White supremacy in genealogy: Mormon antisemitism and anti-Indigeneity part 5

Mormon-produced image of Jesus visiting the Americas and hanging with Nephites, supposed ancestors of Indigenous Peoples and Mormonism, is placed over a Mormon image of Solomon’s temple complete with sacrificial alter and golden-oxen-supported baptismal font. Except the Cardston Alberta temple is laid over Solomon's temple. In the background, palm trees reach toward the cosmic sky.

White supremacy in genealogy: Mormon antisemitism and anti-Indigeneity part 5 of a 7-part series on philosemetism / antisemitism in Mormonism & white supremacy in genealogy

In this post I address the ideological overlap in Mormon mythistries about Jews, Judaism, and Peoples Indigenous to this land.

These overlaps are embedded in Euro-settler-Christians importing their ideologies and mythistries, and Bible-fan-fic genealogies to this land and forcing this continent to fit into their Bible narratives.

Mormonism emplows Christian-suprmecist antisemitism to fabricate a supersessionist connection to the Lost Tribes of Israel & employs Christian-suprmecist anti-Indigeneity to fabricate a Divine Birthright to these stolen lands (like the Doctrine of Discover and Manifest Destiny prescribe)

Mormon-produced image of Jesus visiting the Americas and hanging with Nephites, supposed ancestors of Indigenous Peoples and Mormonism, is placed over a Mormon image of Solomon’s temple complete with sacrificial alter and golden-oxen-supported baptismal font.

​​Mormonism teaches that Indigenous Peoples migrated to this land as white, ancient Israelis. This was a fairly common belief among colonists in the early US. Most of these Euro-colonists believed the Bible applied to everything, so they had to find a way to fit Indigenous Peoples into the Bible narrative.

This collided with another pseudo-Israelite-identity imported here by Northern Europeans—British Israelism, or the belief that Brits are descendants of some of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. So, many just decided that Indigenous Peoples must also be of the lost ten tribes of Israel. 

Part of the reason Northern European Christians decided themselves to be of the Lost Ten Tribes comes from the fact that half of the Christian scriptures are about Israel, about Jews. 

And just as European US-settlers sought to legitimize their young nation by appropriating Indigenous land and culture (using the deep history of Indigenous cultures to make their own new nation seem old like Europes)––Euro-Christian appropriated ancient Israelite identity to make their young religion seem as deep as Judaism. 

2 Nephi chapter 30 lays out this antisemitic / anti-Indigenous parallel clearly. In it’s introduction this church writes: “Many Lamanites and Jews will believe the word (of Christianity) and become delightsome”

Mormons view both Lamanites (Indigenous Peoples) and Jews as formerly Chosen Peoples who have fallen from divine favor in their rejection of Jesus as their God. 

2 Nephi 30:5-7: And the gospel of Jesus Christ shall be declared among (the Lamanites) wherefore, they shall be restored unto the knowledge (Christianity) of their fathers…and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a pure and a delightsome people (this verse read “white and delightsome til 1981). And it shall come to pass that the Jews which are scattered also shall begin to believe in Christ; and…shall also become a delightsome people.

This parallel continues as Mormonism teaches that practitioners have replaced Jews as Bible God’s Chosen People (supersessionism) and have replaced Indigenous Peoples as rightful heirs of this continent, this “Promised Land” (settler-nativism)
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This genocidal, white-supremacist, US exceptionalism is not only foundational to Mormonism, but also the US. These Mormon ideologies grew from ideologies imported here by settler-colonists, from the Puritans to the Founding Fathers. (see Glenn Beck from more on this)

​I think the repeated theme of the “more-worthy-younger-brother” in Mormonism encapsulates this antisemitism / anti-Indigeneity well:
Abel is the more worthy younger brother of Cain.
Joseph of Egypt was the more worthy younger brother of his 11 brothers (the tribes of Israel).
Ephraim is the more worthy younger brother of Manasseh.
Nephi is the more worthy younger brother of Laman.
Joseph Smith was the more worthy younger brother of Hyrum.
Jesus was the more worthy younger brother of Lucifer.
​Mormonism is the more worthy younger brother of Judaism and Indigenous religions.

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White supremacy in genealogy

Part 1 is about how Mormonism foundationally used genealogy to reify its white-supremacist doctrines which teach that Euro-Mormons—as the keepers of the keys of THE “One True Church,” and descendants of Ephraim’s tribe of Israel—are God’s Chosen Race and People.

Part 2 is about how this shows up in Mormon temple work, eternal families, & genealogy.

Part 3 is on the classist, femicidal violences of Mormon doctrine on Eternal Families, Polygyny, and Godhood.

Part 4 shares my personal experience with using genealogy in an anti-racist way.

Part 5 is on the ways antisemitism and anti-Indigeneity overlap in Mormonism 

Part 6  builds on part 5 through a critical analysis of the art and history in the Manti temple and it's grounds.

Part 7 addresses the Baptisms for the Dead that Mormons did for Jews killed in the Holocaust  along with Hitler and other Nazis.

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