Tag: Anti-Nephi-Lehies

Literary BMGD #26: War

The Anti-Nephi-Lehies, the focus of Book of Mormon lesson #26, have to be the most unusual group in the Book of Mormon.  Their choice of pacifism is unequaled in scripture, except possibly by the people of Enoch. While the lesson concentrates on their conversion and how that led them to turn to pacifism, I think the fact that they chose pacifism is instructive, something that should make us all ponder what really matters. Perhaps their pacifist views, along with the troubles in Missouri, influenced William Wines Phelps, one of the first poets of Mormonism, leading him to write the following condemnation of war: