Divine Rite of Kings: Land, Race, Same Sex, and Empire in Mormonism and the Esoteric Tradition

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.

Clyde R. Forsberg Jr. is a Professor in the Department of Western Languages and Literatures at Karabuk University, Turkey. He is also a Civic Education Project and Open Society Institute Fellow with a personal and professional interest in higher education reforms in emerging democracies in the former Soviet Union and parts of the Middle East. His academic training is highly interdisciplinary, with a PhD in American Social and Cultural History under Klaus J. Hansen at Queens University, Canada, an MA in the Philosophy of Religion under the devout Roman Catholic and Bernard Lonergan scholar Hugo A. Meynell, and a BA (magna cum laude) in Religious Studies with a twin concentration in Biblical Studies under Peter C. Craigie and Medieval Islamic Civilization under Andrew Rippin. Forsberg is also a Canadian playwright and jazz musician of note, conflating the fine arts and liberal arts in an attempt to get the message out. Born in the United States (Logan, Utah), raised and educated in Canadas capital (Ottawa), before going on to live and teach abroad in Kyrgyzstan, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, he is that brand of international American Studies scholar who feels most at home when far, far from it. The scion of pioneer Utah Mormons, he is a devout Unitarian. His wife, Cholpon Alieva, is a Central Asian Muslim. They have two children, Acacia and Attila.