I was so proud this Sunday. Grace Chapel's associate pastor, Steve Allen, spoke directly to the un-Christ-like language (and more importantly) sentiment that the President of the United States used to disparage refugees and immigrants from countries with majority black and brown peoples (Haiti; Africa; El Salvador). If it wasn't clear enough what he meant, [...]
Category: Writings Elsewhere
Review of Thomas Simpson’s AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN MORMONISM, 1867–1940
Here is my review of Thomas W. Simpson's award-winning book, American Universities and the Birth of Modern Mormonism (The University of North Carolina Press, 2016), just published in the Southern California Quarterly (Vol. 99 No. 4, Winter 2017 (pp. 480-83)).
Flunking Sainthood: The Book of Mormon and racial reconciliation
I had the great pleasure of talking with the great Jana Riess (of Twible and Flunking Sainthood fame) at Religion News Service. RNS: You say that the earliest Mormons had a “vision of restorative racial universalism” that shows up in the Book of Mormon’s ideal that the Lamanites will acquire white skin when they become righteous. Mueller: For [...]
Religion Dispatches: What the History of Mormonism Reveals about the Origins of “Race”
I participated in RD's now canonical "10 Questions" series on new books. Other recent contributors include Wendy Doniger, Jason Josephson Storm, and Haroon Moghul. What inspired you to write Race and the Making of the Mormon People? Let me be a bit confessional. I’m not a Mormon, but Mormon culture has probably formed me more than any [...]
Religion & Politics: Why I Went Back to Church.
At R&P, I wrote about my journey back to church, motivated by my daughter, my father, and Donald Trump. I was late to my own baptism. This past Easter Sunday, my two-year-old daughter and I were scheduled to be baptized at Grace Chapel, a Presbyterian church (PCA) in our adopted hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska. Anxious to [...]
Max Perry Mueller 