The purpose in giving up the judgment seat was to free Alma to travel to other cities. These are cities that are separate from Zarahemla, but would have belonged to the "land" of Zarahemla. His first stop is to a nearby city called Gideon, in the valley of Gideon. Mormon reminds us that we have recently seen that this was the location of the confrontation between Gideon (the captain from the city of Lehi-Nephi) and Nehor, the proponent of the alternate worldview or religion. We may expect that the church was not completely dominant in Gideon both because Nehor saw it as a ripe place for his own proselyting, and Alma saw it as a place where he needed to preach. Thus Gideon, like Zarahemla itself, was very probably split between the churchmen and the non-churchmen.