Review: Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific, by Amanda Hendrix-Komoto

Abstract

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific, by Amanda Hendrix-Komoto Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific. By Amanda Hendrix-Komoto. (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2022. 282 pp.) Tisa Wenger Tisa Wenger Yale University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (2023) 92 (2): 315–316. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2023.92.2.315 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Tisa Wenger; Review: Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific, by Amanda Hendrix-Komoto. Pacific Historical Review 1 May 2023; 92 (2): 315–316. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2023.92.2.315 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search The field of Mormon studies was once isolated, in Jan Shipps’s memorable phrase, like a “donut hole” in the larger field of U.S. Western history. Today, although many historians remain uncomfortable with the subject of religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is no longer uniquely set apart. With Imperial Zions, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto adds to a burgeoning scholarship that locates Latter-day Saints as very much a part of the history of empire-building in the American West and across the Pacific world. And while the book is unevenly argued, it raises an essential set of questions that future historians of this church will be unable to ignore. Hendrix-Komoto aims to connect the Latter-day Saints’ distinctive theology and practice of plural marriage with their simultaneous participation in U.S. imperial expansion. Ideas about gender and the family, she notes, were (and still are) inextricably tied up with the racial hierarchies... You do not currently have access to this content.