All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage
Mauss, Armand. 2003. All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
Rating:
10
Summary:
dense, but extremely valuable for scholars
The book begins with a discussion of how people, both individuals and groups, create and re-create identities. In the case of the Mormons, they have defined and re-defined their identity a number of times. Originally they wanted to be seen as different, peculiar, and/or elect. Now they want to be seen as representing the mainstream, or, at least the conservative mainstream in the U.S.
But within Mormonism there has also been a lot of identity creation as regards ethnic minorities (American Indians, blacks, and Hispanics). Most of the identity creation has been done for these groups, but at times it has also been done by these groups, and it has been accompanied with varying interpretations or convolutions of Mormon doctrine to justify the changes in the identities.
The author also looks at each of these identities in terms of where they started when the LDS Church was in its infancy (1830), how they have changed over time, and what they are today (2003). Included in this discussion is an explanation of how the North American Indians (specifically those in the U.S.) lost their place as the prophesied ‘Lamanites’ that were supposed to be instrumental in the restoration of the gospel. Mauss then explains how they were replaced, with some additional restrictions, by the Hispanic people of Central and South America. Also discussed is the highly controversial issue of the role of blacks in the Mormon Church. Mauss argues that the exclusion of blacks from full participation occurred post Joseph Smith, during Brigham Young’s tenure, and it was later justified through doctrinal interpretations during the late 1800s and early 1900s. But this identity has also changed, though the changes are still filtering their way down from the Mormon leadership (and, in my opinion, up through the leadership), and now blacks are supposed to be seen as being just like everyone else.
Review:
Let me start by saying I think this is a brilliant book. Of course, it isn’t without its problems, but the problems tend to be fairly nit picky. Overall, this is an excellent, scholarly work that should be read by every scholar interested in Mormonism.
A couple of warnings to the layperson… First, this is a very dense book. The amount of information contained within builds upon some very lofty foundations that require a great deal of background information (I’m really not trying to be arrogant; it took me a very long time to read the entire book because it is so complex). Second, the book contains a lot of history. Yes, there is also a great deal of sociological analysis, but in order to illustrate the analysis the author includes in depth histories of these groups. In my extremely brief summary above I tried to hit the main points (you’ll have to read the book to see if I have succeeded). These points could be summarized in the book in about 150 pages, but the history really is important to the ultimate conclusions. So, keep in mind that you are getting both a history book and a sociological analysis of that history (there is also some statistical analysis, but it is pretty brief).
I will discuss here only two criticisms of the book. First, some Mormons have seen fit to redefine the location of where the Book of Mormon took place, in large part because archaeological evidence continues to disprove the locations advocated by pro-Mormon scholars. The current, popular theory is called the ‘Limited Geography Model’, and situates the events of the book in Southern Mexico and Northern Guatemala. But where this becomes particularly interesting as it relates to ‘All Abraham’s Children’ is that now the advocates of this model are beginning to argue that the people of the Book of Mormon intermarried with the other people surrounding them (the scientifically proposed Asians that came across the land bridge) and, therefore, they cannot be discovered using gene tracking techniques that have recently been developed. This creates a beautiful, non-falsifiable position for Mormons (religions love doing these kinds of things), but it also creates a problem for Mauss’s analysis, though the problem is likely more for the advocates of the theory and Mormons in general than it is for Mauss. The way I see it, if the Book of Mormon people living in the outlined region (Southern Mexico, etc.) intermarried and lost their true bloodline, and the North American Indians have already been ruled out as the embodiment of the Lamanites, doesn’t this rule out the fulfillment of the Book of Mormon prophecy that the Lamanites would be instrumental in restoring the Kingdom of God since Lamanites no longer exist? According to the Limited Geography Model, the Lamanites are no more. I believe this is a point of debate that has yet to come up within the Mormon scholarly community, but it is inevitable as long as they continue to argue for the Limited Geography Model and the later intermarrying of the Book of Mormon people. Mauss doesn’t discuss this issue, but I believe it to be an impending point of contention that will eventually have to be resolved (most likely by developing some other non-falsifiable notion).
The second problem I have with the book is the mostly subtle, pro-Mormon position of the author. I recognize that Mauss is an active Mormon and if he were to be overly critical of the Church, it might threaten his membership status. I also recognize that as an active Mormon he likely believes some of the things the Mormon Church teaches. But as a non-Mormon, I found Mauss’s pro-Mormon arguments, though not very frequent in the book, annoying. True, it isn’t really the place of academics to criticize religious dogma, but neither is it the place of academics to compliment that dogma. The result of this pro-Mormon approach is that Mauss minimizes some controversial issues (blacks and the priesthood) while maximizing the influence of divine intervention; explanations Occam’s Razor would readily dismiss. (Examples of Mauss’s pro-Mormon approach can be found on pp. 21, 43, 127, 128, 153, 236.)
Despite the criticisms, which I really see as minor, I think this is a superb piece of scholarly research. Let me reiterate that I believe the analysis is dead on. Sure, there may be some very minor disagreements over some very minor details, but in the end, Mauss has written a masterpiece illustrating how sociological theory should be applied to phenomena. I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in better understanding these issues in Mormonism, though my caveats about the difficulty of the reading still stand.
