Summary
Title: Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church
Author: Simon G. Southerton
Publisher: Signature Books
ISBN: 1560851813
Pro:
• Sensitive to Native American history and culture
• Makes both DNA research and Mormon beliefs accessible to general readers
• Written by a former Mormon forced to choose between religion & science
Con:
• None
Description:
• Exploration of how modern DNA science contradicts Mormon traditions & theology
• Explains the background of both DNA and Mormonism
• Argues that Mormon leaders are avoiding the truth
Book Review
Most Mormons in the world are unaware of the ways in which science contradicts some of their most basic beliefs about history. This is understandable because, at least for a long time, it was possible to fit Mormon premises in the cracks of ambiguity and uncertainty. It may have been true that no direct evidence of Israelite colonization had been discovered in the Americas, but archaeologists haven’t dug every inch of ground and maybe there is something out there just waiting to be discovered. It is in such gaps that faith always seems to find a foothold.
Today the pendulum is swinging and faith is losing its moorings, at least for those who keep abreast of recent research. The culprit is not archaeology but biology — specifically, the ability to test people’s DNA and trace their lineage across the seas that separate the continents as well as the seas of time, thus establishing with a high degree of accuracy what their ethnic background is. This is the subject of Simon G. Southerton‘s book Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church.
A senior research with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Canberra, Australia, Southerton had a very personal reason to study this subject: he is, or at least was, a bishop in the Mormon church. Because of his career, however, he was also in possession of far more information than the average church member — and this created a growing internal conflict that had to be resolved. For Southernton, the resolution meant leaving his church because of his inability to continue accepting its basic tenets. For the rest of us, it means a fascinating introduction not only to Mormon beliefs, but also the current state of DNA research.
As archaeology and anthropology have progressed, though, all such “evidence” has been refuted and we are left with absolutely no basis for the claims. They would be little more than a historical curiosity of 19th century American culture if they hadn’t been inserted into a nascent religion, one that would grow tremendously and which now informs the historical beliefs of millions around the world.
In addition to perpetuating false beliefs about history, it has also served to perpetuate false beliefs about science and about race. For years faithful Mormons have been fed errors about how science works and what science tells us about DNA. They have also been fed ridiculous notions about the “superiority” of white races, a notion that has been based to a great extent upon traditional beliefs about what ethnic groups originated where.
- “The stereotypes and misunderstandings served to validate the Europeans' theft of native lands as an act of retribution; American Indians were themselves intruders in a land that had belonged to an earlier race--one that was comfortingly familiar to white colonists.”
- “These stereotypes ignored the plurality of native cultures that existed in the New World before contact with Europeans. The myth relied heavily on value judgments of native cultures that clearly placed "savage" races lower on the ladder of civilizations and respectability. And the prejudices reflected a judgment passed on native cultures at the lowest point in their existence, at a time when the very framework of Native American societies had been torn apart by disease, war, and by an irrepressible invading force that was steadily taking possession of their homelands.”
Traditional Mormon beliefs about the history and people of the Americas are absolutely and unquestionably wrong — there’s just no gentler way to put it — but the overwhelming facts against them don’t stop the Mormon leadership from teaching and encouraging belief in these doctrines. People who believe the stories are, at best, sadly ignorant of modern knowledge. People who teach it should know better. Church leaders are arguably engaged in a type of intellectual and scientific fraud.
