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Decolonizing Mormonism: Approaching a Postcolonial Zion
This volume seeks nothing less than to shift the focus of Mormon studies from its historic North American, Euro-American “center” to the critical questions being raised by Mormons living at the movement’s cultural and geographic margins.
As a social institution, Mormonism is shaped around cultural notions, systems, and ideas that have currency in the United States but make less sense beyond the land of its genesis. Even as an avowedly international religion some 183 years out from its inception, it makes few allowances for diverse international contexts, with Salt Lake City prescribing programs, policies, curricula, leadership, and edicts for the church’s international regions. While Mormonism’s greatest strength is its organizational coherence, there is also a cost paid for those at the church’s peripheries.
Decolonizing Mormonism brings together the work of 15 scholars from around the globe who critically reflect on global Mormon experiences and American-Mormon cultural imperialism. Indigenous, minority, and Global South Mormons ask in what is the relationship between Mormonism and imperialism and where must the Mormon movement go in order to achieve its long-cherished dream of equality for all in Zion? Their stories are both heartbreaking and heartening and provide a rich resource for thinking about the future of Mormon missiology and the possibilities inherent in the work of Mormon contextual theology.
As a social institution, Mormonism is shaped around cultural notions, systems, and ideas that have currency in the United States but make less sense beyond the land of its genesis. Even as an avowedly international religion some 183 years out from its inception, it makes few allowances for diverse international contexts, with Salt Lake City prescribing programs, policies, curricula, leadership, and edicts for the church’s international regions. While Mormonism’s greatest strength is its organizational coherence, there is also a cost paid for those at the church’s peripheries.
Decolonizing Mormonism brings together the work of 15 scholars from around the globe who critically reflect on global Mormon experiences and American-Mormon cultural imperialism. Indigenous, minority, and Global South Mormons ask in what is the relationship between Mormonism and imperialism and where must the Mormon movement go in order to achieve its long-cherished dream of equality for all in Zion? Their stories are both heartbreaking and heartening and provide a rich resource for thinking about the future of Mormon missiology and the possibilities inherent in the work of Mormon contextual theology.
360 pages, Paperback
Published June 8, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 6, 2018
I think I now know how it feels to be a walnut, with my seam pried open by a pick and nutcracker. Decolonizing Mormonism: Approaching a Postcolonial Zion, is a collection of 12 essays written by LDS or LDS related authors. They took a pick to my Mormon pioneer world, cracking it open just in time for Pioneer Day.
There is a difference between learning about and learning from, and editors Gina Colvin and Joanna Brooks, invite us to put aside pioneer identities and consider settlers and colonists, learning from indigenous and international saints. Writer Alicia Harris described this as exploring “the seam between” her two identities of indigenous Nakota roots and Mormon upbringing. She called herself a middle and wrote decolonizing is “the work of softening the lines that keep us apart: apart from one another and apart from ourselves.”
To read this entire review, please visit us at https://segullah.org/book-review/book...
There is a difference between learning about and learning from, and editors Gina Colvin and Joanna Brooks, invite us to put aside pioneer identities and consider settlers and colonists, learning from indigenous and international saints. Writer Alicia Harris described this as exploring “the seam between” her two identities of indigenous Nakota roots and Mormon upbringing. She called herself a middle and wrote decolonizing is “the work of softening the lines that keep us apart: apart from one another and apart from ourselves.”
To read this entire review, please visit us at https://segullah.org/book-review/book...
July 25, 2021
An excellent collection of essays that gives voice to peoples who have felt the uneven colonising effects of mormonism in their lives, communities and narratives. It is a call to leaders to truly attempt to create Zion through giving more voice and space to the diversity of cultures and worldviews that occupy the global church and reduce the primacy of a centralised homogenous white American-centric perspective. It asks hard questions, demands imagination, commitment and requests openness to reciprocity of the gifts the global church has to offer our faith tradition. It also demonstrates how church communities on the peripheries endeavor to do the work of decolonisation themselves by shaping their own faith communities at the local level.
March 13, 2020
"For Mormons to see Indigenous peoples as 'alike unto God'...the relationship must decolonize." This collection of essays explores Indigeneity and identity in the LDS church, its intersections with the heavily American influence and structure of the church, and what the process of decolonization might look like for the individual and the institution. Written primaruly by Indigenous Mormons, these insightful essays offer an excellent starting point into much needed discussions and work on the topic going forward.
July 27, 2018
I am supportive of efforts to critically reconstruct the legacy of my Mormon heritage “to mobilize our faith as a resource for redress, reconciliation, self-determination, and wellness.” Reading this book was a first step in learning how to do that. Highly recommend.
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October 21, 2019 I have no idea what rating to give this book. I alternately loved it and was quite frustrated with it, so I vacillate between a solid 5 stars and something more like 3.5. It’s an academic cliché to say that an edited collection varies in quality, but the difference between essays seemed almost abruptly obvious at times.
The highlights, for me at least, were the essays by Elise Boxer, Ignacio Garcia, and Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye. Boxer wrote a fascinating discussion of how the traditional narratives and celebrations of Mormon “pioneers” completely elide how the Great Basin was already populated by Native American nations, positioning it in the wider context of the American tendency in general to treat Indigenous history as “the ‘absent presence’ . . . deliberately erased or radically transformed to maintain the master narrative” (79), and she offers a concrete example of this in her examination of “This Is the Place” Heritage Park. I hadn’t realized what a blind spot this is in my own knowledge of the settling of Utah, and I intend to rectify that as soon as I can. Garcia’s chapter might have been my favorite, as he wrote about his time as bishop of a Latino ward in an English-speaking stake in the southwestern United States. His “in the trenches” examples of adjusting Church programs to meet his ward’s needs were both fun to read and sorely needed, as the collection as a whole seems to lean more toward theoretical discussions. I enjoyed it so much I’ve picked up his memoir Chicano While Mormon for a fuller treatment of his experiences, diagnoses, and suggested solutions. And Inouye’s examination of three different Primary programs was a perceptive analysis of the Church’s “glocalization,” examining how local units draw on and adapt the centrally-mandated curricula.
Other chapters also offered interesting commentary, though not of the sustained quality I felt the three above did, including examining the privilege of white missionaries in non-white local contexts and the piggybacking of Mormonism on imperial and neo-colonial systems. My frustrations came from several annoyances. First, there seems a tendency to under-footnote or assume familiarity with a subject. For example, in the opening essay Gina Colvin talked about opposition within the Church to Māori activism, but many of her claims were made with no footnotes or concrete examples. She wrote, “In 2014 more and more LDS Māori are active in the realm of Indigenous politics and activism” (44), but again offered no examples or sources to learn more. And though she perceptively asked why Church acquisition of land is viewed differently from other settlers’ acquisition, she made no exploration nor points to where one can be found. (To be fair, it is possible that such an exploration does not yet exist, but even an acknowledgment of that dearth seems necessary.) Thomas Murphy’s essay also seemed vague on specifics (e.g., talk of applying “Indigenous methodologies” in research and teaching without much elaboration as to what those were or what that would look like), and ended in a list of what a decolonized Mormonism might look like that at points seemed strangely disconnected from his essay. For example, he wrote, “In a decolonized Mormonism . . . certainly the leadership would support marriage equality” (63). But why? Nothing in his essay addressed this point, before or after the statement. He and several other authors also accepted as settled fact that genetic research has proved the Book of Mormon a work of nineteenth-century fiction, which seems a sweeping and rather dogmatic assertion.
Ultimately this is a book well worth reading despite its flaws. I’m excited to see where decolonization studies in the history of the LDS Church goes in the future.
The highlights, for me at least, were the essays by Elise Boxer, Ignacio Garcia, and Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye. Boxer wrote a fascinating discussion of how the traditional narratives and celebrations of Mormon “pioneers” completely elide how the Great Basin was already populated by Native American nations, positioning it in the wider context of the American tendency in general to treat Indigenous history as “the ‘absent presence’ . . . deliberately erased or radically transformed to maintain the master narrative” (79), and she offers a concrete example of this in her examination of “This Is the Place” Heritage Park. I hadn’t realized what a blind spot this is in my own knowledge of the settling of Utah, and I intend to rectify that as soon as I can. Garcia’s chapter might have been my favorite, as he wrote about his time as bishop of a Latino ward in an English-speaking stake in the southwestern United States. His “in the trenches” examples of adjusting Church programs to meet his ward’s needs were both fun to read and sorely needed, as the collection as a whole seems to lean more toward theoretical discussions. I enjoyed it so much I’ve picked up his memoir Chicano While Mormon for a fuller treatment of his experiences, diagnoses, and suggested solutions. And Inouye’s examination of three different Primary programs was a perceptive analysis of the Church’s “glocalization,” examining how local units draw on and adapt the centrally-mandated curricula.
Other chapters also offered interesting commentary, though not of the sustained quality I felt the three above did, including examining the privilege of white missionaries in non-white local contexts and the piggybacking of Mormonism on imperial and neo-colonial systems. My frustrations came from several annoyances. First, there seems a tendency to under-footnote or assume familiarity with a subject. For example, in the opening essay Gina Colvin talked about opposition within the Church to Māori activism, but many of her claims were made with no footnotes or concrete examples. She wrote, “In 2014 more and more LDS Māori are active in the realm of Indigenous politics and activism” (44), but again offered no examples or sources to learn more. And though she perceptively asked why Church acquisition of land is viewed differently from other settlers’ acquisition, she made no exploration nor points to where one can be found. (To be fair, it is possible that such an exploration does not yet exist, but even an acknowledgment of that dearth seems necessary.) Thomas Murphy’s essay also seemed vague on specifics (e.g., talk of applying “Indigenous methodologies” in research and teaching without much elaboration as to what those were or what that would look like), and ended in a list of what a decolonized Mormonism might look like that at points seemed strangely disconnected from his essay. For example, he wrote, “In a decolonized Mormonism . . . certainly the leadership would support marriage equality” (63). But why? Nothing in his essay addressed this point, before or after the statement. He and several other authors also accepted as settled fact that genetic research has proved the Book of Mormon a work of nineteenth-century fiction, which seems a sweeping and rather dogmatic assertion.
Ultimately this is a book well worth reading despite its flaws. I’m excited to see where decolonization studies in the history of the LDS Church goes in the future.
October 28, 2018
A fascinating and provocative book that brings to light important work that has gone unrecognized for far too long. There's much to love here and much to sink into and ponder. I wish there had been discussion of queer intersections with the postcolonial theoretical approach (there are some mentions, but it's never a focus), but that's a small complaint.
I found particularly engaging Gina Colvin's work (as always incisive and tender and provocative and authentic). I was also struck by Angelo Baca's thoughts on film and Samuel the Lamanite, Ignacio Garcia's reminiscences of bishopric service, Mica McGrigg's lively and powerful personal narrative toward liberation, Stacilee Ford's insightful observations on truly intersectional feminism that honors the ways women outside the Western context want to serve God (even and perhaps especially when it runs counter to our white sensitivities), and of course, Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye's focus on informal institutions alongside formal ones and the new paradigm that that gives me to understand and work to deconstruct my own Mormonism.
I found particularly engaging Gina Colvin's work (as always incisive and tender and provocative and authentic). I was also struck by Angelo Baca's thoughts on film and Samuel the Lamanite, Ignacio Garcia's reminiscences of bishopric service, Mica McGrigg's lively and powerful personal narrative toward liberation, Stacilee Ford's insightful observations on truly intersectional feminism that honors the ways women outside the Western context want to serve God (even and perhaps especially when it runs counter to our white sensitivities), and of course, Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye's focus on informal institutions alongside formal ones and the new paradigm that that gives me to understand and work to deconstruct my own Mormonism.
November 25, 2023
Mormonism needs this book, and more like it. It has power to transform our framework of what Mormonism means, what is has meant and what it will and can mean. It is prophetic in many senses of that word. The introduction by Colvin and Brooks, the afterword by Hafen, and the essay by Brooks each provide excellent overviews of Mormonism and colonialism/anti-colonialism/post-colonialism with pluralistic wisdom and courage. Beyond those overview essays, I also valued both the autobiographical nature of the essays in the first two sections, and the participant observation approaches of the Sherlock, Ford, and Inouye essays in section III.
This volume makes it clear that there are many ways to decolonize Mormonism, they are not mutually exclusive, and to prescribe one over another would itself be colonialist. The repeated reminders to affirm the agency of people outside of the colonial core who have embraced the gospel were especially important.
This volume makes it clear that there are many ways to decolonize Mormonism, they are not mutually exclusive, and to prescribe one over another would itself be colonialist. The repeated reminders to affirm the agency of people outside of the colonial core who have embraced the gospel were especially important.
March 13, 2022
A very informative, sometimes heavy, but necessary series of essays that examine how Mormonism is entwined with colonialism. With the church membership being greater outside the US than inside, it is more necessary than ever to innovate and introduce flexibility in our approach, administration, and doctrine in order to embrace the diversity of indigenous culture and religious tradition into Mormonism, helping it to realize its potential for building Zion among all cultures and traditions in the world.
November 24, 2020
I was thinking I somewhat understood this topic, but in reading this I learned much and it made me think quite a bit more about the waves of colonialism that have occurred.
I especially like the section contrasting the primary programs in 3 different wards. Quite interesting.
I especially like the section contrasting the primary programs in 3 different wards. Quite interesting.
November 21, 2018
This book really opened my eyes to others’ experiences. Totally worth the read.
August 9, 2023
Lots of this was boring/trivial or highly contestable and poorly argued (if at all). Even so, there are definitely useful bits scattered throughout, and the subject matter is relatively neglected in mormon studies.
The most interesting and useful essay was Joanna Brooks', though I have some disagreements/reservations. It's the only one I would think about going back to.
Melissa Inouye's essay was the other highlight. Its scope is smaller and, therefore, less provocative but also more precise.
The most interesting and useful essay was Joanna Brooks', though I have some disagreements/reservations. It's the only one I would think about going back to.
Melissa Inouye's essay was the other highlight. Its scope is smaller and, therefore, less provocative but also more precise.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews