Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints weren’t always seen the way they are today.

“Mormons went from being perceived as not being white enough in the 19th century to too white in the 21st century,” W. Paul Reeve, a professor of history at the University of Utah, said Friday during the Mormon Studies Conference at Utah Valley University.

This year’s conference, themed “Multicultural Mormonism: Religious Cohesion in a New Era of Diversity,” ran from Wednesday to Friday at the Orem university, tackling topics on various ethnicities and their connections to the religion.

Boyd Petersen, program coordinator for Mormon Studies at UVU, said the program is dedicated to cross-cultural and interfaith exchanges. Previous conferences have touched on subjects such as Mormonism and Islam and Mormonism and Buddhism.

“This is a natural extension of what we’ve done,” Petersen said.

Janan Graham-Russell, a writer and womanist scholar, said black members of the Utah-based church can be told that black Mormons aren’t like other black people, can wonder if they have been cursed and have been called racial slurs in the temple.

“Something very curious happens when images of the divine that reside in holy places don’t look like you,” she said.

While church policies barring blacks from holding the priesthood have been reversed, those policies haven’t been forgotten, she said.

There’s also the perception that black bodies are opposite, unnatural and sometimes demonic, Graham-Russell said.

“To be made in the image of God was to be made into the image of the white body,” she said.

Today’s troubles of the LDS Church being seen as too white weren’t always there. Early on, Petersen said Mormons weren’t considered white.

“Nineteenth-century Mormons were thought of as kind of a different race,” Petersen said.

He points to political cartoons where Mormons were depicted with dark skin and a nose that at the time was used to depict Middle Easterners.

Now, depictions in the media of Mormons are completely different.

“The cultural stereotype of Mormons now is they are so white and so boring,” he said.

In his address, “Mormons, Immigration, and Whiteness,” Reeve said early Mormon immigrants weren’t considered desirable. For Mormons now, he said they forget that their immigrant ancestors underwent the same process of assimilation current immigrants do.

“Sometimes, white Mormons like me assume that is what other people had to do, but certainly not our blonde-hair-and-blue-eyed ancestors,” Reeve said.

He drew on examples of Scandinavian immigrants, which were a part of Scandinavian church meetings in Utah that lasted into the 20th century.

Reeve suggested the church teach a more complex version of Mormon history that includes those immigration struggles and diversity.

“Most Latter-day Saints get their version of LDS history from Sunday school,” Reeve said. “Until the Sunday school narrative changes, I don’t think we are going to be making a lot of headway.”

He said institutes and seminaries are already changing curriculum in that direction.

“We are hopefully going to have the next generation raised on a different narrative,” he said.

Graham-Russell suggested looking at racism and white supremacy as a sin.

“We look at sin as something that keeps people from reaching their highest human potential, and if we are able to approach racism and white supremacy in that matter, it is a way to face those conversations in that church that make it not uncomfortable,” she said.

For Mormons, Petersen said it’s important they know not every Mormon looks and acts the same.

“We are hoping to build some bridges there and make people think about how we can use those differences to create more of a unity,” he said.