Forever Familias: Race, Gender, and Indigeneity in Peruvian Mormonism

I must begin with a confession. I was hoping to contribute to a book review panel for this manuscript at the 2024 Society for Scientific Study of Religion conference led by Thomas Murphy, but I was ultimately unable to attend. I offer my gratitude to Amanda Hendrix-Komoto for extending the redeeming opportunity to write this review, so I can at least share a belated contribution to the insights made on that panel. Forever Familias is a richly complex text that in my reading offers both an ethnography of global Peruvian Mormons and a critical autoethnography of an anthropologist. This approach challenges anthropology, religious studies, and global Mormon studies, among other fields, to simultaneously respect a culturally relativist approach, alongside a systemic focused critical analysis, paired with an honest reflexivity. This book does not shy away from anthropology's or academia's colonial baggage, directly confronting various layers of social and cultural power. Meanwhile this book also works through community-based experiences grounded in kinship ties and personal relationships. The contributions from this work include deep insights into vast globally mobile realities, which complicate many of the commonly assumed boundaries of nations, religions, and academic disciplines.Jason Palmer shared in his book release interview with the University of Illinois Press that he encountered “resistance from active LDS peer reviewers,” due to arguments he makes in the book. For example, he states “that the LDS Church sought to be a hegemonic force in all aspects of its parishioners’ lives.” Some of the reviewers’ seemed to support or at least accept this point on academic grounds. Yet, these reviewers refused to recommend publication despite being a densely-researched and compelling manuscript, perhaps due to a sense of cultural loyalty to (or fear of) the Church. This was incredibly frustrating to learn of, yet, unfortunately, unsurprising. Palmer also shared he experienced an academic divide among reviewers, between anthropological and Mormon studies readings. As an anthropologist who is also currently a “good standing” member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (mainstream Mormonism/LDS), I avoided Mormon studies for many years due to the cultural hegemony and institutional power that Palmer identifies. I like to cheekily refer to it as, Mormon cult-ure. Yet, beyond the hegemonic social forces of Mormon cult-ure, many Mormon scholars in my observation practice an intricate sincerity, empathetic and compassionate flexibility, as well as intellectual integrity. Nevertheless, the academic seriousness of Mormon studies, in my view, continues to hinge on the (dis)honesty of our positions on and relationships to Mormon cult-ure. For these reasons, I found the sharp yet generous writing in Palmer's book to be a choice read. I am glad it was ultimately published and released. However, saying so may get me into a bit more cultural ‘trouble’ than I already find myself in, perhaps it is just in my “nature” as a “Lamanite.”The use of familias is explained by Palmer as being adjacent to or overlapping with other Indigenous concepts for relation and kinship. Familias in this sense exceeds the limits of modern English and the index of meaning it carries within coloniality. Palmer honors his relations who are monolingual by adopting their use and extended meaning of even the Spanish definition of the word, with a deeper and broader sense captured in familia. Palmer explains that familia as a concept completes narrow definitions of family as it reunites with a larger interconnected and Indigenous whole. I became particularly intrigued with Palmer's practice of closeness and openness demonstrated throughout the text. This includes revealing himself, his previous misconceptions, and his positionality through critical self-interrogation, which was presented together with the vulnerability of the communities and members of la familia in the book. I find this ethic and methodology rare, even in anthropology, which was captivating and refreshing. This pairing of perspectives and realities was complimented with a piercing analysis that highlighted both the assertions of agency by Peruvian Mormons that shift and refuse imperial power—and the racial, gendered, and colonial power the Church, Peru, and the U.S. enacts on and through Peruvian Mormons.This book does not pull any punches, and it will land as thoughtfully insightful for some and overwhelmingly confronting for others. This could have been the case just on subject matters of race, gender, and Indigeneity alone in our current moment. A sentiment of discomfort is further intensified within the context of Mormon studies in my view, which in my experience includes amateur to professional intellectuals. This includes believing practitioners, dogmatic apologists, nuanced practicing member-academics, theologians, heretics, and non-believing or never-were Mormons. Each of these positionalities offers a unique starting point and set of intellectual and metaphysical boundaries that are dependent on where one is sliding on this spectrum. Social location and religious proximity frame a balancing act between academic inquiry and spiritual and social consequence. It is within this intellectual terrain that Palmer consistently delivers social-spiritual blows in his refusal to reconcile the harms of clear and present imperial structures of power and complicit or active actions that reinforce them. He does so by deploying a robust engagement with heaps of different literatures across disciplines that demonstrates a commitment to critical inquiry, through a genuine engagement with dare I say, a ‘diversity’ of scholars and ideas. Simultaneously, Palmer's relativism to community members of la familia surrenders to their belief and reality and takes what they experience for what they say it is. He demonstrates this by choosing not to deconstruct or explain away their religious and spiritual experiences, honoring them in their context. This approach effectively exposed institutional contradictions that contrast with Peruvian Mormon spiritual flexibility and religious creativity. Palmer's revelation of social processes that mask racism, sexism, and coloniality at individual and structural levels, identified in claims of “gospel culture” or through leadership assumptions, is powerfully delivered. Additionally, the complicated project of mestizaje and globally connected yet locally distinct contexts of race and Indigeneity were surgically detailed, which was perhaps the most impactful contribution for me personally. The explanations of de-indianizing Peruvians entrapped within Christianity and global movements—contextualizes the unique ways in which race can transcend phenotypical coding. Race is thus also a spiritual coloring, identified in the “soul,” manifested in the culture and behavior aligned with colonial power. The insights on racialized and gendered “Lamanite” Indigeneity was steadfast in signifying how Peruvian national marginalization of Indigeneity finds an empowered possibility of Indigeneity through Mormonism. At the same time, “Lamanite” Indigeneity is a carefully contained, surveilled, and controlled identity within civilizing and whitening projects.One of the fascinating concepts in the book that I want to highlight is that of “Nephite immunity,” which Palmer explains is what facilitates a license for cultural elites to bend and break rules through an inherent and essentialist assumption of having “higher morality.” This is possible through racialized, gendered, and imperial power that designed the rules of modern power to begin with, which are enforced and exclusively subverted by those with “Nephite immunity.” The burning curiosities I regularly found myself pondering were based in Palmer's direct and honest positioning both to la familia and to the reader, which were at times vastly different realities coming into intimate contact with each other. These moments in the book remained in my thinking as they extended and connected with my own GuateMayan familia experiences. Moments with familia when differing and unreconciling positions find themselves intimately facing one another through deep relational connections, exposes a reality of living with(in) contradictions. I appreciate the liminal gray areas that emanate out of this text and ethnographically paint a picture of paradox that rings true to both my personal and scholarly perspectives. There was one point that I struggled with a bit though, and that was the mention of missions facilitating a sense of equality through a global experience of communitas. While I recognize this was not the main focus, and I respect the point which was soundly made and supported, I find that different powers based on race, class, gender, Indigeneity, and geopolitics is something I experienced and continue to observe being omnipresent. This is despite living in the same setting, sharing desires and experiences, and walking the same streets as missionaries. Communitas for me was/is more selectively experienced, and has been a topic of discussion and analysis by “Global South,” working-class, Indigenous, and darker-skinned relations of mine who do/did not always feel a sense of communitas as missionaries.Overall, Forever Familias is full of densely layered enigmas and ethical dilemmas that effectively remind the reader of several multifaceted contexts and circumstances that exist at the same time. Palmer masterfully identifies a social structure of power and confronts pervasive social constructions of essentialism. This book has a critical lens that is perpetually aware of its own complications and limitations. As a member of the Church who is also a critical anthropologist, or as I may be theologically framed, “a rebellious Lamanite,” this was a welcome and liberating read. I imagine that for the closeted heretic who will quietly agree with the arguments they do not speak of or write openly, this will be an energizing book, yet for the dogmatically paralyzed who operates in a presumed world devoid of the contexts of modern power, this text will be read as having a “spirit of contention.” Keeping in mind those in the realms of Mormon cult-ure who face potential social-spiritual consequences, I reckon this book will nonetheless be appreciated by thoughtful intellectuals keen to be enriched and/or challenged. Forever Familias is a uniquely rich contribution to critical ethnographic scholarship that will catalyze thoughts and inquiries that go well beyond the pages.