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So many recent events in American life have been a call for the country to grapple with its legacy of racism and white supremacy, including the and even. These events have created turmoil among some conservative Christian groups, who have tried——to confront their own racial divisions.
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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., many in Mormon-heavy Utah doubted the president’s moral character and strength as a role model. Related Stories.
Mormons voted in high numbers for Donald Trump, but the church criticized white supremacist attitudes in the wake of the Charlottesville riots in August. All members of the Church are invited to participate in the 187th Semiannual General Conference of the Church. The general women’s session for sisters ages eight and older will be Saturday, September 23, at 6:00 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time (MDT). The general priesthood session.
• • • 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, 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 about her personal struggle with the LDS Church’s legacy of racism for The Atlantic in 2016. Lilly Fowler also 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, 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 for fellow Mormons to perpetuate their putatively white heritage.