Mormonism and White Supremacy

American Religion and The Problem of Racial Innocence

Joanna Brooks

Draws from little-known archival sources to provide revolutionary new insights on Mormon faith and culture
Moves beyond one-denomination history to frame analyses relevant to many other American Christian traditions

Mormonism and White Supremacy

American Religion and The Problem of Racial Innocence

Joanna Brooks

Description

To this day, churchgoing Mormons report that they hear from their fellow congregants in Sunday meetings that African-Americans are the accursed descendants of Cain whose spirits--due to their lack of spiritual mettle in a premortal existence--were destined to come to earth with a "curse" of black skin. This claim can be made in many Mormon Sunday Schools without fear of contradiction. You are more likely to encounter opposition if you argue that the ban on the ordination of Black Mormons was a product of human racism. Like most difficult subjects in Mormon history and practice, says Joanna Brooks, the priesthood and temple ban on Blacks has been managed carefully in LDS institutional settings with a combination of avoidance, denial, selective truth-telling, and determined silence.
As America begins to come to terms with the costs of white privilege to Black lives, this book urges a soul-searching examination of the role American Christianity has played in sustaining everyday white supremacy by assuring white people of their innocence. In Mormonism and White Supremacy, Joanna Brooks offers an unflinching look at her own people's history and culture and finds in them lessons that will hit home for every scholar of American religion and person of faith.

Mormonism and White Supremacy

American Religion and The Problem of Racial Innocence

Joanna Brooks

Chapter 1: American Christianity, White Supremacy and Racial Innocence
Chapter 2: The Religious Micropolitics of White over Black: Early Mormonism
Chapter 3: Originalism, Infallibility, and the Institutionalization of White Supremacy, 1880s to 1940s
Chapter 4: The Production of National Racial Innocence: 1950s - 1960s
Chapter 5: White Privilege, Racial Innocence, and the Costs of Anti-Racist Dissent, 1940s - 1980s 1
Chapter 6: The Persistence of White Supremacy Beyond Desegregation
Chapter 7: Dismantling White Supremacy and Racial Innocence
Index

Mormonism and White Supremacy

American Religion and The Problem of Racial Innocence

Joanna Brooks

Author Information

Joanna Brooks is an award-winning scholar of American religion, race, gender, and culture, a human rights activist, and the author or editor of ten books including Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings.

Mormonism and White Supremacy

American Religion and The Problem of Racial Innocence

Joanna Brooks

Reviews and Awards

"It is one of the most trenchant and persuasive appeals to confront the history of LDS anti-black racism, past and present, and is a clarion call for academic intervention in contemporary issues." -- Benjamin E. Park, Sam Houston State University

"Dr. Joanna Brooks boldly interrogates the impact of white supremacy on American Christianity, and specifically her own formation within Mormonism. Her work offers an unabashed examination into the history of racism within the Church. This detailed exploration into how racism lives and breathes within the Latter-day Saint religion is an important read for any white American Christian. It is, in part, a spiritual awakening to confront the demons of racism within one's religious beliefs and Joanna Brooks is willing and called to lead you into that awakening" -- he Rev. Dr. Fatimah Salleh, founder of A Certain Work

"As a scholar of race and religion in American literature and Mormonism, Joanna Brooks brings to her work a deep commitment to accurate and credible scholarship as well as a keen sense of language, tone, and literary analysis of historical documents. This is a singularly important, expertly produced, and fluently written text that documents, as Brooks phrases it, the Mormon Church's historical 'possessive investment in whiteness.'" -- Paul Harvey, University of Colorado

"Joanna Brooks frankly reminds us that white supremacy doesn't just happen. It is created, cultivated, passed on, sanctified, then perpetuated through forgetfulness. Mormonism emerges here as the quintessential American religion, but in the unenviable mode of participating fully in the nation's original sin of anti-black racism. This book is strong medicine without the spoonful of sugar-but precisely the kind of medicine that may help effect a cure." -- Patrick Q. Mason, Utah State University