How racist was Joseph Smith? Can the LDS Church really claim Jane Manning James as an example of Joseph Smith’s progressive ideals? There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Joseph Smith had a theological imagination for Indigenous Americans, but what did he really think of African Americans?
Historian Max Mueller, author of ‘Race and the Making of The Mormon People’, joins me to discuss the foundational racial ideas abroad during the early days of the Mormon Movement, and where they ended up in LDS theology.