It may not be your favorite year, but here we are again: Every four years, the LDS annual curriculum topic circles back around to the Book of Mormon. With the increasingly correlated lessons, that’s true for all classes. You’ll get Book of Mormon in Sunday School, in Priesthood/RS, in youth classes and Seminary, in the Ensign/Liahona, with some extra coverage in Sacrament Meeting and General Conference, no doubt. Surprisingly, there are a lot of different answers to the opening question, what does it mean to teach the Book of Mormon? If an instructor is told, “teach the Book of Mormon this year,” what does she teach?
Does it mean teach what the Book of Mormon teaches? Does it mean teach about the Book of Mormon, the origin story and translation claims and so forth? Does it mean using the Book of Mormon to teach/coach/elicit a testimony from the students? Does it mean presenting apologetic material to support the claim “the Book of Mormon is true”? Let’s develop these and other categories, which describe not so much how to structure or focus an entire course as much as how to frame and teach a particular lesson. I’ll throw in some example scriptures from the first five chapter of 1 Nephi, the first scripture block covered in this year’s curriculum.
1. Teach the teachings of the Book of Mormon. Well, what does the Book of Mormon teach? Mostly the same thing the Bible teaches, given that 10% of the BoM text is lifted more or less straight from the KJV Bible and much of the rest is paraphrased or repackaged Bible stories or teachings. So this category almost boils down to “teach what the Bible teaches, but attribute it to the Book of Mormon.” The alternative would be to focus on the *unique* teachings of the Book of Mormon. With lessons on slippery riches, supernatural objects, righteous murder, how to kill a heretic, secret combinations (conspiracy theories), and so forth, this would not be a very good look.
Example: “Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper and shall be led to a land of promise” (1 Ne. 2:20), repeated a dozen times throughout the Book of Mormon. In the formulation at 2 Ne. 4:4: “Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land.” That’s the Prosperity Gospel, and the Book of Mormon was there long before the Evangelicals developed their own version in the early 20th century. So there.
2. Teach the narrative of the Book of Mormon. Just tell Book of Mormon stories in a didactic style, drawing a variety of lessons or principles from this or that story. This is the Primary approach, but it also describes many of the adult lessons. The approach is so malleable that just about any desired lesson or principle can be squeezed from the appropriate narrative episode — which makes it a very popular approach.
Example: Nephi kills Laban and takes his property (armor and sword), as recounted in 1 Nephi 4. The official LDS heading to the chapter reads, “Nephi slays Laban at the Lord’s command and then secures the plates of brass by stratagem.” There are a variety of lessons one can draw from this story, and most of them are wrong. Here’s one lesson that you won’t see in an LDS manual draw from this episode: “Thou shalt not kill.” Incredibly, the Come Follow Me manual features a full-page painting of a stern-faced Nephi admiring a shiny sword in his hand and standing over a prone, unconscious Laban. This, in a lesson the curriculum people want Primary teachers to use. What are these people thinking? The manual, of course, praises Nephi for his “ability to recognize and follow the Spirit.”
3. Teach the Book of Mormon as history. In this vein, Book of Mormon historicity is taken at face value and it is used to teach the origin of the people of the Americas, etc. You may just wink at this category — it’s getting harder for even the average Mormon-in-the-pews to accept BoM historicity — but remember that for two centuries now the Church has taught Native Americans and the peoples of Central and South America that they are the literal descendants of ancient Israelites. Think of the thousands (millions?) of LDS who have based their sense of personal identity (at least in part) on this teaching.
4. The Book of Mormon as a sign of Joseph Smith’s calling. Take Moroni’s Promise at Moroni 10:3-5 as the starting point for the standard conversion scenario: read the Book of Mormon (or a part of it), pray and get a response (any response), which is then use to validate the series of linked claims about golden plates, Joseph Smith and divinely empowered translation, leading to “the Book of Mormon is true” and “the Church is true.” In this approach, the Book of Mormon is merely a stepping stone to arriving at the conviction that the Church is true. The book itself sort of falls out of the equation.
5. The Book of Mormon as spiritual tool. More recently, the Book of Mormon has been brought into what I call LDS Spirit-talk. Increasingly in LDS discourse, it’s all about the feeling the Spirit. Mormons are becoming low-energy Pentecostals. Teach a lesson not to impart any information but to make students “feel the spirit.” Read the Book of Mormon once a day not so much to learn anything, but to “feel the Spirit.” Maybe it just edifies you. Maybe it strengthens your testimony. Maybe it sends you a personal message, a small piece of revelation to start your day. The CFM manual quotes President Nelson saying, “I promise that as you ponder what you study [in the Book of Mormon], the windows of heaven will open, and you will receive answers to your own questions and direction for your own life.” That’s treating the Book of Mormon sort of like the Liahona or one of Joseph’s seer stones, which may not strike Mormons in 2023 as odd but is something rather new, I think. Do Evangelicals try to use the Bible this way, as some sort of spiritual talisman?
6. The apologetic/critical approach to the Book of Mormon. While rarely encountered in LDS manuals or lessons these days (where historicity and translation are presumed, not addressed), it’s all over boards and blogs and sites and journals. This is discussion about the Book of Mormon that takes 19th-century versus ancient authorship as a serious question, that takes historicity as a relevant issue, and presents evidence and arguments both pro and con. To use oversimplified labels, apologists argue the pro side of the argument and critics argue the con side of the argument, but the point here is that they are engaged in the same inquiry and are addressing the same questions. [Sometimes academics try to stake out some middle ground in the argument, but it’s really tricky to do.] Entire books are written along this approach — again, both pro and con — so it is certainly a well-defined approach to teaching the Book of Mormon.
7. The literary approach to the Book of Mormon. Here, one tries to bracket or set aside the full range of issues that arise in the previous category, the apologetic/critical issues, and focus instead on the structure, narrative techniques, phraseology, grammar, and vocabulary of the Book of Mormon. This might be done in all candor, as when say an LDS literature prof highlights a clever use of narrative in a certain chapter or a particularly beautiful set of verses. But this approach is also sometimes used as a form of stealth apologetics, making implicit arguments that Joseph as author couldn’t possibly have crafted such a sophisticated text, therefore … <insert desired conclusion here>.
I talked about Michael Austin’s recent book The Testimony of Two Nations in a post a couple of weeks ago. It’s one example of the literary approach. Another would be Grant Hardy’s Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (OUP, 2010). Smart authors, insightful books, but it always feels that they are dodging the relevant questions about authorship, dating, and audience that any biblical commentator feels compelled to address when writing about a biblical book.
Maybe you can come up with a couple of different approaches not covered in these seven categories or approaches. I suspect that if you keep these categories in mind when you are sitting in LDS adult Sunday School class or when you are reading the manual, at times you’ll stop and say, “Ah, I see what they are doing here.” I didn’t even make a category out of “teaching your own personal religious, political, moral, or cultural beliefs as if they are found in the Book of Mormon.” That happens, too, doesn’t it? Let’s call that category 8. It’s a very popular category.
Apart from commenting on any of the above categories or approaches, or adding your own examples, let’s bring in the question of how you, individual readers, approach teaching the Book of Mormon. I know a lot of you end up teaching, at one time or another, a Primary class or a youth class or an adult Sunday School class or even an Institute class on the Book of Mormon. How do you approach it? Do you hold your nose and just teach the manual? Do you ignore the manual and just teach the scripture block for that week? If you do (and this is the whole focus of the post), how exactly do you teach the scripture block? What approaches do you use or like? What approaches do you simply refuse to employ?
Wheat & Tares 
Before I left the church two years ago my approach for teaching was to divide the lesson into four categories:
1. Doctrine or principles that the text or the lesson was trying to teach
2. Stories or analogies or symbolism
3. Other references or scriptural connections
4. Application or commitments
I would Divide the board each class into these four quadrants and take notes from the discussion into these categories. I found it was a good way for me to cover what I was supposed to teach and also explain where I agreed or disagreed and to manage the class discussion
I think that the approach from Rosalynne Welch and the Maxwell Institute in their recent book about seven gospels is an combination of a literary and an inspirational approach to the text that I think is the new faithful intellectual approach to the Book of Mormon.
If I had stayed in the church this might have been a way to engage with the text that I could have embraced.
The other two recent publications from the Maxwell institute are interesting as well even though they don’t directly bind themselves to the text of the Book of Mormon but because of how they embrace cognitive dissonance of faithful belief with scholarship and more liberal morality. For that I actually prefer the Jewish writers like Chaim Potok as they wrestle with modernity, faith, doubt, and intellectual and moral belief and belonging.
Most organizations that are trying to sell something, whether it’s an idea or a product, need some sort of differentiation in order to be unique and attractive. Religion is no different. The leaders of the COJCOLDS are aware of this and they have often taken positions to highlight the uniqueness of the Church and its members. However, if you are too different you are likely to alienate the public you are trying to attract. The Church has to consider all of this when it determines how to present the BOM.
Do we want to present ourselves as a people and religion with a unique scripture that you can only find at the COJCOLDS? Or do we want to present ourselves as mainstream Christian religion? The Church has a major marketing dilemma.
When I taught Gospel Doctrine, I’d try to take whatever the lesson was about and then apply the principles to what’s happening today in our lives. I was released after a few years and now we have lessons taught with everything tied to some quote from a general conference and ignoring what’s happening in the world today. Even if someone asks a question or comments on something happening today it’s always answered with a “yes, but” to get you back to a quote from a general conference. There is very little effort to dig deeper or to get a broader understanding of any of the scriptures.
1. I think it is serious misinterpretation to conclude that the BoM teaches the Prosperity Gospel simply due to the phrasing in In 2 Ne 4:4 and other locations. Indeed, the book’s author(s) criticize the accumulation of wealth and class distinctions. Although it is true that these “anti-wealth” citations are rarely used in LDS circles. Honestly, taken as a whole the BoM is just too darned liberal for many of today’s conservatives. That is IF they simply stopped engaging in confirmation bias and proof texting long enough to actually read the book.
4. Never liked this argument or approach.
5. Yes, many Christians treat the Bible in a similar fashion.
3, 6-7. I would not teach the BoM as history. It is not because I believe the accounts are completely ahistorical. But this approach alienates those who believe the book is inspired but not historical or that the historicity is so questionable it puts them off. The book claims to be a highly edited work and that structure is reflecting in this editing. Even a traditional believing reader concludes that it is part memoir and part editorial. That’s not history in the traditional academic sense. And as noted, if the book was written FOR the modern era by an earlier author or authors, , it makes it very difficult to determine origin. A better approach for believing LDS who take the book seriously in any fashion would be the literary approach. I think Austin and Hardy will be around for a long time.
More on 6: Extreme and poorly written apologetics give me rash.
For me, the only way to teach and study the BoM authentically these days is to take the literary approach. I don’t think the historicity and authorship questions are very interesting or relevant in the context of the Book of Mormon because they’re not really knowable in the same ways that are available for Biblical scholars*, hard as some of our folks try. And, anyway, I’m more interested in literary approaches to the Bible too.
I haven’t read Mike Austin’s book yet (I plan to), and I loved Hardy’s. For me, these are the approaches that make sense.
What the literary approach can yield when applied to a complex, fraught, often strange text like the Book of Mormon has actually taught me things that, I hope, have made me a better human. I am not sure how much I can say the same for some of those other approaches.
*or rather they may be, but the book’s origin story and claims about authorship make this very fraught indeed and not conducive to the sorts of things most of us come to church for; for the record, I’d be totally there for it, but I’m not sure my gospel doctrine classmates want my perspective on how 19th century rational deism shaped Alma’s sermons.
When I taught BoM GD in 2016 I used Hardy as well as Jim Faulconer’s “The Book of Mormon made harder.” I think a lot of members liked the approach but I think others wished I would have used The Book of Mormon made easier which I’ve never read. You can’t win them all in a catch all “class.”
A lot has changed for me in those eight years. I probably wouldn’t find any of these approaches useful now.
Forgive that last silliness. I have the current calling of gospel doctrine teacher, and approach this year will be approaching the material from the perspective “the Book of Mormon is ‘true'”…for me, that means that irrespective of myriad potential faults and weaknesses–at its core–draws me closer to Jesus and therefore must be good. (This does NOT by extension mean that I subscribe to all the downstream claims that one often sees hinged to such a foundational conclusion).
I often jettison much of the manual’s suggested approaches and also often will call out proof-texting or other such silliness in front of the class. I try to guide the class gently into the territory of “there be dragons” in such as a way as to elicit conversation that fortifies faith in the Savior (not the institution of the church) and righteous principles (e.g. I have several times invoked the teachings from BCC about the best interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan).
I think the church curriculum is missing the mark in many ways–I hope I and the members of our class are maybe not missing that mark as we talk about the Savior and His teachings, not the fax-of-a-fax-of-a-fax teachings that have been sent down to us from the correlation department. So I’ll be “teaching the Book of Mormon” as a launch pad for doing good to others and showing love to God through love of our fellow beings.
Any type of historical approach gets tricky, even with the Bible, let alone the Book of Mormon. The best we can really do is gain insight into the environments and perspectives of the authors who are writing about events (actual or mythical) which happened decades (in the case of the NT) or even centuries (in the case of the Hebrew Bible), after they happened. Take this to its logical conclusion with the BoM and we might very well end up discussing the anti-masonic movement of the 1820s – in Sunday School. And know one wants that.
I don’t have a teaching calling -I may have a lifetime ban 😉 – but I have been mulling over a strictly narrative approach to the BoM that focuses mostly on how the characters deal with conflict within families and groups and what can we learn from that. There is no way to avoid all of the racial, theological, and authorship landmines with the BoM, but I think this somewhat narrow approach to interpreting the text could be fruitful.
Does Hardy’s new Annotated BoM (OUP) recapitulate most of his earlier Understanding the BoM?
Something I think about a lot is a podcast/book club that treats Harry Potter as a religious text. They read through the books and draw out true principles and life lessons that are taught in the book. It seems to be fun, and it helps people live better lives. It works, even though all participants know that Harry Potter is not historically true (as far as we know).
This is how I see Sunday school. I think if it can be done with the Harry Potter books, it could also be done with the Book of Mormon, or any variety of books. Consciously making an effort to draw true principles and life lessons out of a book, and doing it as group, can be a beneficial activity for anyone.
aporetic1,
Thank you for sharing about Harry Potter. That’s a book my whole family has read more than once and it has many truths in it! I love your idea.
I mean no disrespect to the Book of Mormon in any way or form. For me, especially when I was younger, it was a religious talisman that helped me have the Spirit, as I thought about it at the time. Today many, but not all of it’s verses feel very full of a spirit of truth to me (as true with all scriptures, some verses conflict with others). It’s historicity isn’t a big issue for me.
However, all my life I have felt a spirit of truth when reading texts of all kinds. I love to pull a special quote out of a book or talk and put it on a 3 by 5 card and put it somewhere I will see it repeatedly. My favorite books to do this with are the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy by Tolkien and Frank Herbert’s “Dune”. For our family “Lord of the Rings” is a kind of central text all of us know well from reading it repeatedly. Like the Bible or BOM, it’s a book we all know, so the narratives in it can be used for discussion, example and explication. For our church the BOM is that sort of literature.
Here is a favorite quote from “Dune” that feels like scripture to me:
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see it’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
I would teach the Book of Mormon according to its own description about itself and its purposes. And I’d support that approach with prophetic pronouncements and literature from other sources as well.
lws329, just to be clear, this is not my idea. This is a real podcast that actually exists. I couldn’t remember the name of it when I was making my post, but it’s called “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text”. I haven’t actually listened to it, I just think about the idea of it a lot. If anyone has listened to it, I’d love to hear if it’s good or not.
I used to teach Elder’s Quorum once a month and did so for nearly three years. This was over a decade ago when I was beginning to softly question the church. I remember that I always stuck to principles and tried to tie everything in with mainstream secular humanistic moralism. Some people really enjoyed my lessons and others did not. I remember teaching about the Word of Wisdom once and talked about how Brigham Young and Joseph Smith drank alcohol. One attendee was none too pleased that I even mentioned this at all and made a remark of “can you get to the point?”
Now, I know for certain I could never teach any class at church whatsoever. Well, I guess I could teach a class, but it most certainly would not be in the way that people expected or wanted it. The class most certainly wouldn’t confirm anyone’s beliefs. On the Book of Mormon, I am quite sure that I could not teach such a class. My focus would be on what the Book of Mormon tells us about religion and culture in 19th-century upstate New York and Joseph Smith’s personality. I have long tried the Grant Hardy and Michael Austin approach to look at the Book of Mormon as literature. The problem is that I’m too much of a historian. Plus, the even while looking at the Book of Mormon as literature I simply don’t identify with the characters nor do I think that these are well developed characters in the least.
I love the Bible. I don’t believe that most of the events described in the Bible actually took place, at least not in the way the narrators have written the story. But I can compare and contrast the Bible with other ancient scriptural texts, such as the Vedas, Homer, and ancient Egyptian religion. I know that the narrative of the Bible is ancient and contains the cultural knowledge of Iron Age Israelites and Greco-Jews during the beginnings of the Roman Empire. I can look up verses in Hebrew and Greek and figure out the words. I just can’t get any of that with the Book of Mormon. I’ll stick with Popol Vuh to inform me of how 16th-century Mayans viewed religion and the world.
It’s always a combination of all the approaches you mentioned and is very dependent on the person teaching. I glanced through the manual, and it’s all pretty predictable stuff. I was struck by the very first sentence in the lesson for 1 Nephi 1 (which happens to be the topic for this week): “The Book of Mormon begins with an account of a real family experiencing real struggles. It happened in 600 BC…” It’s an unsurprising stance, but the obvious emphasis on “it’s for real” right out of the gate sets an interesting tone for the year.
The Book of Mormon is like most other works of scripture: There’s lots of storytelling, symbolism, and recycled ideas from other sources (a lot of which is of dubious historicity, no matter what holy text we’re talking about). A primary difference I see with the BoM is that Joseph Smith lived recently enough that we can authoritatively point to a specific time/place/person of origin AND it’s not ancient enough to get a historical hall pass. Also, the early Mormon Church stuck itself under a microscope when Joseph Smith blurted that the BoM is “the most correct of any book on earth” and everyone started preaching that the entirety of the faith hinged on it being historical.
As for my approach, the last time I taught the BoM at church was to young primary kids. I would read the lesson, pick out any uplifting & positive stories and lessons, then do whatever I wanted. A class favorite was Lehi’s dream, and changing it to a story about a toy and donut tree and a lesson about keeping focused on the things you want to achieve. I’d also completely throw out any parts that have no business floating around in the heads of children…like murdering an unconscious man “cuz obedience,” scalping, dismemberment, etc.
Side note: Have you ever noticed the order of things in the story of Laban? Nephi supposedly cuts off his head THEN takes his magically clean clothes. That would definitely not be the order of operations…Innocent little Nephi would have had to disrobe the unconscious Laban BEFORE the murdering business. Somehow this makes the whole story seem worse in my mind.
I think the Book of Mormon is best taught as what it was meant to be–a warning about wealth inequality and pride and the societal destruction that they lead to. The word “prosper comes up more than 70 times, and several times we’re told an entire community prospers. Once we’re even told that in a righteous society there were no poor and no rich. The only time we’re told an individual prospers (instead of the whole community) is when the religious leaders of the time tell King Noah that he’s prospering (insinuating that he’s clearly wealthy, so that means he’s blessed by God, so he should ignore Abinadi).
The anti-Christs in the Book of Mormon honestly sound a lot like Ayn Rand. Yes, we’re supposed to compare ourselves to the Nephites. But not because they were righteous, because most the time they weren’t. King Benjamin, Jacob, and Samuel all give sermons about wealth and poverty, and yet we rarely teach Jacob’s and Samuel’s teachings on those subjects, perhaps because they make us or others uncomfortable.
Old Man is precisely correct on this prosperity point, and it’s a shame that the church as a whole largely ignores the Book of Mormon’s teachings about wealth.
Lazy Sunday School teachers go through the scriptures as if there is going to be some quiz when we get to heaven of what took place in the stories. Try hards sit on the front row and answer the soft ball questions thrown out there because the rest of us are too embarrassed to answer the obvious. The same talking points come up every four years. I can close my eyes and imagine perfectly the discussion that is going to happen around Alma the younger, Captain Moroni, the Sons of Helaman, the Tree of Life, the Brother of Jared etc…. This is category number 2. If they put a little effort they mix in number 1. Usually a reference is made to how JS was a prophet and I’m sure President Nelson will be quoted.
My dream SS class would be dissecting differences in the Book of Mormon with current church teachings. Break it down by categories. Let’s look at the Plan of Salvation in the Book of Mormon vs. the current Plan of Salvation. That would easily cover 4 classes or two months. Covenant people, what did this mean to them and how can we make it work for us. Temple worship. Universalism taught by the protagonists vs current Mormon views on tiered heaven and vicarious work. Secret combinations, the book was viewed as anti-Masonic, then we literally use their ceremony. You can’t make this stuff up. POLYGAMY. Ordinances. Exaltation. “This is my Doctrine” as taught by Christ in 3 Nephi 11. RACISM. The list could go on and on.
It may sound like the class would be dogging on the BOM. That would not be my intent at all. How do religious teachings change and resonate from generation to generation? How do we build upon the work of our ancestors in building Zion? What lessons can we learn? How can we show humility and recognize the goodness that can come as we continue to wrestle with scripture.
Zach,
I love idea of the honest and open wrestle with the scriptures instead of the faith promoting narrative. I think doing that would better our faith community in a myriad of ways. But how do we do that. It feels like everyone is so afraid.
As an economist (before law school) I always looked at the “prosper in the land” teachings as directed to the group. High trust societies are more prosperous than low trust societies. High social net societies tend to do better than dog eat dog low social net societies. Combined with the fact that the only direct teaching of individual prosperity gospel was by an anti-Christ, they strike me as more of a social guide than an individual guide. That combines well with the stories of those who suffered greatly because of listening to the gospel, but were spiritually redeemed.
Nephi’s story is interesting, because it is better framed in the context of his response to encountering someone who has attempted to kill Nephi and has people out looking to kill Nephi and Nephi’s resistance to the thought that he should retaliate and kill Laban. I think that there is a lesson there that we often miss.
Things I would rather not discuss in class? Perhaps how if you have someone laying downhill you can cut off their head and they bleed out without getting blood on their clothing. I don’t think we need to get into technical details on how to accomplish some things.
@Stephen R. Marsh – Sure, it’s way more pleasant to NOT think about the technical details of scriptural murder and mayhem, but Nephi very explicitly says he has never killed someone before and is squeamish about it…then he just magically figures out the technical bits. I can’t help but fill in the missing dialog between Nephi and God:
Nephi: “Oh hey! I think that’s Laban sleeping there…is he drunk?! Man he really should follow that Word of Wisdom”
God: “Gross, he’s drooling. You should probably kill him”
Nephi: **GASP** “Killing someone is totally worse than drinking alcohol…or even coffee. I don’t wanna do it.”
God: “Didn’t he just try to kill you? I don’t like him anyway, just kill him with that sword and take his clothes. I’ll have a chat with him in a minute when he’s dead anyway, it’ll be fine.”
Nephi: “I really don’t know about this…I’ve never killed anyone before. Plus those are really nice clothes…I’d hate to poke holes in them.”
God: **sigh** “Yeah it’s obvious you’ve never done this before, and you definitely haven’t read the Old Testament…we REALLY need to get you those plates so you can read up on Judith and Holofernes. Ok…here’s how you do it without ruining those fancy clothes…”
😉