As part of my journey to unlearn and push myself to become anti-racist, I read Mormonism and White Supremacy by Joanna Brooks. Joanna Brooks has helped me in many ways on my faith journey, her book Book of Mormon Girl taught me that I could love the fundamentals of our gospel and still have some problems at the same time. She taught me that I could be imperfect throughout my journey and all that mattered was that I was consistently working to better myself. This principle applies in all areas of our lives, from faith to justice, we all need to consistently work to be better advocates, allies, and saints.
While Mormonism and White Supremacy focuses on the heartbreaking history of white supremacy in our faith, she points out many heroes along the way. Many familiar names come into the scene like Orson Hyde or George Romney, but one name that I hadn’t heard much was mentioned: Stewart Udall.
Stewart Udall as Activist
Stewart Udall is from a prominent Arizona Mormon family, he was a congressman and then the Secretary of the Interior for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. As an environmental activist, my heart skipped a beat. If you read his Wikipedia page you will see that he was instrumental in helping start the environmental movement of the 70’s and played a key role in enacting the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Preservation Act (1966), the predecessor to the Endangered Species Act (1973). I had never known that a prominent Mormon had cared so much about the environment and held such an important office that protects the environment, and used that office for so much good. I had only grown up knowing that Mormons were usually against environmental movements, like Ezra Taft Benson asking “Why a spinster with no children, was so concerned about genetics?” about Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, and then wrote her off as “probably a communist”. To know that there was a prominent Mormon on the right side of environmental history was finding someone to look up to that I never thought existed. Just like Joanna Brooks pointed out in her book, there were always some of us on the right side of history, and for the environmental movement it was Stewart Udall.
What amazes me even more about Stewart is that he not only cared about the environmental movement, he merged social justice into his work, which is important because if the Black Live Mattermovement has taught environmentalists anything, it’s that you can’t fight one of these issues without fighting the other. Along with his brother, he was instrumental in desegregating the cafeteria at Arizona State University. While he was a school board member, he helped to desegregate the district he served in before Brown v. Board of Education. Most notably, he published a letter in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought to then President David O’McKay about the race priesthood ban (this letter is also available in Mormonism and White Supremacy). In the letter he speaks with conviction and love for the brotherhood of man. He pleads with the prophet to end the Priesthood Ban; not because it just hurts the people who cannot receive these blessings, but because it hurts us as well. Udall argues that we need to have these people in our congregation, and keeping the ban would “…damage the minds and morals of our youth”.
Udall’s fight for the environment and for racial justice reminds me of doing all we can for God’s creation, creatures, and humans and everyone together. He definitely made mistakes along the way and had a faith journey that we see many have, leaving the church for a while and coming back to love our gospel because it is fundamentally about the love for God and can be used to help us become the best versions of ourselves. He did all he could with his power to fight for the planet and all the people of the planet, giving us an example of what we can use our power to do. We must do everything we can to fight for others and become the best version of ourselves. We can mess up and make mistakes, but as long as we are consistently trying and fighting to make ourselves and the world better, we are doing what our Heavenly Parents have asked of us.
