The Book of Mormon from a Nineteenth-Century Perspective: Introduction

I am increasingly troubled by how little people seem to know--or care--about history and context. Our current social climate encourages partakers of online media to develop stories about other people and about the past without questioning those stories or even, quite often, collecting information. Checks against such imposed narratives--"Is that really within your purview?" "Do you have enough information?" "Shouldn't you find out more first?"--are often bypassed to deliver (supposedly caring, well-intentioned, emotionally justified and allegedly righteous) verdicts of others. Those verdicts often include labels, which labels appear to align with what I call "first cause," a modern-day version of original sin:  

Everything has gone wrong due to an inherent flaw in a person, plan, or social order. And one of those inherently flawed components is you!

Due to the spiraling focus on meaning-shorn-of-context, The Book of Mormon steadily seems subjected to a kind of self-help manual approach accompanied, on occasion, by an appalled "I can't believe it says that!" approach. 

In fairness, for much of history, the "everything is all about me" approach was adopted by believers and doubters as they used the scriptures to talk about other stuff, especially themselves. The approach lends itself to fresh and thought-provoking dialog. It even lends itself to social and religious change!

It also, unfortunately, lends itself to "since everything is relative and nobody can really know anything, you should believe about this passage what the 'expert' or 'proper' leader/authority/scholar/shouting person tells you to believe."

The "believe what you're told" approach doesn't work for me, whatever the identity of the "we know best" lecturing people. I far prefer context because I admire people of the past and believe they deserve to be understood as more than participants in an ideology or springboards to the reader's ego or springboards to the grinding of an axe. 

The context for The Book of Mormon, of course, is difficult and controversial. As stated in the next post, this blog will not address the issue of The Book of Mormon's translation. I have no investment in that argument in any direction. The primary question behind each entry is, rather, What religious climate existed at the publication of The Book of Mormon that made it such a satisfying book to its readers?