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.

Mosiah 12 & 13: The Ten Commandments

In Mosiah 12 & 13, Abinadi quotes the Ten Commandments.

In nineteenth-century America, the Decalogue was a link to the Lost Tribes of Israel, a popular topic of the time. Many scholars and religious leaders and archaeologists in the nineteenth century maintained that some or all tribes had made their way to America, bringing with them important wisdom, most specifically the Ten Commandments.

In the aftermath of the Civil War as the United States became home to immigrants from places other than Northern Europe (and Canada), the Ten Commandments were presented as unifying standards, products of "natural law," which presupposes that humans across many cultures will identify similar behaviors as right or wrong. (See section on Natural Law below.) 

The hope was that this natural law--along with archetypes and legends, such as the Founding of Our Country--could bring various religions and sects (and states) together. Hence, the erection of numerous monuments before and after DeMille/Heston's The Ten Commandments. 

Transplanted Israelites alongside their ethical legacy were common currency in the nineteenth century. Despite sharing an interest in those ideas, the first readers of The Book of Mormon were more interested in the associated doctrines. As I will address later, Millenarianism flourished within Mormonism but never went entirely in the same direction as it did in other societies. To borrow from my popular culture background, Joseph Smith had a more Spike attitude towards life and human endeavors than an Angelus attitude, more "let's invest in human activity" than "let's watch the world burn."

Like Joseph Smith, many early Book of Mormon readers were coming out of the Calvinist tradition. An ongoing doctrinal controversy within that tradition was the relationship between grace and works or, rather, the exact nature of grace. Passages within The Book of Mormon return to this issue again and again.

In the Book of Mosiah, Abinadi is brought before the wicked King Noah and King Noah's priests. He uses the opportunity to pull a Martin Luther, to accuse the priests of claiming adherence to a set of behaviors they don’t actually practice: “I perceive that [the Ten Commandments] are not written in your hearts” (Mosiah 13:11). The argument bears resemblance to a current-day interpretation of ancient texts, Jesus’s words, and King Benjamin’s speech, the latter also from The Book of Mormon:

• Michael Coogan argues that the Ten Commandments are likely extremely old. Documentary evidence indicates that they preceded the various versions that appear in the first five Books of Moses. The classically numbered third commandment—commonly presented as “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain”—is more accurately rendered as “You should not use the name of Yahweh, your god, for nothing.” 

Both books are worth checking out. Joselit

discusses monuments--see above.

Coogan goes on to discuss how ancient religions customarily paired magic with theology. Speaking the name of one’s god was often part of a spell. Coupled with the classically numbered second commandment about idols, the third commandment of the Decalogue tosses out the idea of propitiation through such appeals: “The Israelites’ new god with the mysterious name was not a god who could be controlled by invoking his name in incantations or magic, any more than he could be localized in a statue” (Coogan). Paul, who knew his scriptures, built on this idea.

• Jesus uses the Ten Commandments to make a series of rather sarcastic points. (There is far more sarcasm in the Gospels than may make some religious commentators comfortable—it is a touching indicator that Jesus had a singular personality, though one can’t help but wonder if Heavenly Father turned to Jesus upon the Ascension and said, “You do realize many humans have absolutely no sense of humor. They are going to take a bunch of that stuff you said very, very literally.”)

Don’t commit adultery becomes If your right eye offend thee (with lustful gazes), pluck it out.

Although some scholars perceive Jesus as increasing the rules, I agree with those scholars who argue that Jesus is actually driving home a point that comes up with the Rich Young Man: If you truly think you are already completely righteous for keeping all the commandments, fine—now, try this on. Are you as good as you say? Are you honestly dedicated to what you claim to follow? If you keep pushing the envelope here, you might find that the essence of the law is better than a checklist. Because cutting out your eye is a dumb idea. Instead, try to use thoughtfulness and commonsense to be a decent human being. It’ll be easier.

As David Mitchell states about the eye of the needle directive, “Jesus was being sarky and going, ‘It’s about as easy for a rich man to get into heaven as it is to get a planet into a shoe.’” 

Trying to bargain will get a believer absolutely nowhere.

• King Benjamin’s speech early in Mosiah presents a series of if…then statements. The “then” statements are often treated as commandments by readers. They are not. They are “fruits” of adhering to the first commandment:

Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.

Believe that ye must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God…(Mosiah 4:9, 10)

If you believe—

You will not have a mind to injure others.

You will treat your children well.

You will help others and have a magnanimous attitude. (Mosiah 4)

In sum, the Ten Commandments are used in The Book of Mormon as a way to resolve the connection between grace and works. Abinadi chastises the learned because they fail to practice what they claim to know/embrace, which chastisement could be taken as an argument in favor of works. However, as detailed above, the overall argument more resembles the points made by Coogan, Jesus, and King Benjamin: the Commandments only have merit as works if they reflect faith-based beliefs as part of character. 

Abinadi then makes an assertion about knowledge/works that would have signaled a battle-cry to nineteenth-century readers, namely a lack of knowledge does not preclude salvation, when he declares without qualification, “Little children also have eternal life” (Mosiah 15:25).

Such a statement may seem a given to readers now—but a gauntlet is being thrown down.

Natural Law

Coogan argues quite reasonably that the Decalogue specifically references ancient Israelite culture. I think he has a point, but I also think there is something rather impressive here about what C.S. Lewis referred to as the Tao; throughout history, people have considered certain things good and bad despite what society considers acceptable and non-acceptable. Slavery has sometimes been acceptable but nobody has ever advocated it as a lifestyle; violence was often far more acceptable but few cultures have ever supported violence/betrayal against a friend (other than those societies that substitute individual virtues with service to the State)...and so on.

Mosiah 4: The Poor

 

The opening of Mosiah, Chapter 4 extols the principle of grace (a topic I will address in several entries). Yet verse 24—"I would that ye say in your hearts that: I give not because I have not, but if I had I would give”—returns to what people do with their beliefs.

I have been in Sunday School classes where verse 24 was used to discuss whether or not people should give money to panhandlers. People in favor of the loose change theory of charity spoke up and darted judgmental glances at others. They could glare at me all they wanted--I rarely have cash on me--but I happened to know that one of the recipients of those judgmental glances has, over his lifetime, donated considerable amounts of money to charitable programs in America and other countries. At the time, I was considerably irritated.

Such judgmental members clearly missed the point. The verse rests on a state of mind as much as an act. Previous verses address assumptions made about those in need and conclude, "Are we not all beggars?" (Mosiah 4:19). The one-road-to-charity folks are actually guilty of the very thing the speaker, King Benjamin, is preaching against. You can’t judge someone else’s circumstances based on what you see or assume.

In our social media-obsessed world of labels and insta-judgments, I think this lesson often gets lost.

More importantly, for the purpose of these posts, the world has changed. 

Nearly the entire history of the world is the history of people trying not to starve to death. Big Brother’s game-based control over the refrigerator is more accurate to the human condition than perhaps appreciated. Historical exceptions such as Ancient Egypt (trustworthy harvests; major works projects) are the exceptions that prove the rule.  

It is notable and touching that even in poverty-stricken circumstances, human beings are capable of great nobility and compassion. An examination of Anglo-Saxon skeletons indicates that elderly peasants who could no longer work were still cared for by somebody.

A descendant of the original soup kitchens.

That "somebody" would have belonged to the family/community. From the ancient world to the early nineteenth century, the number of aid organizations to which one could contribute was far less than now by a magnitude of a thousand+. 

Regarding the nineteenth century specifically, charity organizations in the urban environment flourished as the urban environment took hold (there's no indication that poor people before urbanization were any better off; they were simply more invisible). The YMCA began in the mid-1800s, the Salvation Army also in the mid-1800s. Soup kitchens came and went but weren’t going strong as regular city institutions until the mid-1800s.

Most charity for most of history was local and church-based. And brought about almost entirely by face-to-face/door-to-door requests. Such efforts did great work! But the fail-safes that modern people take for granted—something as basic as not being sent to jail for debt—didn’t exist. Most people were one harvest away from not being able to feed their families. There is a reason that Pa Ingalls spent a large amount of Laura’s childhood not at home (no, the reality wasn’t like the television show). When a bunch of locusts eat your wheat, you have to go work on the railroad instead. 

And there's a reason that the agricultural poor, despite D.H. Lawrence, went to work in mines and factories when the Industrial Revolution rolled in. Despite the incredible dangers of those places, they were better than working on farms. 

Factory workers at Amoskeag, who were working 12-hour days, still considered that they had gained advantages, such as more free time in the evenings. And they joined social organizations, a pattern of civic engagement that took off in the nineteenth century. 

In the 1830s, however, most people were still laborers or farmers, which means that most people were poor laborers or farmers. Even the “wealthy” people who helped out Joseph Smith were not what we moderns would necessarily deem wealthy (though Martin Harris did pay $3,000 for The Book of Mormon's printing of 5000 volumes, which cost is close to $100,000 today--the calculation is confused by certain things being less expensive and other things being more expensive, and printing was steadily becoming less expensive; it was nevertheless a great deal of money). 

In the 1830s, many aid organizations associated with urban environments were still in their infancy. Consequently, one of the best survival mechanisms at the time was to be a member of a functional social community, such as a religious community. See King Benjamin's citizens, nineteenth-century experimental communities like Oneida, and, eventually, Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo.

Nineteenth-century readers were well-aware of the benefits of such communities. And well-aware of the daily risks they otherwise faced. The reminder to hold one’s fire regarding another person’s circumstances would have hit home.

Mosiah & Alma: Missionary Work

Missionaries have existed in every era. For nineteenth-century readers of The Book of Mormon, missionaries were part of the cultural landscape. 

A Little Background

The earliest missionaries for Christianity were in many ways similar to the early Buddhist missionaries: the idea was to run out and tell people about a new freeing, universal way of being. As Andrew F. Walls points out in The Missionary Movement in Christian History, early Christian missionary efforts avoided later "paternalistic" attitudes (which bother us moderns) because Christians themselves were under the same demands for personal growth. Interestingly enough, in The Book of Mormon, Jacob's "y'all are a bunch of jerks" speech to the Nephites relies on this idea. The comparison of Nephites to Lamanites emphasizes the Nephites' failures.

The Nineteenth Century

The evangelical movement in the late 18th century to early 19th century was somewhat different and fell into two strands.

Marriage Proposal from Hell

The first was the idea of converting non-Christians--the late eighteenth century saw a massive increase of Western missionaries to Africa, the Middle East, Asia and, in the Americas, to the Amerindians. Many of these missionaries were celebrities. There is more than a hint of adventuring in accounts of their deeds.

Consider that in Jane Eyre, when St. John Rivers wants to marry Jane so they can serve in foreign climes together, the heroic, self-sacrificing, and grand gesture attracts Jane. However, she opts instead for a domestic life. Although she praises Rivers at the end of the book, she also uses “Dear John” phrases that were not uncommon at the time, such as we’ll meet again in the hereafter. Jane writes, “[T]he good and faithful servant has been called at length into the joy of his Lord.” And...he’s dead.

Pliny Fisk

The second strand was converting other Christians to another form of Christianity or to sincere practicing Christianity (as opposed to apathy). The Burned Over District in New York was home to this type of missionary work.

The first approach tended to focus on finding points of similarity between Christianity and "pagan" or "animistic" religions, as when Ammon informs the king of the Lamanites that the Great Spirit he prays to is the God that Ammon is introducing to him. And many of these missionaries became unintentional anthropologists, especially if they were sincere in their efforts to understand another culture.

The second approach tended to focus more on doctrine, as when Alma and Amulek get into arguments with various Zoramites. This type of preaching would have resonated with The Book of Mormon's first readers. Standing on a street corner or renting a hall/getting invited to a church and preaching a sermon on a particular doctrinal idea was extremely familiar to just about everybody--religious or not--in the nineteenth century.

All approaches brought with them the expectation of cultural as well as religious change. The king stops killing off his servants. Alma and Amulek undermine an entire social caste system. For that matter, Buddhism challenged caste systems in India. The change not only to belief but to culture bothers moderns. It would have been par for the course in the ancient and early modern world.

King Edwin converted--his

successors then repudiated

his conversion.

And, as Walls again points out, such upheavals to culture are never as conclusive as they sound. Saxons "converted" to Christianity when they were forced to by other Saxon groups. They then dropped Christianity when the first group got conquered by someone else. They converted back when it suited their purpose, no one else's. Likewise, Buddhism in China was perceived as adding to Confucianism, addressing what Confucianism left to other disciplines, rather than replacing it.

For nineteenth-century readers, who were constantly hearing about yet another group of Christians going off to set up a colony of believers somewhere, the connection between belief and lifestyle would have been a norm. And American missionary work was quite successful in part due to America's pluralism (although nineteenth-century America may not appear pluralistic by twenty-first century standards, by nineteenth-century standards--especially in the acceptance of different types of Christianity--it was quite pluralistic). 

That is, Americans were used to setting up volunteer organizations, getting them funded, and then dismantling them when necessary. American Christians were also quite used to sending Christianity into their own frontiers by whatever means were available: circuit riders; revival meetings in tents; magazines, and anything else that came to hand.

Alma: Prayer

Background

Tensions inherent in Christian prayer coalesced with the Protestant Reformation. They linger today:

Tension 1: Set prayers versus personal, individual prayers

 

Set prayers--prayers established by tradition or institutions and often, though not always, associated with ritual--evoke the accusation of being "works," actions performed for the sake of gaining favor (points), not for actual communion with God.

 

Philip and Carol Zaleski in Prayer: A History do a decent job of generously allowing for the beneficial experience of both the set prayer and the individual prayer. That is, a set prayer can evoke nostalgia as well as group solidarity. Moreover, the Zaleskis quite openly address the fact that an element of magic flows through all prayer, especially penitentiary prayers. 

 

Tension 2: Magic & prayer

 

The definitions that follow are my own: Magic is the use of actions and words (a spell) to bring about an event. That is, the actual actions and actual words produce a result whatever the character of the petitioner, the value of the result, and, presumably, the desires and wishes of the listening gods. 

 

Magical thinking, for instance, entails the parent saying to a child, "Have a good day today" with the unstated belief, If I don't say it, the child will not be well. The statement has almost nothing to do with whether the child has been sent away safely in a raincoat with enough money to buy lunch...whether the child is being bullied at school...or any other factor. The statement barely acknowledges deity. It is a "spell" set on the child to keep the child safe.

 

An invocation is about what God or the gods will do rather than what the actual actions/words/spells accomplish.

 

The Zaleskis make the entirely correct point that prayer and magic cannot be un-entwined. An element of magic filters through prayer. And the Zaleskis detail how acts/words themselves can create transcendent moments. That is, communion with God/gods is often set in motion by actions and words that are not inherently religious. (Humans are physical beings after all and react bodily to physical acts, such as meditation.)

The Protestants, specifically the Calvinists, were less than happy with the idea of magic/ritual. Alan Jacobs points out in his tome about the Book of Common Prayer that Cranmer wanted to create a common culture (which the Protestant Reformation both willfully and unintentionally did away with) by instituting the Book of Common Prayer. Moreover, he was (luckily for generations of Anglicans) an artist in his own right, so many of the set prayers are truly beautiful. And he was trying to find middle ground between the "traditionalists" and the Continental Calvinists. Many Anglicans greet the prayers with fondness and nostalgia.

 

The Calvinists were having none of it. Set prayers were popish, anti-Christian, episcopal (reliant on priests/bishops), devilish and part of the lingering rituals that traduced Christianity (it's hard to know at this late date how many Protestants didn't go down the Calvinist route simply because they, like me, rather liked a little bit of ritual in their religion). 

 

Tension 3: Petitionary prayers

 

From a Calvinist point of view, petitionary prayers fell into the "magic" category. They were arrogant, blasphemous and not even religious. First, God is omniscient so He already knows what people want; they don't have to ask, so they shouldn't. Second, asking for things implies that God's mind can be changed. Third, asking for things implies that God's job is to give stuff to humans.

 

In all honesty, the Calvinists kind of had a point when one considers what some people consider to be God's job (as if God were their personal life coach). But the Zaleskis quote C.S. Lewis pointing out that if one starts fussing about whether or not prayer can accomplish anything, one might as well go down the rabbit-hole of fussing whether anything that people do accomplishes anything ("rabbit-hole" is my addition). In other words, asking for stuff is as human as when we "put on boots."

 

My entirely personal view is that God preserves agency to a greater extent than humans can understand or want to understand. Petitionary prayers may be partly for our sakes (to make us aware of our need for God). They could also be for God's sake. In whatever way the relationship between God and agency and human volition operates (and I don't know), prayer could be part of helping God help us.

 

The Calvinists would accuse me of being an Antinomian since after all I am implying a God who either is limited or limits Himself.

 

And, yup, I am implying exactly that!

 

I would answer the Calvinists, "Yeah, well, folks, you're the ones who started this."

 

Tension 4: The intensely private, unquantifiable nature of prayer

 

Catholics in the Middle Ages engaged in private prayers. Augustine's Confessions alone prove that conversion and a relationship with God can be intensely personal. Not-set and unregulated prayers are a human norm.

 

However, the Protestant Reformation made them the only alternative--since set and regulated prayers were not-okay (most of the time). However, the Calvinists then discovered that unregulated prayers were...frightfully unregulated. 

 

As the Zaleskis point out about Pentecostalism: 

 

"[H]ow could one recognize the arrival of this climactic third stage [baptism in the Holy Spirit], of such burning importance to personal salvation?" 

 

The form of "recognition" for the Pentecostals was speaking in tongues. That is, the answer was a group experience that was nonetheless highly individualistic. 

 

Unfortunately, the answer by other religious groups--not just Protestants--has been to become entirely abstract and metaphysical or entirely legalistic (and sometimes, both). That is, many religions/ideologies don't feel comfortable just taking people's word for their communion with God/Truth. 

From an anthropological point of view, the need for some type of yes-we-are-on-the-same-page agreement within the group makes sense. I favor the solution of an individual response to an institutional ritual over the metaphysical-legalistic solution that was unfortunately favored by late Calvinists, as it is by Woke Progressives. That is, the late Calvinists--in an attempt to compete in a changing religious environment--got a little obsessed with how exactly people were confessing their sins...and whether they really meant it...and whether those people had hit all the markers of acceptable confession.

 

And within 70 years, people had deserted Congregationalism for Methodism and other Protestant off-shoots.

 

Prayer in Alma

LDS Church Film

 

In The Book of Mormon, Alma takes a stance against the Zoramites praying in public about how great they are and awful everyone else in (hello, social media). In terms of tensions, the Zoramites uncomfortably mix the doctrine of election with set prayers:  Calvinism gone the (even more) legalistic route. 

 

Alma praises private prayers that occur any time and any place. He is preaching, moreover, to the indigent, who fear for their souls because their (literally) poor credentials keep them from the places where they would deliver set prayers. During his discourse, Alma argues against a tit-for-tat relationship with God and produces a fantastic defense of faith: "If a man knoweth a thing, then he has no cause to believe" (32:18, my emphasis).

 

Alma goes on to connect faith to mercy and humility--"Ye cannot know of [the] surety [of my words] at first"--which leads to one of the most remarkable passages in The Book of Mormon about experimenting upon what one is taught rather than taking it as a given. Agency is paired with personal advancement and faith since the experiment--planting a seed--will produce fruit but the nourishment of the tree that produces that fruit can never end.

 

The link back to prayer occurs in the next chapter. In quite beautiful passages that Alma attributes to Zenos, prayer is presented as communication, a conversation, even experiment, between the praying individual and God: "thou didst hear me." 

 

In many ways, Alma's position here resembles that of Job, who demands a hearing with God. What God delivers is not necessarily what Job expected. Job's reaction is not to pronounce, "Okay, thanks. I've checked off the appropriate boxes on my path to salvation. I now have an exact comprehension of my status." 

 

Rather, he reacts by going, "Uh, wow. Wow. Okay. Wow."

 

In 3rd Nephi, set prayers are definitively rejected by Jesus Christ (see the Sermon on the Mount). The Lord's Prayer--over which theologians have often argued--is presented as containing the necessary elements of prayer rather than being a set prayer. An example rather than a ritual. Using the KJV, 3 Nephi 13 introduces the Lord's Prayer with the phrase "after this manner therefore pray ye." It is a reminder that the KJV, like many English-produced religious documents, has a wonderful tendency to hedge its bets.

 

Prayer, concludes The Book of Mormon, is never going to be what you think it is. Not tit-for-tat. Not automatic/instant regeneration and knowledge. Not salvation according to a list. It's communication, folks. God can take anything you dish out. Be prepared for anything in return.  

 

From Alma 33:

 

5 Yea, O God, and thou wast merciful unto me when I did cry unto thee in my field; when I did cry unto thee in my prayer, and thou didst hear me.

6 And again, O God, when I did turn to my house thou didst hear me in my prayer.

7 And when I did turn unto my closet, O Lord, and prayed unto thee, thou didst hear me.

8 Yea, thou art merciful unto thy children when they cry unto thee, to be heard of thee and not of men, and thou wilt hear them.

9 Yea, O God, thou hast been merciful unto me, and heard my cries in the midst of thy congregations.

10 Yea, and thou hast also heard me when I have been cast out and have been despised by mine enemies; yea, thou didst hear my cries, and wast angry with mine enemies, and thou didst visit them in thine anger with speedy destruction.

11 And thou didst hear me because of mine afflictions and my sincerity; and it is because of thy Son that thou hast been thus merciful unto me, therefore I will cry unto thee in all mine afflictions, for in thee is my joy; for thou hast turned thy judgments away from me, because of thy Son.

Alma 36 & 46: Exodus and Liberty

Calvinists maintained that although the Old Testament was superseded by Christ’s acts, the Old Testament was still worth reading because of its types and examples.

Types are stand-ins for Christ: that is, they are seen as forerunners to the coming of Christ (and latter-day events).

Examples are lessons about other things, such as leadership.

And, in truth, just about every "Sunday School" in the United States in just about every church of just about any denomination uses these two approaches. The Puritans in New England were more erudite about it and had a better grasp of context. But pointing to a scripture and saying, “Make this about whatever you want” is, let’s face it, way easier than pondering how and why it was written in the first place (and then what that means to a reader).

I personally think the type-and-example approach has gone too far in the navel-gazing-everything-is-relative direction.

However, I must concede that the story of the Exodus is impressively powerful as a type and example. And has been used by multiple American groups over the years, from the Puritans to African-Americans brought over as slaves. 

As a metaphor, it carries, much like Campbell’s Hero Myth. In Alma 36, Alma references the Exodus when he discusses his redemption from a sinful state. He is being literal--"brought our fathers out of Egypt"--while also quite deliberately embracing the image's symbolism: "[God] delivered them out of bondage and captivity, from time to time even down to the present day; and I have always retained in remembrance their captivity; yea, and ye also ought to retain in remembrance, as I have done, their captivity" (36:29).

"Captivity" was a memory for Americans. Release from captivity, for instance, was used by Revolutionary War pamphleteers. Stuart Halpern in “The Exodus: American’s Ever-Present Inspiration” points out that Thomas Paine and various ministers referenced the Exodus. King George was naturally Pharaoh, a viewpoint shared by much of Joseph Smith’s original audience.

The Title of Liberty raised by Moroni in Alma 46 is against a king. Even more importantly, the scene is associated with a piece of land:

[Moroni] named all the land which was south of the land Desolation, yea, and in fine, all the land, both on the north and on the south—A chosen land, and the land of liberty. (Alma 46:17)

Nineteenth century readers would have related--not only because they knew their Bible--and not only because of the Revolutionary War--and not only because nineteenth-century Americans were searching for links between them and the "Old World"--but also because land was still the operating indicator of freedom, as it has been through much of history.  Freedom = you get land for yourself.

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.