In two short years the completely faithful Nephites that Mormon depicts after the repulsion of the Gadianton threat have gone from peace and prosperity to the breakup of the church. This rapid slide suggests that the picture of complete faithfulness that Mormon drew was a literary device more than an accurate historical comparison. For the society to alter so completely so quickly they had to be building upon themes that were already present and either accepted or acceptable to the majority of the people. As Mormon continues to describe this new apostasy from faith we will see that it is a continuation of the same trends that we have seen before. The people have simply returned to the days when they were willing to accept Gadiantons as leaders. Those previous ways of thinking and acting have returned.
It continues to be significant that Mormon’s description of this massive apostasy from the church comes as a result of “a great inequality in all the land.” In this verse, this great inequality is the very thing that has broken up the church. How did this happen?
One of the important principles of the Nephite gospel was the equality of men before God. This was part of the covenant made with King Benjamin, and a major theme of his discourse. For at least two hundred years from the time of King Benjamin, the church stood as representative of an ideal where all men were equally before God, where no man esteemed himself above another, and where even the king might indicate that he has worked with his own hands. The increasing prosperity of the people has come through the expansion of trade networks, and along with the elite goods that were brought back from the trade routes came the ideas of the rest of the Mesoamerican world that there should be a social hierarchy. The influence of this economic system was tremendous, and led directly to the wearing of “fine apparel” upon which the accumulated wealth might be displayed. When the society recognize not only the prosperity, but the value of displaying that prosperity, the difference between those who could afford the displays and those who could not became visually obvious. Once the difference between “classes” could be easily determined by what one wore, the segregation of the classes became easier, and more absolute.
As society splits into social ranks, it came into direct conflict with the teachings of the Nephite gospel about egalitarianism. This conflict created a point at which the newly wealthy who were creating and establishing this “higher” class must either give up their wealth and class, or they must give up the religion that condemned it. It appears that the wealth was sufficient that they chose to reject the religion. It would also appear that the “common” people also discerned some value in the new system, as many of them also accepted the new way, and left the church. The church would have been broken up not by force, but by internal dissent. It was “broken” because its people left to follow a different god.