Mormonism, White Supremacy, Joanna Brooks, and Telling Stories

Joanna Brooks, Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020)

I

Like her earlier volume edited with Gina Colvin, Decolonizing Mormonism (University of Utah, 2018), Joanna Brooks’s new Mormonism and White Supremacy is an exhortation as much as it is an academic work. Both both books ask us to consider where the lines between academic analysis and moral analysis exactly lie. Brooks discards the traditional pretense of academic objectivity, the stentorian presumption of omniscience that echoes through the pages of most university-published tomes.

To that end this book will probably be most comprehensible to Latter-day Saint audiences, and Brooks probably intends that. Her book moves quickly through the history of the tradition and assumes some familiarity on the reader’s part with phrases like “First Presidency” and “John Taylor.” Brooks inserts herself into the narrative, a product as well as an analyst of the community she writes about. Indeed, in a real sense this book is a plea to that community. Brooks’s first lines testify to that: “This book seeks to instigate soul-searching,” she declares, “academic, institutional, and personal.” (1)

She writes as an anguished Mormon. She wants her fellow Saints to mourn with those that mourn. She believes that though her tradition has enabled such pain, its Christian roots also equip it to be particularly convicted by the reality of pain and particularly prepared to pursue its alleviation. Brooks not only describes what Christian theology is—she also declares what Christian theology should be quite straightforwardly. A “robust Christian conceptualization of sin would hold that it is a deadly but structuring condition of mortality, just as racism is a deadly but structuring condition of life in the United States.” (5)

Is this unusual for a book about history published by Oxford University Press? In some ways. As American academia institutionalized and professionalized, gradually academics, like journalists, came to see themselves as neutral arbiters, and though every introductory graduate course in the humanities solemnly counsels graduate students that objectivity is impossible, most books (at least in the discipline of history) tend to avoid personalizing the narrative. There is, though, a range of newer scholarship pressing back against this, forcing us to consider ourselves as authors and to perceive the public and political implications of our work. This is probably a good thing.

II

Though Brooks’s prose has a light touch a fair amount of theory drifts through the book. This means while it seems to be written for a Mormon audience it will also be most easily digested by those with at least some familiarity with academic theory about race. That choice may be dangerous, given Brooks’s intentions. But this is still a compelling story about the enactment of a grim tautology. Early Mormons were mostly white people who took for granted their whiteness—an identity then as now with uncertain borders that white Mormons among many others have contributed to defining and clarifying as, for the most part, themselves. Because they were white they believed the church they founded also to be white—if only implicitly.

It is important to recognize that while many Americans imagine “racism” in terms of making conscious choices that reflect disdain for people of other backgrounds, a more useful conceptualization of the term acknowledges that is as much or more about assumption, conditioning, structure and possibility as it is about individual animus or aggressive hate. Therefore, white Mormons simply by default assumed the church’s structures and cosmology to coincide with the racial distinctions they understood to exist on earth. Hence as they created their church they also created, to some extent, what whiteness meant.

And hence, white Mormons like many other white Christians imputed those distinctions onto the hierarchies of eternity, lending the racial structures they believed to exist the weight of divine sanction. As white Mormons teased out their theologies—of sealing, of divinization, of temple worship and priesthood—they nearly always stumbled over people they understood to be not white. These people were to them theoretical problems, needing theological explanation and a place to be slotted into their unfolding maps of heaven. That process defined what it meant to be white in the context of this religion, but it also gave white supremacy on earth divine sanction and justification. By the twentieth century when questioned about its existence within their church, Mormons could simply point to God.

Brooks focuses here primarily upon “whiteness” and “blackness” as categories of identity in white Mormons’ imagination. There are, of course, any number of other racial identities that might play a part in this story. There are also many, many elements co-constitutive with racial identity that Brooks does not touch upon; in particular I think of the co-formation of race and class, as the economic aspects of identity are often overlooked in academic work on Mormonism and race, or religion and race more generally. But Brooks stays focused on the simple fact of white supremacy itself, and how Mormons came to reify it, and that relentlessness gives the book the moral power of a jeremiad.

III

Structurally and conceptually, this book reminds me of Colleen McDannell’s recent Sister Saints (Oxford, 2018). Like that book, this one retells a familiar history from a new angle. We are acquainted with most of Brooks’ characters: they are high church leaders, intellectuals, and activists. She has not really uncovered any stories that historians did not already know. But she has told them in a new way, viewed them through the lens of theory, and showed us new shadows that these people cast, or new light that they threw.

So, like McDannell, her book points to the possibility of stories told from other perspectives—and indeed, Brooks exhorts her Latter-day Saint readers to perceive that possibility, to be aware of other stories, and to do what they can to elevate them. Her introduction and conclusion call upon her Latter-day Saint readers to plumb their tradition in order to confront the challenge. Indeed, one comes away from Brooks’s book with the impression that though this tradition has caused such pain, the Christian resources it has within it might enable believers to be particularly attuned to suffering, particularly equipped for repentance, and particularly capable of imagining what a just and Zion society might look like.

Though Brooks’s subjects often act in ways most Americans today would find distressing, Brooks warns us not to be distracted. She does not “wish to impugn the character of individuals. Rather my goal is to assess how systems of inequality take shape through everyday conduct and choices, policies, laws, and theologies, so that we have a better sense of how to dismantle them.” (17)

Stories point us past themselves toward systems. Individuals make decisions circumscribed by institutions. The real task ahead is not simply to rage at the stories that we have been told or to condemn those who enact injustice. The real task ahead is to write new stories and raise new generations, and hence to build new systems. That task is what this book helps us—Mormons and academics alike—to imagine.

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Juneteenth Meeting for Latter-day Saints

We are grateful to organizer Melodie Jackson for passing on details for this event. Here are her words: “There will be some amazing people speaking and singing. It is a healing space for Us. By Us. To Us. I hope you can spread the word and invite as many black people as you can to come and hear each others’ stories. There are healers among us, and I’m excited for you to hear them and feel community, feel heard, and feel seen amidst so much chaos. It will be streamed live through this (Black Lives Matter to Christ) page! 6 pm MST time. Come ready to be validated and filled. See y’all there!”

While we are a Mormon history blog, and not a devotional outlet, we support the work of Black academics doing anti-racist work in Mormonism.

MHA Awards 2020

Congratulations to all the winners!

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$10 Virtual Tour of the Kirtland Temple

Don’t overthink this. Spend $10. Help keep the temple open to the public. Learn a lot. Give more if you can.

https://www.kirtlandtemple.org/onlinetour

White temple clothes and not asking obvious questions

My mom has been reading Saints, volume 2. And as we are wont, she called me with a fun fact. She had read that Wilford Woodruff was the first person to wear white clothing to officiate in at the temple [n1]. I responded that indeed, not only that but it was a suit made of deer skin. My mom was somewhat incredulous.

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Brigham Young’s Birthday Song, 1876

I found this in the Journal of Charles L. Walker. I hope that others will point me to Latter-day Saint songs we haven’t heard before.

JOURNAL: St. George–June 1st. Dry and warm. Went with the choir to Pres. Young’s house to pay our respects on this anniverary of his birthday. The choir sand a song on teh north porch and were then invited into the hall and theer sang several songs appropriate to the occasion. The following one I composed for the choir, who did credit to it by the animated style in which they sang.

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Communal Studies Association: Virtual Conference

Friend of JI Matt Grow passed this on to us. Dr. Grow is the President of the Communal Studies Association for 2020. Here is a LINK to the original.

Dear Communal Studies Association Members,

The CSA board met this past week to consider how best to hold a conference this fall. Given the uncertain situation with the COVID-19 pandemic—including the potential health challenges of traveling and meeting together, as well as budget cuts and travel restrictions at many institutions—we decided that it would be best to hold a “virtual” conference. Our conference will occur on the same dates, October 1-3, and have the same theme, “Foundations and Futures.” But rather than meet at the Historic Ephrata Cloister in Pennsylvania, we will meet on-line to hear the latest scholarship and perspectives in the field of communal studies.

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MHA’s 2020 Conference Goes Digital, or, Two Reasons to Invest in an MHA Membership

Members of the Mormon History Association received an email in the past few days about the digital conference the organization will offer from June 6-12, 2020 (some presentations will be on the website for longer). There is no registration cost for MHA members; MHA membership is the only requirement for participation. You will receive a password to log in to mormonhistoryassociation.org to view the programming.

As conference co-chairs, Anne Berryhill and I have been blown away by how many people are anxious to help MHA put together programming for a digital conference. Teamwork, truly, makes the dream work. You can see the organization’s email HERE (LINK). The program is also available at the bottom of this post.

The only cost for the 2020 conference is membership in MHA. Digital membership is only $40, and student memberships are only $35, though if you’re like me, you’d prefer to have a physical copy of the journal ($70). You can join HERE. Here are two reasons you should join MHA for 2020 (and beyond!):

1. Investment in MHA is an investment in the academic study of Mormon history.

Frankly, these are tough economic times. I know that and live that, and the academic job markets I’m entering this fall bear witness to this reality. My $70 is fair and reasonable for access to the Journal of Mormon History and membership in MHA. It’s also my small way of saying, “I want MHA and Mormon history to survive and thrive.” If you’ve let your membership lapse, this would be a great time to re-join. Friends at first are friends again at last, etc.  

Please renew your commitment to the academic study of Mormon history. Or, if you prefer, Latter-day Saint and Mormon history. I am an academic because of the skills I learned researching Mormonism and presenting at MHA. Every student, scholar, and consumer of Mormon history deserves the same opportunity that I and hundreds of others have had because of their participation in MHA.

• MHA will make decisions on digital programming on future conferences based upon how 2020 goes.

If MHA 2020 goes well as a digital conference, it gives the organization the go-ahead to think about how we can have digital offerings at every conference. For those who face adverse health conditions, have economic constraints, or other reasons they cannot travel, this provides an option to participate online.

You may think to yourself, “I attend MHA every year, what does it matter to me if there are online offerings?”

I don’t think that digital programming will never replace face-to-face meetings. But, frankly, MHA members like me can examine our good fortune that institutions sponsor our travel or that we can find odd jobs to pay for travel, find friends to lodge with and scrimp to be able to pay for meals at conferences. Money, far too often, keeps people from participating at MHA. Digital programming allows more people to participate. More participation means more and better scholarship.

If we aren’t accessible to our membership and can’t allow folks who don’t have institutional affiliations or independent wealth to participate in MHA, then MHA will actively suffer for it. YOU can make a difference in making things better for all the many scholars and enthusiasts MHA hopes to reach by joining MHA. As an academic non-profit, digital options must make financial sense. If more folks join, the 2021 co-chairs can go to the Board and ask for the flexibility and funds to provide more content for MHA’s members.

So please. Join now. Support the academic study of Mormon history. Help MHA make history by pulling off a digital conference that is economically viable.

MHA Enrollment LINK

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM

Job Ad: LDS Church History Library

Church History Consultant Assistant (Contract Employee)  

ORIGINAL LINK

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Socrates and the Afterlife: A Critique of Bart Ehrman’s Time Magazine Blurb

This morning while scrolling through Yahoo’s newsfeed I came across the article “What Jesus Really Said About Heaven and Hell,” a blurb from Bart Ehrman’s new book Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. In the burb, Ehrman argues that the the popular notion notion among Christians of heaven and hell is wrong because Jesus and the Jews didn’t teach it. Instead, Ehrman argues, Jesus taught that the wicked would be totally destroyed while the righteous would be resurrected and live on earth. But Jesus and the Jews did not believe in a soul that that could live apart from the body. That was a Greek idea.

I leave aside the legitimacy of Ehrman’s argument–not surprisingly, a whole lot of people took exception in the comments–and I’ll only note that Ehrman’s idea was argued by a number of Anabaptist and other radicals in the early modern period (called psychopannychism, mortalism, or soul sleep, see N. T. Burns, Christian Mortalism from Tyldale to Milton [1972]). It’s currently taught by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

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