A chosen people, a promised land : Mormonism and race in Hawai'i / Hokulani K. Aikau.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Aikau, Hokulani K., 1970- author.

Series:

First peoples (2010)

First peoples, new directions in indigenous studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Polynesians--Relations with Mormons.

Polynesians.

Latter Day Saint churches--Hawaii.

Latter Day Saint churches.

Latter Day Saints--Hawaii.

Latter Day Saints.

Race relations--Religious aspects--Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Race relations.

Race relations--Religious aspects--Latter Day Saint churches.

Polynesian Cultural Center (Laie, Hawaii).

Relations with Mormons.

Hawaii.

Physical Description:

xiii, 232 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2012]

Summary:

Christianity figured prominently in the imperial and colonial exploitation and dispossession of indigenous peoples worldwide, yet many indigenous people embrace Christian faith as part of their cultural and ethnic identities. A Chosen People, a Promised Land gets to the heart of this contradiction by exploring how Native Hawaiian members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (more commonly known as Mormons) understand and negotiate their place in this quintessentially American religion.

Mormon missionaries arrived in Hawai'i in 1850, a mere twenty years after Joseph Smith founded the church. Hokulani K. Aikau traces the ways in which Native Hawaiians became integrated into the religious doctrine of the church as a "chosen people"-even at a time when exclusionary racial policies regarding black members of the church were being codified. Aikau shows how Hawaiians and other Polynesian saints came to be considered chosen and how they were able to use their venerated status toward their own spiritual, cultural, and pragmatic ends. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : negotiating faithfulness

Mormonism, race, and lineage : the making of a chosen people

La'ie, a promised land, and Pu'uhonua : spatial struggles for land and identity

Called to serve : labor missionary work and modernity

In the service of the Lord : religion, race, and the Polynesian Cultural Center

Voyages of faith : contemporary Kanaka Maoli struggles for sustainable self-determination

Conclusion : Holo Mua, moving forward.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780816674619

0816674612

9780816674626

0816674620

OCLC:

748286886