Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness

"Mormonism is known for having a racial restriction for a long time. Up until 1978, individuals with black ancestry did not have access to full membership, meaning that they could not go to the temple. If they were men they could not hold the priesthood. And that restriction, which was global, was in place until 1978—quite late. But what’s fascinating about this book is that Paul Reeve unpacks the history of Mormonism’s racial restriction. He does an excellent job in tracing how that restriction came to be and how it was much more haphazard and elongated than many historians had thought. But as well as that, he also traces broader American conceptions of Mormonism’s race. When we think about Mormonism today, they strike us as about as white as possible. If you want to think of a stereotypical white religion, you think of the Mormons. But what’s fascinating is that in the 19th century, Mormons were often cast as a non-white community. Given that race is a construction, whiteness was typically associated with full citizenship and civilization, while Mormons were not granted full citizenship nor seen as a full part of civilization, both because of their religious actions, as well as their social activities, most notoriously polygamy. Many people were theorizing that the Mormons did not belong to the white race. And they cast them as an amorphous, vague fuzzy race of their own, which only reaffirmed the Mormons’ anxieties, which is what, in turn, forced them to separate themselves from racial minorities. In order to prove their whiteness, so to speak, to show that they fitted into American civilization, they had to do what many Americans were doing, which was separating themselves from black and Indian and other races that were seen as undesirable. It’s still a hot topic. Mormonism is still predominantly a white religion, especially in America. Mormonism has become much more global since then. They’re building several temples in Africa right now. But there are still lingering racial issues and racial anxieties. If you look at the leadership of the church in Salt Lake City, nearly all of them are white and of American descent and are from an upper class. And so Mormonism is still struggling with the legacies of this racial question. I think one of the great phrases that Paul Reeve comes up with in his book is that Mormonism went from being ‘non-white to too white’ in the course of over a century, and I think we’re still dealing with those repercussions. Yes, there are. There are growing numbers, especially if you go to inner-city communities. You’ll find more racial diversity there, but they’re still a minority among Mormons—disproportionately so—across the country as a whole."