Book Description

Divine Rite of Kings: Land, Race, Same Sex, and Empire in Mormonism and the Esoteric Tradition is a social-historical-political analysis of the religion of the Latter-day Saints as deeply indebted to a variety of esoteric systems of belief. It argues that the present campaign against gay marriage and other homophobic policies of the “American religion,” targeting the LGBTQ community, and, indeed, children of same-sex parents, are connected to erstwhile racial doctrines and practices, which excluded persons from full fellowship on the basis of race alone, Africans the supposed offspring of Cain and Canaan and thus cursed. Narrow heterosexist notions of “sexual purity” merely replaced Anglo-Saxon supremacist notions of “racial purity” in the imperial and the millennial understanding of Mormonism. The new heterosexism, this book suggests, can be viewed as a form of boundary maintenance better suited to an emergent international church and world religion, ironically, which continues to make inroads in parts of Asia, where its social conservatism and, indeed, virulent attacks against the “gay and lesbian lifestyle,” continue to attract followers.