We continue our series on race and Mormonism, and Tuesday, historian Max Perry Mueller joins us to talk about Joseph Smith and the early church's complicated views on race.

The historian Max Perry Mueller says that LDS Church founder Joseph Smith had a radical mission. He wanted nothing less than to end schisms in the human family. That doesn’t mean that Smith wholly embraced other races though. He envisioned Mormonism as a chance to lift the curse of blackness, to make a person who accepted the gospel, well … white. We continue our series on race and Mormonism, and Tuesday, Mueller joins us to talk about the complicated views on race held by the early church.

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Max Perry Mueller is an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska. His book is called Race and the Making of the Mormon People [Indie bookstores|Amazon]