MIPodcast #202: Book of Mormon Ethics, featuring Dr. Courtney Campbell

Intro:

From Brigham Young University’s Maxwell Institute, this is the Maxwell Institute Podcast: Faith Illuminating Scholarship

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I’m Rosalynde Welch. Today I have for you the fourth and final in a series of interviews introducing the Maxwell Institute’s four research initiatives. Over the last few months I’ve discussed our Bible initiative with Dr. Kristian Heal, our discipleship initiative with Dr. Miranda Wilcox, our interfaith initiative with Dr. Andy Reed, and today I’m talking about a fourth research initiative, the Book of Mormon, with Dr. Courtney Campbell. Courtney is the co-editor of a new book titled Moral Visions: Ethics and the Book of Mormon. The book is a collection of academic essays by scholars from a variety of disciplines, each reflecting on some aspect of the Book of Mormon’s answer to the key question of ethics: how should I live? There’s never been a book-length academic study of Book of Mormon ethics, so this volume fills a hole in the existing scholarship and I found it to be packed with stimulating insights, whether you approach the Book of Mormon as a scripture reader or a scholar.

The book was published by the University of Illinois Press, but it was developed with support from the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies, which is housed here at the Institute. This conversation gives me a chance to highlight an aspect of the Institute’s work that might be less visible to our listeners. Our mission charges us both to fortify Latter-day Saints in their testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and to engage the world of religious ideas. We try to build bridges between the academic study of the Restoration and the Latter-day Saint community, and one of the ways we do that is by supporting academic projects that deserve to find a voice in professional scholarship. Our own fellows are our greatest asset in this respect, and they publish widely. But we also support other academic projects that fall within our research initiatives and that are of value to both Saints and scholars. Moral Visions is one of those projects, and I enjoyed discussing the book with Dr. Campbell.

Courtney is a professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University, and the Director of the Program in Medical Humanities there. Dr. Campbell recently published another book on the Restoration, titled Mormonism and Moral Life, and you’ll hear us refer to that book as well in our conversation. Our discussion focused on the how, what, and why of ethics in the Book of Mormon, and we talk about everything from the book’s persuasive strategies, to the ethics of expensive clothing, to the role of prophets in creating communities in which all people are able to thrive. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Interview:

Rosalynde (00:00.904)

Courtney Campbell, welcome to the Maxwell Institute podcast.

Courtney Campbell (00:06.008)

Thank you, Rosalynde. I appreciate the invitation to come and speak with you and rejoin the Maxwell Institute community for a little bit of time.

Rosalynde (00:14.802)

Today we're talking about a book called Moral Visions: Ethics and the Book of Mormon, which you edited together with Kelly Sorensen. But before we get to that book, I want to take a step back and start with the book that this book is about, namely the Book of Mormon. Every morning, many thousands of Latter-day Saints sit down, they open the Book of Mormon, and they begin to read it. They're essentially reading the book as an ethical text, although most of them probably wouldn't use that language to describe what they're doing. Talk a little bit about what ethics is at its most basic and how the Book of Mormon functions for Latter-day Saints as an informal ethical guide.

Courtney Campbell (00:58.508)

I think you're right in terms of the book being used on a daily basis as an informal moral guide, obviously a more formal spiritual guide to cultivate various practices of prayer, spiritual impressions and the like. But those are morally significant actions because they form who we are as persons.

Ethics in general looks at three major questions. The most common that one would find in the Book of Mormon is what type of persons ought we to be? Thus, Jesus tells his disciples at one point what type of, what manner of man ought you to be, or man and woman ought you to be, even as I am. That's a kind of virtue or character approach. Ethics would speak to the kinds of persons and our qualities and characteristics.

A second focus of ethics has to do with actions that we should perform. We're very familiar with this in the discourse of commandments, discourse of law, and the like in the LDS culture. What kind of action should be performed, what should be refrained from, and the like.

And then a third general question moves away from discrete character traits or discrete actions and ask How ought we to live our lives? how ought I to live my life individually? and how ought I to relate to other persons in a community, be it a religious community be that family community or be it a civic community or even more broadly a political community.

To me all of the the questions all of those questions are embedded in certain respects in the Book of Mormon. I would say that to your question, how does it function as an informal moral guide? I'd say that most Latter-day Saints, insofar as they see it as a kind of moral guide for how, what type of person ought I to be? I think it's really that virtue ethics question. So I'd be a person that expresses gratitude on a daily basis for God, for the atonement of Jesus Christ and so forth. And I express that through

Courtney Campbell (03:20.142)

prayer, that's going to shape my dispositions and how I see the world and how I'm going to interact with others. That's, to me, a sort of more central kind of focus of the moral focus for the Book of Mormon for everyday Latter-day Saints than, you know, specific concrete action guides such as do this or don't do that. There's other kinds of resources, obviously, within the cultural tradition that address those thou shalt and thou shalt not, so to speak. I don't think the Book of Mormon functions quite in that manner for members of LDS community. I tend to think of it not as prescriptive what we should do or not do, but illuminative, that it helps us see things, helps us see ourselves, helps us see our relationship with our neighbors, helps us understand our

Rosalynde (03:54.77)

Yeah.

Courtney Campbell (04:18.158)

our responsibilities in the world and towards God through its stories and narratives. So to me, the Book of Mormon is more about ethics as problem seeing or envisioning and less about problem solving or actions.

Rosalynde (04:35.292)

Yeah, yeah, so we go to the Book of Mormon, we ask it questions. Is it fair to say that most questions that are formulated as, with the word should, like how should I, or what should we, or how should our family--that if you have that should in your question, you're probably asking the Book of Mormon a kind of ethical question?

Courtney Campbell (05:04.94)

Yeah, should language, ought language are much more in the realm of ethics than hypothetical. I can't can't argue this or something like that, which, yeah.

Rosalynde (05:17.69)

Yeah, can I? Yeah, yeah, yeah

It's interesting that you title your book not moral principles or ethical systems in the Book of Mormon. You call it “Moral Visions.” And I think this gets to what you've been saying, which is that the Book of Mormon is less interested in laying out a set of rules or spelling out a set of standards. That type of work is done for Latter-day Saints and other kinds of publications. But the Book of Mormon is more interested in shaping its readers to be the kind of person who recognizes a moral reality in the world. Is that right? Talk to us about this, about this word “Visions” in your title. What were you hoping to get out?

Courtney Campbell (11:07.523)

Right, well we were clearly drawing on a tradition for which the term vision has some currency, whether it be the First Vision, or The Vision. So we're certainly playing with that. Again, vision is a metaphor about seeing. We see the world differently after the First Vision. Joseph Smith sees the world differently and his story helps other people see the world differently.

Rosalynde (11:14.95)

That's right. So we're supposed to think about the First Vision. Yeah.

Courtney Campbell (11:36.462)

So that's, you know, that's kind of central to what we're trying to get at with visions in general are different ways of understanding, different ways of seeing the world, seeing our relationships with each other, understanding and seeing one's own identity and ultimately seeing one's relationship with a divine being or with God. How is it that we see that?

And then by moral visions, also, or by visions, we also wanted to say there might be, actually there's, we know several versions of the First Vision, but visions

Rosalynde (12:27.304)

Mm-hmm.

Courtney Campbell (12:29.862)

in the way that we're constructing it is very pluralistic. It embraces different ways of seeing and understanding the world, understanding ethics, understanding morality, indeed understanding the restoration in general.

And part of what we are trying to provide in that book through that one word, there's a lot of weight for one word to carry, is a kind of community of discourse about visions and in particular moral visions.

Book of Mormon is really about, insofar as it has to do with ethics, which for me, it's really fundamentally part of the message and purpose of the Book of Mormon, that it provides this opportunity for a community of conversants to have discussions about the truth and the good and the right, began to answer for them by asking the right questions, began to come up with some answers about how we address these kind of large questions of meaning and purpose in our lives.

Rosalynde (14:15.528)

Well, let's turn now to some of the specific essays in this volume. It's a collection of a number of different essays by different authors. Each one takes a slightly different angle. Some focus in on a very specific topic of applied ethics. Some are more broad, thinking more generally about across the Book of Mormon, how these moral visions are developed.

One, I thought a good place to start would be Kim Matheson, my colleague here at the Maxwell Institute. She has an essay called “Epic History, Ethical Pedagogy: The Book of Mormon's Scene of Instruction.” And she kind of does some foundational work. She's less interested in answering specifically what the Book of Mormon recommends ethically. And instead, she wants to focus on how it performs its ethical instructions, its persuasive strategies. Even before we get an answer to those “should” questions, how is it that the Book of Mormon is able to teach us at all? How does it command our attention and command our assent--or invite, I should say, invite our attention and invite our assent?

So talk--and it does this partly by explicitly imagining scenes where moral instruction is taking place. This is a very common scene in the Book of Mormon, right? Where we have a father instructing a son or a king instructing a people in these ethical questions. And so we have lots of material within the Book of Mormon to see how it sees these ideal scenes of instruction taking place.

So share with us what are some of the techniques that Kim identifies as the how of the Book of Mormon's ethical instruction?

Courtney Campbell (16:07.874)

Yeah, this is a really brilliant essay. I don't know that I've ever quite encountered something like this with regards to the Book of Mormon. And every time I read it and reread it, I'm learning something new. It's a wonderful essay. again, as you pointed out, her focus is on the how. And for her particular purposes, she wants to emphasize a phrase that she's borrowed from writer Mark Jordan about what she calls the scene of instruction. And back of that scene of instruction, she's inviting her readers to consider, if I can rephrase her point a little bit in terms of virtue ethics, what kind of people must we be for the Book of Mormon to form us morally or form our characters in an ethical way and in a way that the book hopes, self-represents itself as hoping to do so. What kind of people do we have to be?

And so there's a kind of imaginative audience that the book sets up and an imaginative readership and an imaginative kind of discourse that the book represents as a way to set a scene or a setting for moral instruction from a patriarch to a family or from a father to a son, or in some cases from mothers to their sons and the like, or imagines what might be going on with individuals that are actually picking up the Book of Mormon and trying to apprehend what is the content of its message.

And so the first kind of, at least a couple of kinds of things that Kim rightly points out in terms of how the Book of Mormon goes about shaping us as readers and again, asks us to be a certain kind of reader. First, it's a book and it's presumes a kind of literary culture, which

Courtney Campbell (18:29.102)

as part of the 19th century frontier ethos, wouldn't, you know, a couple of centuries beforehand prior to printing presses and so forth and general distribution of books, I mean, it wouldn't have made any kind of sense to have it represented as a book. Again, this sense that the Book of Mormon lands where it does and has the impact for what Kim calls “moving the bodies of its readers,” sometimes to affiliate with the movement that this book generates, ultimately the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but also moves bodies to persecute, to write letters against it and so forth. I mean, it moves bodies is Kim's point of there's a, yeah--

Rosalynde (19:15.43)

And I thought that it was a really interesting way she phrased that. She makes this connection between the text, right? The Book of Mormon is a book, it's a text. And then our bodies. So the Book of Mormon is a text that moves our bodies in particular ways by means of morally shaping our spirits and our minds, right? So the sort of direction of causality goes from the text, through our minds and our spirits, right, the ethical formation of those, and then to directing our bodies to behave in certain ways, as you say, in accordance with the commandments, to be with our community, to relate to people in certain ways. The Book of Mormon externalizes itself. It makes itself real in the world by means of the bodies of its readers. I thought that was a really interesting way to think about it.

Courtney Campbell (20:09.806)

I think the second kind of, well, besides being a book, it's a book with a kind of presumes a certain knowledge of about the biblical or the particularly the Christian narrative. So there's a kind of--it's picking up that story, amplifying it in certain ways, modifying it in other kinds of ways, but it does presume in its audience that they're going to have some kind of familiarity with that particular narrative, the narrative of Christ and Christ's atonement and other books that are going to be disclosing that to a worldwide population.

Then she also says this book is located within and also as a narrative of a history of a lost civilization. And that's where her term epic history comes in that what the book is representing to its readers as supplying is of, again, the problem with the 19th century, 20th century into the 21st century is not only have we failed to learn from history, but we don't have enough of it. And so here's a history of a couple of lost civilizations, if you will, to help us give meaning to our present moment, hopefully to engage our memories, including our moral memories, so that we can remember.

Courtney Campbell (22:29.07)

what has occurred in times previous or eras previous. Even if we didn't know that there was such civilizations around now, the book discloses that and that again invites the reader into a new kind of an imaginative kind of relationship. The Book of Mormon is imagining its readers and again, its scene of instruction, but it also invites the readers to engage in their own imaginative exercise. Okay, what were these people like? What kinds of relationships did they have? What kind of food did they cook and so on and so forth? So those are--

Rosalynde (23:11.548)

And maybe even more to the point, this history that the Book of Mormon narrates points forward to our day, right? So as modern day readers, we find ourselves implicated in that history, both because it explicitly prophesies about our day. It gives the reader a role in the dissemination and the world historical destiny of this book, right? So this ancient history,

Courtney Campbell (23:20.898)

Mm-hmm.

Rosalynde (23:39.93)

implicates the present and the future within it. And that's a very persuasive way to get the reader on board, right? Is to say, look, you are in this book and so you better listen up.

Courtney Campbell (23:52.236)

Yeah, exactly right. This is you can find yourself in the story and moreover you are already embedded within the story in some way. You're the you in the 21st century, well you may be living in a non-religious society and going about your ways in a kind of very individualistic mode. You're embedded in this story, the imagined scene of instruction, to go back to that phrase, for when this book comes forward. And so, yeah, it lays a hold on the reader in a very kind of important way. This book is for you, to you, and actually about you, even if you didn't already know that.

Rosalynde (24:43.644)

Yeah. So Kim does a wonderful job of sort of laying this out and laying bare, helping us to recognize what we've probably already sensed, at least implicitly, which is that the Book of Mormon persuades us by presenting itself to us as a book with all the power of a written text, a book that is a companion to the Bible. So all of the moral and historical weight of the Bible, then the Book of Mormon can, can use that as part of its persuasive means for its reader. And then it places us, right? It recruits us into the grand epic narrative history that it lays out.

Kim makes a number of points in here and they're all really interesting, including a fun one at the end where she talks about, sort of in contrast to the grand scope of its epic history, there's also a kind of very personal anxiety on the part of Moroni about whether or not what he has created, right, as editor and final redactor of the Book of Mormon is up to its incredibly important role in salvation history. And she shows how even that sort of anxiety that's expressed occasionally in the Book of Mormon has its own way of conveying urgency and thus pressing itself, pressing its ethical case upon its readers. Even its weakness can be made a kind of ethical strength, I guess.

Courtney Campbell (26:14.478)

Yeah, it's really the last section of her essay is just really wonderful and laying out this authorial anxiety from Moroni. And you can obviously sense it in some of the others that all the, again, all the thousand years of history and the meticulous record keeping and preservation of the records and the like, is supposed to land in the imagined scene of instruction of the 19th century. And what if it doesn't move bodies? Maybe our writing is going to be so weak, says Moroni, that it's not going to measure up. And, you know, I think there's a kind of humaneness to that. To me, that kind of humanizes the book in a very kind of

Rosalynde (26:53.788)

Yeah.

Courtney Campbell (27:12.078)

profound way because all of us that have done some kind of writing hoping to persuade, if not necessarily move bodies, to persuade minds have said, boy, if I really communicated what I hope to, what I want to get across here. I mean, it's kind of a reiterated point throughout the book is kind of the futility of the prophetic message to bring people together. The only kind of counter to that, really the major counter, not the only one, is the story of Christ's ministry in Third Nephi and the kind of community that sets up in Fourth Nephi.

Rosalynde (28:16.006)

Yeah.

Yes.

Courtney Campbell (28:36.194)

But anyway, Kim's essay really, I think, just does a wonderful job of articulating as part of the scene of instruction and how the text is trying to form the readers, the character of the readers, is this very human concern. And that can be grabbing and personalizing and I think persuasive in important ways.

Rosalynde (29:05.767)

Moroni was probably right to be anxious about whether or not the Book of Mormon would hit its mark and perform the prophetic work that it has to do. With the benefit of 200 years of, almost 200 years of history of watching the Book of Mormon do its thing in the world, we can say it has successfully nucleated and spurred the growth of a religious community, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that now is many millions of people strong, but that doesn't, that's not the full breadth of the Book of Mormon's ethical concerns.

And I think as we dig into this book, we have many questions to ask ourselves about whether or not as a religious community, we have understood and internalized and have moved our bodies ethically in the way that the Book of Mormon envisions.

So let's turn now to some of these specific applied ethical concerns of the Book of Mormon. There's a really, really enjoyable and interesting essay by a scholar named Ariel Bybee Lawton. It's titled “The Perils of Apparel: Clothing and Dress Ethics in the Book of Mormon.” So this is a question of the what. What specifically does the Book of Mormon say about how we should be and what we should do?

One of its very specific and practical concerns is clothing and dress and social status. So briefly, if you would for us, just review the argument that she draws out of the Book of Mormon around clothing and dress.

Courtney Campbell (30:43.938)

Yeah, so Ariel looks at several kinds of texts that describe, I mean, it's descriptive ethics. It's not prescriptive, but it's descriptive ethics. What does the Book of Mormon have to say about how the various communities dressed and clothed themselves? And she highlights through this kind of textual analysis.

Several kinds of interesting features that there's a kind of critique-within-a-prophetic-critique within the Book of Mormon itself about certain modes of dress, maybe not so much the dress itself, but the attitudes towards dress and clothing. And she picks up on various passages, again, that one can find throughout the text, repeated passages--

Rosalynde (31:37.692)

Beginning from the very beginning with Lehi's dream, right? From 1 Nephi 8 and then just straight through the Book of Mormon. This is a really recurrent topos. And once you've noticed it, you'll see it everywhere.

Courtney Campbell (31:40.386)

Yep. Yep.

Courtney Campbell (31:50.37)

That's right. And the basic idea is that individuals that are sort of, if you will, self-absorbed that live in the great and spacious building as a first example, they dress differently. They're dressed in silks, they're dressed in fine linens and costly apparel, several kinds of adjectives to describe their dress. So part of it is, again, it's not a critique per se of what people are wearing. It's a critique of the underlying values and ethical attitudes that are then manifested in various forms of dress. So again, there's a kind of way in which the external clothing is a reflection of various kinds of virtues and vices internal to the person or internal to a particular community.

Rosalynde (33:04.55)

And in particular, it's concerned about differences, right? It's concerned about economic differences. So the problem isn't necessarily in wearing fine clothing if the entire community is prospering together and everybody is wearing fine clothing. The problem is when some people are wearing fine clothing and some people are naked on the street. That seems to be the situation that really alerts the attention to Book of Mormon writers.

Courtney Campbell (33:33.484)

Yep, it's a profound critique. So the issue about clothing then becomes sort of a symbol of a community's neglect of the most vulnerable in the society. If you're wearing fine clothing, if you're wearing pearls, fine linen, costly apparel, and the like, there's a kind of uplifted, if you will, social status. And that often is manifested, at least in the numerous texts she pulls out, of not even noticing that there are poor amongst us or persons that go without. We're kind of, we suffer a kind of moral amnesia or a kind of moral myopia. We just, again, that goes back to the visions metaphor. We just don't see those people in a way that, again, we should.

So--and it's interesting in a couple of the texts, although Ariel doesn't really bring this out as much, but the critique in the Book of Mormon is not only about the adornment of ourselves with fine and costly apparel, but also the adornment of churches. And so there's, yes, this--

Rosalynde (34:42.792)

Especially in the latter days, right? This is where Moroni really kind of works himself up to a frenzy in Mormon chapter eight, envisioning the latter days, the churches that are built up there and the materialism, the expense and the fineness of, yes, not only the clothing, but also the furnishings of the church buildings themselves. Is that how you read it?

Courtney Campbell (34:50.85)

Yes.

Courtney Campbell (35:07.682)

Right. Yeah, exactly right. That there's, what's being emphasized is the external and what's been neglected has been the internal, the external self and the inner self. And so it's a profound critique, if you will, of hypocrisy. Okay. You believe this, you say you believe this, but here's what's happened. You focus so much on the wearing of fine clothes, the adornment of your churches.

Rosalynde (35:16.57)

Yes. Yeah.

Courtney Campbell (35:37.928)

And as Moroni says, you've neglected, you don't even notice the poor, the vulnerable, the widows and the like who are crying out for help. So what… Dress, then, is a marker for in the Book of Mormon is issues about materialism, often, not entirely, but often issues about materialism and a lost relationship with God. Once you lose the relationship with God, you end up engaging in sort of social divisioning, social divisions and stigmatizing those that again may not have the kind of financial wherewithal that an individual does. It's again a way, it's not a, I don't think it's a prescriptive text, it's descriptive--but it's also illuminative. That is it's showing us or helping us see different kinds of attitudes towards dress to be sure or adornment of churches, but also how it is that we treat or neglect the poor and the vulnerable and the naked in the community.

Rosalynde (36:53.564)

So you've made the point a couple of times here, and I think I agree with it, but I want to play devil's advocate, OK, which is that it's not--the problem is not the wearing of fine clothing. The problem is the neglect of the needy. Right. The problem is the inequality in a community where some people hoard resources for themselves and this conspicuous consumption, and other people are going hungry on the street and that that's where the real should resides, right? We should redress that inequality.

But don't you think it's the case that you can see with, with Nehor, for instance, and his followers, and maybe reflecting a little more personally in our own lives--isn't there a kind of feedback loop where when you do invest, as Jesus says, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. So when we invest in the fine clothing and we do wear it, that in turn kind of exercises this effect on our own soul that may further corrode. It shapes our values. It creates these habits where we notice and we care about things like clothing. So I wonder whether there is a kind of ethical force, an ethical prescription, in fact, around the wearing of clothing itself. Do you think so, or would you push back against that?

Courtney Campbell (38:15.82)

If Ariel were here and not myself, that she would say that, again, the reason it's not about the dress is that there are certain passages in which dress itself, that dress is a marker for other kinds of things, as there are passages in the Book of Mormon which do indicate that the people had different kinds of apparel, but they worked together to produce for the community rather than to divide themselves from each other. So insofar as there's a communal goal that's furthered by what she calls, she calls it a work ethic, a clothing work ethic, insofar as that is part of the sort of patterns of production of clothing, dress, and the like, and women spinning and so forth. And I think she also does make an important point that dress in the Book of Mormon is not gendered, that there's really one passage that refers just to the women. Otherwise, it seems to be a communal production, okay?

Rosalynde (39:56.136)

Mm-hmm.

Rosalynde (40:05.927)

Yeah.

Rosalynde (41:09.5)

Well, it goes to the Book of Mormon's very complex treatment of the idea of prosperity, right? The idea of a prosperity gospel has kind of gotten a bad rap in our present day for good reason, right? The prosperity gospel being this idea that keeping the commandments requires God to bless you materially in such a way so that if you're a good Christian, you're also going to be rich, right?

There are so many reasons why that set of ideas is rightly criticized. But the Book of Mormon does challenge it a little bit. As I read the Book of Mormon, it forthrightly says, yes, keeping the commandments and living in covenant relationship with God does result in prosperity. And that prosperity is good as long as you are prospering together as a community. Shared prosperity is good, but it's bad to prosper alone. As soon as you start prospering more than your neighbor, suddenly that turns on a dime and it's not anymore a symbol and a marker of God's favor, but that prosperity is in fact the marker of pride that is, as we see again and again, goes before the inevitable downfall of the community. So it's really sort of a complex and very challenging dynamic there.

Courtney Campbell (42:35.042)

Yeah, I agree that that leads into the prosperity discussion. And I've done a little bit more with the prosperity gospel and the prosperity ethic in the Book of Mormon in the book that was published last month, Mormonism and Moral Life.

Rosalynde (42:50.684)

Yes, what's the title of that?

Yes, a wonderful book.

Courtney Campbell (43:04.91)

And I would just say that I don't read in the text, and this is me, not Ariel, but I don't read in the text that prosperity is equivalent to wealth or prosperity is equivalent to riches. It's often the case in the book Mormon that we'll talk about prosperity, you'll prosper in the land. That's different than you're gonna prosper with all sorts of riches and buildings and so forth. Prosperity in the land has a different kind of meaning. It's kind of the promise that God gave to the Israelites going into the promised land that the land is going to be fruitful, okay? And that you'll be self-sustaining. You won't be a community that relies on, you know, the handouts from the Egyptians or something like that. So prosperity in the land, I think, has a different kind of meaning than just building up riches. I think prosperity can also refer to fecundity, that is to prosperity and posterity.

I think the prosperity ultimately has, again, this is argument in the other book, prosperity refers to a well-thriving community. There are instances in the Book of Mormon itself, Alma Chapter 1 through 5 being sort of an example and point where the communities are said explicitly not to be as prosperous as other communities, but they had, I'm sorry, not to be as rich and have enough, sufficient riches as other communities, but they were more prosperous. Why were they more prosperous? Because they treated others as equals. They cared for those that were sick amongst them. They cared for, they engaged in like sort of communal processes of self-sufficiency and took care of the needy and the like. So prosperity to me, at least in the scriptural readings is really about the well-thriving community and not about individual elevation of self over over others or some kind of social elite. It's not about the 1 % at all.

Rosalynde (45:05.543)

Well, this is a nice pivot then to the last essay that I'd like to discuss from Moral Visions, and that actually is your essay, Courtney, “The Ethics of Memory in the Book of Mormon.” And as I read it, this turns us toward kind of the final question. We've talked about the how, we've talked about the what. Now let's talk about the why. Why is ethical instruction so important in the Book of Mormon? What is the vision that it's pointing us toward? You relate this to the idea of prophecy and the particular role of a prophet in a community. So briefly walk us through your argument in this essay.

Courtney Campbell (45:50.734)

Sure, this is I'm I have a different kind of audience in mind than I think some of my colleagues because I am trying to bring the Book of Mormon ethics in the conversation with academics, you know that aren't aren't LDS. Because I think it has something to say about what's called the practice of social criticism that hasn't been picked up, and I'm trying to engage that conversatio. And my model for doing that or my metaphor for doing that is the notion of prophecy as a form of social criticism. And I'm drawing on a Jewish social philosopher, Michael Walser, who talks about the role of the prophets in the biblical, the Hebraic tradition in particular, that prophets are… It's different than a prophet that holds a particular kind of office in an ecclesiastical organization. Okay, this isn't about prophets, seers, and revelators and sustaining. This is kind of what is the social function and role of a prophetic figure.

And my sense is that prophetic figure is first to be the memory for the people that has lost its way. Anytime you have a prophetic figure in the Book of Mormon and it's interesting to note never once in the Book of Mormon does an individual refer to themselves as a prophet. It's either the narrator that does that or it's the people themselves in one form or another. Sometimes it's false prophets, the people I'm referring to as prophets never once refer to themselves as prophets. That's kind of interesting in itself. It's again a sense of

Rosalynde (47:46.46)

That is interesting, yeah.

Courtney Campbell (47:47.978)

moral character, a sense of humility of these people and people I really work with in my article have to do with primarily the people I consider giving the moral sermons are Jacob, Benjamin, Abinadi as part of sort of the lead into Alma and Amulek and Samuel and Samuel the Lamanite and then ultimately to Moroni and or to Mormon and Moroni. Those are the prophets because all they're engaged in this practice of social criticism. They are calling a people that has at one time been told the story, okay, the story of particularly of God's deliverance of their fathers or their father's fathers. That is the Israelites from Egypt. They've learned that story and they've forgotten about it. They've neglected it. They don't have rituals that sustain it. The prophet comes to them, whether it be a Abinadi or be it Benjamin or Jacob and says, you need to remember this story. Don't you remember that? Don't you, as Abinadi puts this forth, you tell me what the Ten Commandments are. And they have the...the priests of Noah have a difficult time working with that. He says, here they are. Okay. Have you taught them to the people? No. Do you practice them yourselves? No.

So the second function of the prophet figure in the Book of Mormon, and again, in broader social criticism, that's my audience here. I'm not doing this for the Book of Mormon scholars. I'm trying to, you know,

Rosalynde (49:14.696)

Yes.

Rosalynde (49:33.66)

Right.

Courtney Campbell (49:38.85)

build a bridge between others that are engaged in the ethics world and the political world. So the prophet figure is going to expose moral hypocrisy. Your community was constituted by these values. That's what formed your community. Your community was formed by processes of remembrance, knowing that you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You need to take care of the strangers and the refugees in your community in the same way that you were taken care of. And you don't do that anymore. You've forgotten about that and you think that everything is fine. So the second function of, besides being the moral memory, is to expose moral hypocrisy.

And then the third element of prophetic witness, of prophetic social criticism, as you tell, the first story didn't work. The Exodus story didn't work. Let me tell you a different story and maybe you'll get the point this time. And so Abinadi, Alma, all these people, they start with the Exodus story, but then they re-story that into Christ is going to deliver you from your sins. Okay. I mean, that's the basic restory-ing move. It's kind of like the way that Jesus asks in the New Testament, those that question what the great commandment is and the law is, and they respond: We know that love of neighbor. And then they have a question. What's the neighbor? And so Jesus doesn't go back and say the Torah says this in Leviticus. He says, let me tell you a story. Here's the good Samaritan. And so the message is remembered through a restory-ing of the particular content. For me, that's the...

Rosalynde (51:15.898)

He gives them a new story.

Rosalynde (51:26.06)

Courtney, let me just make sure our listeners understand. It might sound like you're saying restoring, but you're saying re-story-ing. Re-story-ing. So providing a new story that will speak the same ethic, but in a new time and in a new context.

Courtney Campbell (51:34.604)

That's right. Yep.

Courtney Campbell (51:43.788)

Right, yep, exactly. But I do want to say just on that point that restory-ing is part of restoring. And so to me, the restoration is a restory-ing of the early Christian movement into the vernacular of the 19th century movement. Okay? So we tell a different story. We don't say that God's...

Rosalynde (51:52.465)

Yeah.

Courtney Campbell (52:10.786)

God's activity in human affairs ended in the first century AD. We say it's ongoing and look what happened in the 19th century. That's a restoring of the past by restory-ing the message.

A prophet's going to engage in restory-ing and then offer what I call prophetic hope. Here's your way out. Here's your, by remembering, by at least eradicating to some extent the hypocrisy of the community. And typically this is the elites. It's going to be the lawyers in Alma. It's going to be the priests in King Noah. It's going to be the social elites that are kind of-- because they've got things very good, why change? They're the ones that are really called to account. There's gonna be an appeal to the broader community, oftentimes to go unheard or un-listened to or rejected of, know, we can anticipate the survival of this community into the future. yep.

Rosalynde (53:27.794)

So this is really the why, the why of ethics in the Book of Mormon is looking forward to the future. How can we convey the truth that Jesus is the Christ? It's transmitted in communities. How can we have flourishing, righteous, functional, healthy communities? That's a question of ethics. So it's of paramount importance in the Book of Mormon that our communal ethics are right so that the proclamation of Christ can continue into the future and culminate then of course in the Zion that we're building to welcome the Savior and His second coming.

Courtney Campbell (54:06.402)

Right. Yeah, that's my sense of the why. The answer to the why question is ultimately to get to a Zion community, which we get about 10 verses of inklings of that in 4th Nephi, but in anticipation of Christ and righteousness reign on the earth we need to create our own thriving communities. And that's only going to happen if the stories are remembered, ritualized, and people engage, I didn't really sort of mention this, but people engage in covenantal relationships. I mean, and to me, you know, the very word covenant that's mentioned in the title page of the Book of Mormon and so forth as part of the message is again, you get ethics built right into the very message of the Book of Mormon because covenant is a religious responsibility, but it's also a set of a whole cluster of moral responsibilities that come along with that. And by telling the story and retelling it for future generations of the Latter-day Saints, or at least the Book of Mormon, is engaged in what ethicists, again, the people that I rub shoulders with, call moral responsibility for future generations. And the way that we carry out that, or the book carries out that responsibility is through the covenantal processes.

Rosalynde (55:40.69)

Courtney, this has been such a stimulating discussion. I wish I could keep you here for another hour and pepper you with questions. The main question that I didn't get to, and I won't have you answer it because I know we've got to wrap up here, but my biggest question around ethics is how we can shape our lives toward the good without becoming judgmental of those around us, right?

Because when you develop a moral vision and you look out at the world and suddenly you see it's full of good and bad, right and wrong, you're gonna see the good, you're gonna see the right, but you may, you'll probably also see the evil and the bad and the wrong. And how do we not devolve into kind of tribalistic condemnation? I think that's an important aspect. Maybe the shadow side of ethics. We'll have to have you on another time to talk about that.

I wonder just to wrap up here if you'd like to reflect on the final question I always offer to our guests, which is what are the ethical questions that we should be asking of the Book of Mormon in the 21st century?

Courtney Campbell (56:57.838)

I think that there are three or four central questions that we don't ask as a religious community very much. We're neglecting to ask them as a civic community or a political culture, least in the United States. And the first, which I think the book speaks to obviously in great depth is how do we live together in a fragmented world?

It goes back to just your comments right now about judgment. How can we live together without exclusionary identities of, you know, whether it be nationalism, whether it Christian nationalism, and so forth that seek to draw boundaries around the people of God and the inclusive covenant that God has made with all people? How are we gonna live together?

And I the Book of Mormon doesn't do a great job of answering that. It sort of says these communities didn't learn to live together, learn to be more, so we give you this information so you can be more wise than we have been. And that to me is a really fundamental kind of question that we need to ask because it's so easy in the...

Rosalynde (58:05.744)

Yeah, we get lots of negative examples.

Courtney Campbell (58:21.326)
in our political culture now, I'd say, and to some extent the religious culture, just sort of go into our silos and say, I'm just not gonna, you know, I'll live my own kind of life and let everything else go to hell in a handcart, so to speak. I don't think that that's not the message of the Book of Mormon, the message of the Book of Mormon is to call us together to form vibrant moral communities that sustain themselves over time based on principles of Christian discipleship and ultimately based on notions of a belief in Jesus as the Savior and also the Creator and the Caregiver and our model.

So anyway, that's kind of, that's a huge, huge question, but I think that's something that we need to be asking of our community, religious community. It's something that we can ask of the Book of Mormon, and I think it's just essential that we're asking that of our political culture right now.

I'd also say that we need to raise some questions, given the critiques that we've alluded to in the conversation last hour about materialism in the Book of Mormon and the critiques of materialism that is, as well as the practice of materialism. How is it that we can develop our communities in such a way that we will not neglect the poor, the vulnerable, the refugees, the migrants, the immigrants. How can we experience prosperity as we talked about, which has very different meanings, but how can we experience prosperity without marginalizing some people?

And the last kind of point to make that I appreciate frankly, so much of the work that President Nelson has done on this to raise the issue of peacemaking in our, in the 21st century right to the forefront of our communal conversations and also obviously his work went beyond that to peacemaking and reconciliation with different organizations different different groups different social groups and and so forth and There I think again the the book of mormon has some so how can we be peacemakers? Again, let-- this goes back to Kim's article--let the story form who we are as persons. What type of people ought ye to be? You ought to be as I am. Be a peacemaker.

Rosalynde (01:02:03.368)
Well, I think we should leave it right there. Courtney Campbell, thank you so much for joining me today on the Maxwell Institute podcast.

Courtney Campbell (01:02:10.114)

Thank you, Rosalynde.

Conclusion:

I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Courtney Campbell about a new book he’s edited, Moral Visions: Ethics and the Book of Mormon. The book was published by the University of Illinois Press, and it’s available on their website or on Amazon. The volume has many interesting essays we didn’t get to discuss today--they’re all worth reading but I’ll call out in particular essays by our BYU colleagues Daniel Becerra, Joseph Spencer, and Ryan Davis. It’s exciting to see how Book of Mormon scholarly research is advancing into new fields and asking new questions. You might even say the Book of Mormon answers the questions we should be asking.

I’ll be back soon with another interview. Thanks for listening to the Maxwell Institute Podcast.