MAKING WITNESSES: THE BOOK OF MORMON’S SECULAR STRENGTH Cardboard characters. Improbable plots. Simulated Elizabethan syntax. If, as asserted by many readers and literary critics, these terms accurately characterize the Book of Mormon, how do we account for its remarkable power to regenerate lives and foster the development of a dynamic community? Inquiring into its literary, rather than supernatural, facets, I argue that much of the Book of Mormon’s power derives from its ability to mold its actual readers into its ideal readers, and thereby transform them from readers into witnesses.

DON BRADLEY and MARK D. THOMAS