The Book of Mormon as an American Origin Myth

The Book of Mormon was written at a time when Americans were deeply interested in the country’s origins and history. America was finally old enough to start thinking of itself as a nation with a history. The last of the Founders had just passed away. People were just beginning to write books about the Revolution, and the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. Relics of the Founding were being treated with an almost religious reverence. There was a widespread feeling that the birth of America had been a sacred event.

At the same time, America was young enough to feel insecure about its lack of history. It had no national literature, for example, to compare with Britain’s collection of classics. The British thought of Americans as uncouth and uncultured, lacking the centuries of refinement that the mother country could draw upon.

In the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith does two things.

First, he sacralizes the Founding. In 1 Nephi 13, the prophet Nephi prophesies the formation of “a great and abominable Church,” which persecutes the saints of God and takes them into captivity. Presumably this refers to Catholics and Protestants. Nephi then describes the discovery of America by Columbus, who he represents as divinely inspired. The Protestants then go forth out of captivity and travel to America, where God uses them to smite the unfaithful Lamanite tribes, and makes them prosper in the land. Thus the Founding is mythologized in a very typically American way: persecuted Protestants are said to have been guided here by divine Providence to prosper and worship freely in the land of promise.

The second thing the Book of Mormon does is extends America’s history backward by thousands of years. In the Book of Mormon, America is given its own literature and its own prophets. The experience of the ancient inhabitants, in fact, mirrors the experience of the Gentile Americans. Persecuted by Jerusalem’s religious establishment, they were forced to flee, and to travel over “many waters” to the American promised land. Thus it is possible for Americans to think of their land as one with a long history, and of their nation as one with a distinct divine mission and character: to serve as a land of promise and as a utopia for pure religion.