Quincy D. Newell puts a human face to the priesthood and temple ban of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in her seminal study of Jane Manning James, a black Latter-day Saint. In 1852, prophet-president Brigham Young instituted a ban that excluded persons of African ancestry from full participation in the Mormon Church. Newell's book is an excellent case study demonstrating how the ban affected James and her family and how this remarkable woman maintained her commitment to Mormonism despite being excluded from some of the faith's most important priesthood and temple rituals.

Jane Manning James was born into a free black family in Wilton, Connecticut in 1813. In 1842, James left the Presbyterian faith and converted to Mormonism after encountering two Mormon missionaries. Energized by her new religion, she helped convert several of her family members, including her mother, three brothers, two sisters, and other relatives, prompting them to move to Nauvoo, Illinois, the epicenter of the Mormon Church by the early 1840s. Shortly thereafter, she became acquainted with Mormonism's charismatic founding prophet Joseph Smith, developing a close relationship with him and his family in Nauvoo. Subsequently, she worked in his home as a servant, where she laundered his clothes, cooked meals for the Smith family, and became an eyewitness to building what Smith called the “Kingdom of God.” Under Smith's careful leadership, black men were ordained to the lay Mormon priesthood, but that changed after Smith's untimely death in 1844. Smith's successor, the bombastic and energetic Brigham Young, led Latter-day Saints westward, along with James and her family, where he made drastic changes to Mormon racial policies and practices. He sermonized that black people were cursed. In 1852, nearly a decade after Manning's conversion, Young instituted a ban on priesthood rituals and practices, confining James and her kin to the margins of the church.

In telling this story, Newell skillfully narrates Jane's persistent attempts to achieve full inclusion in the church. In 1903, for example, she asked then-church president Joseph F. Smith, the nephew of Joseph Smith, if she could be endowed and “sealed” and subsequently adopted into the family of Joseph Smith in a special temple ritual, which would bind her to Smith and his family in a way that comported with Mormon teachings about family, kinship, and eternal salvation. Her request was rejected, although she was granted access to limited temple rituals such as performing the “ritual of proxy baptism” for her deceased relatives (97). The ever-persistent James petitioned Joseph F. Smith again for permission to participate in full Mormon temple rituals, but again, she was denied. In the last petition, James signed her letter to Smith as “Your Sister in the Gospel”—which became the title of Newell's book.

Newell expertly explains that Manning understood all too well that her skin color disenfranchised her in her new faith, yet she and her family were drawn to the Mormon message of salvation. Many of Mormonism's unique religious practices spoke to her directly: Mormonism's emphasis in speaking in tongues, prophetic revelation, healing gifts, and Mormon salvific rituals and rites. Jane also developed a kinship with fellow (white) sisters in the all-woman Mormon Relief Society, a philanthropic organization started in Nauvoo in 1842. In this tightly-knit community, the Relief Society supported James her during moments of financial distress and grief but also provided spiritual sustenance when the larger church seemed to fail her.

Familiarly known as “Aunt Jane” to her fellow Latter-day Saints, Manning demonstrated her commitment to the church when she followed Latter-day Saints to the Great Basin in Utah, where she lived until her death in 1908. As Newell chronicles this story, she acknowledges the limitations of her scant sources, yet with her critical eye for detail, rigorous interrogation of extant sources, and creative imagination, she has provided a probing account of a seminal yet overlooked figure in the annals of Mormonism. Newell also includes several arresting accounts of Manning in Mormon historical memory, demonstrating that by the twenty-first century James had evolved among the Latter-day Saint faithful—so much so that she became the subject of plays, musicals, and Mormon prayer candles.

Newell's work is a wonderful reminder of what can be accomplished with limited sources. But, more importantly, she provides a model of how to write about the lived religion of marginalized voices and how to include them into our narratives, whether it be that of a black Mormon woman like Jane Manning James or marginalized voices in other faith traditions. For this effort, and more, we are in her debt. Newell has done historians of Mormonism and Religious Studies a great service.