All Abraham's Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage [Hardcover]

Armand L. Mauss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2003

"All Abraham's Children" is Armand L. Mauss's long-awaited magnum opus on the evolution of traditional Mormon beliefs and practices concerning minorities. He examines how members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have defined themselves and others in terms of racial lineages. Mauss describes a complex process of the broadening of these self-defined lineages during the last part of the twentieth century as the modern Mormon church continued its world-wide expansion through massive missionary work. Mauss contends that Mormon constructions of racial identity have not necessarily affected actual behavior negatively and that in some cases Mormons have shown greater tolerance than other groups in the American mainstream. Employing a broad intellectual historical analysis to identify shifts in LDS behavior over time, "All Abraham's Children" is an important commentary on current models of Mormon historiography.

Editorial Reviews

Review

ADVANCE PRAISE "All Abraham's Children affords a highly engrossing and superbly researched account of changing Mormon relations with minorities from the time of the religion's founding to the present. I expect it to become a classic." -- Charles Y. Glock, coauthor of Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism and The Anatomy of Racial Attitudes "This exceptionally well-articulated book is an important work on Mormon race relations and a significant statement of Mormon intellectual and cultural history." -- Ronald W. Walker, author of Wayward Saints: The Godbeites and Brigham Young and coauthor of Mormon History

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (April 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252028031
• ISBN-13: 978-0252028038
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #605,888 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Caroline, February 19, 2007

By 

C. Kline (Irvine, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All Abraham's Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (Hardcover)

Misconceptions clearly didn't read the whole book. Or else he simply didn't understand it. Mauss masterfully discusses the LDS church's decision to extend the priesthood to black men in 1978. Thorough and expertly researched, this is THE definitve treatment of race in the LDS church.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uh, Mauss is a Mormon, December 9, 2005

By 

Toomuchtimeonmyhands (hellay, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All Abraham's Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (Hardcover)

And he's not talking about how Mormon conceptions go down in Africa, but in America, the land of our religion's birth. This is an excellent book, thought-provoking yet fair. If you want to get a better grasp of the history of race and lineage within Mormonism from it's beginnings up to the present, this book is the one to order.

5.0 out of 5 stars A VERY INFORMATIVE ANALYSIS OF LDS ATTITUDES AND HISTORY, July 26, 2011

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: All Abraham's Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (Hardcover)

Armand Lind Mauss (born 1928) is an American sociologist (professor emeritus at Washington State University) specializing in the sociology of religion, as well as a Latter-day Saint intellectual. He is also the author of The Angel and the Beehive: THE MORMON STRUGGLE WITH ASSIMILATION, This Land of Promises: The Rise and Fall of Social Problems in America, etc.

He wrote in the Preface to this 2003 book, "This book ... analyzes the origin and nature of traditional Mormon attitudes and behavior toward Jews, Native Americans, and people of black African origin... and it compares 'racial' attitudes of Mormons with those in certain other religious denominations for which survey data were available."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"Certain specific ideas from those (British-Israel) movements were clearly reflected in the discourse and teachings of LDS leaders..." (Pg. 29)
"During the 1970s and 1980s, (Bruce R.) McConkie modified some of his ideas ... (and) change in church policy also required him to to drop his long-standing prediction that blacks would not be given the priesthood during mortality ... Yet McConkie never recanted any of his other racialist ideas." (Pg. 31)
"The various Mormon missionary enterprises to the Indians cannot be considered very successful if measured by the sheer number of converts or their retention in the faith." (Pg. 68)
"Interestingly enough, prior to 1981, (2 Neph 30:6) read 'WHITE and delightsome' in some earlier editions... In 1839, Joseph Smith ... approved a third edition of the Book of Mormon ... changing 'white' to 'pure' in this passage... (But) 'white' (instead of 'pure') remained in the official text until the 1981 edition..." (Pg. 117)
"Only in the twentieth century, and then only for brief periods, did the Mormons launch any special missionary programs among Jews, and these proved rather unproductive..." (Pg. 183)
"Africans and African Americans presented an anomaly to the usual LDS eagerness for missionary outreach to the varied peoples of the earth, for the church itself resisted proselyting among black populations for more than a century." (Pg. 212)