Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and The Problem of Racial Innocence

by Joanna Brooks

Indeed, as critical race theorists have shown, the Protestantism-influenced formulation of moral wrong as individual “sin” requiring remedy provided the framework for the US Supreme Court’s deliberation of cases involving school desegregation and affirmative action remedies to past wrongs. Unfortunately, this simplistic, incidental view of sin is totally insufficient and inappropriate, not only to capturing the systematic and collective dimensions of racism but also to the fullness of Christian theology as well. A more 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. This more robust view of racism as sin would require individuals and institutions to conduct a moral accounting not only of their own conscious acts of harm or injustice but also of the way they have participated in and benefited from the entire system of harm and injustice that has meant death and suffering to others.