Review
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Title: Exceptionally Queer: Mormon Peculiarity and U.S. Nationalism
Author: K. Mohrman
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Genre: History
Year Published: 2022
Number of Pages: 423
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 9781517911294
Price: $30.00
Reviewed by Kevin Folkman for the Association for Mormon Letters
Earlier this summer, my wife and I happened to be in Utah and were able to attend events surrounding the dedication of monuments depicting the black pioneers who arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Sculptures at This is the Place Heritage Park had been commissioned and paid for by private donations, in partnership with the State of Utah, for pioneer slaves Green Flake, Oscar Crosby, and Hark Wales, as well as free black woman Jane Manning James. The ceremony unveiling the statues was a moving experience for us, with featured musical performances by members of the Bonner Family and speeches by Park Director Ellis Ivory, Utah Governor Spencer Cox, and M Russell Ballard, President of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
It wasn’t until we returned home that we realized that the program printed for the unveiling of the monuments was titled “Pioneers of 1847,” not “Black Pioneers of 1847.” It is unknown how this came about, but the effect was jarring.
Exceptionally Queer: Mormon Peculiarity and U.S. Nationalism by K. Mohrman suggests that the answer may lay in issues that go far back into U.S. and Church history. She forwards the argument that as the Church transitioned from national pariah during the polygamy era to exemplary American citizens by the mid-twentieth century, Mormons in Utah embraced American Exceptionalism, a commitment to U.S. citizenship in the mold of white Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. In Mohrman’s view, this is reflected in American systemic racism, sexism, and colonial thinking. If you follow the reasoning and research in her book, despite the LDS Church ending the temple and priesthood ban for Black members in 1978, this racism and sexism persists in many ways as part of the American culture, and in the institution of the Church.
Exceptionally Queer was a difficult read for me. At its heart, Mohrman’s book is steeped in critical theory applied to both race, economic, and gender issues, wrapped in the language of academia. I found myself on multiple occasions having to look up the definition of some of the words used, primarily in quotations from Mohrman’s sources. This also resulted in frequent page flipping to the back of the book to read the endnotes to understand the arguments she presented. For such a challenging read, I prefer footnotes.
Mohrman argues that religious, racial, sexual, gendered, and class representations should be examined in conjunction with each other and not as discrete issues, as has often been done in the past. She points to the persistent self-identification of the LDS church and its adherents as a “peculiar people,” an important key to understanding the transition from peculiar as defined by a polygamous, economically cooperative, and patriarchal society, to what Mohrman calls a hyper-normative culture that prides itself in typifying American exceptionalism, manifested in wholesome family values, capitalist language, and divine destiny for the United States of America.
In Part I of Exceptionally Queer, Mohrman traces how the growing Latter-day Saint church’s peculiarity narrative developed from the Restoration period, through the economically isolated, polygamous, and theocratic pioneer period, culminating in the face-off with Federal power that led to the abandonment of polygamy and economic experimentation in the late 19th century. During that era, Utah and Mormon church members were depicted in the national press as racially degenerate, not fully American, and a threat to traditional Protestant morality. Mohrman makes frequent use of editorial cartoons from the publications of the 19th century to highlight how Mormons were perceived as racially inferior, along with Native Americans, blacks, and Chinese immigrants. Comparisons to Muslims and harems were commonplace. The implications, Mohrman writes, is that as a result of polygamy, church members in Utah were not viewed as fully white Americans. With the abandonment of polygamy starting in 1890, the peculiarity narrative changed to one of accommodation with American ideals.
In Part II, Mohrman describes how the church affected a shift to assimilation in American mainstream culture. Church members were held up as particular exemplars of American values and self-identifying as quintessentially American during the early to late 20th century. In her view, such hyper-normativity is at its roots an expression of white supremacy, restrictive gender roles and sexism, and conservative Protestant religious views. She points to many examples of this, but none more telling than voters who reacted to the presidential candidacy of Mormon Mitt Romney as being too nice, too perfect, too wholesome, with not a hair out of place. Mohrman also points to other examples of this hyper-normativity. During the first few years after the Boy Scouts of America was organized, Utah had the highest per-capita BSA membership in the United States. Such activities as the BSA and YMCA “…framed Mormonism as actively adapting itself to the gendered and racial requirements of national inclusion, but it also represented Mormons as more naturally manly than others.” [p173]
There are important insights in Mohrman’s book, but I found the title and cover design to be intentionally provocative, with “Queer” as the largest word on the cover, paired with stylized images of the Salt Lake City Temple draped in the star-spangled banner of the U.S. flag. Gender issues are an important part of Mohrman’s book, but the title seems at odds with her argument of viewing race, gender, class, and religion as all parts of a greater, indivisible whole. Mohrman only fully explains towards the end of her book her definition of queer as used in the title as “…a kind of politicized identity, a practice or set of practices, and as antinormative (all of which articulate queerness as a kind of exceptionalism)” [p304]. She quotes Peter Coviello’s comment that “modern Mormonism’s seamless identification with American religiosity as being disrupted by an underlying perversity based in 19th-century polygamy in contrast to 20th-century hyper-normativity” [p304] This definition would have been more helpful in the introduction, rather than at the end.
The idea of viewing the Church and its culture as a multifaceted whole is Exceptionally Queer’s greatest strength. While she treats the Church and its leaders with a fair amount of respect, Mohrman misses some opportunities to engage the reader more thoroughly in her narrative. For example, when she writes about Spencer W. Kimball and the 1978 revelation ending the priesthood and temple ban for church members of African descent, she merely states that Kimball received a revelation that directed him to end the ban. Left out is even a cursory description of the time and effort Kimball put into seeking such a change. Kimball involved scholars, close friends, and other church leaders in doing research into church history, scriptural interpretation, and current literature on the origins and development of the ban. It was a chance to add some significant context to one of the most important changes in church policy during the 20th century.
Some readers will be discouraged from reading Mohrman’s book by the title of Exceptionally Queer, some by the challenging language, and others by the frank discussion of critical theory as it applies to race, gender, and economic aspects of the LDS church. That is regrettable, as Mohrman advances powerful and important arguments that deserve widespread attention by both scholars and the general LDS church membership. I don’t agree with all of her conclusions, but I can sense the value of addressing such topics in a frank and forthright manner. In Mohrman’s view, one can perceive the exclusion of “Black Pioneers of 1847” from the title of the program for the dedication of the monuments mentioned earlier as evidence supporting her arguments, subconsciously or intentionally. Exceptionally Queer deserves the attention of more than academics to its arguments and will be much referenced by future scholarship regarding religion, race, and gender. It just may not reach all the audience that Mohrman may have hoped for.