Imperial Zions

Bodies, gender, family, and race mattered to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific Amanda Hendrix-Komoto demonstrates the ways that the beliefs of Latter-day Saints entered a racially, ethnically, culturally, and geographically diverse context. Not a progressive story of white Latter-day Saints spreading across the world with a static theology, she expertly shows how the beliefs and practices of Latter-day Saints adapted to different cultures, peoples, and places

Hendrix-Komoto begins by laying out a series of contradictions at the heart of the Restorationist theology of Latter-day Saints, focusing on the interplay of race, sexuality, and the body. Joseph Smith had a series of revelations that God once had a human body, and that only after a period of mortal probation and death did he become the ruler of the universe. This sense of the embodiment of God led Latter-day Saints to believe that they themselves would become gods. Sex, race, gender, and family then mattered, according to Hendrix-Komoto, because they had divine heavenly precedents.

These beliefs about God and the body existed in tension with the surrounding society. The fundamental belief of the corporeality of God came into conflict with 19^th-century white American culture. Latter-day Saints believed God once possessed a body, a physical nature they assumed was white and male. Since God was male, he also had to be masculine and rational, not female and irrational, and so it was difficult to explain how women would become gods. The idea of a rational God also came into conflict with 19^th-century views on the heathen nature of Native Americans. While Latter-day Saints had a divine command to preach to indigenous peoples, dominant cultural beliefs about their fundamental irrationality made those efforts complicated.

The placement of Latter-day Saints in the racial politics of the 19^th century worked in multiple directions, according to Hendrix-Komoto. Since Latter-day Saints believed that since they were like God, they thought they had access to him through revelation. 19^th-century white Americans expectedly portrayed these beliefs and practices as nonwhite. Once they found out about the unorthodox social practices of Latter-day Saints, like plural marriage, they depicted them as nonwhite as well. Latter-day Saints unsurprisingly objected to these racially othering descriptions. Responding to these polemics, they virtue signaled their whiteness and respectability by discussing their missionary work at length in public spaces. Latter-day Saints also drew on the Book of Mormon to differentiate themselves vis-à-vis other nonwhite groups, like Native Americans. They argued the Book of Mormon portrayed families as white, middle-class structures, and Latter-day Saints used their holy writ to justify civilizing and removing Native Americans.

Hendrix-Komoto also examines how tensions developed concerning the place of women in Mormon life as the practices of polygamy and missionary work increased through the 19^th-century. In tandem with culturally dominant norms surrounding marriage, Latter-day Saint theology taught women to see their husbands as their patriarchal and spiritual guides and protectors. Women needed their husbands in order to receive the fulness of eternity, according to Latter-day Saint theology. While this was the ideal and initial practice, these kinds of emotional links between husbands and wives came into conflict with Latter-day social practices. As men spent more time apart from their wives because of missionary duty and polygamy, Hendrix-Komoto shows how Latter-day Saint women fashioned emotional links with each other. The irony was that Mormon men saw these bonds between women as a threat, leading for further calls for patriarchy.

In addition to tensions with dominant American notions of race, gender, and family, Hendrix-Komoto uncovers the ways Latter-day Saint practices conflicted with concepts of empire. Mission work to Native Americans and those in the Pacific Islands became a major part of Latter-day Saint theology in the 19^th century. As they preached to these communities, missionaries brought up opposing political and religious empires. They criticized American expansionist efforts, suggesting that Latter-day Saints would offer them an alternative position in the United States. They similarly worked to discredit Catholic and Protestant missionaries in the Pacific, suggesting they could offer those in the Pacific an alternative source of spiritual power. As in other chapters, Hendrix-Komoto shows the complicated ways these historical processes worked in real time. When male missionaries formed marriage bonds with Native and Pacific women, Protestant Americans depicted Latter-Day Saint’s sexual politics as similar to interracial marriage. Latter-day Saint marriage practices likewise changed in dialogue with the very groups they sought to convert. While both Latter-day Saints and Native Americans practiced polygamy, they wanted American society to know that their polygamy was not like that of the native population. Their version, they argued, was not about sexual whims, but an integral part of their theology.

Tensions over race, gender, family, and empire come to a head in one of Hendrix-Komoto’s strongest chapters, which centers on John Garr. Garr, a white Latter-day Saint, was called to settle part of the Cache Valley. Taking Latter-day Saint theology seriously, he married a Native American woman and that marriage produced a mixed-race child named Johnny. Johnny then married a white women, and their marriage produced children. After the death of Johnny, those children went to live with their grandfather, John Garr. Hendix-Komoto uses a probate case about the inheritance rights of those grandchildren to trace the complex interactions of race, gender, family, and the law.

Hendrix-Komoto concludes with a final irony about the ways the theology of Latter-day Saints interacted with race, gender, and family. With striking detail, she shows the ways Native Mormon communities in both Utah and Hawaii attempted to assimilate to the dominant Latter-day Saint culture. These groups sought to adopt all of the outward signs of Latter-day Saint belief and practice. While the larger Latter-day Saint community never accepted these communities as full members, the conversion of Native groups became a way to foster their own complex identity.

Hendrix-Komoto has written a book that takes belief and practice seriously, and not just for those in power. She shows how those on the margins of society used belief to advocate for themselves and to maintain their long-standing cultural identities.

Nathaniel Wiewora is an associate professor of history at Harding University.

Nathaniel Wiewora

Date Of Review:

September 30, 2023