Ammon: Missionary extraordinaire, cultural imperalist

As I’ve been reading about the mission of Ammon and his brothers, my thoughts have been running in at least three directions. (1) I’ve been reading this as a story about changing people’s minds and hearts and lives through God’s power. How can I, too, be an instrument in moving people to overcome false traditions of their forebears—which to my mind would include sexism, racism, homophobia, nationalism, consumerism, and laissez-faire capitalism? (2) At a more cerebral level, I was intrigued by the possibility of a feminist reading, based both on the roles that Abish and the queen play in proclaiming the gospel and on the conflict between Lamoni’s commitment to the gospel and patriarchal authority, as distilled in the confrontation with Lamoni’s father. (3) And this is what I want to write about today: I’ve been reading this missionary account against itself as an account of cultural imperialism.

Here’s my “method.” I’m reading the text in a loosely deconstructive way. In other words, I’m looking for “slips” or “lapses” in how the author has crafted this narrative, which reveal that there are alternative ways to craft the narrative, ways that don’t serve the author’s interests. For example: In Alma 1:15, we read about the execution of Nehor. The author wants a scene in which Nehor confesses his wrong-doing before he dies—we have similar scenes in the story of Sherem and the story of Korihor. I guess the significance of such a scene is that it helps to legitimize killing him. A confession like this needs to be voluntary to have the force the author wants. But in Alma 1:15, the author slips and gives away that the confession was compelled. Note carefully what the text says: “. . . they carried him upon the top of the hill Manti, and there he was caused”—oops! the author catches himself and moves quickly to correct—“or rather did acknowledge, between the heavens and the earth, that what he had taught to the people was contrary to the word of God . . .”

That’s how I’ve been reading the account of Ammon’s mission: finding places where the text gives away that things are going on which don’t fit quite so well into the moral coloring that the author wants to give the story.

All right—what do we have? The cultural imperialism implicit in what the missionaries is doing becomes overt in Alma 23:5, where the writer enthuses that thousands of Lamanites have been “brought to believe the traditions of the Nephites.” The missionaries’ message—which, of course, they understand as universal, the gospel of Christ—is explicitly equated here with the traditions of a particular people. Ammon and his companions aren’t just teaching about the Creation, and the Fall, and the Atonement. They’re also teaching a Nephite version of history. We learned about the Lamanite version of history back in Mosiah 10: the Lamanites believe they were driven out of Jerusalem because of their forebears’ iniquities; they were wronged in the wilderness and while crossing the sea; Nephi usurped the power to rule and then robbed Laman and Lemuel by taking off with the brass plates, etc. Lamoni’s father invokes this vision of history in Alma 20:10, 13. From the Nephites’ point of view, the Lamanite version of history is simply “the traditions of their fathers, which were not correct” (Alma 21:17). In the Nephite version, Nephi was chosen by God to rule because he was righteous and the Lamanites’ ancestors were wicked. Ah yes, and there’s also that business in the Nephite version of history about God cursing the Lamanites with a dark skin so that the Nephites wouldn’t intermarry with them (2 Ne. 5)—which is interesting to bear in mind when you read about Ammon declining Lamoni’s offer to marry one of his daughters (Alma 17:24-25). Ammon and his brothers may love the Lamanites deeply enough to suffer privation for the sake of saving their souls; marrying a dark-skinned girl is a different matter.

Lamanite conversion has political, and perhaps economic, consequences for Nephite-Lamanite relations. We’re told that the converted Lamanites “were friendly with the Nephites; therefore, they did open a correspondence with them, and the curse of God did no more follow them” (Alma 23:18). The reference to the curse being lifted is important because it means that from the point of view of Nephite ideology, the converted Lamanites are a people with whom the Nephites can now have legitimate dealings: they can be allies, not enemies. This same verse tells us that the converted Lamanites “began to be a very industrious people,” which makes me wonder if their “correspondence” with the Nephites is meant to imply trade. The political ramifications of Ammon’s mission are important for explaining why the rest of the Lamanites respond so violently to converts beginning in chapter 24: as they quite accurately perceive, the converts are forging an alliance with those whom most Lamanites regard as a mortal enemy.

The Nephite dissenters—the Amalekites and the Amulonites—oppose the mission for similar reasons. As people who fled Nephite rule, the last thing they want is to see an expansion of Nephite political and cultural influence, especially when Nephite society is so strongly influenced by Christianity, a religion that opposes their own, i.e., the religion of Nehor. (Recall that until Alma gave up his seat as chief judge to dedicate himself to revival, the highest legal authority in Nephite society was also the high priest of the Christian churches and an avowed opponent of Nehor's religion. You might read that as helping to explain the violent hostility Alma encountered in Ammonihah.) The situation of the dissenters is similar, at least from their own perspective, to the situation of the Mormons, who fled the United States to relocate in what was then part of Mexico—only to find themselves, within a year, back under U.S. jurisdication as a result of the Mexican-American war, which quickly led to conflict between the Mormons and the U.S. government. The Amalekites fear a similar fate.

The chapter heading to Alma 23 says that after his conversion by Aaron, the Lamanite king proclaims “religious freedom.” Well . . . not really. What the king proclaims is that the missionaries cannot be detained or mistreated—fair enough so far—but also “that they should have free access to [the people’s] houses, and also their temples, and their sanctuaries. And thus they might go forth and preach the word according to their desires . . .” (23:2-3). The reason for this proclamation, we’re told, is because the king desires “that the word of God might have no obstruction, but that . . . his people might be convinced concerning the wicked traditions of their fathers” (23:3). This is not a declaration of religious freedom for all. This is privileged treatment for the religion that the ruler has come to favor. The king can’t force his people to convert, because the kind of conversion experiences that the missionaries want have to be voluntary by their very nature; but he can compel them to listen. According to the king’s decree, you can’t keep the missionaries from preaching at your religious gatherings (imagine the Amalekite reaction). You can’t even keep them out of your house!

There are hints that Lamoni also uses compulsory measures to spread the Christian message in his kingdom. Even though Lamoni, unlike his father, does appear to proclaim religious freedom for all (21:22), we’re also told that “he caused that his people, or the people who were under his reign, should assemble themselves together,” at which point he, and possibly also Ammon (the chronology’s unclear), preach and teach (21:20, 23). On the subject of compulsion, note that Ammon has no scruples against using the threat of death to get what he wants, including advantageous political concessions, from Lamoni’s father (20:21-25).

What am I learning from this deconstructive reading that’s relevant to spirituality? What I’m thinking is this: The author of the text intends us to see the missionaries’ work in black and white terms. They are proclaiming God’s truth, saving the Lamanites’ souls. How could that be less than praiseworthy? But the text itself allows us to discern things differently. There are ideological or political implications to the missionaries’ work that are not so clearly praiseworthy, especially when viewed from the perspective of others. I’m not trying to invert the black-and-white reading of the text, suggesting that we ought to see the Amalekites as the good guys and the missionaries as villains. I’m suggesting, rather, that instead of reading this story in black and white, we should be reading it in shades of gray.

The spiritual significance of this is that it cautions us against equating our own politics, ideology, culture, etc., with the gospel. As soon as I write that statement, I realize there probably isn’t anyone in the LDS Church who would disagree with it. The problem is, I think the majority of people who go around talking about separating the gospel from culture or partisan politics don’t do it nearly as well as they think they do. And I include myself in that. As people who are trying to apply gospel principles to assessing the righteousness of what goes on in the world around us, it is inevitable that we will equate the gospel with certain normative political and cultural judgments. I do that when I say that I believe God supports same-sex marriage as an expression of God’s zeal for justice. Church leaders do the same thing in a very different way when they instruct members that God opposes same-sex marriage. Obviously, we can’t both be right. In another post, I’ve said that I suspect we’ll find in the final reckoning that God isn’t on either of our sides because God's love encompasses us all despite these kinds of conflicts. But in the meantime, we still have to go on making those kinds of judgments according to our best lights.

But here’s the difference: If you see the world in gray instead of black and white; if you recognize that your perspective almost certainly doesn’t match God’s perspective as closely as you think; if you have a strong sense of the limitations of human knowledge, including our ability to accurately discern God’s will as revealed in scripture or to distinguish revelation from our own ideas, fears, and desires—if you do all that, it can be a corrective, a restraint. It can keep you open to continuing revelation that will revise your present understanding, and it can prevent you from exercising unrighteous dominion. But if you see the world in black and white; if you subscribe to an understanding of scripture that tends to insist on straightforwardly accepting the text’s claims and judgments; if you understand prophetic authority in a way that discourages an interrogatory attitude toward the teachings of church leaders—if you do that, then you’re walking a much more dangerous path. You’re less likely to be open to corrective revelation, and you’re more likely to practice unrighteous dominion without recognizing that’s what you’re doing. That’s what I see Ammon and his companions doing.