Review
Title: The Book of Mormon For the Least of These, volume 1: 1 Nephi-Words of Mormon
Author: Fatimah Salleh with Margaret Olsen Hemming
Publisher: By Common Consent Press
Genre: Non-Fiction
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 157
Binding: Soft Cover
ISBN13: 978-1-948218-23-8
Price: 12.95
Reviewed by Denice Mouncé for the Association for Mormon Letters
The Book of Mormon For the Least of These, Volume 1 challenges readers to confront the issues of injustice in the Book of Mormon. This book is for everyone; readers will find in its pages the struggles of imperfect people who are trying to be obedient and come to know God. Messy and awful at times; beautiful and divine at others, the Book of Mormon provides a wealth of information for our lives. The authors face the challenges of the Book of Mormon with their unique insights to give readers a fuller picture of the doctrine. Reading this book gives readers a better understanding of the challenges faced by marginalized people in ancient and modern times while providing the reader with insights into how the gospel is for everybody, “completely and unreservedly.”
The Book of Mormon For the Least of These, Volume 1 is the first installment of a trilogy that will span the length of the Book of Mormon to provide a critical analysis of the text as analyzed from a modern social justice perspective. The authors, “wrote this book intentionally looking for messages about issues related to social justice” (xii). Given this intent, most entries focus on issues of race, gender, poverty, and other issues of inequality. The authors lovingly dub these marginalized individuals as, “the least of these.”
Written by Dr. Fatimah Salleh with Margaret Olsen Hemming, the book introduces us to the perspectives of these women’s interpretation of the scriptures as applied to modern issues of equality. Dr. Fatimah Salleh has a Ph.D. in Divinity from Duke Divinity School and has wrestled with the racial and gender issues present in the Book of Mormon. Margaret Olsen Hemming, who has a graduate degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution – and experience with the resettlement of refugees – has seen the violence of the world in the text of the Book of Mormon. Together they started from the beginning and fought their way through the text to confront racism, gender bias, and violence head-on. The perspectives from their personal and professional lives permeate the pages and give readers the lens to see how the text of ancient scripture has modern implications in our society.
The critical reader may ask themselves what value applying modern morality and norms to an ancient text and culture has for readers; the authors state their purpose eloquently: “…there is a tragic history of scripture being weaponized against populations that are already marginalized. When this happens, the radical message of the gospel, that God loves each person completely and unreservedly and calls us to do the same, is lost” (xiv). The goal of the authors was to critically evaluate the scriptures looking for those who do not have a voice and give that voice back to them.
The book does have significant editing errors. At times the meaning of individual sentences was difficult to interpret, but the general intent of each section was clear enough to be understood. For example, on page 87 two readers came to different conclusions about the following sentence: “He invokes it even more often that he references the violence that he personally endured” (87). One reviewer argued that the line was a simple typographical error and should be corrected to “…than he references…”. The other reviewer interpreted the line as needing the removal of the second “that.” The problem is that in the first meaning Nephi is talking about the topic more than he talks about his own suffering, and in the second he is talking about his personal suffering extensively. The general intent of the paragraph is that Nephi is sad about the knowledge of the extinction of his descendants, but how the authors choose to characterize his reaction to that knowledge is unclear. The typographical errors did affect readability enough that it was disruptive to the text.
A thorough and insightful read from start to finish, The Book of Mormon For the Least of These, Volume 1 invites readers to let down their walls and invite in new insight. Thoroughly insightful, respectfully reverent, and challenging, there is no end to the value of insight that can be gained from taking this journey. Everyone will not agree with everything in this book, but the conversations and thoughts this book starts will cause readers to reevaluate how they are caring for “the least of these.”