Hints of a Nephite Colonial Atrocity: A Reading of Omni

The story of how the Mulekites become Nephite in the Book of Mormon seems clean, but one interpretation suggests something more sinister.

This is the first 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.

Most Latter-day Saints will tell you that the Book of Mormon is written by an ethnonational group called the Nephites, living (for most of the book) in a country called the Land of Zarahemla. They identify as Jewish. Their relatives are the Lamanites. An initially familial feud causes centuries of racially charged bloodshed.

And the Nephites are the good guys. The Lamanites are bad. Very bad. The terms Mormons employ (respectively) are righteous and wicked. The Nephites (generally) keep the commandments, have prophets who call them to repentance when they don’t and get to ‘prosper in the land’ (see Helaman 3:20). The Lamanites don’t keep the commandments, are savage and basically evil. Oh, and the Nephites are white. The Lamanites have a ‘skin of blackness’ (2 Nephi 5:21). Nowadays, in the corners of LDS chapels, people don’t like to talk too much about the race bit, but it’s there in (pardon the pun) black and white. And in the system underpinning Mormon discourse.

It helps to interrogate assumptions. In any teaching system, content tends to be flattened over time. In formal settings in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this is especially true. Sermons and Sunday School lessons have a very specific purpose (to edify spiritually), so gleaning moral lessons or finding facts that prove the Book of Mormon is a ‘true’ historical document is the goal and speculation and personal interpretations are not encouraged.

Thus, over time, protagonists become heroes and martyrs, romanticized almost into godly super-humans teaching us the right. Antagonists become villains and examples of what will happen if we don’t toe the line (clue: you will be ‘destroyed from off the face of the land’ (Jarom 1:10)).

Binaries are easy to teach. They blur everything into good versus evil.

But, if we allow ourselves to peep beneath those church-prescribed lenses — and engage with the text as we would any non-scriptural document — we can find interpretations informed by our individual experiences of the world. That’s the point of literature, isn’t it? It questions our assumptions and immerses us in the aesthetic of language, sure, but it also reveals the shadows in ourselves. It uncovers the racialization and prejudice informing our instincts. It illuminates the messiness of humanness.

I should add here that whether you believe the Book of Mormon is ‘true’ or not doesn’t mean you can’t read it using the techniques you would apply to literature in general. Everything that is written has elements of fiction. Speakers are calibrated fictionalized representations of writers. Texts are inherently fictional modes of expression. If you believe the character Mormon was the editor of the historical document translated as the Book of Mormon, you still have to admit that he shapes and positions himself deliberately. He omits, adds and comments just like any literary text.

Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash

So, let’s dive into the Book of Mormon using a different lens. This one is informed by my lived experience as a white, English-speaking, gay, cis-gendered male, former Mormon, currently spiritually disinclined reader. My views are jaded, just like everyone’s. I tell you my biases upfront so you can understand where I’m coming from and engage with it as you need to. I certainly don’t offer my interpretations as gospel, but perhaps I can suggest insights that inform or expand or challenge others’.

The Book of Mormon’s speakers are all Nephites and that cultural bias means we only have their views to consider. Far from being innocent, maligned people constantly being invaded by godless savages, the Nephites have a profoundly murky culture. They aren’t godless savages themselves, no…. They’re more complicated than that. In fact, they bear the hallmarks of a typical colonial power. They have systematically vilified, oppressed and racially denigrated their Lamanite cousins, but they believe they’re doing it to protect themselves and spread the religion they believe in. They aren’t victims; they’re more likely rulers.

One of the most unsettling moments of the Book of Mormon occurs in the Book of Omni, narrated by a Nephite called Amaleki.

The original Nephite settlement experiences a schism, resulting in a group abandoning the colony (v. 12). Their reasons are obscure: the group’s leader, Mosiah, is apparently ‘warned of the Lord that he should flee’. No other rationale is mentioned — not that he thinks the Nephites are wicked or desires to live his religion purely or anything else. He just claims he has received divine warning to flee. So he and some followers of his do.

After travelling for a few days, lo and behold, they come across (‘discover’) another civilization in a place called the Land of Zarahemla (v. 4). In Mormon theology, these people are referred to as the Mulekites. They, so Amaleki claims, are Jewish too and their ancestors have arrived in the Americas roughly the same time as the Nephites (v. 13).

So, in walk Mosiah’s party to the Land of Zarahemla and ‘there [i]s great rejoicing among the people of Zarahemla’ (v. 14). This apparently has something to do with Mosiah’s plates of brass, the Hebrew scriptures.

The Mulekites are ‘exceedingly numerous’ (v. 17); even many years later, ‘there [a]re not so many of the children of Nephi…as there [a]re of the people of Zarahemla’ (Mosiah 25:2). The groups can’t understand each other because (as Amaleki phrases it) ‘their language ha[s] become corrupted…and [neither] Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, c[an] understand them’ (v. 17). The Nephites are also horrified to learn that the the Mulekites ‘den[y] the being of their Creator’ (v. 17).

At this point, it sounds like two cultures are having a first-contact situation. It’s a lingual mess but apparently very pleasant.

This is where things get suspicious — and remember that the text we are reading here is written by a speaker who self-identifies as Nephite, a descendant of Mosiah’s group.

Consider the following:

• Amaleki is quick to tell the reader of the Mulekites’ cultural and religious deficiency at the time the Nephites arrive. They have ‘had many wars and serious contentions’, have ‘brought no records with them’ and ‘den[y] the being of their Creator’ (v. 17). Despite the language barrier, ‘Mosiah cause[s] that [the Mulekites are] taught in his language’ (v. 18). The verb ‘cause’ is interesting; it implies compulsion. How does a small band of immigrants cause such linguistic change in the broader host population?
• The Mulekites just receive these foreigners they know nothing about and ‘rejoice’ because the immigrants have literature the Mulekites can’t read. This might be reasonable, except:
• Once everyone understands the Nephite language, ‘the people of Zarahmela, and of Mosiah, d[o] unite together’. No time frame is given (the process may well take years) and one might expect that the small group of refugees join a receptive society to form a stronger defence against possible Lamanite aggression (assuming the Mulekites even know about the Lamanites). So, sure, except:
• ‘Mosiah [i]s appointed to be their king’ (v. 18). The Mulekites already have a leader called Zarahemla, with whom Mosiah has conversations about the community’s origins (v. 18). How is it that an emmigré becomes the king of his host culture? Why would Zarahemla give up power? Does he die? And how? Is this all because Zarahemla believes Mosiah’s culture is somehow the pure form of his own community’s historic culture?
• Within a generation, the whole community appears to have converted to the Nephite religion (see Mosiah 2:3). We already know that the Nephites view the Mulekites as spiritually lost, so how is it that such religious change happens so quickly?
• Mulekite identity appears to vanish from the Book of Mormon within a few generations. They certainly might well remain or intermarry, but even though the geographical territory is named the Land of Zarahemla, the people are referred to afterwards as ‘the people of Nephi’ (see Alma 1:1). As far as I can find, only one person in the whole Book of Mormon is mentioned who claims ancestry from them (Ammon, see Mosiah 7:13). It appears as if they are culturally, ethnically and linguistically subsumed under Nephiteness. Every Nephite leader, political or religious, whose lineage is mentioned, claims Nephite descent, not Mulekite. This is despite the fact that the Mulekites apparently outnumber the Nephites at the time of union.

No matter how faithful you are, you have to be at least partly suspicious. Something’s up here.

Perhaps the Mulekites aren’t so placid. People don’t abandon culture and language this quickly. It sounds like something more colonial is going on.

It is more likely that the Mulekites are conquered (violently or even non-violently) by the Nephites. Maybe there is conflict early on and Amaleki papers over it because he’s uncomfortable with how things played out.

As always happens in colonization, the oppressed majority lose the right to culture and identity. Political capital is absorbed by the ruling minority. The colonizers monopolize positions of power and establish their culture as prestigious. Nephites become rulers. Mulekites could form the working classes. It does take a generation before everyone appears to be on board with the Nephite faith, but when it happens, it’s wholesale. The forces required to effect that kind of change must have been considerable.

Nephite writers don’t feel the need to tell us the circumstances of the occupation. They now own the narrative. They can say, for example, that the Mulekites ‘rejoice’ at the Nephites’ arrival. It’s all a very lucky rendezvous. There’s no motive mentioned. And why wouldn’t Nephites refer to it so joyously if Mosiah was led by God Himself? Theirs was an inspired, ‘righteous’ enterprise.

Alternatively — and this really leans into a sceptical reading — the immigrants conquer the Mulekites out of geopolitical expediency. They believe that the Lamanites and even their former Nephite compatriots pose an existential threat. The Mulekites are the perfect counterweight: they are numerous, clearly pliant and nearby. The prophetic justification could be retrofitted.

None of the writers seems concerned to trace what happens to the Mulekites. They largely disappear. Or, more accurately, they ‘convert’.

Conversion is a loaded concept. The Book of Mormon promotes it readily. Most Latter-day Saint readers will find this idea appealing: conversion is a good thing; it signifies that people are repenting of their sins and turning to God. This story in Omni is often viewed as an example of God’s hand in fulfilling His purposes in redeeming His children.

I wonder if, in our enthusiasm, many readers miss the very dark, very human subtext of Omni. It doesn’t have to destroy one’s faith to see this and grapple with it.

Occupation, cultural erasure and any form of coerced conversion (whether by sword or by force of cultural sway) are evil, abhorrent, despicable. They are wrong no matter how real anyone believes exaltation and salvation are. The Nephite nation might well owe at least some of its existence to injustice. The same can be said of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and of the United States themselves.

I live in a country where this is undeniably true. South Africans don’t have the luxury of pretending our history is glorious, sanitary and hero-filled. The white community here tries very hard to ignore that history, but we can’t. We have to confront it.

The Book of Mormon’s uncomfortable moments are resonant with human experience. Perhaps Mormons and other readers can use the text to reckon with that more sharply. Faith isn’t the preserve of the perfect. It is lived and exercised and sometimes lost in fleshy tabernacles, with all the problems attendant to that humanity.