Editing Lamanites (section)

==Impact on views on race==
{{See also|Mormon teachings on skin color|Black people and Mormonism}}

[[File:Baptism of Shivwits Indians.jpg|thumb|Member of the [[Shivwits Band of Paiutes]], in 1875, being [[baptism in Mormonism|baptized]] by [[Missionary (LDS Church)|Mormon missionaries]].]]

In the Book of Mormon, Lamanites are described as having received a "skin of blackness" to distinguish them from the Nephites. The "change" in skin color is often mentioned in conjunction with [[God]]'s curse on the descendants of Laman for their wickedness and corruption:<ref>{{harvnb|Largey|2003|loc="Lamanite civilization"}}; {{lds|2 Nephi|5|21}}</ref> 
<blockquote>And he had caused the cursing to come upon [the Lamanites], yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, and 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.</blockquote>
On the other hand, the Book of Mormon teaches that skin color is not a bar to salvation and that God:<ref>{{lds|2 Nephi|26|33}}</ref>
<blockquote>denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.</blockquote>

The non-canonical 1981 footnote text of the Book of Mormon closely linked the concept of "skin of blackness" with that of "scales of darkness falling from their eyes," which suggests that the LDS Church has now interpreted both cases as being examples of figurative language.<ref>{{citation |last=Perkins |first=Marvin |year=2008 |title=How to Reach African-Americans |url=http://www.blacklatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/How-to-reach-African-Americans.pdf}}; {{harvnb|Austin|2024|pp=63, 70–71}}</ref>

Several Book of Mormon passages have been interpreted by some Latter Day Saints as indicating that Lamanites would revert to a lighter skin tone upon accepting the gospel. For example, at a 1960 LDS Church [[general conference (LDS Church)|General Conference]], [[Apostle (Latter Day Saints)|apostle]] [[Spencer W. Kimball]] suggested that the skin of Latter-day Saint Native American was gradually turning lighter:

{{blockquote|I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today. ... The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos, five were darker but equally delightsome. The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation. At one meeting, a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter we represent, the little member girl – sixteen – sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents – on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather. ... These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated.<ref>{{cite magazine|title=Conference Report|date=December 1960|magazine=[[Improvement Era]]|pages=922–23}}</ref>}}

That view was buoyed by passages such as 2 Nephi 30:6, which in early editions of the Book of Mormon, read: <blockquote>[T]heir scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a white and a delightsome people.<ref>{{Sourcetext|source=Book of Mormon|version=1981|book=2 Nephi|chapter=30|verse=6}}</ref></blockquote> In 1840, with the third edition of the Book of Mormon, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, [[Joseph Smith]], whose adherents believe translated the writings of ancient prophets to become the Book of Mormon, changed the wording to "a pure and a delightsome people," consistent with contemporary interpretation of the term "white" as used in scripture.<ref>{{cite book |author=Smith, Joseph Jr. |author-link=Joseph Smith |title=Book of Mormon |year=1840 |edition=3rd revised |publisher=Robinson and Smith |location=Nauvoo, Illinois |page=[https://archive.org/details/bookmormon01smitgoog/page/n119 115] |url=https://archive.org/details/bookmormon01smitgoog |access-date=2009-08-03 |df=dmy-all}}</ref><ref name="websters1828">{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/americandictiona02websrich/page/n924/mode/1up |page=924| via=[[Internet Archive]] |volume=2|quote=Def.&nbsp;6, In a scriptural sense, purified from sin; sanctified. Psalm&nbsp;51. |title=Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language |date=1828 |edition=1828}}</ref> However, all future LDS Church printings of the Book of Mormon until 1981 continued from the second edition, saying the Lamanites would become "a white and delightsome people."{{efn|The 1841 and 1849 European editions (printed by the Twelve Apostles) were the [[Kirtland, Ohio|Kirtland]] second edition with British spellings. Future LDS editions continued from the European editions until a major reworking in 1981, which adopted Smith's 1840 edit.<ref>{{cite book |author=Crawley, Peter |title=A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church |volume=One 1830–1847 |page=151 |year=1997 |department=[[Religious Studies Center]] |publisher=[[Brigham Young University]] |place=Provo, Utah |isbn=1-57008-395-9 |url=http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/u?/rsc,3772 |access-date=2009-02-12 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110611230856/http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/u?%2Frsc%2C3772 |archive-date=2011-06-11 |df=dmy-all}}</ref>}}

Eventually in the Book of Mormon narrative, the labels "Nephite" and "Lamanite" became terms of political convenience, and membership was both varied and fluid and not based on skin color. Within the first 200 years of the Nephites' 1,000 year chronology, the prophet [[Jacob (Book of Mormon prophet)|Jacob]] stated that any who were enemies of his people were called Lamanites and that any who were friends were called Nephites:<ref>{{lds|Jacob|1|14}}; {{harvnb|Austin|2024|pp=116–117}}</ref>
<blockquote>But I, Jacob, shall not hereafter distinguish them by these names, but I shall call them Lamanites that seek to destroy the people of Nephi, and those who are friendly to Nephi I shall call Nephites, or the people of Nephi, according to the reigns of the kings.</blockquote>

===Anti-Lamanite narrator bias===
Book of Mormon scholars have used various lenses to interpret how race is portrayed in the Book of Mormon, particularly in relation to the Lamanites. Throughout the book, Nephite narrators describe the Lamanites as a "wild", "ferocious", and "bloodthirsty people" who "loved murder".<ref>see {{lds|Enos|1|20}} and {{lds|Mosiah|10|12}} for "wild," "ferocious," and "bloodthirsty people" and see {{lds|Jarom|1|6}} for "loved murder", quoted in {{harvnb|Austin|2024|p=111}}</ref> As [[Grant Hardy]], Jared Hickman, Elizabeth Fenton, and [[Terryl Givens]] explain, the Book of Mormon's first-person narration means its content is couched in "limited, human perspectives".<ref>{{multiref|For scholarly interpretation and first-person accounts, see {{harvnb|Coviello|2019|pp=142–143}}.|For "limited, human perspectives", see {{Cite Q|Q123382112|p=15}}}}</ref> The Nephite narrators of the Book of Mormon had the power to "characterize their antagonists [the Lamanites] as they wished", Armand Mauss writes.<ref>{{harvnb|Mauss|2003|p=116}}; Mauss quoted in {{harvnb|Austin|2024|p=113}}</ref> Deidre Green, a professor of Mormon studies, suggests that the prophet [[Jacob (Book of Mormon prophet)|Jacob]] condemns the Nephites' racist attitudes towards the Lamanite people and "clarifies that righteousness is manifest through right intentions and actions, not physical appearance."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Green |first=Deidre Nicole |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OIw8zQEACAAJ |url-access=limited |via=[[Google Books]] |title=Jacob: A Brief Theological Introduction |date=2020 |isbn=978-0-8425-0011-1 |publisher=[[Neal A. Maxwell Institute]] at [[Brigham Young University]]|pages=47, 77}}</ref> [[Michael Austin (writer)|Michael Austin]] argues that Jacob's warning to the Nephite people concerning their prejudice against the Lamanites is one of the book's attempts to combat the "anti-Lamanite" biases presented by the individual narrators. Austin further supports Max Perry Mueller's assertion that the narrative of the Book of Mormon does not support anti-Lamanite prejudices, using the story of [[Samuel the Lamanite]] as an example of criticism in the book's narrative of Nephite tendencies to "link skin color to righteousness".<ref>{{harvnb|Austin|2024|pp=109–112}} draws from ideas in {{Cite book |last=Mueller |first=Max Perry |title=Race and the Making of the Mormon People |year=2017 |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=e025xna&AN=1571938&site=ehost-live&scope=site |url-access=registration |isbn=978-1-4696-3376-3 |page=50}}</ref>

===Book of Mormon chapter summaries===
In December 2010, the LDS Church made changes to the non-canonical chapter summaries and to some of the footnotes in its online version of the Book of Mormon. In [[Second Nephi]] 5, the original wording was the following: "Because of their unbelief, the Lamanites are cursed, receive a skin of blackness, and become a scourge unto the Nephites." The phrase "skin of blackness" and the passage was changed to "Because of their unbelief, the Lamanites are cut off from the presence of the Lord, are cursed, and become a scourge unto the Nephites." The second change appears in the summary of [[Book of Mormon (Mormon's record)|Mormon]] 5. Formerly, it included the phrase that "the Lamanites shall be a dark, filthy, and loathsome people." The new version deleted the phrase "dark, loathsome, and filthy" and now reads "the Lamanites will be scattered, and the Spirit will cease to strive with them."<ref name="Fletcher Stack">{{Cite news |last=Fletcher Stack |first=Peggy |author-link=Peggy Fletcher Stack |title=Church removes racial references in Book of Mormon headings |newspaper=[[The Salt Lake Tribune]] |url=http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50882900-76/mormon-book-changes-church.html.csp |date=2010-12-16}}</ref><ref>{{lds|1 Nephi|12|23}}</ref>

The changes are seen by some critics to be another step in the evolution of the text of the Book of Mormon to delete racist language from it. Others, such as Marvin Perkins, see the changes as better conforming the chapter headers and footnotes to the meaning of the text in light of the LDS Church's [[1978 Revelation on Priesthood]].<ref>{{cite web |last=Perkins |first=Marvin |title=Changes To LDS Scripture Headings & Footnotes |url=http://www.blacklds.org/changes-to-lds-scripture-headings-footnotes |website=Blacklatterdaysaints.org |date=7 February 2011}}</ref> In an interview, a former [[Brigham Young University]] graduate student suggested that the changes were made for "clarity, a change in emphasis and to stick closer to the scriptural language".<ref name="Fletcher Stack"/>