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

by Joanna Brooks

Especially after the rise of Web 2.0 in the mid-2000s, every Mormon home gained search engine–driven, one-click access to a range of perspectives—from avowedly anti-Mormon and ex-Mormon to faithful but critical progressives to “TBM: true-believing Mormon” apologists—on the most sensitive and controversial issues in Mormon life, from the origins and historicity of the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith’s polygamy (which had been largely excised from official church curriculum) to gender and racial inequality. Church members who had as nineteen- and twenty-year-old boys knocked on doors in impoverished neighborhoods around the world asking others to make enormous sacrifices to join and support the LDS Church on the strength of their testimonies in the literal truth of Mormon scriptures and the infallibility of Mormon leaders found themselves middle-aged men alone late at night peering into a computer screen at a far more complicated story. Podcasts like “Mormon Stories” and “Mormon Expression” gained tens of thousands of listeners as they provided new venues for LDS people who had once harbored their questions and doubts privately. The far-reaching impact of Web 2.0 among Mormon extended kinship networks only accelerated the growth of the Mormon “faith crisis” community,