Jabra Ghneim
Jabra Ghneim is a Utah activist.
Radical Mormon
Jabra Ghneim grew up in a Palestinian family, originally from Bethlehem but exiled in Kuwait. Although nominally Christian, Ghneim’s parents were nonobservant. They were, however, members of extended families of dedicated Marxists. Ghneim has aunts and uncles who were arrested and tortured in Jordan for distributing communist literature, and he identified with that tradition. “When I was growing up, my dad had a secret stash of Marx and Lenin books, and I read all of it. I was the kid who spoke about dialectic materialism to my friends, and nobody understood me.”
Ghneim went to university in Jordan, where he was introduced to Mormonism. Soon after, he earned a scholarship to study economics at Brigham Young University. The libertarian philosophy of the BYU economics department was jarring to him, but then Ghneim discovered the courses taught by legendary Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley.
Although Nibley criticized communism as being too focused on the material at the expense of the spiritual, he embraced the socialist nature of Christian and Mormon scripture. In his most popular text, Approaching Zion, Nibley cites the equality mandates in the revelations to Smith and points to church elder Brigham Young’s harsh condemnation of 19th century capitalism.
Ghneim eventually settled in Utah, married a fellow Mormon, and completed his Ph.D. in education at BYU. He now does translation work for clients that include the LDS church. “I’m a very faithful, observant Mormon, and I believe in the leaders of our church’s roles as prophets and revelators,” he says. “But I feel like progressivism and liberation are core concepts of the church, and those things are being forgotten.”
Which led Ghneim and fellow LDS members to join forces with others to form the Mormon Liberation Theology Project. “A liberation theology is consistent with our baptismal covenant, which we renew in Sacrament meeting every week and in the temple whenever we attend it. It is consistent with the commandment that we succor the poor” he says. “The church image may have changed over the years, but none of those doctrines has been overturned.”
One of the Project’s core challenges is responding to the dominant view in modern-day Mormonism that private property is sacrosanct and the poor are to be assisted only to the level that property-holders conclude they deserve. “But this is not what the Book of Mormon says,” Ghneim points out. “We have to share what we have—no ifs or buts.”[1]