This past weekend, the church released another installment from its Book of Mormon video series. This particular video covered 2 Nephi chapter 5, which contains a passage that's infamous among church critics:
Wherefore, the word of the Lord was fulfilled which he spake unto me, saying that: Inasmuch as they will not hearken unto thy words they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And behold, they were cut off from his presence.
And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.
And thus saith the Lord God: I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities.
And cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing. And the Lord spake it, and it was done.
And because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey.
And the Lord God said unto me: They shall be a scourge unto thy seed, to stir them up in remembrance of me; and inasmuch as they will not remember me, and hearken unto my words, they shall scourge them even unto destruction.
The video shows Laman and Lemuel plotting to kill Nephi because he rules over them. It shows friends and families saying tearful goodbyes as the fledgling civilization in the promised land bifurcates into separate factions in separate settlements. It shows Nephi lamenting his trials and the wickedness of his brethren. It shows the Nephites becoming productive and industrious in their new home. But there's a pretty crucial aspect of this schism that it doesn't even acknowledge: God's curse upon the Lamanites.
As we know, God cursed the Lamanites for their inquities and caused a skin of blackness to come upon them, which also made them unenticing to the Nephites so that intermarrying between the righteous and the wicked would be discouraged. The punishment God inflicts on the Lamanites comprises verses 20 through 25. That's six verses out of a chapter of 34 verses, which is a pretty big chunk to omit from a film adaptation—especially since other parts of the curse are prophecies that will be fulfilled by the end of the Book of Mormon. And the curse also contains warnings for the righteous: don't mix your seed with the loathsome Lamanites or you'll share in their punishment.
But, strangely, (my sarcasm should be obvious here) no acknowledgement is made of this passage in the video.
Now, I realize this puts the church in an awkward position. After all the work they've done to convince people Mormonism isn't racist, trumpeting the more troubling racial underpinnings of their own scripture can threaten to undo any progress they've made. Ideally, of course, they'd condemn the use of skin color as a way to distinguish good from evil, but by doing so they'd be condemning their foundational holy writ and their god. So I understand why that definitely ain't happening.
But that still brings up an impossible choice. Since the racism is in there and they can't remove it, what's the best approach when they're bringing their scripture stories to life? Is it worse to adhere faithfully to the text and include the racism, or is it worse to skip it and pretend like it's not actually there at all? Well...I think they made the wrong call here.
Again, I understand why they did it. One of the goals of these videos is to attract new investigators, to reel people in with miraculous stories and Christ-centered teachings. Generally speaking, blatant racism is a marketing technique that's destined for failure. And it's possible the filmmaking team themselves were a bit embarrassed by this subject. It's also tough to imagine a curse of this nature being implemented into the videos in a way that wouldn't have been weird and hokey, so maybe it was cut for more practical reasons.
But it's still dishonest.
Let's indulge in a little parable. Let's say you're dating someone new and you're terrified that if you tell her about your collection of rare Beanie Babies before she really gets to know you, she'll judge you unfairly. So you wait. Six months into the relationship, you're confident enough in her affections that you tell her about it. She's cool with it.
Now let's go through the same scenario, except replace "collection of rare Beanie Babies" with "belief that dark skin is a sign of divine disfavor." That's not the same thing at all. She'll probably be cool with the Beanie Baby thing, but generally, if you harbor intense bigotry toward a cross-section of humanity, people want to know that information up front before they decide to invest their time and energy in a relationship with you.
By the same token, if the Book of Mormon videos were to skip over the second telling of the vision of the Tree of Life (which they did), it wouldn't be a big deal. Nobody's going to join the church, read the Book of Mormon, and then leave in a huff because the videos never talked about how Nephi was later given a vision similar to Lehi's.
But if someone watches the videos, takes the missionary discussions (which, barring a particularly unsual missionary, will not explain that Native Americans are dark-skinned because God cursed them with extra melanin), joins the church, and then reads the Book of Mormon in full, there's gonna be one hell of a record-scratching moment when they hit 2 Nephi 5.
I have a feeling that the faithful response to that argument would be that the investigator should do their due diligence and study the entire Book of Mormon prior to committing to baptism. And while I agree with that, I don't think the missionary culture really encourages a methodical, circumspect approach in its investigators. And even though someone should, ideally, read a religion's scriptures in their entirety before signing on, that doesn't excuse the religion's lies of omission. Picture a stereotypical used car salesman telling an unhappy customer, "well, you didn't inspect the transmission yourself before I sold you the car." Okay, yes, that's true, but you're still the sleaze bucket who sold me a lemon hoping I wouldn't realize it before I signed the paperwork.
So it will be really interesting to see how the remainder of the Book of Mormon videos unfold. Will the church make some kind of reference to the racial punishment of the Lamanites? Will it show the darkness and the loathsomeness of their people? How will it attempt to walk the line between scriptural exactness and PR polish? If there's an honest way to tell a racist story without racism, they haven't found it yet.
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