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“race”

Book Review: When Religion, Race, and Sport Collide (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016)

By March 4, 2018


We are pleased to post this review from Craig Yugawa, a medical student at Washington University in St. Louis. You can follow Craig on Twitter

Darron T. Smith?s When Race, Religion and Sport Collide: Black Athletes at BYU and Beyond is a skillful recounting of the tenuous status black college athletes face in the larger American context, especially those at ?Predominantly White Institutions? (PWIs). While covering athletics in America more broadly, Smith uses BYU?s unique institutional and racial history as a lens to focus on the societal and cultural barriers commonly faced by black athletes who repeatedly face ?objectification of their bodies, [while at the same time] leav[ing] the ivy tower battered, bruised, and empty-handed? (148). This timely work is a compelling narrative which weaves together easily understood personal anecdotes; high level social science, medical, and humanities research; and theological summary to flesh out the complicated relationship between the LDS church and the athletes of color at its flagship university.

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Review: Mueller, Race and the Making of the Mormon People (University of North Carolina, 2017)

By November 27, 2017


On the surface, Max Perry Mueller?s book is, like several other recent works, a study of the shifting racialist ideas in nineteenth century Mormonism. Like those books, Mueller argues that early Mormonism is a particularly useful illustration of the fluidity of race, particularly in the early decades of the United States. When, as Mueller argues, white Americans began in the nineteenth century to understand ?race as (secular) biology,? (12) they began arguing that those characteristics they used to classify and label ?races? were organic, functions of one?s biological makeup, and though these characteristics extended from the merely physical (like skin color) to issues of intellect and temperament, most people determined them to be inborn and hence immutable.

 

The Mormons, Mueller argues, were different, in two ways.

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Patriarchal Blessings, Lineage, and Race: Historical Background and a Survey

By June 8, 2017


“Following the death of Joseph Smith the policy of the church was to exclude blacks from ordination to the priesthood and from Latter-day Saint temples. Although some black members of the church were given patriarchal blessings, declarations of lineage were omitted as a matter of policy. But guidelines were not consistent, and the question remained the subject of debate. In 1934 Patriarch James H. Wallis wrote in his journal, “I have always known that one of negro blood cannot receive the Priesthood nor the blessings of the Temple, and are also disqualified from receiving a patriarchal blessing . . . But I am sure there is no objection to giving them a blessing of encouragement and comfort, leaving out all reference to lineage and sealing.” Apostle John A. Widtsoe relayed President Heber J. Grant’s reply to Wallis’s request for a ruling. It stated, “It will be alright for Brother Wallis to bless them, but as to their status in the future, that their status in the future, that is . . . in the hands of the Lord.”[i]

 

In a previous post, I explored the ways in which racism has been espoused by LDS leaders and average Latter-day Saints alike, and how the vestiges of some of those teachings remain in modern Latter-day Saint doctrine. In today’s post, I’d like to explore the ways in which patriarchal blessings continue to identify Latter-day Saints by racial heritage, and, in some instances, place people of African descent as separate and inferior to “white” Mormons, through the LDS Church’s counsel not to declare an Israelite lineage to African-descended Mormons.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a “patriarchal blessing” is a blessing bestowed by an ordained patriarch (in the vein of Old Testament patriarchs like Abraham), which dispenses direction and advice to the receiver. The blessing also declares the blood lineage of the receiver in relation to his or her connection to the House of Israel.[ii] Smith’s own theology was generally universalist, meaning that he did not preclude any person from obtaining salvation, regardless of racial background. In the New Testament, John the Baptist preached to the Pharisees and Sadducees that their Abrahamic lineage did not elevate their relationship or access to God. Indeed, John the Baptist informed the Jews, “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”[iii] Joseph Smith similarly believed that Abrahamic lineage did not matter in relation to salvation or divine favor. God could raise up anyone, including Africans, as “children of Abraham,” so far as they converted to Mormonism and accepted its principles and ordinances.

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Tweets on “Race and Gender in Mormonism”

By November 18, 2016


Howdy,

Last night the University of Utah’s Tanner Humanities Center hosted a panel discussion on race and gender in Mormonism. The panel featured talks from Margaret Toscano and Paul Reeve, and was part of Marlin K. Jensen Scholar in Residence Brian Birch’s class, “The Intellectual Life of Mormonism: Reason, Faith, & Science Among the Latter-day Saints.” We tweeted about it here!

Enjoy


Call for Papers: Mormons, Race, and Gender in the Borderlands

By August 12, 2015


CALL  FOR  PAPERS:

Race, Gender, and Power in the Mormon Borderlands

Mormon history lies at the borders between subaltern and dominant cultures. On the one hand, due to their unusual family structure and theocratic government, Mormons were a persecuted minority for the better part of the nineteenth century.  On the other, Mormons played a significant role as colonizers of the North American West, extending their reach to the borderlands of Mexico, Canada, and the Pacific Islands. There Mormon colonists intermarried with Native Americans, Mexicans, Hawaiians and Samoans, even as they placed exclusions on interracial sexual relations and marriage. During the nineteenth century, Mormons also discouraged Native peoples? polygamous practices while encouraging plural marriage for white women. And Mormon religious doctrine subordinated persons of color within church hierarchy well into the twentieth century. African-American men, for example, could not hold the priesthood until 1978. Historically, then, Mormons have navigated multiple borders– between colonizer and colonized, between white and Other, and between minority and imperial identities. This limnal position calls for further investigation. We propose an anthology of essays on race, gender, and power in the Mormon borderlands.

Over the past thirty years, historians of Mormon women have expanded our understanding of gender and power in Mormon society. However, most of these studies focus on white Mormon women, while Mormon women of color have remained largely invisible. This volume seeks not simply to make visible the lived experiences of Mormon women of color, but more importantly, to explore gender and  race in the Mormon borderlands. Taken together, these essays will address how Mormon women and men navigated the complications of minority and colonizer status, interracial marriage and doctrinal race hierarchies, patriarchy and female agency, violence and religious responsibility, and plural identities. These metaphoric borders were brought into play on the geographic and cultural borders of the United States. Specifically, this volume will encompass the continental U.S. West, the borderlands of Canada and Mexico, and Pacific Rim islands such as Samoa and Hawaii, exploring the intersectionality of race and gender in Mormon cultures on the borders from the nineteenth through twenty-first centuries. This focus will open new directions in Mormon history in concert with recent trends in western history. The anthology will have full scholarly apparatus and we welcome both historical research and interdisciplinary work.

Please submit article proposals/manuscript drafts by Sept.15, 2015, to Dee Garceau at <garceau@rhodes.edu>  (901-484-1837)

Co-Editors:  Dee Garceau, Rhodes College  garceau@rhodes.edu ; Sujey Vega, Arizona State University, Sujey.Vega@asu.edu; Andrea Radke-Moss, BYU-Idaho  radkea@byui.edu

Co-Editors’ Faculty Profiles:

Dee Garceau

Sujey Vega

Andrea Radke-Moss

Please feel free to contact us with any questions you might have.

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JMH Special Issue on Race: A Brief Introduction

By July 2, 2015


When I composed the introduction to the special edition of the Journal of Mormon History (July 2015), I described the study of race and Mormonism as a ?nice subject, historically obscure even within the Mormon studies world.? But boy have I been proven wrong, or at least behind the times!

Anyone attending last month?s Mormon History Association annual meeting in Provo, where many of the panels dealt with race (broadly conceived) and the restored church?not to mention the powerful Smith-Pettit plenary by Margaret Jacobs on the adoption of Native American Children by Mormon families as well as the Best Book Award going to Russell Stevenson?s documentary history on people of African descent and Mormonism?would recognize that race has become a major preoccupation for the corner of Mormon studies that MHA represents.

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Max Perry Mueller’s “History Lessons: Race and the LDS Church,” JMH 50th Roundtable

By April 10, 2015


Max Perry Mueller uses a clever title, ?History Lessons,? in his essay on ?Race and the LDS Church? in the fiftieth anniversary edition of the Journal of Mormon History. ?History Lessons? implicate some form of historical appropriations. Institutions use history to formulate lessons, which support certain values and ways of knowing. Mueller traces how the LDS Church alters historical narratives of a ?black Mormon past? through three main time periods to argue ?the LDS Church has worked to tell a story of historical continuity in its relationship with people of African descent? (143).

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Guest Post: From the Archives: Missionary Work, Race, and the Priesthood and Temple Ban in Brazil, circa 1977-78 (Part II)

By April 3, 2015


This is second and final entry in a series of posts from guest Shannon Flynn on missionary work, race, and the Priesthood Ban that draws on his experience as a missionary in Brazil from 1977-1979. See Part I here.

_________________________

The final document in this series is a scan of a letter that we missionaries received at the end of February 1978. The handwritten note is from the Mission President at the time, Roger B. Bietler.

This letter indicates to me that there was beginning to be a softening of what had been, at various times, a hardened position. By the time this letter was written, the date of the completion of the temple in Sao Paulo would have been known at church headquarters. It is my estimation that the temple dedication was the signal event that provided the final impetus to change church policy/doctrine regarding blacks and the priesthood. There would have been a flood of people entering that temple whose linage had not been thoroughly checked and such a situation could have caused a significant problem. What is known to few, is that a number of men in Brazil before June 1978 had discovered a partial black linage after having been ordained and served in many leadership capacities. I know of one story in particular where Elder Grant Bangerter had to travel to Belo Horizonte to release a stake president because that stake president had discovered, through diligent family history work, that he was partially descended from black people. I don?t know what percentage it was, but it couldn?t have been much. The stake president had informed Elder Bangerter, who in turn had consulted with higher authorities in Salt Lake and then went to Belo Horizonte to reorganize the stake. Nothing was ever said to the stake members and it was handled as delicately as possible. Nothing was done to ?remove? his priesthood, he was just asked to not perform anymore ordinances or serve in leadership capacities. I was told Elder Bangerter was personally mortified to have to do that to this man but his personal discomfort was outweighed by his need to maintain loyalty to his ecclesiastical superiors and fidelity to established policy.

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Guest Post: From the Archives: Missionary Work, Race, and the Priesthood and Temple Ban in Brazil, circa 1977-78 (Part I)

By April 2, 2015


Today’s guest post comes from Shannon Flynn, a longtime student of church history who currently lives in Gilbert, Arizona. Shannon holds a B.A. in history from the University of Utah and had published four book reviews in the Journal of Mormon History. Today’s post is the first in a two-part series that draws on his experience and presents documents (with accompanying translations) from his time serving as a missionary in Brazil Sau Paulo South Mission from 1977-79.

While the significance of Brazil and its unique cultural heritage and hierarchy of race often receives at least a passing mention in discussions of the ending of the ban in June 1978, often lacking from historical accounts of this era are the first-person perspectives and (especially) documents of the sort provided by Shannon below. Part II of the series will be posted tomorrow.

_________________________

I was called to serve a two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Brazil Sao Paulo South Mission from the first week of March 1977 to the first week of March 1979. Because of visa problems, I did not arrive in Brazil until October 13, 1977. I was assigned to the Maua area of Sao Paulo during the month of June 1978. It was there that I heard of the announcement of extending the priesthood to all worthy males. The impact this had on missionary work and the progress of the church cannot be underestimated — it was a sea change. Previous to that time the way the church dealt with blacks and the priesthood had been a vexing problem since the first missionaries landed in Joinville in 1926. In the first few years blacks were almost never proselyted but that eventually changed and methods were developed to handle the ensuing problems. Previous to the time I arrived there was a lesson that was added to the regular discussions that dealt with the problem of determining whether the investigator had black lineage (scans of the documents, together with accompanying translation, can be found here). This lesson was given at the conclusion of the regular discussions. I don’t ever remember using this exact catechism style of discussion but we would try to accomplish the goal of determining the lineage of the persons being taught. Missionaries elsewhere in Brazil used similar lessons during this time — in a 2013 guest post at Keepapitchinin.org, Grant Vaughn provided scans of the lesson he taught in the Brazil Porto Alegre Mission from 1976-78.  Moreover, I would assume that most missions before my time had something of a similar nature.[1] 

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Missionary Lesson on Race in the Brazil Sao Paulo South Mission, Circa 1977

By April 1, 2015


Untitled Untitled2

 

Elder: We are all children of God.
Mathew 6:9 ?Our father who art in heaven?
Is it true that God loves each of us equally?
Response: Loves us, yes.
Read 2 Nephi 26:33 ? ?inviteth them all ?white or black, bond or free??

Elder: Although God loves all of us, are we all the same regarding talents and mercy?
Response: No.
Read Abraham 3:22-23 ? intelligences organized before the world. Intelligences were different: some being noble and great.
Elder: According to what the scripture says, when was it that God chose those persons that were to be the leaders on the earth.
Response: Before birth.

Elder: What is the authority that God gave His leaders for the purpose of acting in his name on the earth?
Response: The Priesthood.

Elder: God chose His leaders that would be priesthood holders on the earth before they were born.
Read Alma 13:1, 3-4
When were these priests chosen?
Response: From the foundation of the world.
Elder: How were they chosen?
Response: With the opportunity to choose, they chose the good and exercised great faith.
Elder: Was God just in the decision he makes as to who can hold the Priesthood?
Response: Yes, he was. They deserved the right.

Elder: We know that God has a time and place for everything. For example, this earth was created for our mortal life at a certain time, and in the future the time for this mortal life will end. Now, just as Jesus was the savior of the world, He was not born at the beginning of the earth nor the end, but when?
Response: The middle.
Elder: This does not mean to say the he loved the people who live in the middle any more than those at the beginning or the end, wouldn?t you say?
Response: You are right.
Elder: This was just the right time for Him to come.

Elder: God also decided before the world that some of His sons would not hold the Priesthood on the earth until He decided the right time had come. God put all those spirits in one race so they could be identified. We read in the scriptures that after the flood in the time of Noah that this race ended up in the African continent. Which race was this?
Response: The black race.
Read Abraham 1: 21, 25-27
Elder: What kind of man was Pharaoh?
Response: Wise, just and fair.
Elder: Then, what was the reason he could not hold the Priesthood?
Response: Because he was not of the lineage that could hold it.
Elder: God has not told us exactly why black people cannot hold the Priesthood currently, but just that it is so. But let us consider our lives in general. What is it that God wants for every person?
Response: To perfect us, save us etc.

Elder: Do you think that God loves all of us equally?
Response: Loves all, yes.
Elder: Then brother, don?t you think that God in his wisdom, does what is best for all of his people?
Response: He does, yes.

Elder: Joseph Smith and other modern prophets having been instructed by God the blacks will receive the priesthood in a future day, when the time is right. But for now, the blacks can join the church, but since their hour has not yet fully arrived, we are not sent to them.

Elder: Brother, what do you think your own attitude should be with respect to our brothers and sisters here on earth?
Response: One of love.
Elder: Members of our church have suffered persecution at various times and places. It is our desire to love everyone and fight for the rights of every man in all places. Brother, are you capable of accepting and appreciating people of all races and cultures equally?
Response: I am.

Elder: Do you know if you or your parents have any black linage?
Response: If yes, Elder: Do you want to be baptized and live in the church?
If no: Elder: If you were to discover after your baptism that someone in your family had come from a black lineage would you remain faithful in the church?

Elder: Do you have any questions?

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

D&C 76:24 — the inhabitants of the earth are sons and daughters of God

Hebrews 12 — The father of our spirits

Acts 10:34 — God is no respecter of persons

John 3:16 — God so loved the world

Revelation 12:7-9 — the war in heaven showed great differences

Jeremiah 1:5 — the prophet was chosen before he was born.

Moses 7:8,12,22 — People of color had no place amongst the others

Genesis 24:1-4 — the prophets did not want their descendants to marry people of Canaan.

Esdras 2: 62-63 — The Jews kept their genealogies, even while in captivity in Babylon, so they could have rights to the priesthood. Those without a genealogy had to present themselves before the prophet.

Mathew 12:30 — There were no neutrals in heaven

Acts 17 — Pre-ordination

Mathew 15:24 — Christ did not preach to the gentiles, but only the lost sheep of the house of Israel

Deuteronomy 32:7-8 — all of the house of Israel were numbered before coming to earth.

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