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Racial Diversity in the LDS Church
All (or most) Mormons are white?
This is a common misconception in the United States because many American Mormons are from Utah, located in a region of the country that is predominantly Caucasian. For example, notice on the maps below that Utah and neighboring "non-Mormon" states don't have substantial African-American populations.
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That having been said, there are many black members of the Church even in the United States. My wife is one of them! In her years of church membership she has never experienced exclusion or racism. Globally, Caucasians comprise a minority of Church membership and are "losing ground" with each passing year. See my Diversity Slide Show for more.
Mormons are racist?
Of course any group of millions of people will include a few racists, but racism is condemned by the Church and rejected by all faithful members. Historically, the opinions of some (though not all) Church members were in sync with the commonly accepted (and often incorrect) views of their times, views that included racism. One would be hard-pressed to find an organization of any era whose individual members were free from the influence of prevailing human philosophies. This history, however interesting, has little relevance to modern Mormonism, which categorically denounces racism in all its forms. That having been said, regardless of the erroneous views of some of its members in the past, the Church has been in many instances quite progressive.- Since its beginning, the Church has spoken out against racism.
- Unlike many denominations, the LDS Church has never had segregated congregations.
- Back when slavery was legal in the United States, many Church members opposed it and/or its brutality.
- African Americans have been members of the Church since its early years.
- The Church supported the Civil Rights movement against the racism of the 1950s and 1960s.
- Mormons and African Americans have a common enemy: the Ku Klux Klan.
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I find this accusation of racism particularly offensive, given my wife's African heritage. It is particularly ironic that many of the organizations that falsely accuse Mormons of "racism" themselves are affiliated with religious denominations that historically have openly embraced racism. Because this topic is so important to me, I've dedicated an entire page to racism. Also, be sure to check out my Diversity Slide Show for more. |
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3 Comments » Leave a comment
- Anonymous
Thank you for your website! Many people need to know the real LDS church. Racism is not accepted in church. - Raymond Takashi Swenson
8-14-2008, 07:14:48 PM
Thank you for a fabulous web page. It is especially good in addressing the issue of the true diversity of the LDS church membership. I am a Japanese-American Mormon. My parents met when my dad was with the us air force in occupied Japan after world war II, and my mom, whose family was Russian Orthodox (from the conversion of her great grandfather), worked at the air base. My dad was called as a missionary to Japan just before I was born. I returned to Japan on my own mission from 1969-70 and returned with the air force in 1980 just before the dedication of the Tokyo temple.
When I grew up in Salt Lake in the 1950s, there were several black families in our ward. When I was in the air force in Colorado in 1974, I helped baptize a black army sergeant. We lived in a ward in Maryland with black families in 1978-80.
The church has over half its members who speak a language other than English in the home, and over half the members live outside the USA. There are a million in Mexico, nearly a million in Brazil, and millions more in Chile, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, etc. There are about a million Mormons in Asia, and a quarter million in African nations including Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, etc. Any visitor to the BYU campuses can see the church's diversity, especially in Hawaii, where "whites" are in the minority in the student body.
Even among those "white" Mormons in Utah, with English, Welsh and Scandinavian heritage, many of the missionaries who volunteer to teach the gospel for two years are assigned to nations around the world, on every continent. Walking through a Salt Lake lunch crowd, you can call for help in any of a dozen languages, and someone will respond who can speak to you. That was displayed during the 2002 Olympics. "White" Mormons have more intimate friendships with people of all races and nationalites than most other Americans. The LDS church membership is far more diverse than the population of the USA.
And this is not new. Mormon missionaries have been seeking out American Indians since 1830, Polynesians since 1844, Japanese since 1901. The first temple outside the continental US was in Hawaii in 1910 for the many Polynesian members there.
I remember a street meeting in Japan in 1970 when a Japanese man accused Mormons of being racist. He was saying this to Elder Kapolulu, a Chinese-Hawaiian whose skin was as dark as most African Americans. Elder Kapo pointed to his nose and said "mite goran!" (look!) The pedestrian was clearly not thinking.
Those who attack Mormons as being "racist" are idiots who don't have any idea what Mormons look like, what languages we speak, where we have lived, and who we are married to. How do they think they can tell us Mormons, who are of every race and ethnicity, that we are "racist"?
It is especially hypocritical coming from people who claim that Mormons are tainted with racism for a policy that ended a generation ago. Southern Baptists still had segregated congregations in 1980, and most congregations are still all white. Hollywood has been criticized until the very recent past for only grudgingly ending discrimination against minorities. The modern civil rights act only came into being in 1964, only 14 years before the revelation on priesthood in 1978. How does that 14 years make any difference when the nation had laws for a century after slavery that segregated by race and discriminated by race in voting and jury duty and every other civil right, while there was no racial segregation in LDS congregations? - Andrea Montes
6-16-2009, 03:45:14 PM
I am a black LDS church member and have always felt nothing but love and acceptance from the church.