Editing Book of Mormon (section)

==== Beliefs about geographical setting ====
{{main|Proposed Book of Mormon geographical setting}}
Related to the work's historicity is consideration of where its events are claimed to have occurred if historical. The LDS Church—the largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement<ref>For "largest denomination", see {{cite web |date=2020 |title=Latter Day Saints movement |url=https://hwpi.harvard.edu/files/pluralism/files/latter_day_saints_movement.pdf |access-date=March 11, 2024 |website=The Pluralism Project |publisher=Harvard University}}</ref>—affirms the book as literally historical but does not make a formal claim of where precisely its events took place.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Wade |first=Lizzie |date=January 18, 2018 |title=How a Mormon Lawyer Transformed Archaeology in Mexico—and Ended Up Losing His Faith |url=https://www.science.org/content/article/how-mormon-lawyer-transformed-archaeology-mexico-and-ended-losing-his-faith |website=Science |publisher=[[American Association for the Advancement of Science]]}}</ref> Throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Joseph Smith and others in the Latter Day Saint movement claimed that the book's events occurred broadly throughout North and South America.<ref name = "Gardner" /> During the twentieth century, Latter-day Saint apologists backed away from this hemispheric belief in favor of believing the book's events took place in a more limited geographic setting within the Americas.{{Sfn|Duffy|2008|p=46}} This [[limited geography model]] gained broader currency in the LDS Church in the 1990s,<ref>{{Harvnb|Duffy|2008|p=42}}.</ref> and in the twenty-first century it is the most popular belief about Book of Mormon geography among those who believe it is historical.<ref>{{Harvnb|Jones|2016|p=199}}.</ref> In 2006, the LDS Church revised its introduction to LDS editions of the Book of Mormon, which previously read that Lamanites were "the principal ancestors of the American Indians", to read that they are "among the ancestors of the American Indians".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Fletcher Stack |first1=Peggy |author-link=Peggy Fletcher Stack |title= Single word change in Book of Mormon speaks volumes |url= https://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/lds/ci_7403990 |newspaper=[[The Salt Lake Tribune]] |access-date=April 27, 2022 |date=November 8, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Why Native Americans struggle to make their stories and traditions fit with the Book of Mormon|url=https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/07/02/why-native-americans/|newspaper=[[The Salt Lake Tribune]]|date=July 2, 2021|access-date=October 13, 2021|archive-date=September 27, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210927135734/https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/07/02/why-native-americans/|url-status=live}}</ref> A movement among Latter-day Saints called Heartlanders believes that the Book of Mormon took place specifically within what is presently the United States.<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Seriac |first=Hannah |date=December 15, 2021 |title=Mormon Group Digging for Scriptural City of Zarahemla in Iowa Is a Portrait of Religious Nationalism |url=https://religiondispatches.org/mormon-group-digging-for-scriptural-city-of-zarahemla-in-iowa-is-a-portrait-of-religious-nationalism/ |magazine=Religion Dispatches}}</ref>