The faithful Nephites feared Amlici because the law allowed the voice of the people to make changes. Amlici’s increasingly numerous followers might be enough to carry the day with the “voice of the people” and change the ruling order.
This simple declaration is one modern readers understand all too well. In a democracy, we may worry when a faction we oppose gains enough support to force its ideas upon us. However, for the Nephites, it is not a simple political choice between two groups. Rather, they fear that Amlici “would deprive them of their rights and privileges of the church” (v. 4).
Why would Amlici as king wish to destroy the church? Why would a return to a monarchy, which the Nephites had abandoned only five years earlier, be such a terrifying religious threat? It is too simplistic to explain such an attack as motivated by Amlici’s “evil.” It presupposes that either Amlici duped all of his followers or that all of his followers were equally evil.
A more reasonable answer is that these Amlicites had espoused the order of the Nehors, an affiliation that included both a political and a religious change. They had espoused a new social/religious order antithetical to Nephite religion. Economically, Nephite society was adamantly horizontal and egalitarian, while the order of the Nehors was just as adamantly vertical and stratified. Domination by the Amlicites would forcibly implement the vertical distribution of wealth, stratify the Nephites, make them unable to live their social ideal, and destroy the social aspect of their religious worldview.
When we remember that there have already been contentions between the Nephite faithful and the “other” religion, it is also easy to see that these tensions would erupt into persecutions. If the order of the Nehors became the dominant religion, it almost certainly would persecute believers in the Nephite religion, relegating it to the margins of society and perhaps suppressing it altogether. The Nephites rightly feared that Nehorite success would destroy their culture and religion, as they knew it.
Variant: The spelling of Amlici and its variants leads to confusion in the text. As noted in “Excursus: Religion of the Nehors” (following Alma 1), the later Amalekites are the same as the Amlicites indicated in verses 11 and 12. Skousen suggests that the differing spellings reflected different attempts to capture Joseph’s dictation. Skousen suggests that Joseph pronounced the man’s name with /k/ rather than /s/ (Amliki, not Amlisi). The spelling was probably “corrected” on the basis of the name Amaleki that appears as a record-keeper in Omni and as the name of one of Ammon’s men (Mosiah 7:6). A later Nephite rebel is named Amalickiah, where the /ck/ combination and the similarity of the root name may have influenced the eventual spelling of Amalekite. Skousen suggests that all occurrences of Amalekite should be changed to Amlicite.