Moroni declares that the Nephites do not desire to shed the blood of Zerahemnah’s troops. This is the formal offer of surrender. In this part of the discourse Moroni verifies his understanding of the reason for the attack of the Lamanites. The first reason is economic. The Lamanites wanted to bring the Nephites “to the yoke of bondage.” As we have noted, this would have been an economic relationship with the city state represented by Zerahemnah. To this reason, Moroni adds that the Lamanites are angry “because of our religion.” Once again, we should understand that religion encompassed an entire way of life. Why were the armies of Zerahemnah angry because of the religion of the Nephites? There were many apostate Nephites in this army, and they had openly rejected both the religion and the lifeway of the Nephites. They would still have an attachment to their former life, but one that reflected the more recent separation from it.
In the Mesoamerican world, these were two completely different ways of seeing the world. This was not simple religion, but religion and science rolled up into one. There was a fundamental difference between the two religions that permeated all of society, particularly in the egalitarian ideal of the Nephite religion. If it nothing else, the hierarchical nature of the Lamanite society and the egalitarian nature of Nephite society were not only opposite ideas, each idea was inherently destructive to the other. Each would have seen influence from the other religion as dangerous to their way of life.