King Benjamin's Speech: Revivals

Nineteenth-century readers would have recognized themselves in King Benjamin's listeners.

Towards the end of his life, the good King Benjamin gathers his people together and gives a speech. Near the end of the speech, his listeners cry out, "O have mercy and apply the atoning blood of Christ" (Mosiah 4:2). As a consequence, they are touched by the Holy Spirit.

Revivals in which speakers evoked an emotional crisis, a desire to repent and (re)commit to Jesus Christ, were not only common in the nineteenth century, they were familiar to the previous generation. 

The Great Awakening began in the 1700s before the Revolutionary War. One of the sad (but true) aspects of the Salem Witch Trials is that less than fifty years later, the girls' behavior would likely have been perceived not as possession by the devil but as possession by the Holy Spirit. George Whitefield from England was likely the greatest revivalist of the era, charming even the mostly agnostic Benjamin Franklin. Jonathan Edwards was the New England clergyman who made revivals acceptable. 

Jonathan Edwards

In many ways, revivals were a reaction against a perceived indifference or rote attitude regarding religion. My personal diagnosis is that revivals were a reaction to an upheaval in culture. The Salem Witch Trials were not the ultimate hurrah of Puritanism; they were the last hurrah, the end of a culture in which government and traditions and beliefs converged. The colonies were becoming more and more pluralistic. Revivals were a way to locate common ground and reassurance amid uncertainty.

Jonathan Edwards, one of Calvinism's New Lights, greeted revivals as a solution to apathy though he did not preach in the Whitefield manner. He read "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" without histrionics (he wasn't a histrionics type of guy) but he did it to create an acknowledgment of guilt or emotional catharsis in his listeners. 

"Old Lights" Puritans, on the other hand, objected to the emotional excesses of the Awakening (one revivalist held a bonfire in which sacrilegious stuff was burnt, including--he offered--his pants; at the same time, a number of students accused their professors of not being committed enough to various beliefs: sound familiar?). In response to the Old Lights, Edwards argued that one couldn't divide up the impressions of the Holy Spirit, being okay in one instance but not okay in another. 

Edwards still struggled with the ramifications of the Awakening, namely the "revolution in authority." As George Marsden writes in his excellent book A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards, "For the moment, few evangelicals (and certainly not Edwards) saw such spiritual equality as having implications for social status generally. But in the long run, the implications were there."

Herein lies the inherent contradiction of Protestantism: By stressing the individual's relationship with God, all Protestants, from Luther to Edwards, left the matter open to challengers. "I'll just go start my own religion then," says the challenger. "No, no, no," proclaim the leaders. "We didn't mean THAT." 

Too late.

The Old Lights weren't just offended by the break with past authority. They were also offended by the instant-salvation aspect of the revivals. Marsden states, "[Charles Chauncy] was not against truly transformative works of the Holy Spirit, but he believed they were usually manifested as a gradual process of recognizing and living according to God's grace. 'Enthusiasm'...was a sort of overheated and contagious mental state that led people to mistake their own overwrought passions for the work of God." 

Moreover, ordinary citizens were getting a tad tired of all the unrest. The revivals weren't as horrific as the Salem Witch Trials but the mob-like drop in rational thought wasn't too different. (As Marsden later remarks, "[C]harity...on both sides...was becoming a rare commodity.")

The Second Great Awakening in the nineteenth century was a continuation of the first with a stronger emphasis on Millennialism and Methodist theology. The Burned-over District in New York was so named because so many revivals occurred there.   

As for the attendees/believers, they would have come from varying backgrounds and taken up varying positions: Franklin, non-religious yet friends with the similarly outspoken and bombastic Whitefield; careful, logical Edwards, wholly passionate in his quiet way about revivals; Chauncy, rational and appalled about the fall-out.

And everybody in-between.

King Benjamin's speech supplies several distinctive and familiar revival-type characteristics:

1. It is an organized event.

In the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, some controversy existed over planned, authorized revivals--organized by clergy--versus pop-up revivals carried out by itinerant preachers. People like Edwards naturally favored the former. Civil authorities had reason to be wary of the latter.

2. The necessity of the written word is stressed.

Speakers in the past didn't have microphones. Whitefield had the ability to be heard at a tremendous distance--one possible reason he was so popular. But generally speaking, a speech had to be taken down in some manner and passed on. 

3. King Benjamin warns his audience of internal splits and contentions. 

4. The listeners are threatened with judgment.

However, as typical of The Book of Mormon, the judgment is not the wrath of God holding sinners over a flame ("oops, nope, gotcha--just joking") but rather the result of the individual withdrawing from God. "Mercy hath no claim" on the damned because the damned "shrink from the presence of God" (Mosiah 2:38-39). 

5. Salvation is promised to all, including those who "ignorantly sin" (Mosiah 3:11), such as little children. 

6. As mentioned above, while listening to King Benjamin, the people cry out for mercy. 

7. When the people cry out, they are visited by the Holy Spirit. 

8. As a result of feeling the Holy Spirit, they are "filled with joy, having received a remission of their sins, and having peace of conscience, because of the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ who should come" (Mosiah 4:3).

9. King Benjamin then continues his speech, exhorting the listeners, "[Y]e must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you; and now, if you believe all these things see that ye do them" (Mosiah 4:10).

Some revivals descended into what can only be called mass hysteria--something resembling concert attendees swooning when the Beatles came to town. Jonathan Edwards, for instance, was unable to finish his famous speech due to mob-like behavior, of which he was honestly not impressed. That mass hysteria does not occur with King Benjamin. See #10.

10. The people enter into a covenant. 

Encountering King Benjamin's speech, nineteenth-century readers would surely have spotted similarities to revivals at the time. They would also have spotted differences. 

They may also have spotted a resolution to the ongoing tension between grace and works.

Both Chauncy and Edwards agreed that a sudden emotional outburst isn't enough. But why not? If there is an elect, why is a manifestation of grace not enough to be going on with? And who is experiencing that manifestation of grace/sanctification anyway? (Edwards warned revival attendees against trying to distinguish "true" sanctification from "false.") For that matter, why do such experiences seem to fade over time, so the experiencer begins to backslide? (Edwards was truly upset by the backsliders.)

The Book of Mormon resolves the issue here--and in other places--by proposing a solution that makes works not a way of illustrating that one has been marked by grace (though that Calvinist concept is definitely present) or a way of carrying out a change in heart (though that more Methodist attitude is also present). Rather, the individual is drawn to grace by the individual's path or preference or even personality: where the individual is headed, what life the individual is trying to form through choices, actions and rituals (works), dreams, plans, objects, people, places...

You reap not just what you sow but what you care about sowing.

Alma 27-30: Korihor & Alma, Atheism & Evidentiary Religion

The story of Korihor resembles many scenes in nineteenth-century America and Britain. Alma and Korihor are not arguing because they are so unlike each other. They are, in fact, arguing from a shared set of references. 

In fact, Korihor argues positions already taken by The Book of Mormon: “a child is not guilty because of its parents"; priests bind “yokes” on others.

So why is Korihor a problem?

He is an atheist. The trouble isn’t his positions but the deductions he forms from his positions.

Atheism in Context

One important aspect of any religion is that what may appear uniform to outsiders and even to future adherents does not appear that way to insiders and believers at the time. The early Christian world split in two over the question of whether Christ was a spiritual manifestation (equal) of God or a son (non-equal) of God. Likewise, Buddhists almost immediately took up different explanations of "rebirth" at the beginnings of Buddhism--what rebirth entails, how it comes about.

The differences may matter. The arguments, however, often appear entirely incomprehensible to everyone else.

Deists in eighteenth to nineteenth-century America are a good example of the gap between outsiders’ and insiders’ perceptions.

Deists in nineteenth-century America now appear as somewhat bland, honorable, club-attending, gentle Christians. The "Founding Fathers" were largely deists—isn't that nice?

To early Americans, deists were radicals, and it was generally recognized that while not all deists were atheists, many atheists were nominally deists (taking into account that "atheism" has had different definitions in different time periods). No public, publishing colonial writer was obviously atheistic. Thomas Paine, for instance, called what he was arguing for "deism," and he was criticized for it.

Like with most religions of the era, deism rested on “evidential” reasoning—the idea that the natural world and rational argument could prove philosophical and, if necessary, religious truths. The idea influenced generations of believers, from literalists using the natural world and the Bible to prove the equivalent of Creationism to near-atheists using the natural world and Bible studies (coming out of Germany) to prove the non-existence of miracles.

Korihor's Atheism

Consequently, nineteenth-century believers would have comprehended Alma's alarm at Korihor’s contention, “How do ye know of their surety? Behold, ye cannot know of things which ye do not see; therefore ye cannot know that there shall be a Christ” (30:15).

Korihor also proposes antinomian arguments (no moral law exists as a norm), which arguments have haunted religious and philosophical thought since the beginning of time. Jain Buddhists, for example, were concerned that rebirth of a person without a definite “I” soul would result in nihilistic or dismissive attitudes towards current bad behavior.

In nineteenth-century America, everybody was accusing everybody else of antinomian arguments: the Calvinists got accused of it for proposing that God has already determined salvation—therefore, moral goodness of the individual didn’t matter. The Universalists got accused of it for saying everybody would be saved—therefore, God was indiscriminate and didn't care about the morality the Bible appeared to preach.

Evidentiary Religion

Both Alma and Korihor argue from the perspective of evidentiary religion, a perspective nineteenth-century readers would have recognized.

On the one hand in the nineteenth century was the belief that all theological knowledge rested exclusively within the scriptures. On the other was respect for tradition, the analysis and insights of Church theologians over the years. Both sides argued that theology was backed up by external evidence (science/nature) and had to make rational sense (George MacDonald presents a variation of this approach when he argues that any interpretation of doctrine that violates commonsense is probably, you know, wrong; he also refuses to treat the Bible as the final stop). In the meantime, scholars were arguing, "Hey, maybe that interpretation isn't contextually what Paul meant in the first place." 

Congregations split between the revivalist focus on individual testimony and those who thought such a focus was self-indulgent. Nobody was going so far as to say, “God is telling me to create new doctrine" (only the Millennialists). Rather, debates circled around a particular scripture’s original intent followed by evidence for that intent. 

When Alma states, “[B]ehold, I have all things as a testimony that these things are true," nineteenth-century readers would have recognized the statement as underscoring evidentiary proof and as opening the door to revelation beyond the scriptures.

They also would have recognized his and Korihor's use of rational, point-by-point arguments.

So when Korihor is brought before Alma, Alma zeroes in on specific claims—namely, the claims that Korihor makes in reference to the natural world and one’s senses. Alma uses the "evidence of absence" argument: you claim there is not a God but all we have is your word for that. Like Korihor, Alma draws on the natural world and the scriptures to make opposing points:

The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator. (44)

What All These Issues Mean to Nineteenth-Century Readers

The chapters involve remarkably nuanced arguments but ones that early nineteenth-century readers would have related to—this is the tail end of the era in which Congregationalists were still trying to square predestination with free will and works. Many arguments between Protestant sects and, for that matter, between various Calvinists rested on points of doctrine. 

And, as always, there were lots and lots of in-between believers: those who embraced many of the same ideas as Calvinists and Universalists and even Deists while refuting others. That is, they had no trouble embracing grace while admitting, “Yeah, people shouldn’t be jerks.” Nineteenth-century readers would have easily balanced the “same” elements of Alma and Korihor’s arguments against their differences.

In sum, Korihor isn't at fault for arguing. He is at fault for being reductionist and dreary. 

The reaction here is one that underscores Millennialism--namely, many believers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries honestly did not want to take rational "evidentiary" positions to their nth degree. Why should they get rid of miracles? Why should they get rid of Christ's godly nature? Why should they slice up the scriptures into so-called palatable bits like Thomas Jefferson did?

They didn’t want to discard rationality and evidence from the natural world—but why should that mean getting rid of the unseen, unknowable, and unprovable?

Since quantum mechanics hadn’t yet shown up in the sciences, they had a point.