Liberation and Community in the Book of Mormon

After realizing that I could not stay in the LDS Church, I was interested in Community of Christ because it still held the Book of Mormon as sacred scripture. I read the book many times since my first reading at age 13 and my interpretation of the book changed over time. All church lessons on the Book of Mormon emphasized the larger meaning of the text as one that warned against pride, and that we should pay close attention to the specific lessons of specific writers. Initially, I sympathized with Nephi and believed him when he wrote that his brothers were awful and that Lehi was a good and faithful parent. Later, I understood Nephi as an unreliable narrator whose story was more of a cautionary tale.

When I left the LDS Church, I was questioning my belief in the historicity of the Book of Mormon, but it still felt important to me. It had promised me that a better life was possible when when I was struggling with my family as a young teenager. It comforted me when my mother died. It served as an anchor in my life as a young adult. It was something I made time for even as my small children overwhelmed me. The Book of Mormon felt too important, too significant to just let it go. But I didn’t know how it could be a part of my ongoing, post-faith transition life of faith if my beliefs arounds its origins had changed so fundamentally. Could this once-sacred text still be spiritually meaningful to me?

Yes, was the answer I eventually came to, but I was going to need some help acquiring new tools of reading and understanding. The first volume of Fatimah Salleh and Margaret Olsen Hemming’s The Book of Mormon for the Least of These was exactly the tool I needed to learn to read the Book of Mormon in a different way. The first book was revolutionary in its framing of the text because it centered those at the margins of BOM stories and even those who were not named in those stories. Salleh and Olsen Hemming demonstrated the ways in which readers could use their scriptural imaginations to imagine a fuller story than the one presented by BOM narrators, very much in the spirit of Wilda Gafney’s Womanist Midrash and other womanist biblical interpreters before her. I immediately used these ideas to help me preach from the Book of Mormon in a Community of Christ setting.

The recently-released second volume, which covers Mosiah to Alma, continues to guide readers to understand the text through the lens of liberation theology and womanist ethics. The authors hit their stride in this second volume. In centering the people at the margins of BOM stories, Salleh and Olsen Hemming comment on the teachings of BOM prophets and the ways in which those teachings do and do not support the liberation of those at the margins or support the thriving of whole communities. This critical lens reveals BOM prophets as both inspired and limited in their understanding of the world around them and of God.

I recommend this book to those who are looking to deepen their reading of scripture beyond plain text readings and to further their understanding of the gospel in terms of social justice. As someone who has left the LDS Church but still wants to find meaning and relevance in the Book of Mormon, Salleh and Olsen Hemming have written an invaluable resource that has helped me renew my faith and maintain a connection with this sacred text.