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

by Joanna Brooks

“The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray,” LDS Church President Wilford Woodruff had told the faithful assembled at the General Conference in October 1890, shortly after asking them to accept as “authoritative” the end to the public practice of polygamy. “It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so He will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty.” 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,