“It’s Time We Began”: Race, Relationships, and the Life of the Church Now – Dialogue Journal and UVA Mormon Studies Panel

UVA Mormon Studies and Dialogue Journal will host four Latter-day Saint scholars to discuss the aftermath of the 1978 Revelation on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

On Saturday, April 25, 2026, Latter-day Saint scholars Alice Faulkner Burch, Vinna Chowriamah, Matthew L. Harris, and W. Paul Reeve will join UVA Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies Laurie Maffly-Kipp for the continuation of Dialogue Journal’s “All Are Alike Unto God” series. This series examines the insights and aftermath of the 1978 Revelation to Latter-day Saint President Spencer W. Kimball which expanded the priesthood beyond just white men to “all worthy, male members of the Church.”

The panelists will look at how racism still emerges both domestically and internationally and ways leaders and members can and do work together to root it out.

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Event Logistics

The panel will take place on the 30th floor of the UVA Darden DC Metro Building at 1100 Wilson Boulevard in Rosslyn, Va. Admission is free and open to the public, but space is limited. Registration is required to attend in person. The event will also be streamed live on the Dialogue Journal YouTube channel.

About the Scholars

Alice Faulkner Burch is a historian of the Black American experience in Utah and the American West, and is the editor of My Lord He Calls Me: Stories of Faith By Black American Latter-day Saints (Deseret Book, 2022). She serves on the Utah State Historical Records Advisory Board and the Utah chapter of the Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society. As part of their commitment to making Utah a better place for Black Americans, Alice and her husband, Robert Burch, co-founded the Sema Hadithi African American Heritage and Culture Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to researching, preserving, and teaching Utah’s Black American history.

Vinna Chowriamah is a Religious Studies PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studies global Mormonism, particularly in India and Mauritius. A Mauritian convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Chowriamah has spoken and written extensively on the Mormon experience and negotiation of Hindu cultures for events like the Global Mormon Studies Lectures, among others.

Matthew L. Harris is Professor of History and Director of Legal Studies at Colorado State University-Pueblo, where he explores the intersectionality of religion and law, race and religion, civil rights and race construction, and right-wing extremism and American politics, particularly among religious groups. Some of his many books include Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality, Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right, and The Mormon Church and Blacks: A Documentary History.

W. Paul Reeve is the Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies and former chair of the History Department at the University of Utah where he teaches courses on Utah history, Mormon history, and the history of the U.S. West. He is Project Manager and General Editor of an award-winning digital database, Century of Black Mormons, designed to name and identify all known Black Latter-day Saints baptized into the faith between 1830 and 1930. Reeve is also the author of multiple award-winning books, including Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness, (Oxford, 2015) and co-author of This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah (Oxford, 2024)

About The Moderator

Laurie Maffly-Kipp is the Richad Lyman Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Virginia. She is a distinguished scholar of American religious history and has authored numerous influential works on Mormonism, religion in the American West, and African American religious history. Over the past few decades, Professor Maffly-Kipp has become an influential interpreter of Latter-day Saint history and participated in shaping the field of Mormon Studies. She is also a former president of the American Society of Church History and the Mormon History Association.