Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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)

Mauss' book is a treasure for thinking LDS and any others who seek knowledge and understanding. while the LDS hierarchy might never disown the racism of leaders (BY, others), books like this are not an attempt to soften LDS racism. A.M. is 'a thinking persons' Lund.