In this episode, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon, along with panelists Boyd Petersen, Charles Randall Paul, and Chelsea Shields Strayer explore all these questions, plus engage in a fascinating peek at how evil is seen in some non-Western cultures, including West Africa (where Chelsea has been doing anthropological fieldwork for the past decade) and its ideas of that very real powers that work in witchcraft, spirit possession, cursing, and other “occult” practices? Does Mormonism have theological explanations for these forces and the various ways they are manifest? Do West African Mormons still hold on to some of these ideas even after their conversion?

This episode is another longish one, but we believe it contains much that will be of great interest to listeners. There is probably a higher ratio of speculative ideas to standard ones in this episode than in almost all others, so be warned in advance! Still, we hope you will jump in, swim around with us in these interesting seas, and then join in the conversation yourself in the comments section below!

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Readings of interest:

Link to Chelsea Shields Strayer essay, “Are All Children Children of God?” that is discussed in this episode from the Summer 2011 issue of Exponent II.

As a child, the story of Moroni visiting Joseph Smith seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on just why. Only later, on reflection, did the mythic aspects of the story stand out more sharply.

First the repetitive structure: The angel Moroni appeared to Joseph three times during the night in his bedroom and tells the same things each time. Joseph comes back each year on the same night to the Hill Cumorah, from 1823-1827. Some accounts, such as his neighbor Willard Chase’s, have him being told to dress in black clothing and to bring his wife.

Each time he is denied the plates, and told to return the same time next year. His words are “at the end of the year”, which is an interesting phrase given that one would assume the end of the year was December 31^st. He repeats the phrase “end of the year” several times in his narrative. Why is this? And why so much preparation time for the plates?

In addition to the repetitive structure, there are remnants of Joseph’s magical/organic/agricultural worldview showing through here. The “end of the year” is not a phrase you would use unless you are tied to the rhythms of the land. The fall equinox is the end of the growing season, and as such the end of the natural year. Nature is beginning to die. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Moroni, revealing a new thing, to have visited Joseph in the spring, have him visit the Hill Cumorah in the spring each year, and then allow Joseph to take the plates in the spring, when life is beginning?

As far as the years of preparation time, perhaps the Book of Mormon and it’s significance needed to “grow” in Joseph’s psyche, where the end of the growing season and harvest time would have impressed very forcefully on a farm boy how things grow, from crops to individuals to societies. It also would be a time of celebration and a reduction of physical activity to a certain extent, allowing time for more contemplation.

Perhaps the story of Joseph’s nocturnal hill visits is about something old, mysterious, and forgotten, something that has died. Certainly the contents of the Book of Mormon reveal that indeed, the narrative is about a death. The death is of Nephite civilization and Nephite righteousness, which are inextricably intertwined. In that sense, the time of year is perfect to discover something hidden and old, a record of a people who have died, perhaps to save it from complete oblivion.

It is interesting to consider a gold book in a stone box in a New York hill about a civilization which no one would have known anything about had not Moroni told Joseph about it. Are there other books, in other hills, about other civilizations history and archeology knows nothing of, awaiting an inquisitive seeker?