Notes on the Book of Mormon From a Nineteenth Century Perspective: Mosiah-Alma & Missionary Work

Pliny Fisk: missionary/adventurer

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

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

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

Marriage Proposal from Hell

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

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

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

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

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

King Edwin converted--

his successors repudiated

his conversion.

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

For nineteenth-century readers, who were constantly hearing about yet another group of Christians going off to set up a colony of believers somewhere, the connection between belief and lifestyle would have been a norm. And American missionary work was quite successful in part due to its pluralistic society. That is, Americans were used to setting up volunteer organizations, getting them funded, and then dismantling them when necessary. American Christians were also quite used to sending Christianity into their own frontiers by whatever means were available: circuit riders; revival meetings in tents; magazines, and anything else that came to hand.