A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawai’i

by Hokulani K. Aikau

Christianity figured prominently in the imperial and colonial exploitation and dispossession of indigenous peoples worldwide, yet many indigenous people embrace Christian faith as part of their cultural and ethnic identities. A Chosen People, a Promised Land gets to the heart of this contradiction by exploring how Native Hawaiian members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (more commonly known as Mormons) understand and negotiate their place in this quintessentially American religion. Mormon missionaries arrived in Hawai‘i in 1850, a mere twenty years after Joseph Smith founded the church. Hokulani K. Aikau traces how Native Hawaiians became integrated into the religious doctrine of the church as a “chosen people”—even at a time when exclusionary racial policies regarding black members of the church were being codified. Aikau shows how Hawaiians and other Polynesian saints came to be considered chosen and how they were able to use their venerated status toward their own spiritual, cultural, and pragmatic ends. Using the words of Native Hawaiian Latter-Day Saints to illuminate the intersections of race, colonization, and religion, A Chosen People, a Promised Land examines Polynesian Mormon articulations of faith and identity within a larger political context of self-determination.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Mormonism

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 18, 2012

Reviews

[Emily Ho · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a resident of any land, but especially a land freshly colonized, it’s essential to stop, and to observe. This book is exactly that for the current neck of the woods I reside in. If you live in Lā’ie, this is essential reading. If you simply visit Hawai’i for vacation, if you’re a Mormon, this is an enormously important read.

“I did not know that during the course of my work I would learn that cultural regeneration can happen in unexpected places and with unexpected alliances. My bias going into this project was that the Mormon church was a racist institution that played a role, even if a minor one, in the exploitation and disposition of Hawaiians. What I found is that the story is not that simple.”

This book is fair, it’s thoughtful, and it’s thorough. The critical eye gives a fair shake to all sides of the conversation, and doesn’t shy away from complicated ethics.

[Jeff Denning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional