Responses: Paul Harvey and Edward Blum respond to Noel Carmack’s Review Essay in the Journal of Mormon History

By September 24, 2013

Almost exactly one year ago, the University of North Carolina Press published Edward Blum and Paul Harvey’s The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America, a sweeping and provocative analysis of the ways in which Americans from various walks of life over the last four hundred (!) years have imagined Jesus. Among the many contributions the book makes, and of particular interest to JI readers, is the authors’ situating Mormons as important players in the larger story of race and religion they narrate so masterfully. In fact, one paragraph in particular has garnered more attention than nearly any other part of the book—a brief discussion in chapter 9 of the large, white marble Christus statue instantly recognizable to Mormons the world over. In the latest issue of the Journal of Mormon HistoryNoel Carmack authored a 21 page review of The Color of Christ, focusing on their treatment of Mormonism and paying particular attention to their discussion of the Christus. Professors Blum and Harvey generously accepted our invitation to respond here, as part of both our ongoing Responses series and as an appropriate contribution to our look at Mormon material culture this month. 

Color of ChristWe are grateful for Noel Carmack’s strongly argued and wonderfully researched review essay “Thorvaldsen’s White-Marbled Christus Reconsidered,” which addresses both the whole of our book The Color of Christ as well as the specific issue of images of race within LDS art. More specifically, as the title suggests, Professor Carmack focuses his attention on one short (but, obviously, provocative) paragraph in the book that mentions the 11-foot high Christus (or, more formally, Christus Consolator) that peers down on visitors from the Visitor’s Center in Temple Square in Salt Lake City.

Had we the benefit of this outstanding piece of research, we certainly would have written a much different paragraph–or extended this to several paragraphs–about the Christus. The origins and meaning of this widely disseminated artistic piece deserved more and better discussion than the cursory one that it received in our book, and Carmack’s copiously footnoted article fleshes the story out more expertly than art history amateurs such as ourselves could do so.

Perhaps the real issue here, however, is what we could have focused on more to advance the central premises of the book. At this point, our paragraph about the Christus has received more devoted attention than any single other aspect of this book, even though (to our misfortune) we spent less time researching or thinking about this topic than the numerous other ones covered in the book, whether it be the meaning of Moravian blood-and-wounds theology in the eighteenth century, or the appearance of a white-skinned, hair-parted-in-the-middle Jesus to black slaves, or to how and why Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ became the most dominant Jesus image of American history.

christusAs it happened–by accident, not by intent–our book appeared at the beginning of the 2012 election season, featuring (if you may recall) the nation’s first Mormon presidential candidate. Seizing on that fact, interviewers queried us closely about the “Mormon” parts of the book, asked us to elaborate on the particular Mormon history of denying the priesthood to black men, and generally wanted a “story” that fit the election news cycle. For better or worse–probably some of both–we obliged, in part because we sought to publicize our work to a more general readership. The result, however, is that something like our cursory paragraph on Christus, or brief arguments in the book about the relationship of whiteness and Mormonism, have occupied a disproportionate share of attention given to the work. Indeed, Carmack’s review is one of the few to even mention the fact that the book discusses groups such as the Moravians and the Jesuits –each of which comprises about as many words in the text as the discussion of Mormons.

But if we are allowed a mulligan and a redo here, here is what we might have focused on more intently: we missed an opportunity to make a point about the centrality of Jesus by contrasting The First Vision with the Christus. The former is about God introducing his son Jesus to Joseph Smith. In artistic depictions from the late nineteenth century and from the more recent Mormon popular artist Del Parson, Joseph is shown blinded by brightness but addressing questions to God. Christus, by contrast, is about Jesus only; and Parson’s centrally iconic works such as Christ in Red Robe and a series of paintings depicting Jesus’s birth, life, and resurrection from the tomb portray the Christocentric conceptions of contemporary Mormonism. Regardless of whether we are right in our contention about the inevitably racialized meaning of choosing Christus as an artistic representation just at the height of the civil rights movement, we are certainly in agreement with Carmack (and others) that the presentation of Mormonism as a Christian tradition based on the gospel of Jesus Christ is a central part of the story here. Persistent (and false) rumors that Parson had to redo his image according to the demands of Church authorities (allegedly to make his Christ look more like the real Jesus) suggest the ambiguity of contemporary artistic representations of a white Jesus, intended to be symbolic rather than representational, and yet nonetheless representational of the unconscious, encoded, racialization of American Christianity–“white without words,” as we call it in the book.

Finally, when writing The Color of Christ, we were struck not simply by the racialized aspects of Mormon approaches to Jesus, but also by the fluidity and complexity of Jesus at the foundations of the establishment of the church in the 1830s. When recording and revising his first vision, Joseph Smith took great pains to make textual what he saw and what he heard. At no point did he refer to God or Jesus as white, and we thought the movement from experience to text to art was an important aspect of Mormon history, one we wanted to bring out for further excavation, what Noel Carmack does so well in his article.

Article filed under Book and Journal Reviews Comparative Mormon Studies Cultural History Material Culture Miscellaneous Politics Popular Culture Race Responses


Comments

  1. Paul and Ed, Thanks for this nuanced and well-thought response. I hope when I am a big kid/scholar that I’ll be able to be half as a charitable and kind.

    Comment by Amanda HK — September 24, 2013 @ 11:25 am

  2. Thanks, Ed and Paul. I second Amanda’s admiration for your charitable and kind response and willingness to use Noel’s review as an opportunity to reflect on what you wrote and what you’d do differently if given the chance.

    Comment by Christopher — September 24, 2013 @ 1:13 pm

  3. Thanks very much for such a thoughtful response. I think the response also provides a great illustration of the contingent nature of history writing. We rely on others when we can, and do the best we can with the time and resources at our disposal. The historiographical dialogue helps us to learn more and come to better conclusions about the past.

    Comment by Joel — September 24, 2013 @ 1:41 pm

  4. This is a great dialogue. Thanks, Ed and Paul.

    Comment by Ben P — September 24, 2013 @ 2:53 pm

  5. Thoughtful and articulate. Thanks for responding in such a positive and professional way!

    Comment by J Stuart — September 24, 2013 @ 8:04 pm

  6. I would like to add, if I may, my own respect and admiration for the graciousness and professionalism with which Paul and Ed responded to my review. I hope readers understand that, despite my criticisms of the authors’ discussion of the Christus, the book is an outstanding example of research and insight into the use of religious images as mechanisms of political and social power in America?-lamentably, to subjugate people of color with the likeness of a white Christ. The book is a seminal, important work that should be read by everyone interested in American religious history and black/white studies. I applaud them for their fine work!

    Comment by Noel C — September 24, 2013 @ 9:27 pm

  7. Nowhere do we have a description of Christ, with the exception of those few words in Isaiah regarding the Messiah. So the beautiful print we have hanging in our chapel of a very handsome Scandinavian Jesus is merely someone’s idea or fantasy. The fact that Joseph Smith described him only as a glorified being I find reassuring. Had he said he was 6’2″, extremely handsome and totally buff, I would have to question. But I wonder how many Christians, Mormons included, myself included, could accept Christ as very short and very ordinary looking? Who knows? He just might be.

    Comment by Aaron — September 25, 2013 @ 7:40 am

  8. This is great. Thanks, Paul and Ed. Your suggestion that the Christus be read as an example of the “Christocentric turn” in late-20th century Mormonism is fascinating.

    Comment by David G. — September 25, 2013 @ 8:09 am


Series

Recent Comments

Mark Ashurst-McGee on Study and Faith, 3:: “I just love this: "historians should be more like detectives and jurors than lawyers"”


Steve Fleming on Study and Faith, 2:: “I'm sad to say that "Everything Everywhere" is the only movie I've ever walked out of (long story of a combination of tending to fall…”


Steve Fleming on Thoughts on Study and: “Thanks for commenting T.M. I wrote my dissertation on JS's ideas and have been revising it (with a ton more research) and I'd declared myself…”


Adam F. on Study and Faith, 2:: “Sorry if this sounds like a threadjump, but your statement about humans' need for meaning over nihilism just screams "Everything Everywhere All at Once" at…”


T.M. Overley on Thoughts on Study and: “No need to defend “truth claims.” Often, such claims are mere impositions of man—which, it seems, Joseph Smith was acutely aware. To this date, the…”


Steve Fleming on Thoughts on Study and: “Thanks, Brent. Sorry I missed this. Get some more posts up soon.”

Topics


juvenileinstructor.org