Not a Country or a Stereotype: Latina LDS Experiences of Ethnic Homogenization and Racial Tokenism in the American West

Abstract

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), also called Mormonism, has experienced rapid changes in its US demographics due to an influx of Latinx membership. The most recent growth in the US church body has been within Spanish-speaking congregations, and many of these congregant members are first or 1.5-generation immigrant Latinas. Using ethnographic data from 27 interviews with immigrant members living in Utah, Nevada, and California, LDS Latinas reported that while US Anglo members did seem to appreciate certain aspects of their cultural customs or practices, they also reported frequently experiencing ethnic homogenization or racial tokenization within US Church spaces and with White family members. Our findings indicate that the contemporary LDS church, despite some progressive policy implementations within its doctrinal parameters, still struggles in its ever-globalizing state to prioritize exposing White US members to the cultural heterogeneity of non-White, global LDS identities and perspectives. Latina LDS experiences and their religious adjacency to Whiteness provide a useful lens by which researchers can better understand the ways in which ethnic identity, gender, legal status, and language create both opportunities and challenges for immigrant incorporation and inclusion within US religious spaces and add to the existing body of scholarship on migration and religion.

Keywords

• Latinas
• US immigration
• ethnic homogenization
• racial tokenism
• religious politics
• Mormonism