Book of Mormon Studies Podcast: Alma Scholarship with Sharon Harris

Rosalynde Welch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Maxwell Institute Book of Mormon Studies podcast. I'm Rosalynde Welch, the host, and today I have a wonderful guest who's also my friend. Her name is Dr. Sharon Harris. Sharon is an assistant professor of English at Brigham Young University. She has the coolest research focus. She studies music and literature in 17^th-century England.

She also is a very accomplished Book of Mormon scholar. Often we find that people trained in literary readings are already ready to go when it comes to scripture because they're trained in these specialized ways of reading. And so she's written a wonderful book, A Brief Theological Introduction to Enos, Jarom, and Omni.

But today we are not talking about that.

Today we are talking about Alma 1 through 29 and we're focusing in particular on some of the highlights of the scholarly research that has appeared over the course of Book of Mormon studies on these very, very rich chapters. This portion of the Book of Mormon is very well known. It has some of the most beloved stories in it. Very, very rich. And so not surprisingly, the scholarship yield has been very rich as well. And so we're going to dive into–

There's so much we can't even do a survey, but we're going to touch on, each of us, two pieces that we find to be especially helpful and enlightening when it comes to these chapters of Alma. So, contrary to my typical practice, I am going to lead off here because we decided that we'd go through these articles roughly in order of the text itself, focusing on the text in the order that we encounter it reading the Book of Alma.

So I will start first by talking about a chapter from a book, I don't know how well known the book is, but it should be better known. It's a book called The Voice of the People: Political Rhetoric in the Book of Mormon and It's by a scholar named David Gore, It was published in 2019 by the Maxwell Institute as part of a series at the time called Groundworks that was really digging into sort of scriptural scholarship, scriptural readings. Professor Gore teaches at the University of Minnesota. He's a Latter-day Saint. He focuses on rhetoric and public affairs, and so he brings that lens of rhetoric, public communication, persuasion, and the public square that we all share.

He brings that lens to bear, and in this chapter, chapter three, he's focusing on the story of Nehor which we encounter of course in Alma chapter one. It starts off the book of Alma with, on a very dramatic note with a big bang. So Professor Gore, as I said, throughout this book, he brings to bear questions of public communication and the way that we talk to one another and persuade one another. The necessity of that kind of public persuasion and also the pitfalls of that kind of public communication.

So he sets up the situation for us in Zarahemla here right at the opening of the Book of Alma in a really compelling way. And he notes that at the end of the Book of Mosiah, we saw King Mosiah's decision to recognize the voice of the people and to move away from a monarchy to a system of judges that was responsible in some ways to the voice of the people, and also to legislate a kind of freedom of conscience that disallowed people from persecuting one another based on their personal religious choice to join this relatively new Church of God that Alma has organized, or to not join it, to abstain.

So both of these elements of increased personal self-determination have brought a kind of instability to Nephite society. And this is kind of a law of human behavior that when people can choose, they might choose differently. And so in that setting of great social instability and personal choice, the necessity for this kind of contest of belief and persuasion arises.

So the importance of public communication, public speaking rhetoric is really heightened here in this phase of the Book of Mormon. So we see a society kind of divided between Alma's Church of God, which is separate in some ways from the state-sponsored religion that's centered on the law of Moses and the temple, and then other people, the unbelievers, soon to be organized under the figure of Nehor.

Because of this increased liberty in this kind of social division, he writes, “There remains no unifying social vision or narrative for the people of Zarahemla, but rather a contest of beliefs that occasionally rose to the level of violent disagreement.”

So this context helps us see Alma's preaching in a different way. We know that contention is bad, but persuasion has to function as the alternative to violence. And so the message that Alma will preach in his ministry, of course, here at the beginning of the Book of Alma, he's still the chief judge and we'll see him adjudicating Nehor's trial. But then once he steps down from the chief judgeship and dedicates his entire time to preaching, we see him using elements of rhetoric and persuasion, responding directly to the teachings of Nehor and countering his claims one after another. This is because Alma knows that preaching the Word of God is more powerful than the sword. And responsible public persuasion can be an alternative to violence. So, yeah. Yes, please.

Sharon Harris: Yeah, can I mention something about that? This is really interesting to me because in a different project, working on the Book of Mormon, I had always heard about the scripture in 3rd Nephi, Jesus comes to visit the Lehi people and teaches that the spirit of contention is of the devil. And sometimes that might even...

We might think, oh, you know, you shouldn't fight with your siblings at home, you know, when we're children or something like that. And that's all true. I'm not contesting that. But I was curious about the word contention, and I looked it up throughout its use in the Book of Mormon. And almost every time it seems to have to do with social and political disagreements and conflicts that can rise to the level of violence. So what you're pulling out, that Alma wants to offer persuasion as an alternative to this inclination to violence as a way of forcing one's will or one's position through society, is really salient, I think.

Welch: Yeah, yeah. And we see Nehor, I think, as the perfect embodiment of this idea of contention, as a kind of irresponsible form of public manipulation that does, in fact, lead to violence. The story of Nehor is pretty well known, probably from the first chapter of Alma, but just as a reminder, Nehor kind of appears out of nowhere as this very charismatic figure. He begins very deliberately preaching a way of life and an ideology that's, in almost every respect, directly counter to the theology the Church of God that Alma has been sharing and systematizing in Zarahemla. And indeed, as he is swelled to great heights of vanity and greatness, flattering the people. Gideon, a really fantastic character that we remember from the Book of Mosiah, counters him in public. Incapable of receiving this kind of public rebuke and in fact instigates violence and ends up killing Gideon. He's then brought to trial before Alma and ultimately executed.

So that's sort of the outlines of this well-known story. But Dr. Gore does such an interesting job, first of all, of pulling out the characters of Alma and Nehor as these very stark contrasts, right, very different from each other, but then even more I think brilliantly than that, he helped me to understand the opposition between the order of Nehor. So Nehor has founded a kind of movement and it's hard to know exactly what form it takes. It has political ambitions, it's clear it has kind of religious ambitions, but it isn't quite an alternate church, at least it’s never called a church, but it's a kind of social order and more than anything it's a way of life. It's a way of being that he's trying to persuade people to come to. And in the same way, of course, Alma's Church of God is a church and an organization and an institution, but it's a way of being. When you join it and you live in this covenantal community, you adopt a particular way of life.

And so Dr. Gore describes these two different ways of being. The order of Nehor is a way of being that it is in and for oneself. Whereas the way of life in the covenantal church or community is a way of being that is with and for the other. So the order of Nehor is based on selfishness, on class stratification, idleness, lack of commitment, lack of responsibility. Everything about Nehor's personality is kind of amplified and turned into a sort of social way of relating to one another here in the Order of Nehor. It's explicitly anti-equality because it, you know, it lifts up figures like Nehor as popular who don't need to work for their own living and they're supported by the people. So it's explicitly anti-equality and that means that it's explicitly anti-King Benjamin, anti-Alma, anti-Mosiah… All of whom through the book of Mosiah had been working to teach this doctrine of human equality, fundamental human equality rooted in our shared creation status as creations of God.

The order of Nehor privileges idleness and self-indulgence expensive clothing and show is very important. Of course, persecution. There is a religious element to what he preaches, universal salvation, he says there's really no consequences for anything that we do.

And in the end, what Dr. Gore shows is that Nehor was so dangerous, both to the religious order, that is the Church of God, and also the political order, the reign of the judges, partly because it represented a direct threat in an alternate institution. But even more than that, it was so dangerous because it degraded the character of the people.

So if the voice of the people is to be determinative in the political sphere, and if we're to live together in love and trust and common life in the religious sphere, then the character of the people has to be good. Otherwise, it falls apart, right? And this is a great message of the Book of Mormon about the dangers of sort of democratic-like social orders, is that the people might choose poorly. So it really matters that they're well-trained and that their character is firm. And so that is the threat that Nehor represents.

And then on the contrast, we see the Church of God, which in almost every respect is the opposite. It prizes peace, human equality, modesty of clothing and consumption, this ethics of neighborliness, of friendly interaction and sharing and giving, and is all under underlain by King Benjamin's anthropology of human humility and equality.

And so Dr. Gore helped me see this real compelling line between King Benjamin's account of human nature at the beginning of the Book of Mosiah, which is again all about humility and equality and neighborliness. Moving through to Alma's church in Alma 18, he of course was converted by Abinadi, but many of the same themes come in Abinadi's preaching. So Alma's church is likewise founded on humility and equality and neighborliness and common life.

And then moving through to Mosiah's political order at the end of the book of Mosiah, where in this reign of judges that responds to the voice of the people, it's an ethos of humility and of equality and of neighborliness and of responsibility. So I found that to be a very, very compelling reading of who Nehor was, the threat that he represented, and the kind of stark choice that we see between different ways of life.

And even though, you know, me as a reader in the 21st century, you know, I have slightly different, a very different political and religious context. Nevertheless, that choice between the way of life and the way of being, I think is still very, very alive for me. And it speaks in a very relevant way, I think, to the way we live in the 21st century and the choices that we are still asked to make about how we are going to live in relation to our neighbors: which of these ways are we going to choose? And he ends by making a very compelling case that, in a way, all of us in our daily life and choices, in the way that we interact with one another, we are all of us preachers in this day and age. We're all of us influencers, right, where we all have a social media presence. Everything that we do and say functions as a kind of persuasive utterance that not only affects us, but it acts on the people around us as well. So we are responsible for what we do and say, and even decisions that we might feel like are just private decisions as nobody else's business. In a way, it's a kind of persuasive act. And so we are responsible not only to ourselves, but to our neighbors as well. […] Yes, please.

Harris: Can I throw something in about that? This is actually from another Maxwell Institute book, Kate Holbrooks, Both Things Are True. And she's talking about Nehor toward the end of the book briefly. And one of the things she points out is among several lessons of this sad tale, one stands out.

And she says, “What we desire influences what other people desire.” So just like you're saying that there's a whole, we are influencers. David Gore talks about idolatry being a way of outsourcing accountability to something else that can't really fulfill those promises. And it just seems like this is so relevant to the temptations that we can face with quick, easy answers that aren't actually satisfying.

Welch: Yeah, yeah, very much so. It, yeah, it just reinforces to me once again how relevant the Book of Mormon is to modern life and to the choices that we and the dilemmas that we find ourselves in now.

You know the Book of Alma is especially full of negative examples, ways that we should not be, which are helpful right? It's helpful. And speaking of kind of difficult episodes and negative examples, you're going to walk us through something, you know, the very difficult story of Alma's ministry in Ammonihah. And again we can learn some… We can learn a lot about how to live life in Christ in from the negative example that we see there. So walk it walk us through this Sharon

Harris: Okay, well this comes from, there's a couple of different places that we can find Kylie Turley's work on this episode. One is an article that she has in the journal Book of Mormon Studies, and then also in her Brief Theological Introduction that she wrote as part of the Maxwell Institute series on Alma 1-29. And one of the things I was delighted to be able to talk about this scholarship was that –and include Kylie's scholarship in this episode of, in this podcast– because to me, Kylie's work is one of those rare pieces of scholarship that inspires not just through its conclusions, but also through its method. And I know Kylie well, she's a friend, and one of the things that is so, I found out about her some years ago, is, I think she knows the person Alma as well or better than anybody I've ever met. She's just spent so much time reading carefully, thinking about the implications, drawing connections, asking questions that Alma becomes a really live, full-bodied three-dimensional person in her understanding.

And so it means that she's able to see what he offers in the scholarship she writes in the Book of Mormon. And so, and maybe I'll give the ending first, but at the end of her book, she writes that, she says, I might be mistaken about what conclusion she draws. She says, “My conclusions should be questioned. And yet to question my conclusions, you will need to read scripture. Whether you would agree or disagree with my interpretation of scripture, I consider my efforts a success if you have begun or renewed your commitment to studying the Book of Mormon.” So implicit in all of her interpretation is an invitation to dig into the scriptures. And I think her method of engaging the scriptures in general and Alma in particular really bears that out.

Welch: And I'll just say, Sharon, I love that passage. Thank you for highlighting it. Part of what I hope is a sort of underlying message that I don't state all the time, but one of my hopes for this podcast is, first of all, by showing a variety of scholarly perspectives to help us know that no single interpretation is definitive. Of course, prophets have the stewardship to declare what doctrine is, and they'll use scripture to do that. For the rest of us, though, no single interpretation is definitive--but they can be persuasive to different degrees as we were just talking about.

And second of all, I never want this podcast to be a substitute for reading the scriptures. Podcasts can be so convenient and wonderful and we can listen to them, but they should never take the place of getting into the scriptures ourselves. And I worry sometimes that might be happening in this moment of peak podcast. So thank you so much for just going that passage from Kylie's book.

Harris: Right, right, well, and she inspired you to do that. So maybe we can see how that works with her reading of the Ammonihah scene. If I am remembering right, perhaps this gets touched on in your previous episode talking about the structure of the book with Kim Matheson, but maybe we can go in a little bit more detail about setting up what happens here.

So the scene is that Alma has gone to preach at Ammonihah. He's rejected and cast out.

And so he is told by an angel to go back and try again. But he's also told you can go in a different way. You'll find someone who will help you. And this is Amulek. Meanwhile, and so an angel told Alma to do that. An angel tells Amulek, you need to go home and get ready for this man of God that you need to receive and listen to. So Alma goes to Amulek.

They stayed together for a while and then they began preaching together and it's a very serious message. So in Alma chapter 9, he tells them, you have to repent or God will utterly destroy you from off the face of the earth. And they have this exchange with lawyers and all the, it seems like an elite audience in Ammonihah.

These people, we find out at the end of the episode, are the profession of Nehor. So exactly the context you've been setting up, they have drunk the Kool-Aid of Nehor's message, and they tell Alma, you have no authority here, we don't believe in what you do at all, and we are going this other route. And it's a very, I think as exchanges and preaching in the Book of Mormon go, it's a very sophisticated one. They have sophisticated questions, they're testing Alma. They’re tempting him with money and pushing on Amulek. And this looks like a sort of, “can you hang” kind of a conversation. And they talk about the resurrection, the fall, the plan of redemption, the priesthood, the Lord's coming. And in the end, Alma and Amulek call them to repentance. And the people of Ammonihai do not take it well. So they want Alma and Amulek destroyed. They tie them up and send them off to the chief judge.

And meanwhile, Zeezrom and other men who actually believe, find themselves persuaded by Alma and Amulek, they're cast out. And then it just jumps into this story that they took the women and children, and it says actually whosoever believed or who had been taught to believe in the word of God, and they should be cast into the fire. We don't even hear about them setting up the fire. We just are kind of dumped into this moment where this horrific scene of a fire set up for mass execution of those who believe. And it includes the wives and children, it seems, probably of the men who believe, and then any women and children who have been taught to believe or who believe themselves. And not only that, it says they brought forth, this is in Alma 14:8, they also brought forth their records which contained the Holy Scriptures and cast them into the fire, that they might be burned and destroyed by the fire.

And so they've got this terrible scene of burning women and children and records. But not only that, it says they carried Alma and Amulek to the scene and they made them watch. And, uh, Kylie Turley who writes the book, she points out this unusual instance of present tense that the whole thing is told in past tense, but in a particular verse here, it says that Alma is watching in verse 10 or excuse me, Amulek, “The pains of the women and children who were consuming in the fire.” So they're being forced to watch it as it happens. I mean, this is the kind of thing that I would not want to see at all. I don't know if I could... And Amulek says as much, how can we possibly watch this awful scene?

So what what Kylie Turley –I want to call her Kylie because I know her as a friend but also I want to be Professional and call her Turley. So we'll call her Turley here. But what, what Turley says here is she points out that Alma's response is unsatisfying and she points out the silences that follow this episode. So Amulek seems to just kind of be at great pains. How can we possibly watch this awful scene? Can we please stop it? And Alma's response is unsatisfying and kind of clinical. He says, “The spirit constraineth me that I must not stretch forth my hand for behold the Lord receive with them up unto himself in glory and he does suffer that they may do this thing or that the people may do this thing unto them according to the hardness of their hearts. That the judgments which he shall exercise upon them in his wrath may be just and the blood of the innocent shall stand as a witness against them, yay and cry mightily against them at the last day.”

Welch: He offers a kind of theodicy in that moment, right? He's giving a defense of God and trying to make sense of how God could allow this evil to happen. But rather famously, the odyssey is something that's better undertaken years later, sitting safely behind your office desk. That's when you reflect on these questions, not in the moment. So it's a kind of misplaced and a really rare misfire from Alma in some ways it seems, because typically he's so good to his audience.

Harris: Right. Yes. Yeah. One of the best writers in the Book of Mormon, I think, and Turley points this out regularly that, you know, he knows his audience. He knows how to do a turn of phrase. He knows how to be persuasive. He used to be persuading people out of the church. Now he's preaching them back into it. So for him, like you say, to have this misfire is really kind of baffling. And so we want to flag that as one thing to notice. It seems it seems glitchy, I guess, would be one way of thinking about it.

And then another thing to flag that Turley points out is the silence that follows. So they're made to watch this, and then the chief judge of Ammonihah asks them for a response, and in verse 17, “Alma and Amulek answered him nothing.” And then many lawyers and judges and priests and all of the people that have been reviling them or taunting them, they come to them in prison and ask a series of questions. And it says again in verse 18, but they answered them nothing. And then the judge later commands them to speak again and threatens to burn them. Says, you know, you have to answer me or we'll kill you. And it says, but they answered them nothing. Or they answered nothing.

And so eventually Alma calls on God, they break out of the prison, they go talk to Zezrom. They, we see Alma speak again, but there is a real hole in his ability to articulate for a while following this. And Turley suggests this is a trauma response. The way that another scholar put this in looking at Turley's work is that sometimes you need to stop theologizing and just shut up and sit with somebody in pain. And that seems to be what's happening here. One of the things that Turley points out is that we don’t have a record of what Alma says publicly following this episode for five years. We were told that he preaches but we're not given his words. And then what we get after those five years is Alma 29, we'll come back to this, that we tend to think, you know, we've often heard this as, oh that I were an angel as a sort of missionary aspirational message, but actually in the context of Alma 27 and 28, all part of an original chapter in Joseph Smith's dictation of the Book of Mormon in his translation, Alma 29 is a lament. And so the first thing we hear from Alma publicly after five years is a lament.

One other thing to point out about this, so this is the part that really, why would he have such a terrible trauma response besides the atrocity of watching them be killed, is that while, after they watch this, the chief judge asks a very particular question. He smites them and then the chief judge says, “After what you have seen, will you preach again unto this people that they will be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone?” So he's recalling a message that Alma in particular said in Alma 12, where he says, you have to repent or you'll be subject to hell and you'll be into a lake of fire and brimstone.

The chief judge says, behold, you see, you had not power to save those who had been cast into the fire. Neither has God saved them because they were of their faith. What say ye for yourselves? And says, look, we've created the lake of fire and brimstone. What are you going to say now? And Turley writes, this is not a random question. It's targeted at Alma and aimed to damage him as much as possible. Most likely they're watching, Alma and Amulek are watching friends and probably Amulek's family die, very likely his wife and children in the fire. And she writes, “Still not content, the chief judge ensures that Alma understands the brutal irony at the heart of this horror. Alma's unfortunate gospel metaphor about a lake of fire and brimstone prompts the literal lake of fire and brimstone that burns before his eyes.” And so hearing that his words ignited this atrocity silences Alma for days is the way that Turley reads this, and points out –this was so striking to me– there is at least one phrase he, Alma, will never say again in the Book of Mormon: “Lake of Fire and Brimstone.” These events redefine his vocabulary. They redefine the vocabulary of the entire Book of Mormon. So Turley cites several instances prior to this where people have used this image that Hell can be like a Lake of Fire and Brimstone. And after people burn women and children alive in a lake of fire and brimstone, the words, lake of fire and brimstone, are never spoken again by anyone in the Book of Mormon. I think I had not appreciated how defining of a social, historical, cultural event this was in the collective experience of the Lehites. It just becomes a thing that is kind of untouchable after this.

Welch: That is so, it's fascinating. And it relates so closely to what we were just talking about with the previous chapter, which is the way that words and reality and persuasion can function. All right, well, let's talk now on a lighter note after spending time in Alma 1 and Alma 14. Let's move to Alma 19. It just feels like moving into a room full of sunshine and light and the smell of flowers and music. This is a wonderful article that came out in 2018, written by two professors here at Brigham University in the Department of Ancient Scripture, Nicholas Frederick and Joseph Spencer. Both of those names and faces will be familiar to people who have been watching the podcast all along. They wrote an article called “John 11 in the Book of Mormon,” and it was published in a journal called Journal of the Bible and its Reception. This is notable because it's an academic, it's a secular academic journal, mainstream academic journal. I love it when scholars are able to put the Book of Mormon in all of its beauty and strength before the secular world, the academic world, and show that it really, really can stand up to the kinds of lenses and scrutiny that the academic world brings to bear. So it was notable for that reason. But it's also just a fantastic reading of Alma 19, which is the story, as you just sort of alluded to, of the origins of Lamanite Christianity here in the court of King Lamoni. It's a pretty well-known story. So in this article by Nick Frederick and Joe Spencer, they look at the very striking parallels between that story and the story of the raising of Lazarus in John chapter 11. So structurally you can see that it's very, very similar. There's two men in John 11, it's Christ and Lazarus, and two women, in John 11, it's Mary and Martha. Of course in Alma 19 it's Ammon and King Lamoni, and then the Queen and Abish. And so there is this moment of raising from the dead, there is a moment of the display of great faith.

So structurally we see the parallels, but even more persuasively than that there are at least five specific phrases that appear in Alma 19 that also appear in John 11. So we can see that there are these clear verbal parallels.

● So the phrase, “he stinketh,” right? The question of whether or not the person who is dead is really dead or not.

● “He is not dead but sleepeth in God.” So the idea that actually they're not really dead, they will be raised.

● “He shall rise again.”

● “Believest thou this?” Again, the question of faith and belief.

● “Cried with a loud voice.”

● And “there were many that did believe.” So the effect of this episode in stimulating faith in those who watch.

So these clear verbal links make it very persuasive that there's something deliberate going on between Alma 19 and John 11. And these scholars make the case that Alma 19 represents a very sophisticated and subtle reworking of the story of Lazarus, not in a random way, but in a targeted way that makes a specific theological point. It makes that theological point not by speaking in theological language, but by revising the story very, very subtly.

And so they walk us through each of these verbal parallels, and I won't do that in detail here, but they do it with an eye to seeing similarities and differences, particularly in the questions of number one, who is the Christ figure in Alma 19? And what they find is that actually it's not totally stable. Different people in Alma 19 step in and out of the figure that Christ plays in John 11. So first of all, of course, it's Ammon who is teaching and inviting and commenting on the faith of Lamoni and the Queen.

But then, later in the story, both Abish, who as you as I just mentioned, is the one who actually touches the Queen and raises her from the dead. And then the Queen who cries in a loud voice, which is the phrase that's used for Christ when he summons Lazarus from the tomb. Both of them, these two women, step into the role of Christ in these parallel narratives.

Harris: It’s really kind of incredible, you know.

Welch: It is incredible. Yes! And so they draw from that this very important theological conclusion about Alma 19. And that is that we should see Alma 19 as the Book of Mormon's central and principal contribution to questions about women and religion. And it's so significant that the male Christian missionary, Ammon, who at first is unquestionably the Christ figure, surrenders his role to these two different women. One is a woman, the queen of high social standing, but the other one is a woman of low social standing and both of them are racially other from the perspective of the Nephites. So we see here played out in a story what Nephi had prophesied many hundreds of years ago that Christ denieth none. He invited all to him, male and female, black and white, bond and free. So we see that prophecy specifically played out here in the generosity with which Ammon is made to surrender his prominence as the Christ figure to the Queen and to Abish.

So it's a very, very beautiful reading of Alma 19. And I love it because it's a subtle but so effective defense of the Book of Mormon. It shows without a doubt that what's happening in Alma 19 is not a kind of facile or cynical plagiarism of the Bible, but it is a very careful conversation, revision, teaching, and clarification of the Bible, just as Nephi said that it would be when he foresaw the coming forth of the Book of Mormon to stand hand in hand and testify of the Bible in the last days. How that is the case and it shows the deliberate and sophisticated theology that is behind the intertextuality between the Book of Mormon and the Bible.

Harris: Yeah, that's really beautiful.

Welch: Yeah, good. All right. Well, we're racing on in our time here. So I wanna shift gears now, Sharon, and let you share one last really, really wonderful and powerful piece of scholarship about this first half of the book of Alma.

Harris: Yeah, so there's, there are, again, with the previous one, Kylie Turley had written both an article and a book about this, and similarly, David Pulsipher has written an article that is in the journal Book of Mormon Studies called Buried Swords, but also with Patrick Mason, this book Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer to a Rage of Conflict. This is co-published by the Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book, and I recommend it so highly. It looks at peace building and in particular, like what does it take to build peace? And with a sort of mounting analysis of what active nonviolence can do. This seems to be something that we haven't typically engaged culturally as members of the LDS Church as much as we could, given some of the stories we have in scriptures. And that's what brings us to this work for this part of Alma. That in the story of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, those who converted to Ammon's message and Aaron's message, all the sons of Mosiah and their preaching, you get this group of Lamanite converts who refuse to engage in violence with those who are opposing them. So you have the converts, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, what they call themselves, and then later the people of Ammon, and they are attacked by other Lamanites. And it says, it doesn't just say that they allowed themselves to be killed, but it says that they went out to meet them.

I mean, it's a really astonishing account of the way that they saw these people as people they loved, as brothers and sisters, as part of their kin and not people to be punished or complained about, but they submitted to them. So what David Pulsifer does in his article is he goes through at length, kind of looking at the reception of this story in the kind of history of reception in the church.

Welch: Pause just a minute, Sharon, explain for us what the word reception means here.

Harris: Oh, thanks. Yeah. So basically what he's doing is he's looking at how has this story been interpreted in Sunday School manuals, in teachings, in the way that it gets talked about by leaders of the church, in the way that regular members of the church are reading it across the years.

And when we think about this story on its face, it's a really kind of arresting, striking story that they would go out to allow themselves to be killed by their brethren. What David Pulsipher shows is that over time there's been maybe perhaps an inclination among us in the Church to explain away the boldness and striking quality of that response. And I won't go into a ton of details about this, but starting kind of with the... when we get an upswing of patriotism and the aftermath of some of the World Wars, there's an inclination to defend defending yourself. And I don't want to say that that's not the case, but what he shows is that as we've talked about, no, the people of God defend themselves. People have come up with stories or explanations for why this was different and special, unique, not something that we should necessarily model.

So the question is, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies are giving us a really extreme, remarkable model of nonviolence, of a nonviolent response. One of the things he talks about is pacifism as a sort of philosophy and approach, and then active nonviolence, which can include a variety of approaches, including demonstrations or boycotts or a submission to violence from others without retaliating. And the Anti-Nephi-Lehies were doing this kind of active nonviolence. And that approach can be uncomfortable. It really can call us to a level of commitment that maybe is really difficult to swallow.

There are three parts or ways that we can read this story. This comes from Pulsipher’s article. Part one, when they vowed to never use the weapons for bloodshed, so the Anti-Nephi-Lehies have converted, they bury their swords and they say they'll never use their weapons for bloodshed. That can be like pacifism.

Part two, they go out to meet their attackers and we have this act of nonviolence. They also financially support the Nephites who are protecting them. So it gets, well, I'm sorry, that's part three. But they go out to meet them and this is this act of nonviolence.

And then part three is that they financially support a Nephite army who protects them. And then later the stripling warriors fight for them. So these might be equated to what's often called just warfare, like a rationale for going to war.

And we can see, we can read various parts of the story in various ways to justify whatever position we want to take about violence. But kind of like you were talking at the beginning about Nehor, enforcing what you want through violence is one way of doing it. But the Anti-Nephi-Lehies offer a very viable alternative. And one of the things that's so striking about this story, something that they point out is that it was really effective. Like as they go out to meet them and lay down before them and let themselves be killed, it actually stops the bloodshed in many respects, in many ways faster than other instances in the Book of Alma.

Welch: Mormon doesn't decide the question for us, right? Sometimes, sometimes Mormon draws his conclusion very clearly and wants us to see, but here he really doesn't. And you know, in fairness, as you've acknowledged, the Book of Mormon really does put forth a robust just war theory, right? This idea that there are times when innocents are being imminently threatened when violence is justified. But at the same time, let's not forget it also puts forth these other alternative options, which you've laid out, which is a kind of active nonviolence or a kind of total pacifism. And in the end, what Mormon shows, if he doesn't say it out loud, but what he shows is what Alma says, which is that the preaching of the word –persuasion, changing of the heart– is going to result in a permanent change. Whereas coercively imposing your will through violence might temporarily make people change their behavior, but it doesn't change their hearts. So the problem is gonna pop right back up again as soon as the threat is removed. And of course, this is the cycle that we see in Nephite society throughout the book of Alma. And as we get into Helaman, if the hearts of the people are not changed, then the problem will recur as soon as the immediate threat has passed. So for a long-term solution and for a long-term vision of the ethics of neighborliness and harmony and peace that we're striving for, in light of King Benjamin and Alma, we have to change hearts in the end. And that is what the Anti-Nephi-Lehies’ act does. It changes the hearts of their would-be attackers, some of them, some of them, but at great cost, at tremendous cost.

Harris: That's right. Mm-hmm. Right. That's right. Right, yeah. And one way of thinking about, so one of the ways that I understand Patrick Mason and David Pulsifer's message in the book is, and like you were saying, there may be times that violence, and especially in self-defense, is justified, but it's not an ingredient of sanctification.

Right? Like it may be something that comes at the level of justification, but if in the overall goal of sanctification, there's not a call for, a need for, a rationale for violence. That's a really, I think, a very, I don’t know, breathtaking idea to confront. Just how, what are we willing to do? This reminded me actually of a quotation from Neal A. Maxwell at a conference talk in 2002 called “Consecrate Thy Performance.” And he says, no, I don't want to decide the question either, like you, like you said. Mormon doesn't decide the question. I'm not trying to decide that question. But I think sometimes it's useful to be reminded that the gospel asks us for consecration, and that's not a partial enterprise. And so what Neal A. Maxwell says is, “In pondering and pursuing consecration, understandably we tremble inwardly at what may be required. Yet the Lord has said consolingly, my grace is sufficient for you. Do we really believe him?”

Welch: Yeah, what a question. Do we really believe him? And in a way, that's the question that's been asked in every one of the chapters and the episodes and the articles that we've been talking about today. Do you believe him? What kind of faith is he calling us to? And are you willing? Are you willing to respond to that invitation?

Harris: Yeah.

Welch: Well, we're near the end of our time, Sharon, and I wanted to give us both an opportunity to share a particular passage or scripture that has been meaningful to us personally. And I'll go first if you like, and then I'll give you the last word here. I just wanted to draw attention to, there's so much that we couldn't touch on, Alma five, Alma seven, so many of these incredible sermons that Alma gives as he embarks on this preaching tour. They’re so rich and fortunately I think they're fairly well known among the saints. But I'm gonna read Alma 7, 11 through 12 which may be the best known, among the best known of the verses in the book of Alma, but I couldn't not touch on it. I read it this time in light of what Dr. Gore helped me to see which is that there is a straight line through the book of Mosiah delivering us into the book of Alma, you know, putting forth this way of being, this way of life that is about our fundamental human equality, rooted in the fact that we are all creatures of God made from dust and unprofitable servants, but that we should, that knowledge shouldn't depress us, but it should turn us outward to serve and give as generously to those around us as God serves and gives to us every day as he gives us breath and life.

So, with that vision of kind of neighborliness, service, shared common life, I read these famous chapters about the atonement here, Alma 7, verses 11 and 12. “And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions, and temptations of every kind, and this that the word might be fulfilled, which saith, he will take upon him the pains and sicknesses of his people, and he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people, and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities."

And what has really struck me is that the kind of knowledge that Christ had to gain through his incarnation, through taking upon him a body, was know-how. You see that right at the end of verse 12, that he will know how to help his people according to their infirmities. Know-how is practical knowledge. It's knowledge of how to do things that are useful and helpful. And that really struck me, that if this is the kind of knowledge that Christ needed to gain, more than any kind of theoretical knowledge or disembodied kind of understanding of the principles. It’s knowing how. Perhaps that's the same kind of knowledge that I'm called to know how to do in serving my neighbor. Do I know how to take care of somebody who is sick? Do I know how to change a bedpan? Do I know how to build a wheelchair ramp? Do I know how to cook for a crowd? All of these practical skills are essential to our shared common life. And in following Christ, we're asked to develop that kind of know-how.

Harris: That's really lovely and gets at the lived in nature of discipleship. Yeah, that's great.

Welch: Yes, yeah, totally. It's all it's about life in bodies and it always will be. That will never change.

Harris: I found out just a couple of days ago that my friend's 11-year old daughter has been preparing a talk for church. And with her mom, she looked into the phrase, redeeming love. And this phrase occurs three times in the Book of Mormon and all of them in these chapters in Alma 1-29. It happens twice in Alma’s sermon to the church at Zarahemla in Alma 5 and then once in Alma 26 when Ammon is relishing and enjoying the successes they've had among the Lamanites.

And here's the thing that struck me is that each time this phrase, redeeming love, is something that you sing. And I felt that. So I'm a singer. I have a long love of a, long love affair with singing and with choirs. Specifically, I remember going to the temple on April 6, 2000. This was the day of the Palmyra Temple dedication, and later that evening I went to the temple. It was one of those times when you go to the house of the Lord and it feels like it. That is the description of the experience. As I left, I could hardly... I remember I needed to hurry and get out the door because I wanted to sing. That sounds so, I don't know, idealistic, but it was true. I just...the song, How Can I Keep From Singing, was this experience that I had.

I can remember another experience I had as a young woman, as a youth in the church, with repentance and walking away from a situation knowing that I was forgiven and I wanted to sing. And so this beautiful experience, this welling up of redeeming love that I felt I wanted to sing.

So I set that up. And I want to contrast that with the image of trumpets. There's a reference to a trumpet five times in the Book of Mormon, and three of these would have been familiar to Alma. The obvious passage from the block of scripture we're talking about is in Alma 29, verse one. He says, Oh, that I were an angel and could have the wish of mine heart that I might go forth and speak with the Trump of God, with the voice to shake the earth and cry repentance to every people.

And like we've talked about already, this can be interpreted as a missionary type of scripture. But Turley and others suggest that there may be other factors at play and we can read this as a lament, right? What I want to do, actually, is just think about how does this image of trumpets work for Alma? He says here that he would tell every soul in verse two of Alma 29 with a voice of thunder.

So maybe we should look at Alma's personal experiences with angels and the images of trumpets that he knows and see what that tells us about this passage. So Alma's personal experiences with angels. In Mosiah 27, we see that the angel comes and calls Alma to repentance. And he and those that were with him fell to the earth. And it says, resonant of Alma 29:2, and his voice was as thunder, which shook the earth. So here's a voice of an angel that's thunderous and shaking the earth. In Alma 8, the angel appears to Alma and commands him to return to Ammonihah, and he does this speedily. Alma 10, an angel, appears to Amulek, and Amulek obeys. And there are other teachings that Alma has about angels, but in terms of these personal experiences that he has, angels seem to be these beings that make people obey. Like, they get results.

And so that's the idea about angels. Looking at the idea about trumps and trumpets in the Book of Mormon, in Mosiah 26-25, Alma the Elder is praying to know what to do about people who are rejecting the church. And the Lord answers him and says, "'When the second trump shall sound, then they that never knew me shall come forth and stand before me.'" And it jumps into this moment in the judgment and resurrection, and it skips the first trump of the people who are faithful. It goes right to the second trump of people calling forth those that never knew God, never knew the Lord. Here's one more. And in the record of the Jaredites, Alma would have known this record because we see him talk about it to his son Helaman in Alma 37. But in this passage, the armies of Coriantumor invite the armies of Shiz to battle with a trumpet call. So in these examples, trumps and trumpets are powerful, inescapable, and severe summonings of some kind. They herald or spell out bad news, at least in these examples.

So we have angels that have gotten results and made people obey in Alma's personal experience, and then we have trumpets that call to send a kind of eternal or final reckoning. So what is it that Alma is actually wishing for at the opening of Alma 29? When he says, oh that I were an angel, speak with the with a trump. The previous two chapters, which are all part of the same original chapter, talk about the destruction that has happened, the tremendous battle, the worst that they've ever had. And this on the heels of Ammonihah, as we saw, Turley points out that this is the first we hear of Alma after the terrible experience at the burning of the women and children of Ammonihah. And so it seems like part of what Alma is wanting here is he wants to be a thunderous, inescapable force that can't be resisted or argued with.

And then he goes on to say, “Behold, I am a man and do sin in my wish, for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted to me. I ought not to harrow my desires the firm decree of a just God.”

And I wanna suggest that it's not that it's a sin that he wishes he were an angel. It might be the sin that he wants to make people after all of this terrible devastation and destruction and trauma that he and his people have experienced from these battles, from the killings at Ammonihah, from the killing of the people of Ammon. That he, there's something that is so frustrated and grieving that's kind of bursting inside him and he wants to make people obey. Stop it. And this is really, I think this is really striking, really touching, really easy to identify with.

And there's a few things we can pull from this: that God places such a central priority on agency. And he won't take away agency. Alma knows that it's a sin to wish to make people do what he wants. But like you were saying earlier, having this external force on the outside is not going to ultimately be effective. It's not the same thing as having it come from one's own volition and conversion.

It also talks about the power of desires, right? And what do we actually desire and what does that move us to? But I think too, it looks at the pain of having to deal with others' agency, of having to walk with them. And I mean, this is what God does with us. We make bad choices and rather than give up on us, God says, okay, I guess we will walk this road together. If you're willing to repent and come back, this is going to be harder. This is going to be more painful, but I will stay with you. And it suggests that that's what we need to do as well in really sometimes difficult ways.

And so, I am reading this as Alma's sin is in the desire to compel, the desire to coerce. And he knows that he can't do that, but in not doing that, in refraining from compulsion, that's what allows anybody to sing the song of redeeming love. Nobody can make me sing. I wouldn't have had that experience of wanting to sing the song of redeeming love because somebody told me to do it. That would have actually ruined the whole thing. And it comes from an individual. And like you've pointed out, trying the virtue of the word of God, this is what the scriptures offer us. If we don't engage them for ourselves, then we can't come to this conclusion ourselves, we can’t have this experience for ourselves and nobody else can provide it for us. So that's what I wanted to share. I think it's a kind of a cool image, the singing the song of redeeming love versus kind of being blasted with a trump. Stop it!

Welch: Well, I find it so compelling, so powerful, so personal, and so persuasive. What if we can remove our desire to control, and instead just be the sun and the warmth that allows somebody else's agency to grow and allows their hearts to change, and allows them to come to Christ of their own volition. That's what Lehi wanted at the tree, and I think that's where all of us find ourselves is to beckon and invite and then to let God accompany the seeker.

Harris: Right, right, and Alma says as much. Perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God to bring some soul. Yeah.

Welch: Yeah. Well, I think that is the perfect place to wrap up today. Sharon Harris, thank you so much for joining us on the Book of Mormon Center's podcast. This has been amazing.

Harris: No, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.