Item Detail
-
24235
-
4
-
0
-
English
-
"Until This Curse of Polygamy Is Wiped Out" : Black Methodists, White Mormons, and Constructions of Racial Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century
-
Religion and American Culture
-
2011
-
21
-
no.2
-
167-194
-
"In 1881, the New Orleans-based Southwestern Christian Advocate warned its readers: 'if the people flatter themselves that the Mormons are dying out they are much mistaken.' Published for African American church members throughout the South, the Southwestern Christian Advocate was an official newspaper of the Methodist Episcopal (ME) Church. A year later, the paper's editors claimed they were 'in receipt of an anonymous communication on the evils of Mormonism or polygamy here in the city of New Orleans.' Similar cautions continued into the next decade. African Americans heard and applied warnings about Mormonism and polygamy in a different context than white readers. As they struggled against racism and the legacies of slavery in the post-Reconstruction South, criticizing Latter-day Saints was one of the strategies that black ME Church members used to articulate their vision for achieving equality in church and society. In particular, anti- Mormonism exposed the ongoing insecurity of black women and their families, deconstructed caricatures of black identity and reconstructed a mainstream American Protestant identity, and instructed fellow African Americans in the methods of racial uplift. Taken together, these issues of insecurity, identity, and instruction outlined the ME vision for racial integration, even as they signaled the challenges preventing its realization." [pp. 167-168]
-
Exceptionally Queer : Mormon Peculiarity and US Exceptionalism
Exceptionally Queer: Mormon Peculiarity and U.S. Nationalism
"Our Religion Is Not Hostile to Real Science" : Evolution, Eugenics, and Race/Religion-Making in Mormonism's First Century
Religion of a Different Color : Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness