I think that most scholars who utilize the ethnicity paradigm when studying sects without seriously considering some of the problems with the term. I think that ethnicity is used too much as a noun–something tangible. I will address this question more in future posts.

Clark,

Are you talking about Utah now, or the country in general? By the two, do you mean Lamarckian conceptions of race and the curse of Ham? What examples are you thinking about? I could also imagine a scenario where believing scientists such as Talmage or Widtsoe tried to reconcile the two ideas. To make any better observations, I would need to see the texts you are talking about.

All very interesting, particularly since I’m taking a seminar on this topic right now. In the little bit of reading I’ve done on this I have noticed that some scholars apply ethnicity to sects (Quakers, Mennonites, Dunkers); that is they list them as ethnicities. Keeping in mind that sectarianism is the religious act of a group setting themselves apart from the larger community, or choosing to have an “other” or outsider status (Mormons are definitely a sect). Are you arguing against the term generally? What term of group identity ought to be applied to sects like Mormons?

I don’t know about Utah, we might have to hear from one of our Utah experts on that one, but the historical literature seems to argue that Lamarck’s ideas were fairly ubiquitous as far as scientific conceptions of race are concerned. The literature also argues that the often religious conceptions of race based on myths like the Curse of Ham were developed, in part, to compete against multiple origins theories like that of Lamarck.

I guess it is possible that O’Dea was thinking about Mormon conceptions of themselves as a chosen race, but I doubt it. By the way, I think that conceptions of a Mormon race at the turn of the century probably are referential to Lamarckian conceptions of the environmental factors of biological race. They were conceiving their ideas in a time when people thought of race as something that resulted not only from long term origins of humanity but also from inherited adaptions to a particular environment.

O’Dea, in my opinion, was trying to explain a powerful contemporary group identity that he could see among the Mormons by dipping into the Sociological literature on ethnicity which had become academically powerful when he was writing his narrative.