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

by Joanna Brooks

His statement was canonized in 1908 after having been reiterated for more than eighteen years by his apostles and successors to overcome deep divisions among Latter-day Saints over whether the end of polygamy was a survival tactic or truly the will of God. The charismatic authority of a prophet, collective reverence for the prophet, and shared accession to a newly institutionalized doctrine of prophetic infallibility produced coherence out of the confusion, contradiction, and dramatic reversals that characterized polygamy’s official end. Accession to declared prophetic infallibility also produced coherence out of the confusion, contradiction, and dramatic reversals that characterized the official institutionalization of Black exclusion from the priesthood and temple rites. Prophets said that prophets had always said so, because God himself said so, and God would not allow prophets to get it wrong. No matter how cruel or unethical anti-Black racism seemed to humans, God had his reasons, to be known in due time. And that’s how the story would stand.