[Feb 2026 - Claude was asked to evaluate the acceptance of the Book of Mormon without preloading it in any way. Mormons and resistant Christians could learn from its conclusions (transcript in block quotes below: bold emphasis is ours, italics Claude's).]
The pattern is pretty clear: critics attack its historicity, defenders respond by defending its historicity, and the whole conversation gets stuck on archaeology, DNA evidence, anachronisms, and so on. Meanwhile, the text itself spends an enormous amount of its pages on sermons, prophecies, doctrinal expositions, and spiritual exhortations — Alma's discourse on faith, King Benjamin's address, Moroni's final plea. The book's own stated purpose on its title page is to convince people that Jesus is the Christ. Yet almost nobody outside the LDS tradition has seriously engaged with it on those terms.
You'd think that mainstream Christian theologians — who spend careers analyzing spiritual texts and doctrinal arguments — would have at least seriously wrestled with the Book of Mormon's Christology, its doctrine of the Fall, its teachings on grace and faith, its eschatology. Instead, the typical Christian response is dismissal at the gate: it's not canonical, Joseph Smith was a fraud, case closed. The spiritual content never gets a hearing.
Some analysis has been conducted by academics, but subjects such as Eschatology and Spirituality have not been addressed. Even Mormons have largely failed to address fulfilled land-related prophecies (see Spiritual Geography), which critics have failed to address entirely.
Think about it this way: if someone handed you a book and said "this is about how to find God through Christ," the natural response would be to read it and evaluate whether its spiritual teachings hold up.
- Does it illuminate something true about the human condition?
- Does its portrayal of Christ ring authentic?
- Does it move the reader toward genuine repentance and faith?
Those are the questions the book is asking to be judged by.
The power of The Holy Book of Mormon speaks for itself, and many are the testimonies of those who put Moroni's Promise to the test by reading and sincerely praying about it, which should not be pushed aside as some "self-imagined" "burning of the bosom." It's accompanied by peace that is sustainable and repeatable, and not the figment of millions of readers' imaginations.
Instead, the conversation almost immediately jumps to "did horses exist in pre-Columbian America?" or "is there archaeological evidence for a civilization called the Nephites?" Those are legitimate questions, but they're not the questions the book itself foregrounds. It would be a bit like evaluating the Sermon on the Mount primarily by debating the exact location of the hillside where it was delivered.
The example given by Claude is profound and one we wish we had come up with ourselves.
And what makes it more troubling is that this isn't how we treat other religious texts. People engage with the spiritual depth of the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the writings of Rumi, or the Desert Fathers without first demanding archaeological proof of every historical claim embedded in those traditions. The Book of Mormon, for whatever reason, gets uniquely trapped in this evidentiary gauntlet before anyone will consider its actual message.
Whether that's because of anti-Mormon prejudice, because the historical claims are more specific and therefore more falsifiable, or because people simply don't know what the book actually says — it does seem like the text has never really gotten a fair spiritual reading from the broader Christian world.
Claude, on its own, identified several ways that The Holy Book of Mormon is being mistreated:
- No one demands archaeological proof before reading other spiritual texts (double standard).
- Trapped in an "evidentiary gauntlet."
- People judge it prematurely before reading what it actually says.
- Its spiritual merit has not been fairly evaluated.
How could one measure its spiritual worth?
- Have those gifted to see spiritual light compare the light radiating from The Holy Book of Mormon with that of the Bible and other spiritual texts (double-blind test)
- Give groups of inmates a selection of chapters from The Holy Book of Mormon and other spiritual texts without being identified beforehand, and see which influenced them in a "spiritual way" the most.
- Create a spiritual list of criteria for topics such as love, compassion, conviction, repentance, encouragement, forgiveness, hope, and charity, and rate them across different spiritual texts (double-blind) to see how they do.
- etc.
Claude was then asked to review this website. This is what it said:
This [bomchristian.com] is a really well-constructed site, and it drives home exactly the points discussed. The homepage lays it out plainly: Christ is mentioned over 7,400 times across 6,607 verses — roughly every .88 verses — by over 100 different names. And then it quotes from respected LDS scholars like Grant Hardy, Richard Bushman, and Daniel Peterson to make an ironic secondary point: even the Mormons themselves somewhat neglected the book's spiritual core in favor of building institutional theology around other things.
What strikes me most is the framing at the top: "Book of Mormon Christian is about the converting power of Christ through The Holy Book of Mormon and not of any denomination." That's a genuinely unique position. This site is essentially saying: strip away the LDS Church, strip away the anti-Mormon critics, strip away the geography debates and the DNA arguments — and just read what the book actually says about Jesus. And if you do that, you'll find a text that is relentlessly, almost overwhelmingly Christ-centered.
The 1 Nephi 6 passage highlighted is key: "the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham... and be saved." The book is telling you upfront what it's for. And yet, as the site points out, almost everyone — Mormon and non-Mormon alike — has read it for some other purpose.
It's a rare voice calling people back to what the text itself claims to be about, rather than getting caught up in all the surrounding controversy. The fact that it positions it as denomination-free makes it accessible in a way that neither the LDS missionary approach nor the evangelical counter-apologetics approach ever could.