“The lessons we learn from scripture depend on the questions we ask… The Book of Mormon…warrants the most challenging questions we can throw at it. This book attempts to ask those difficult questions.” So opens this third and final volume of The Book of Mormon for the Least of These, focusing on the books of Helaman through Moroni. Specifically, this commentary asks what the Book of Mormon says “about genocide, bigotry, environmental destruction, poverty, and inequality? What can it offer a world that is broken, full of hatred and unfettered greed?” The Book of Mormon and this commentary have lots to say on these (and many other) crucial topics for this day and age.
Olsen Hemming and Salleh bring myriad insights. (I counted more than 40 notes or highlights in my copy.) From underlining the unfairness of the justice system that locked up five innocent men in Helaman 9 (“how many times in the Book of Mormon do innocent people go to prison?”), to drawing attention to the failures of Nephi the prophet (“a promise from God that your work is right is not a promise of ease and safety”), to inviting readers to reflect on the likely fate of women and children carried away into the wilderness by robbers (“vulnerable bodies are frequently a casualty of men’s wars”). Again and again, the authors point to themes often largely neglected in discussions of these books. Olsen Hemming and Salleh provide questions for meditation or discussion related to many passages, making this an ideal volume to integrate into a class.
I’ve had the privilege of discussing each volume in this trilogy with the authors, Fatimah Salleh and Margaret Olsen Hemming. If I’ve taken one thing from each of those conversations, it’s how much they love the Book of Mormon and how much they love the prophets in this book. They don’t give the prophets a pass, as one or another of them “sometimes engages in ideas of prosperity gospel, racism, sexism, and the justification of abuse and oppression.” But their critiques come from a place of respect and deep affection. I unreservedly recommend this entire series.
Related resources:
- Rachel Rueckert’s review of this volume in Exponent II: “The Book of Mormon for the Least of These has never been more urgent, timely, relevant, and needed. The authors’ love, passion, dedication, and commitment shine through on every page. This book changed me, and I’m so glad I let it into my life and heart. I’ll be returning to it again and again.”
- Christian Anderson’s review of this volume for the Association for Mormon Letters: “Our world is simultaneously more just and nonviolent than at any time in history, but also more aware of what violence and injustice remain and profoundly divided over what to do about it. Those who have ears to hear can consider this series their call to the work.”
- My review of the first volume in this trilogy: The Book of Mormon for the Least of These: 1 Nephi – Words of Mormon.
I’m pleased that these authors find so much value in the Book of Mormon relating to what we might term as modern issues–and I’d like to think that every reader of the BoM might be edified by its message regardless of their degree of preparation. But at the same time I think we often miss what the text is really saying when we try to interpret it through a modern lens. It’s not that the BoM doesn’t address modern issues–it certainly does. But I wonder sometimes if we read into the text an approach to those issues that isn’t there.
Racism is a good example. The more I’ve studied the BoM the more I’ve come to believe that we’ve been front loading our reading of the Nephites views of skin color with our own racist concerns. I’m at the point now where I don’t think the Nephites had any racist notion at all toward the Lamanites–at least not in the way that we think about the problem of racism today. Their difficulty with the appearance of the Lamanites had nothing to do with color–but rather it was a sign (to the Nephites) of their complete and utter rejection of the standards imposed upon the Lord’s people by the Law of Moses.
And so when the Nephites look upon the Lamanites they’re not seeing another race of people. What they’re seeing is their *brethren* who have thrown off the law. A “good” Nephite knows that the law demands the body be covered–but the Lamanites, as described by the Nephite writers, do the opposite. They wear hardly anything at all–and so is it any wonder that their complexion is darker than the Nephites’?
The writers mention other behaviors of the Lamanites–such as eating raw meat–that are affronts to the Nephites’ way of life–and that’s what those descriptions are based on: the difference between the two groups based on how they keep the law (or not).
And so what we *don’t* have is Joseph Smith injecting elements from his own culture into the text that bespeak racial tensions. When we free ourselves from that assumption we’re better able to understand what the writers of the BoM are actually saying about the Lamanites’ skins. For example, Jacob’s words about the Nephites’s skins being darker than the Lamanites’ (if they don’t get their act together) is a symbolic suggestion that the law will justify the Lamanites before it justifies them. In other words, the Nephites shouldn’t criticize the Lamanites for not living the law — as is evidenced by their complexion — when the sins they’ve committed are far more grievous.
It would be surprising if the Nephites were not racist, given that just about every society we know of is. It seems to be human nature to feel wary when encountering someone who looks different than what we’re used to, and then we assign meaning to those feelings. The form that racism takes is different in different societies, and often skin color has nothing to do with it. But we see a preference for lighter skin right now in India, China, and Latin America, for example.
It’s certainly true that Nephite racism is quite different from 19th century American racism. Joseph Smith would never have described ancestors of Native Americans as having a “skin of blackness” as “blackness” was associated with Africans.
Of course the Nephites didn’t call it racism, and one can argue whether that’s really the best term given the kinship between the Nephites and the Lamanites. But “race” is a social construct, not a biological one, and the way the Nephites looked down on the Lamanites and assigned them negative characteristics as a group (“filthy”, “idle”, “ferocious”) fits the pattern. So does Nephite prophets like Jacob and Mormon trying to fight those attitudes while not noticing all the ways those attitudes affected their own thinking. Again, it’s human nature and we’re all affected.
Good thoughts, RLD. I agree that racism has always been rather ubiquitous–unfortunately. And I certainly don’t want to convey the notion that racism could never have reared its ugly head among the Nephites. That said, I don’t think the Nephite descriptions of the Lamanites arise so much from a clash of cultures as they do from the underlying reason for their differences–which is their respect or lack thereof for the Law of Moses. It’s not as if the two groups come out of the bush and discover each other and never learn how to get along. The descriptors, “filthy, idle, and ferocious,” need not be racist epithets nor an attempt at “othering.” I think they could very well be — or might’ve started out as being — the obvious evidence of falling out of favor with God–and I think that caused many of the Nephites to mourn for their brethren the Lamanites. But, sadly, as per Section 121, it seems that the Nephites were prejudiced towards the Lamanites, at times, in spite of the underlying causes of the rift between the two groups–the Lamanites murderous intentions notwithstanding.
The problem isn’t the origin of those judgements, or even their accuracy (translated into a statistical claim like “the mean level of idleness among the Lamanites is higher than the mean level of idleness among the Nephites”). The problem is applying them to the Lamanites as a group.
One way to think of racism is as a cognitive shortcut: I don’t know anything about you, so I’ll start by assuming you’re just like other people I’ve met that look like you, or what I’ve been told that people who look like you are like. And it may not be a bad place to start, depending on what I’ve been told. The real problem is when I don’t pay attention to individuals and don’t move past that starting point–think Stephen C’s recent post on demographic morality plays. What I like about this framework is that it tells me how to overcome racism: slow down and think of the person in front of me as an individual.
One way to weaken this kind of racism is to make people aware of individuals who go against their stereotypes, and I think Mormon was intentionally doing this when he talked about the sons of Helaman or Samuel the Lamanite.
There undoubtedly was racial tensions in the Book of Mormon just like we have today. The question is- will we be able to set aside our prejudices and become a people not being distinguished by “ites”? The destruction of the Nephites and many of the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon was born from the idea of social class and distinction, not having all things in common amongst them anymore. For about 200 years after Christ appeared to them they were all one people, the children of Christ, having no race distinction amongst them.
Fast forward to today, In my lifetime there has never been a time as much as I see today where class distinction is greater nor racial tensions higher. We love our money more than God and we envy our neighbor who has more than us. Politics is forcing us into both race and class distinctions.
Personally I have decided that I no longer will identify as “white” or “Caucasian” on any government or other official form. I will put “other” and identify as a child of God.
I’m really glad to see a positive review of the series here! I think everyone should take a look at these books. Excellent supplements to Book of Mormon study. I do think racism is a core theme of the Book of Mormon. But even if it wasn’t actually a problem in the ancient world (and again, I think it was), the Book of Mormon has definitely been used in racist ways since its translation in the nineteenth century. It was written for our day.
I had the privilege of interviewing the authors on my Fireside with Blair Hodges podcast. I recommend the episode! https://www.firesidepod.org/episodes/salleh