Both Wrong and Bad

Secular and religious students spend a lot of time evaluating the rightness of The Book of Mormon. Believers seek to establish the truth of the empirical claims made in and about the book, which are fundamental to their belief. Nonbelievers seek to disestablish these claims. It is a lot of great, scholarly, fun. But, it seems to me, that more time could be spent evaluating the goodness of The Book of Mormon. Suppose we grant that it is an ancient work, recovered in the nineteenth century, and translated by supernatural means. This would make it right, but the enlightened reader must still grant an even more obvious case against the book: it is not good.

It is not good in a literary sense, to be sure, and we can look into that later, but it is not good in an ethical sense. I could cite its misogyny[1], brutality[2], or injustice[3], but for me, the glaring ethical failing in The Book of Mormon is its racism[4].

Early in the text, we pick up a thread of racism that will span the entire narrative. Because some of the book’s founding family, thereafter called Lamanites, separates themselves from the “righteous” sect, or Nephites, God curses the Lamanites. He cuts them off from his presence and forbids the Nephites from intermarrying with them. A sufficient dick move, but to really drive home that he is not just a dick, but a bigot, he marks the Lamanites. Not with a Death Eateresque tattoo, but with “a skin of blackness . . . that they shall be loathsome unto [the Nephites].”[5]

It is difficult to conceive of a more thoroughly hateful portrayal of race relations. The ethnocentric slime of this theme throughout the book mires repeatedly in novel moments and images. Here are just a few ways in which this Dark Mark gets worse as one reads on:

1. ·         It explicitly contrasts the skins of blackness given to the Lamanites with their former skin, which was white, fair and delightsome, and which is still had by the Nephites
2. ·         God lords the threat of doing the same to the Nephites through his prophets throughout the narrative
3. ·         When Lamanites convert to join the religion of the Nephites, their skins become white
4. ·         In addition to the difference in skin color, the Lamanites are ever after portrayed in crass stereotype as idle, wild, mischievous, savage, drunken, and stupid
5. ·         Worst of all, the text directly equates the dark-skinned Lamanites with the Native Americans of our day

All of this is well known, but I restate it now and I plan to do so often if only to reiterate the evil in this book which The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to paint as benign.[6] What may be less known, however, are several other ways in which The Book of Mormon is horribly racist.

As is often the case, the problems with The Book of Mormon became worse as I studied apologetic literature, written by believing scholars seeking to reclaim the book from the accusation of racism. Richard Bushman, for example, in Joseph Smith Rough Stone Rolling, attempts to complicate the matter of race in the text. He concedes the “blatant racism,” of the curse passages, but explains that the Lamanites are unforgotten members of the House of Israel in the text, “God’s chosen people.”[7] This, for Bushman, turns the nineteenth-century racial conception of Indians on its head. Rather than Europeans coming to claim a new world, the Europeans are “interlopers,” and Gentiles. America is indeed a land of promise, but a promise made to the Indians, not to the Europeans, which they will share if the Gentiles come unto Christ.

This apologetic makes my skin crawl. Not because Bushman is wrong, but because he is right. He is correct that not only does the book equate dark skin with misbehavior and ugliness; it also appropriates diverse, beautiful, and ancient cultures on the American continent and twists them to fit into the Western mold. Joseph Smith is not out to give us a hypothetically abhorrent view of race, but a real and destructive one. He would tear down Enigorio and Enigonhahetgea, and replace them with Cain and Abel, The Great League of Peace for the bloody Judges.[8] That Joseph could presume to bring this text to the Indians, expecting them to appreciate the message, staggers me. Here is your history. This is it. Not the words of your sages and elders. You are not you. You are this. You are us.

And, by the way, how does the House of Israel fare in the text? Well, first I note that the same appropriation occurs here. The message in the book to the Jews is that really you are just Christians. Your culture is bankrupt, lost in the anomie of forgetting that Christianity is right. This apologetic is epidemic in the Christian faith, but Joseph canonized it.[9] Disgusting.

Second, Joseph whittles Judaism down into stereotypic filth. The book revels in the conquest of King Nebuchadnezzar[10], and in its post-diction of the many “destructions, famines, pestilences, and bloodsheds” to which the Jews will fall victim. This because “they shall crucify [Jesus] . . . and there is none other nation on earth that would crucify their God. For should the mighty miracles be wrought among other nations, they would repent and know that he be their God.”[11] There had been pogroms enough in 1830 to make such a sentiment hideous.

Bushman’s tact of complicating The Book of Mormon is the time-honored modus operandi that has failed since Joseph “discovered” Zelph.[12] While from the perspective of literary criticism, I appreciate the addition of nuance, from the perspective of decency and progress, the matter is quite simple. The Book of Mormon is not just wrong. It is bad.

I hate to do it, but I have to leave you with its worst passage. It is in 1 Nephi 13. The book dwells for hundreds of pages on a fake genocide: the slaughter of the Nephites. Granted the uremic attitude toward the Native Americans throughout this text, I suppose it should not surprise me that it has only 27 words to spare regarding the actual genocide of the peoples of ancient America:

And I beheld the wrath of God, that it was upon the seed of my brethren. And they were scattered before the Gentiles and they were smitten.[13]

27 words worth millions of lives. I have had enough.

References

Bushman, Richard Lyman. 2005. Joseph Smith Rough Stone Rolling A Cultural Biography of Mormonism's Founder. New York, New York: Vintage Books.

Cooper, James Fenimore. 2012. The Last of the Mohicans 1826. Vols. II: Volume B 1820-1865, in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Nina Baym and Robert S Levine, 80-86. New York * London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Dryden, John. 1672. The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards in Two Parts. Savoy, England: T.N. Accessed April 8, 2018. http://name.umdl.umich.edu/A36610.0001.001.

Franklin, Benjamin. 2012. Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America (1784). Vol. I: Volume A Beginnings to 1820, in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, edited by Nina Bayme and Robert S Levine, 476-480. New York * London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Hardy, Grant. 2010. Understanding the Book of Mormon A Reader's Guide. New York: Oxford University Press.

Jefferson, Thomas. 2010. "Notes on the State of Virginia (1787)." In The Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Wayne Franklin, 24-177. New York * London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Smith, Joseph. 2008. History, 1838-1856, column A-1[23 December 1805 - 30 August 1834]. Vol. X, in Journals, Volume 1: 1832 - 1839, edited by Dean C Jesse, Ronald K Esplin and Richard Lyman Bushman. Salt Lake City, Utah: Intellectual Reserve, Inc. Accessed April 9, 2018. http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/575.

—. Original Publication 1830, Edition Release 2009. The Book of Mormon. The Earliest Text. Edited by Royal Skousen. Connecticut, New Haven: Yale University Press.

1827 Original Publication; Reproduced in 2012 for Edition. The Iroquois Creation Story. Vol. I: Beginnings to 1820, in The Norton Anthology American Literature, edited by Nina Baym and Robert S Levine, translated by David Cusick, 21-25. New York*London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Tvedtness, John A. 2003. "The Charge of "Racism" in the Book of Mormon." FARMS Review (Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship) 15 (2): 183-197. Accessed April 8, 2018. https://publications.mi.byu.edu/publications/review/15/2/S00010-5176b139bd48510Tvedtnes.pdf.

Wells, Steve, ed. 1999-2018. Skeptics Annotated Bible. Vol. III: Book of Mormon. III vols. Accessed April 9, 2018. http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/BOM/index.htm.

[1] (Smith Original Publication 1830, Edition Release 2009, Moroni 9:9-10; 730)

[2] (The Book of Mormon, Alma 1:4, 15; 278-279)

[3] (The Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 13; 33-38)

[4] (Wells 1999-2018, Please see the citation of 179 instances from The Skeptics Annotated Bible: The Book of Mormon http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/BOM/int/long.html)

[5] (Smith Original Publication 1830, Edition Release 2009, 2 Nephi 5:18-25; 90)

[6] For arguments against these passages being racist see (Bushman 2005, 97-99), (Hardy 2010, Note 13 to Chapter 7) (Tvedtness 2003)

[7] (Bushman 2005, 97-98)

[8] (The Iroquois Creation Story 1827 Original Publication; Reproduced in 2012 for Edition, 24)

[9] (Smith Original Publication 1830, Edition Release 2009, Title Page)

[10] (The Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 1:19-20; 7-8)

[11] (The Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 10:3-5; 104-105)

[12] (Smith, History, 1838-1856, column A-1[23 December 1805 - 30 August 1834] 2008)
[13] (Smith, The Book of Mormon Original Publication 1830, Edition Release 2009, 1 Nephi 13:14; 34)