Hero Worshipping a Probable Maniac: The Problem with Captain Moroni
He’s admired as one of the Book of Mormon’s greatest and most righteous heroes, but a closer reading suggests that veneration is misplaced.
Captain Moroni is the poster child for the über masculine Mormon man. Literally. Teens often plaster this painting (below) on their wall. Note the near-bursting biceps, the monstrous shoulders, the armour, the oozing gruffness:
In theological settings, this character from the Book of Mormon is held up as an exemplar of masculine restraint and heroic soldiership. He’s a scriptural war hero.
One of the reasons he is esteemed so highly is this gem of a passage from the text:
I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men. (Alma 48:17)
He sounds almost like a prophet. Actually, the book positions him almost as one. And many Mormons take his words as if he is one.
But Captain Moroni is a deeply problematic figure. He is an absolutist, an authoritarian, an advocate of the capacity of violence to enforce order, an agent of cruelty for national gain—a man who should not command armies or the military power of any state. If he were a real person today, he would be a military maniac either condemned for war crimes or enjoying tenure in a junta.
On a literary level, Captain Moroni is most interesting not just as a conflicted and troubling character, but because he is portrayed by a speaker — Mormon himself — who resonates with this awful man precisely because his own life is so conflicted.
It helps, then, to start with a reminder of the speaker’s past and agenda. Then we can consider how that shapes the way in which Mormon portrays his cult hero, and suggests ways in which modern readers can grapple with this.
Mormon the writer
Mormons don’t often think of Mormon as a speaker. But he is. He is the speaker throughout most of the Book of Mormon. You don’t have to read the book as a literary text to see the impact of this: everything is channelled through his interpretation and biases.
Mormon tells us he is living in a time of intense ethnoracial conflict between the Nephites, his people, and the Lamanites (Mormon 1:8). Mormon is one of the last followers of the Nephites’ ancestral faith. He is deeply religious. He has a profound spiritual experience in his teens (v. 15) and he views his calling to be a guardian of the spiritual records of the old Nephite church (v. 4). He is repulsed by what he sees as ‘wickedness and unbelief’, including ‘sorceries, witchcrafts, and magics’, which assumedly are heretical to him (vv. 14, 19). He is convinced that the Nephites are about to be wiped out because of their refusal to readopt the religion of their ancestors. In fact, he says ‘the work of miracles and of healing…cease because of the iniquity of the people’ and ‘because of the hardness of their hearts the land [i]s cursed’ (vv. 13, 17). For him, it’s simple. The Nephites have abandoned their old god and so are suffering the natural consequences of sin (annihilation).
For our purposes in this essay, it is most important to note that Mormon is a military man. He is only 15 when he is appointed to lead the entire Nephite army (Mormon 2:1–2). His military career spans two tenures, separated by resignation owing to his frustration with the Nephites for not turning to his god (Mormon 3:16). Both tenures see the Nephites losing battle after battle. The fighting is egregiously bloody by any standard. His own troops engage in rape, cannibalism, arson and torture, not only on their opponents but on Lamanite families too (Moroni 9:9–10). Still, Mormon remains at their head, trying to fight what he declares is a losing battle (Mormon 5:2).
It’s genocide.
Mormon’s background is nothing short of horrific and traumatic. He deserves any reader’s sympathy. He is a reluctant warrior who believes his people will be exterminated for not observing his religious denomination. He is witnessing the erasure of his people.
Captain Moroni
And boy does Mormon crush on a figure from his country’s deep past. Captain Moroni. He even names his own son after him. The parallels are quick to see.
Moroni (the captain, not Mormon’s son) appears round about the time of some not insignificant war. Mormon doesn’t go into Moroni’s backstory. Instead, we meet him already formed as the general of the Nephite army (incidentally, the same position Mormon holds):
Now, the leader of the Nephites, or the man who had been appointed to be the chief captain over the Nephites — now the chief captain took the command of all the armies of the Nephites — and his name was Moroni; and Moroni took all the command, and the government of their wars. And he was only twenty and five years old when he was appointed. (Alma 43:16–17)
Just like Mormon, Moroni is a young (‘only twenty and five’) military ‘chief captain’. Mormon mentions a few examples of military genius to which he credits the Nephites’ victories.
Moroni, though, is more than just a muscle man. He’s faithful to the same religious tradition as Mormon. As we shall see, faith and fighting blur in his mind.
There are three events in the Book of Mormon that reveal Moroni’s decidedly problematic nature. All of them show Moroni not solely on the battlefield, but acting in a pseudo-political office. His actions should be questionable. By modern standards, he would be decried.
Event 1: Moroni, the self-appointed executioner of political opposition
The first incident occurs in 73 BC according to the Book of Mormon’s internal chronology.
The Nephite nation is in a constitutional crisis. The established order in which the power is vested in a chief judge and governor (who is elected ‘by the voice of the people’, though whether that is democratic is debatable) has been challenged by a man called Amalickiah. Amalickiah, according to Mormon, is ‘desirous to be king’ (Alma 46:4). He manages to gain a substantial following, particularly among lower judges, and petitions to restore the monarchy, with himself as king. Mormon claims that Amalickiah has promised political offices to his supporters (v. 5). The group gains considerable momentum.
Mormon doesn’t allow discussion of the party’s genuine grievances, because he is invested in Moroni. He even appears to conflate Amalickiah’s political campaign with religious apostasy, going as far as to claim that Amalickiah aims to ‘destroy the foundation of liberty which God ha[s] granted unto them, or which blessing God ha[s] sent upon the face of the land for the righteous’ sake’ (v. 10). Liberty, therefore, is viewed as a divine gift and is maintained only so long as the established church has a stake in the constitutional framework. The loss of that national religion is anathema to that liberty. You can see where Mormon’s own political ideas shine here….
Now, Mormon doesn’t mention any physical fighting at this point. It just appears that a political campaign has appeared. (It will lead to full-scale civil war and Amalickiah will be revealed as a monstrous butcher, but not yet.)
Suddenly, when Moroni hears — merely hears — about ‘these dissensions’ from the church (the context shows that it is a religious, not political defection that triggers him), he is ‘angry with Amalickiah’ (v. 11).
He takes it upon himself to create a banner, writes upon it ‘In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives and our children’ (v. 12 — note again the faith/freedom conflation), puts on his armour and runs into the street.
It’s quite the act of political theatre.
He calls those who agree with him to follow him. ‘And those who … belong to the church … who [a]re true believers in Christ’ (v. 15) do gather. Fair enough. Odd that the head of the army is doing this, but let’s go with this for now. Moroni goes to cities throughout the country and does the same thing. Still, this all seems fine.
But then, Amalickiah’s supporters start to be ‘doubtful concerning the justice of the[ir] cause’ (v. 29). He takes his base and heads for Lamanite territory.
This is where things take a markedly dark turn:
Now Moroni thought it was not expedient that the Lamanites should have any more strength; therefore he thought to cut off the people of Amalickiah, or to take them and bring them back, and put Amalickiah to death; yea, for he knew that he would stir up the Lamanites to anger against them, and cause them to come to battle against them; and this he knew that Amalickiah would do that he might obtain his purposes….
And it came to pass that he … marched forth into the wilderness, and headed the armies of Amalickiah…. Amalickiah fled with a small number of his men, and the remainder were delivered up into the hands of Moroni and were taken back into the land of Zarahemla.
Now, Moroni being a man who was appointed by the chief judges and the voice of the people, therefore he had power according to his will with the armies of the Nephites, to establish and to exercise authority over them.
And it came to pass that whomsoever of the Amalickiahites that would not enter into a covenant to support the cause of freedom, that they might maintain a free government, he caused to be put to death; and there were but few who denied the covenant of freedom. (vv. 30–35)
Note Moroni’s motives here. He fears that Amalickiah could use the Lamanites (who, according to the Nephites, are just savages who can be whipped into anger by the white people) to invade Zarahemla. So he decides to execute the dissenters. Everyone he captures who does not vow to agree with Moroni’s views (‘free government’) is ‘put to death’.
I’ll bet ‘but few’ refuse. It was agree or die! It goes without saying that many Nephites agree with Moroni out of fear, not principle. This isn’t a democracy. It’s Moroni’s junta.
The dissenters have not caused violence. They have merely promoted an idea. Moroni doesn’t like it.
And why does he become the enforcer of an agenda? Why is he the one executing people? Where is the chief judge in all of this? And where are the views of ordinary citizens? It’s all Moroni, Moroni, Moroni. Has Mormon deliberately omitted uncomfortable opposition to Moroni’s behaviour? Or is everyone so terrified of him that the record is basically a paean to Moroni’s glory?
It’s interesting how Mormon has to insert that Moroni is ‘appointed by the chief judges and the voice of the people’. Mormon has to assert that Moroni has some constitutional legitimacy. Otherwise, readers might think that Moroni has pulled off some sort of coup in the name of restoring freedom.
And yet, the reader must wonder: who on earth is this man? Does the fact that he believes his church is shrinking in membership justify the summary execution of people who want a different form of government? Is he afraid he’ll lose his job under a new order? And does the fact that Moroni’s suspicion about Amalickiah and the Lamanites will turn out correct still justify all this?
I pose that Mormon actually admires this absolutism for moral purity. Mormon is unsuccessful in converting his contemporary people to save them militarily. But Moroni is a man who finds that success through extreme abuse of power. In Mormon’s dreams, he is a Moroni. He runs out in the street with some fabric and rallies the nation to his cause.
Event 2: Land evictions for strategic influence
The second incident I’d like to explore is mentioned very briefly, almost in passing. Mormon glosses over it probably because of its awful implications. But even in this small passage, we see Moroni as a man so bent on defending his country that he will stoop to what we would today consider war crimes.
It’s a few years after the events outlined above. Amalickiah has assassinated the Lamanite king and become effectively their colonial overlord. He has invaded the Land of Zarahemla. Moroni is trying to hold him off.
Moroni’s strategy at this point is to fortify every Nephite city to maximize their chances of avoiding capture (Alma 50:1, 6).
Then Mormon notes this:
Moroni caused that his armies should go forth into the east wilderness; yea, and they went forth and drove all the Lamanites who were in the east wilderness into their own lands, which were south of the land of Zarahemla….
And it came to pass that when Moroni had driven all the Lamanites out of the east wilderness, which was north of the lands of their own possessions, he caused that the inhabitants who were in the land of Zarahemla and in the land round about should go forth into the east wilderness, even to the borders by the seashore, and possess the land. And he also placed armies on the south, in the borders of their possessions, and caused them to erect fortifications that they might secure their armies and their people from the hands of their enemies. And thus he cut off all the strongholds of the Lamanites in the east wilderness, yea, and also on the west, fortifying the line between the Nephites and the Lamanites, between the land of Zarahemla and the land of Nephi….
Thus Moroni, with his armies, … did seek to cut off the strength and the power of the Lamanites from off the lands of their possessions, that they should have no power upon the lands of their possession. And it came to pass that the Nephites began the foundation of a city, and they called the name of the city Moroni; and it was by the east sea; and it was on the south by the line of the possessions of the Lamanites. (vv. 7–13)
Mormon’s language of ‘go forth’ and ‘placed armies’ and ‘began the foundation’ euphemizes what Moroni is doing here.
It’s forced evictions. It’s forced occupation. It borders on ethnic cleansing. Moroni simply goes into land not governed by Nephites, evicts Lamanites there because they’re a ‘threat’ to him and brings in Nephites to establish a militarized buffer zone. He builds a city there, calls it after himself of all people, to maintain a Nephite zone of control. He floods it with troops. It’s preemptive and sickening.
The Lamanites he expels from the wilderness aren’t the ones attacking him. Actually, it is a Nephite who is invading from further south. But those Lamanites are inconvenient obstacles. They’re black, they’re Lamanites, they’re savages, they’re pagans, they’ll attack at some point—so Moroni gets rid of them. He extends Nephite spatial control.
This is part of the imperial playbook. This is Mormon’s hero. You can see why. Moroni’s intentions are clearly to protect his people — and no one can critique that — and his methods are extreme and brutal and, from a modern perspective, illegal, yet they are means to an end. Mormon lives at a time when his people are being systematically exterminated. He sees himself as having to make similarly morally questionable and deadly decisions. Mormon has to protect his nation at all costs. What those costs are is suggested by Moroni.
And because Moroni is ultimately successful — methods be damned — Mormon can venerate him because he can find the moral measure with which to gauge his own career.
Event 3: The Morianton incident
About two years later, with the whole country essentially in a state of cold war, people in two adjacent Nephite provinces (Morianton and Lehi) end up in a border dispute, which Mormons calls a ‘warm contention’ that comes to the threat of combat (v. 25). Those from Lehi flee their land in panic and seek Moroni’s aid (because, naturally, everyone runs to the general, not the government) and they press that they are not ‘in the wrong’ (v. 26). Mormon endorses their side, but without giving much reason.
The people of Morianton, led fittingly by a man called Morianton, are wary of Moroni’s involvement (and who would blame them knowing his proclivities?) and they resort to exile by fleeing north out of Nephite territory (v. 29).
Then, a ‘maid servant’ flees from Morianton’s domestic violence and apprises Moroni of Morianton’s plans (vv. 30–31). (Sidebar: This is the Book of Mormon’s only mention of domestic violence and the maid is one of the only women ever described directly. It is interesting that Mormon includes women only when he feels they aid the narrative or help to humanize the men around them, like Moroni.)
And this is where Moroni springs to dubious action as always. Mormon’s phrasing is telling:
Now behold, the people who [a]re in the land Bountiful, or rather Moroni, [fear] that they would hearken to the words of Morianton and unite with his people, and thus he would obtain possession of those parts of the land, which would lay a foundation for serious consequences among the people of Nephi, yea, which consequences would lead to the overthrow of their liberty.
Therefore Moroni sen[ds] an army, with their camp, to head the people of Morianton, to stop their flight into the land northward. (vv. 32–33)
See how Mormon has to correct himself by adding ‘or rather Moroni’? So the residents of Bountiful (the northernmost Nephite settlement) aren’t the ones worrying about Morianton passing through. It’s Moroni who is worried that Morianton could cause the people of Bountiful to join him in ‘possession of those parts of the land’. Now, Mormon doesn’t say that Morianton would secede from Nephite nation, only that he would have ‘possession’ of some territory. But let’s say that that is Morianton’s scheme. Even then, Moroni’s concern is assumptive and geopolitical: he thinks a Morianton-led northern country ‘would lay a foundation for serious consequences’ including Moroni’s all-time terror, ‘the overthrow of their liberty’.
So Moroni sends his army. That’s his solution for everything, because politics is best resolved by the sword, because the ‘liberty’ of the nation (by which, remember, he means the Nephite church’s freedom) is always more important than the right to life of Nephites themselves.
It’s obvious how the affair ends. The troops invade, Morianton is killed and everyone else is allowed to live on the condition that they adopt Moroni’s verbal covenant of liberty (vv. 35–36).
Careful readers will note other examples of Moroni’s complexity, such as his infamous temper. That anger includes threatening to pursue the Lamanites ‘into [their] own land, which is the land of [the Nephites’] first inheritance; yea, and it shall be blood for blood, yea, life for life’ (Alma 54:12). That, of course, would be retributive genocide under the guise of reclaiming land which Moroni believes still belongs to the Nephites. Moroni also determines to ‘seek death among them until they shall sue for peace’ (Alma 55:3). This tendency towards unrestrained, vengeful violence contrasts with the image of the principled, godfearing general as Mormon initially describes him. But that’s the point. Moroni is complicated. His methods are, by modern standards, unconscionable, his motives are at least ostensibly noble, but his absolutism drives him to bloody extremity…that works.
Few other non-prophets get the amount of airtime as Moroni. It’s as if Mormon writes about Moroni in order to navigate his own moral dilemmas. Possibly, Mormon agrees with Moroni’s preemptive strikes and censorious covenants. Maybe he just needs to explore the consequences.
Moroni and the modern reader
This essay series is primarily about race and coloniality in the Book of Mormon. It might seem that my interpretations of Moroni’s character steer clear of those notions, but they are there.
Moroni’s fears of the Lamanites are steeped in colonial assumptions that the Lamanites are mindless and prone to being ‘stir[red] up to anger’ by external, Nephite, elements (Alma 46:30). His disregard for Lamanite rights to live in their own lands betrays Moroni’s beliefs in Nephite superiority. He retains a sense of historic Nephite ownership over ancient Nephite lands now under Lamanite sovereignty, which undermines centuries of legitimate Lamanite administration after the Nephites’ flight.
Thus, while he never seems to be overtly racist, there are signs of implicit coloniality and racial (or at least ethnic, nationalistic or religious) supremacy that should be disquieting for the modern reader.
Believers and non-believers would do well to approach Moroni as a character more sceptically. We don’t have to condone or endorse his behaviour or views. Nor need we or should we interpret his presence for such a long stretch of narrative as indicative of his righteousness or doctrinal significance.
We can see him as a human, stretched to exceptional limits by the gruesome war into which he is thrust. We can see him as a very young man who is expected to lead armies in a campaign of atrocities. We can see him as a man granted the mighty power of the state in his office, but a man who abuses that power to inculcate peace through fear and censorship. We can see him as a believer in liberty who denies the liberty of others so that the liberty of some can be maintained.
We can see him as a literary or scriptural (depending on our approaches) caricature of humanity warped into inhumanity by power, by assumption, by circumstance, by meant but extreme zeal.
This is the second in a series of literary essays informed by the growing conversation on coloniality and race in the Book of Mormon. I engage with Mormonism’s keystone text differently now as a former Mormon; I offer my interpretations to add to wider and more critical readings that — in and out of the church — are helping readers explore the text from fresh, honest, introspective perspectives.
Also in this series:
Also by me:
