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

by Joanna Brooks

But perhaps the most pernicious and far-reaching impact of the institutionalization of the priesthood ban through a systematic, “correlated” theology that erased historical memory was that it intensified the Church’s commitment to prophetic infallibility. To manage the theological incoherence of an anti-Black stance on ordination and temple ordinances with Christian ethics, the Mormon movement developed not only a possessive investment in whiteness but also a possessive investment in rightness that it used to insulate itself against dissent from within the Church and pressure from without. No matter the cost to its own integrity or dignity, the Church and its members would do as God wanted, and had always wanted, and as prophets had always taught—or so we were led to believe. The possessive investment in rightness that emerged from Mormonism’s possessive investment in whiteness uses prophetic infallibility to excuse, cover for, and render innocent the white supremacist choices of Mormon individuals and institutions.