Description: "This book examines the role of white American Christianity in fostering and sustaining white supremacy. It draws from theology, critical race theory, and American religious history to make the argument that predominantly white Christian denominations have served as a venue for establishing white privilege and have conveyed to white believers a sense of moral innoeence without requiring moral reckoning with the costs of anti-Black racism. To demonstrate these arguments, Brooks draws from Mormon history from the 1830s to the present, from an archive that includes speeches, historical documents, theological treatises, Sunday School curricula, and other documents of religious life"--
Review Quotes:
"It is one of the most trenchant and persuasive appeals to confront the history of LDS anti-black racism, past and present, and is a clarion call for academic intervention in contemporary issues." -- Benjamin E. Park, Sam Houston State University
"Dr. Joanna Brooks boldly interrogates the impact of white supremacy on American Christianity, and specifically her own formation within Mormonism. Her work offers an unabashed examination into the history of racism within the Church. This detailed exploration into how racism lives and breathes within the Latter-day Saint religion is an important read for any white American Christian. It is, in part, a spiritual awakening to confront the demons of racism within one's religious beliefs and Joanna Brooks is willing and called to lead you into that awakening" -- he Rev. Dr. Fatimah Salleh, founder of A Certain Work
"As a scholar of race and religion in American literature and Mormonism, Joanna Brooks brings to her work a deep commitment to accurate and credible scholarship as well as a keen sense of language, tone, and literary analysis of historical documents. This is a singularly important, expertly produced, and fluently written text that documents, as Brooks phrases it, the Mormon Church's historical 'possessive investment in whiteness.'" -- Paul Harvey, University of Colorado
"Joanna Brooks frankly reminds us that white supremacy doesn't just happen. It is created, cultivated, passed on, sanctified, then perpetuated through forgetfulness. Mormonism emerges here as the quintessential American religion, but in the unenviable mode of participating fully in the nation's original sin of anti-black racism. This book is strong medicine without the spoonful of sugar-but precisely the kind of medicine that may help effect a cure." -- Patrick Q. Mason, Utah State University