priesthood,” he declared in 1852. Young deemed black-white intermarriage so sinful that he suggested that a man could atone for it only by having “his head cut off” and spilling “his blood upon the ground.” Other Mormon leaders convinced themselves that the pre-existent spirits of black people had sinned in heaven by supporting Lucifer in his rebellion against God.
The priesthood ban had sweeping ecclesiastical consequences for black Mormons. They could not participate in the sacred ordinances, like the endowment ceremony (which prepares one for the afterlife) and sealings (which formally bind a family together), rites that Smith and Young taught were necessary to obtain celestial glory.
Of course, while perhaps unusual in its fervor and particular in its theories, the rhetoric of Mormon leaders was lamentably within the mainstream of white American opinion. White Christians of many denominational stripes used repugnant language to justify slavery and the inferiority of black people. Most accepted theories that the sins of Cain and Ham had cursed an entire race. Indeed, those white Americans who today express outrage over Mormon racism should remind themselves of their own forebears’ sins before casting stones at the Latter-day Saints.
Most Protestant denominations, however, gradually apologized for their past racism. In contrast, while Mormon leaders generically criticize past and present racism, they carefully avoid any specific criticism of past presidents and apostles, careful not to disrupt traditional reverence for the church’s prophets.
To an extent, this strategy has worked. The church is now much more diverse, with hundreds of thousands of members in Africa and many members of African descent in Latin America. In the United States, not all Mormons look like members of the Romney family: Mia Love, a daughter of Haitian immigrants and the Republican nominee for a Utah Congressional seat, proudly states that she has “never felt unwelcome in the church.”
Nevertheless, regardless of how outsiders would respond (audiences will still enjoy that line in “The Book of Mormon”), a fuller confrontation with the past would serve the church’s interests. Journalists frequently ask prominent Mormons like Mr. Romney and Ms. Love about the priesthood ban. African-Americans, both members and prospective converts, find the history distinctly unsettling. Statements by prior church presidents and apostles provide fodder for those Latter-day Saints — if small in number — who adhere to racist notions.
The church could begin leaving those problems behind if its leaders explained that their predecessors had confused their own racist views with God’s will and that the priesthood ban resulted from human error and limitations rather than a divine curse. Given the church’s ecclesiology, this step would be difficult.
Mormons have no reason to feel unusually ashamed of their church’s past racial restrictions, except maybe for their duration. Their church, like most other white American churches, was entangled in a deeply entrenched national sin.
Still, acknowledging serious errors on the part of past prophets inevitably raises questions about the revelatory authority of contemporary leaders. Such concerns, however, are not insurmountable for religious movements. One can look to the Bible for countless examples of patriarchs and prophets who acknowledged grave errors and moral lapses but still retained the respect of their people.
Likewise, the abiding love and veneration most Latter-day Saints have for their leaders would readily survive a fuller reckoning with their human frailties and flaws. The Mormon people need not believe they have perfect prophets, either past or present.
Mormon president calls on members to help end racism
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' president issued another plea for members to help end racism, saying Sunday at the faith’s signature conference that God loves people of all races equally and that it pains him to see Black people suffer prejudice. Russell M...
apnews.com
Mormon president calls on members to help end racism
By BRADY McCOMBSOctober 4, 2020
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In this Saturday, Oct. 3, 2020, video image streamed by The Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, church President Russell M. Nelson speaks during the opening of the 190th Semiannual General Conference at the Conference Center Theater on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. The twice-annual conference kicked off Saturday without anyone attending in person and top leaders sitting some 6-feet apart inside an empty room as the faith takes precautions to avoid the spread of the coronavirus. A livestream of the conference showed a few of the faith's top leaders sitting alone inside a small auditorium in Salt Lake City, Normally, top leaders sit side-by-side on stage with the religion's well-known choir behind them and some 20,000 people watching. (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints via AP)
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ president issued another plea for members to help end racism, saying Sunday at the faith’s signature conference that God loves people of all races equally and that it pains him to see Black people suffer prejudice.
Russell M. Nelson’s comments followed similar speeches by other top leaders Saturday at the conference that comes as many members live through a reckoning over racial injustice, especially in the U.S. following the May police killing of Black man George Floyd.
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“God does not love one race more than another. His doctrine on this matter is clear,” Nelson said. “I assure you that your standing before God is not determined by the color of your skin.”
Members believe church presidents are living prophets who receive revelations from God.
Like the leaders who spoke on Saturday, Nelson didn’t mention the church’s past ban on Black men in the lay priesthood. The prohibition — which stood until 1978 — was rooted in the belief that black skin was a curse. It remains one of the most sensitive topics in the faith’s history.
The church disavowed the ban and the reasons behind it in a 2013 essay but has never issued a formal apology — a necessary step for some members.
The Utah-based religion known widely as the Mormon church doesn’t provide ethnic or racial breakdowns of its 16.6 million members — but scholars say Black followers make up a small portion of adherents. None of the 15 men who will sit on the faith’s top leadership panels are Black. Church leadership did become more diverse in 2018 when it sent to the previously all-white Quorum of the Twelve Apostles its first-ever apostles of Latin American and Asian descent.
This weekend’s twice-yearly conference is the second one held this year without an audience.
Since becoming president in 2018, the 96-year-old Nelson has called for racial harmony and launched a formal partnership with the NAACP.
“I grieve that our Black brothers and sisters the world over are enduring the pains of racism and prejudice,” Nelson said.
bruh when you have no history or culture of your own
thats what you do.....
the original meaning for black is pale pasty....
they literally flipped the whole fuckin script...
so that scripture was actually talkin about pale
pasty people when it mentioned black skin..
we as a collective truly have no idea how much
they flipped that script and covered up all
our shit...
i have no idea why i had seen this already
I think it was during Big Love on HBO or something
I think it was during Big Love on HBO or something
I remember that video when two Mormons rolled up on a brother who happened to be an BHI(Black Hebrew Israelite). He had them shook daddy. 
Not surprising, all crackers are naturally racist, I thought we knew that?
That show was wild....I asked my wife if we could conduct interviews. She was not amused.
Anyone who follows mormonism is a fucking idiot of the highest order, so yeah white racist.
Fuckin crakkkas. 
They messed up already by referring to elohim as one entity when elohim is plural as in a race. Elohim is the Hebrew version of anunnak which means the mighty ones that came from the skyi
My man! This brother knows "right knowledge" and overstanding.
Its wild how big it is
Steve Young is a mormon i got family in utah too and the stories are wild
Look at all the changes BYU has had to do to become a viable football program and the stories black players have.
But I don't know man scientology is up there too and have you seen the vow on hbo?
They all seem extreme from outside
But we really don't want to rank religions
Cause Look at all these Maga preachers repping Trump using the Bible
That was my SHOW.
They showed some deeply hidden aspects of Mormonism that were NEVER shown to outsiders before. All those ceremonies? Were secret
BroI remember that video when two Mormons rolled up on a brother who happened to be an BHI(Black Hebrew Israelite). He had them shook daddy.
that video is embedded into my mind
@Dr. Truth told u niggaI remember that video when two Mormons rolled up on a brother who happened to be an BHI(Black Hebrew Israelite). He had them shook daddy.
it’s a PHRASE
" DUM-DUM-DUM- DUM-DUMMMMMM..."
Who got the whole cartoon clip?
Gave them niggas beddibes
Gave them niggas beddibes
Do MORMONS STILL WEAR magic underwear?
yup Young wore his during games
Agreed, it's just that the foundation/story/beliefs of the mormon church are hilariously stupid even compared to other religions.This same thing could be said about Christianity.
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