In the preceding chapter, we looked at traditional issues in Book of Mormon studies, comparing twentieth-century approaches to these issues with responses to them discernable in the work of twenty-first-century scholars. Today, two decades into the twenty-first century, there are many active researchers still working on these issues. Some of these, despite developments in the field, continue to work on either questioning or bolstering the Book of Mormon’s claim to being an ancient book. As we’ve said, however, fewer well-trained researchers work in traditional ways on such problems today than just a few years ago. Most of these issues, as we’ve detailed in chapter 4, play a different role in the hands of today’s students of the Book of Mormon. In this final chapter, we want to look at the new questions and methods that have arisen in the twenty-first century, largely positioned beyond the questions and concerns of twentieth-century Book of Mormon studies.

Before we do so, however, it’s worth pausing to think about whether there’s something problematic about the shifts we detailed in the preceding chapter. As laudable as it may sound to say that Book of Mormon scholars today are working productively and amicably with academics positioned outside the faith tradition, aren’t there legitimate worries about treating the Book of Mormon in a way that allows it to become a neutral object of investigation? Shouldn’t the Book of Mormon always be controversial, a scandal of sorts, provoking outsiders enough that they ask the question of whether the book is true? Might Book of Mormon studies in its newest forms be watering the Book of Mormon’s message down so that it’s more palatable to nonbelievers, ultimately secularizing the sacred? We argued in chapter 3 that scholars shaped by late twentieth-century Book of Mormon studies and scholars shaped by early twenty-first-century Book of Mormon studies ought to learn from one another. But might it simply be the case that more recent developments actually do mark a departure from the faith in some way? The fact is that the sketches in chapter 4 need some defense and justification. Before we go any further in describing what’s changed in Book of Mormon studies, we have to ask whether Book of Mormon studies ought to move in the directions it has recently.

The questions in the last paragraph all point in the same direction. They all suggest, to one degree or another, that Book of Mormon scholarship would become more palatable to outsiders only by design—that is, because Book of Mormon scholars decide one day to make the Book of Mormon palatable to outsiders. The questions also imply that Book of Mormon scholarship could only go in the direction it’s been going in order to capitulate to some force felt from outside the faith. And so, some fear that all the talk in chapter 3 about a broadened conception of what it means to speak of the truth of the Book of Mormon may really be a fancy and seductive way of saying that we ought to redefine truth—perhaps in a postmodern fashion—so as to get along with the sophisticated and the secular. This, however, is entirely false. Rather, there are deeply religious and wholly nonsecular motivations that have driven the broadening and redirection of Book of Mormon studies in recent years, and newer work has simply had as one of its incidental (but very welcome) byproducts a certain reception in the larger scholarly world.

“Let us take the Book of Mormon, which a man took and hid in his field, securing it by his faith, to spring up in the last days, or in due time; let us behold it coming forth out of the ground, which is indeed accounted the least of all seeds, but behold it branching forth, yea, even towering, with lofty branches, and God-like majesty, until it, like the mustard seed, becomes the greatest of all herbs.” —Joseph Smith, “Letter to the Elders of the Church, 30 November–1 December 1835,” The Joseph Papers

Part of what’s driven changes in Book of Mormon studies is what Terryl L. Givens explained in By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion, as we’ve talked about before. That is, much of the work done on both sides of the question of historicity—work done by critics of and work done by defenders of the Book of Mormon’s antiquity—seems to be in a relatively finished state. There’s seldom much that’s new these days in the battle over the Book of Mormon’s historicity. Critics today tend to retread the ground of their forebears without adding any substantially new arguments or evidence. For the most part, they tend just to update the rhetoric or the distribution platforms of those who have criticized Book of Mormon historicity before them, hoping to reach newer or younger audiences. Like the critics, defenders today tend to retread the ground of their own scholarly forebears while adding few substantially new arguments or evidence. They also, in other words, mostly tend to update the rhetoric or the distribution platforms of those who have defended the Book of Mormon before them. Defenders of the Book of Mormon’s historicity have in particular worked tirelessly to make their work accessible to younger Latter-day Saints through the use of new media, including social media. Exemplary in this regard are those who work at Book of Mormon Central. They labor to ensure that robust intellectual defenses of the Book of Mormon worked out by past generations are immediately discoverable by those who encounter traditional criticisms of the Book of Mormon for the first time.

We should of course keep our eyes peeled for updates and developments on the traditional question of Book of Mormon historicity—emerging new angles, pressing new questions that require careful answers, or more thoroughly researched defenses of the book’s historical claims. Nevertheless, if the scholarly conversation is to continue, it has to begin addressing other questions about the Book of Mormon. There’s so much to be understood about the Book of Mormon that has so far gone untouched. However, now these other questions are not only of real spiritual import, they’re of increasing spiritual import. What drives many Book of Mormon scholars today, it seems, is a worry that an exclusive concern for just the one question of historicity might compromise the much larger apologetic task. They want a book that’s true and valuable not only because it’s historical (although that’s obviously important). They want a book that’s true in a hundred other ways also, and in ways that matter to human beings on an existential and not just on an intellectual level. Their experience leads them to believe that questions beyond that of historicity are what many or even most readers of the Book of Mormon want answers to. As we’ve said before, readers of the Book of Mormon today are as likely—if not in fact more likely—to reject the Book of Mormon for reasons that have nothing to do with historicity. They’re as likely or more likely to drop the book and the religion endorsing it because the volume seems to them to be irrelevant, archaic, boring, unenlightening, or ethically troubling. This is something we see among our students too often, and there’s reason to help a new generation see the book’s power that we see.

A simple simile might be useful in expressing what’s happening among newer Book of Mormon scholars. Returning again and again to the issue of Book of Mormon historicity can feel like starting a car in the garage over and over again to prove that it runs—but only seldom putting the thing into drive to see what it might do. Book of Mormon researchers today increasingly feel that it’s time to trust all the evidence that the car runs and take it out onto the road. How does it handle when the rubber meets the road? Where might a tank of gas in this marvelous vehicle take us? Eagerness to get out of the garage and onto the street doesn’t begin from any desire to deny that the car runs. This eagerness is to take as fact that the car runs and then give others outside the garage an opportunity to see what the thing can do. Others deciding that they’d like to take a ride in the car with us isn’t a sign that we’ve somehow compromised the vehicle’s integrity. It’s a sign, we hope, that the car has more to recommend it than we’ve ever realized.

“At some point, I realized that I had been avoiding the Book of Mormon for years because I was afraid that it would not be complex and rewarding. I was afraid that it would not measure up—that I would find it simplistic and immature—and I was not sure that my adult faith could withstand that discovery.” —Michael Austin, Buried Treasures: Reading the Book of Mormon Again for the First Time

There’s reason, then, to celebrate new developments in Book of Mormon scholarship, even as there’s reason to celebrate the incredible work that’s been done by those whose shoulders Book of Mormon scholars stand on today. We fully appreciate those who worked professionally over the course of six or seven decades to set the Book of Mormon in the ancient world and who proved themselves to be astonishingly prolific and creative in their efforts. They scoured the records of the human race, sifted through the sands of ancient civilizations, mastered dozens of languages, and discerned new ways of reading the text. The monument to the Book of Mormon they built is a wonder, breathtaking in its scope. And now, we believe, there’s good and faithful reason to muster exactly the same kind of commitment and ingenuity and put that into a host of other questions regarding the book’s truth. If we had a small army of trained theologians, reception historians, textual critics, literary scholars, and social critics all working as hard on the Book of Mormon as those trained in ancient history have worked before us, what might emerge from their effort and inventiveness? And the good news is that precisely such a small army has perhaps begun to take shape and is hard at work in laying the foundations for an expanded field of Book of Mormon studies.

With all that prologue, then, what might be said by way of closing about the newest issues emerging in Book of Mormon scholarship? What’s begun to take shape that invites the careful attention of the next generation? And how does this mark a change, all over again, from what’s happened in the past even as it continues in the broader apologetic spirit that’s animated Book of Mormon studies from the beginning?

Questions of Identity

It isn’t surprising that, in the political climate of the past decade in the United States of America, the question of race in the Book of Mormon has received increasing emphasis. This isn’t simply due to a changing political culture, however, as if it were merely a secular concern. Leaders of the Church have emphasized more and more strongly the importance of working for the elimination of racism from the world and from Latter-day Saint culture. It’s thus partially in direct response to a prophetic call that at least some scholars working on race in the Book of Mormon take up their task. Because some within the Church have occasionally used scripture—including the Book of Mormon—to justify racist attitudes or defend racist structures, there’s a strong need for a more careful assessment of what the Book of Mormon has to say about racism and racialism. Numerous passages seem to refer straightforwardly to black or dark skin or to white skin, tying these to differently valued cultures (whiteness to industry, for example, and blackness to idleness). Such passages speak of black skin as a curse, as loathsome and unattractive, and as something to be overcome. In addition, there’s a long history of racist verbal and pictorial portrayals of the Book of Mormon’s Lamanites that has often cemented attitudes about what’s at stake racially in the volume, not to mention the very real and painful toll such depictions have taken on people of color within and outside the Church.

“I grieve that our Black brothers and sisters the world over are enduring the pains of racism and prejudice. Today I call upon our members everywhere to lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice.” —Russell M. Nelson, “Let God Prevail,” October 2020 general conference

Of course, these difficulties haven’t come into visibility only in the twenty-first century. Readers with concerns about potentially troubling passages about race in the Book of Mormon have offered creative interpretations since the 1950s and 1960s at least. The most common approach to dealing creatively with such passages during the last decades of the twentieth century was to argue that talk of blackness and whiteness in the volume is wholly or ultimately metaphorical. According to this approach, the book probably doesn’t deal with questions of race at all but rather with two racially identical peoples who use color-based metaphors to speak of righteousness and wickedness. While this is a possible and interesting explanation of the text (and has received provocative new support in certain recent quarters), few seem content with this approach today. There are passages in the Book of Mormon that are simply too hard to explain as merely metaphorical. And even if one might work up creative ways of explaining as metaphorical every potentially difficult passage, the fact is that most readers don’t generally receive them that way. Latter-day Saints sitting in the pews continue to be most often led by the surface meaning of the text to assume that the book makes claims about races and skin color. Further, some point out that, even if all the potentially troubling passages were merely metaphorical, it has to be recognized that even metaphors have cultural implications and a social impact that can’t be ignored. Numerous passages in the Book of Mormon set up whiteness and white skin, even if only symbolically, as a kind of ideal standard, and this says something to readers who experience their skin color as an object of scorn or shame.

The consensus that’s begun to emerge among scholars in recent years is that the Book of Mormon almost certainly talks—and talks in straightforward ways—about race and racialism. There are key passages in the book, in fact, where certain prophetic voices explicitly identify racism (hatred because of skin color, as well as the attribution of cultural associations to race), calling it a sin and condemning the Nephites for exhibiting it. It thus seems that the Book of Mormon shows racism to its readers, even as it simultaneously condemns it. It presents the history of a people that were often racist, the Nephites, and it asks its readers to watch as prophets struggle from within racist cultures to allow God’s own anti-racism to reveal itself. In addition, the Book of Mormon places at a key point in the narrative a prophet of color, Samuel the Lamanite, the only Book of Mormon prophet quoted by the resurrected Christ during his visit to the New World. Where Nephite prophets struggle from within a racist culture—sometimes themselves using racializing language—this Lamanite prophet issues a clear call for systemic change and individual repentance. With these interpretive frameworks in place, the beginnings of a sustained faithful engagement with race and the Book of Mormon are seriously underway.

Another issue that has been increasingly emphasized in recent years in Book of Mormon studies is gender. After the rise of feminism as a mainstream cultural and political force, it has become difficult for readers of the Book of Mormon not to notice how few female characters there are in the volume—and how often women in the book face physical and sexual violence. Only three uniquely Book of Mormon women have names, and few of the Book of Mormon’s women receive any opportunity to have their voices heard by others. Although readers can celebrate Sariah, the matriarch of the Book of Mormon’s opening book, 1 Nephi, and Abish, the Lamanite heroine who plays a key role during the conversion of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, most of the Book of Mormon seems at least superficially uninterested in women, unless it’s occasionally to recount their sufferings. In the context of increasing gender equity in Latter-day Saint culture during the twenty-first century, these textual matters have grown in cultural importance.

Study of gender in the Book of Mormon also has twentieth-century precedents. In the wake of American feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, studies of women in the Book of Mormon occasionally appeared during the 1980s and 1990s—some more obviously liberal and some more obviously conservative. Most of these twentieth-century publications, although they were largely written by believing readers, brought a harshly critical eye to the text, surveying the violent fates of women in the narrative and lamenting the androcentric nature of most of the text. Most historicized these issues, taking the poor representation of women in the book to be a feature of the volume’s antiquity, its origins long before the rise of Western feminism. A few called for a strong historicization, an explicit rejection of the spiritual relevance—at least in terms of gender—of a text hailing from a misogynistic era. Others called for a kind of compassion toward the authors and editors of the book, whether because they didn’t know better or because they overlooked women as they gave their attention to other spiritual purposes.

Recent years have seen not only an uptick in the frequency and length of publications on women in the Book of Mormon but also a broadening of the subject of gender in the Book of Mormon and the emergence of new approaches to interpreting passages in the book regarding gender. The last few years have thus seen the first studies of masculinity in the Book of Mormon, along with studies of how the volume portrays and understands the very category of women. They have also seen the first intersectional studies—that is, studies of how race and gender are interrelated in the Book of Mormon. Further, though, in connection with intersectional research, there has emerged an approach to gender in the Book of Mormon that’s not unlike the recent approach to race in the volume. Interpreters point to the possibility that the book is meant to illustrate a misogynistic Nephite culture and to show that such a culture leads ultimately to social and cultural ruin: the destruction of the Nephites. These interpreters note that women consistently fare better in Lamanite culture and that the Lamanites remain alive at the end of the volume, surviving to receive further blessings. There’s real and compelling evidence that the Book of Mormon has been deliberately shaped to show how a racist and misogynistic people destroy themselves while those who resist both racism and misogyny find divine help and preservation. Here again, Samuel the Lamanite is a particularly interesting figure. Not only is he a prophet of color, but he also speaks forcefully in behalf of Nephite women in Helaman 15, recognizing parallels between their plights and those of his own racialized people. Here again, with the basic foundation for gendered study of the Book of Mormon in place, close and charitable readings of the Book of Mormon’s presentation of women and men have begun to appear.

As we mentioned in chapter 2, yet another issue has only just begun to receive real interest in Book of Mormon studies: the question of what the volume might say about mental health issues and about disabilities. Increased attention to this is unmistakably due to growing social recognition of these issues in the twenty-first century. The very first clearly recognizable disability studies reading of the Book of Mormon appeared two decades into the twenty-first century, but it promises to be the first of many. In a more general vein, though, late 1990s readings of the theme of grace in the Book of Mormon helped draw the attention of twenty-first-century readers to the volume’s consistent interest in weakness. Key figures in the Book of Mormon—Nephi, Jacob, Benjamin, Alma, and Moroni—overtly confess and confront their weakness and even develop theological reflections on the way that weakness might be a gift. That human frailty in this way extends even to mental and psychological trauma is clear from passages about the mourning of whole communities in the wake of terrible battles; it’s also clear in a particularly rich way in what may be Moroni’s symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder when he first takes up the task of writing in the book after the final Nephite wars and his father’s death. The Book of Mormon offers itself up to those with concerns about mental health, and it has just begun to receive real attention from such readers in Book of Mormon studies—once again with the promise of more to come.

Questions of Politics

A number of other issues of increasing importance to twenty-first-century readers have begun to draw attention in Book of Mormon studies, as we summarized briefly in chapter 2. Already in the twentieth century, the Book of Mormon’s many descriptions of war and violence prompted concern from some readers. Several writers attempted to explain how the book might be read as endorsing a peacebuilding ethic, if not a pacifist stance regarding war and violence. FARMS scholars in the 1990s took, for the most part, a different tack, leaving off questions of whether the book’s portrayal of sustained warfare is relevant to the modern audience and investigating instead whether its descriptions of war fit well into what’s known of ancient warfare. Questions about what the Book of Mormon says of war have, however, begun to garner more widespread interest in the twenty-first century. Thanks in part to the politically divisive spirit in the United States of America during the first decades of the twenty-first century, students of the Book of Mormon addressing questions about warfare in the book have tended to take polar opposite positions. Some scholars express deep concern about the book’s proclivity for violence, and others argue intently that the book rightly endorses war as necessary and righteous under certain circumstances. (Concerns about violence in war often extend to particular stories about violence, such as Laban’s death early in 1 Nephi.)

“Nephi’s struggle, and the struggle of his descendants, is one to which any reader can relate. Faced with conflict, do we turn to loving persuasion or angry coercion to resolve our differences? Like Nephi it can be easy to despair of our personal or cultural affinities for anger and violence, to be discouraged with our ‘wretched’ patterns of conflict. But the Book of Mormon testifies that there is another, better way available to us.” —Patrick Q. Mason and John David Pulsipher, Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer to an Age of Conflict

Related in many ways to questions about war and violence in the Book of Mormon are questions about whether and how this sacred scripture should be used in defense of political programs. Growing interest in liberal and progressive readings of the Book of Mormon has led to overt critiques of the figure of Captain Moroni as brash and irascible. Of course, such critiques are consistently countered by readings of Moroni not only as the greatest patriot the Book of Mormon portrays but also as an admirably realistic strategist with clear Christian commitments. Several new readers of the Book of Mormon in recent years have begun to ask earnestly what the concrete sociopolitical situations on display in the Book of Mormon look like and what the book’s message regarding latter-day politics might be. More nuanced readings of the strictly political dimension of the book are largely in their infancy, with the vast majority of what’s said or written on the subject too ideologically divided by prior political commitments. But the field of Book of Mormon studies as a scholarly discipline has begun to foster political readings undertaken with great care and with a moderate spirit. What might the Book of Mormon’s comments about the voice of the people really suggest about the power of political rhetoric? How might Mormon’s intense interest in just a few years of the reign of the judges clarify his own political purposes? What does a nuanced reading of King Benjamin’s concern for his people or his son’s criticisms of monarchy have to say about political institutions?

King Benjamin’s sermon is often a focus in reflections on problems of poverty and in reflections more generally on questions of class. To date, no sustained or careful study of the question of poverty in the Book of Mormon has appeared, although there’s clear interest in it. It’s perfectly clear to any reader of the Book of Mormon that the prophets who populate its pages have concerns about wealth—at the very least about wealth wrongly acquired or wrongly disposed. It’s also perfectly clear to any reader of the Book of Mormon that the Nephite prophets believed strongly that prosperity comes, at least at times, in response to human righteousness. Book of Mormon peoples live best when they hold all things in common, and their utopian civilization after Christ’s visit falls apart when classes reemerge as central to their society. And yet the Book of Mormon prescribes no obvious or consistent program for how to eliminate problems of poverty. Increasing interest in these questions, intensified in key ways by the Church’s explicit expression of interest in refugees and victims of natural disasters, suggests that textual work on such questions needs to begin in earnest. That there are the merest beginnings of this kind of work in Book of Mormon studies is a sign that a significant wing of the field is beginning to take shape.

Questions of Meaning

The several issues reviewed in the previous two sections constitute points where the text of the Book of Mormon is already being critiqued or is more likely to be critiqued in the near future. They’re points where specific challenges to the Book of Mormon have begun to receive new and refreshing answers. The reality is that readers suffering from severe depression are less likely to be worried about whether the Book of Mormon meets the historical standards set by contemporary consensus scholarship than about whether it can speak to them peaceably, without burdening them more than they’re already burdened psychologically. A reader with intense worries about political instability and growing political polarization is less likely to balk at the lack of a recognizable geographic model that fits the Book of Mormon than at the book’s apparent readiness to be politically appropriated by extremist groups. Readers of color, as well as white readers increasingly concerned with combating racism in the twenty-first century, are far more likely to fret over the Book of Mormon’s discussions of skin color than about traces of the King James Bible in the volume. And readers with growing awareness of gender and sexual inequities are strikingly more concerned with the apparent absence of women in the Book of Mormon than they are with whether it’s possible to find Hebraic poetic patterns scattered about the text. The Book of Mormon is implicitly under fire, so to speak, from a host of new angles. The new vision gaining ground in Book of Mormon studies is working to address these issues, to show not only that the Book of Mormon can hold its ground on all these twenty-first-century questions but also that the book might have much to teach us as we try to negotiate the difficult terrain we all now find ourselves on.

“In terms of word count, slightly more than sixty percent of the words in [King Benjamin’s] discussion of the fruits of repentance are about how we respond to the beggar and others in need. Clearly this is an important topic for Benjamin.” —James E. Faulconer, Mosiah: A Brief Theological Introduction

In addition to specific critiques of the Book of Mormon in the twenty-first century, though, there’s a kind of general and implicit critique. And right at present, this critique might form the most immediate concern in budding twenty-first-century Book of Mormon studies. The question here is whether the book is, to put it bluntly, boring. Long before readers raise questions about gender and race, about politics and mental health, about violence and poverty, they tend to raise questions about whether the Book of Mormon is worth reading at all. In the twenty-first century, with secularism becoming culturally normative and religion becoming an increasingly private affair, many have begun simply to ask whether religion in any form (and especially organized forms) is worth the bother. And when religion involves reading over and over an unsubtle and didactic book filled with “thees” and “thous” and “it came to passes”—especially if it doesn’t seem that the book has anything unsurprising to say about the life of faith—one rather naturally begins to ask in a secular context whether the book really matters in the twenty-first century. What’s perhaps most characteristic of twenty-first-century Book of Mormon studies, then, is a widespread effort to show that the Book of Mormon is rich and provocative, that it’s filled with literary and theological surprises. Much of the effort expended in recent scholarship, as we’ve summarized less directly in early chapters, is aimed at showing that the Book of Mormon is filled with things as yet undiscovered, and that serious investigation of the book has only just begun.

That the Book of Mormon is simply boring, irrelevant, clichéd, or uninformative threatens to be the most uncontested of slam dunks against the book today (to use Elder Maxwell’s metaphor again).[1] The player on the court who’s trying to show off with this slam dunk, though, isn’t an individual. It’s rather a whole twenty-first-century secular culture, the entirety of an increasingly irreligious world. This is a slam dunk that can’t be ignored a moment longer, and it’s in hoping to contest it that the best work in Book of Mormon studies today is being pursued. How might we show that the Book of Mormon is not only relevantly defensible in political and ethical terms in the twenty-first-century context but also of deep and sustained interest to anyone who will take it seriously? In the twentieth century, it seems it was possible to defend the Book of Mormon principally by showing that its historicity is defensible. If there weren’t compelling historical reasons to disbelieve the book’s claims, it was worth holding on to one’s faith. In the twenty-first century, though, historicity is only one among many key concerns. We must show that the book has real force.

Top and bottom: The Book of Mormon: Brief Theological Introductions. Courtesy of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

The greatest active successes in Book of Mormon studies today (rather than its principally reactive successes) therefore have been neither in discerning new defenses of the book’s antiquity nor in responding to increasingly felt cultural criticisms of the book’s content. What’s pressing the book’s way into the future is work that’s successfully showing that the Book of Mormon is rich and complex, that it has unexpected theological commitments, that it has intricate structures that organize its ideas and teachings, that it traces certain ideas across generations while suggesting that other ideas come and go, that it can speak to the most burning theological questions of the Christian tradition, that it can stand robustly alongside the greatest volumes of world scripture, and that it can bear the most scrutinizing literary investigation.

“Mark Twain, who once memorably referred to the Book of Mormon as ‘chloroform in print,’ is also our source for the quip that Wagner’s music is ‘better than it sounds.’ Somewhat surprisingly, it may actually be the latter description that more accurately describes the Book of Mormon. There is no denying that the words can sound awkward, repetitious, and derivative, but if we direct our attention deeper, to the level of form and structure, there is much more going on than first meets the eye (or ear).” —Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide

Scholars have begun to show that the Book of Mormon’s various authors have distinct projects and visions—that Nephi and Mormon and Moroni are wholly different kinds of writers, each with his own hopes and anxieties. Scholars have begun to show that the Book of Mormon emphasizes the theme of Israel’s covenant in a way that’s surprising to most Latter-day Saints, with remarkably novel interpretations of Old Testament scripture. Scholars have begun to show how the Book of Mormon reworks major New Testament themes in virtuosic ways, sketching a unique scriptural theology that’s gone unnoticed for most of the Church’s history. Scholars have begun to show that the Book of Mormon endorses a nuanced and rich Christology and a theology of grace that has deeply important practical implications for the life of faith. The Book of Mormon is increasingly revealing its relevance and force.

The future of Book of Mormon studies finds its point of orientation in all this sort of work. What’s taking shape is an abundance of work showing how the Book of Mormon—alongside direction from living prophets, of course—might help guide the Saints through the shifting sands of twenty-first-century political culture. And along with this, an ever-deeper sense of what the Book of Mormon’s own theological commitments are—the picture the book tries to paint for its latter-day readers—is growing. For most or all of the twentieth century, it was thought that the Book of Mormon’s Achilles’ heel was the question of historicity, and so believing scholars worked hard to keep arrows from penetrating that one vulnerable place. Today, however, it’s become clear that many other parts of the Book of Mormon are exposed to danger, and believing scholars are working hard to provide the book with armor—and to show that the Book of Mormon’s own skin might be armor enough, if the book is read carefully. And questions of whether the book can continue to be meaningful in the life of the Saints, of whether the book might in fact prove more meaningful than any of us imagined it could be, are the ones being asked with the most intensity. This makes for a genuinely bright future.

Notes

[1] See Gilbert W. Scharffs, “I Have a Question,” Ensign, January 1995, 62.