In a time when America is taking a hard look at our country’s racist past and present, LDS scholar Joanna Brooks looks at the history of race within the LDS church.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has had a complicated relationship with race for years, from its scriptural teaching that black skin is a symbol of spiritual deficiency to its early ban, now overturned, on male black church members joining the priesthood. Joanna Brooks told us that she hopes her book Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and The Problem of Racial Innocence [IndieBound|Amazon] will not only educate other white members of the LDS church like herself, but also make them uncomfortable, and eventually more understanding of their fellow black church members.
