the importance of Abish's narrative in the book's overall depiction of gender relations. The success of Ammon's mission to the Lamanites hinges on Abish's presence and her preparation to be a missionary in his stead. Since her conversion relates in some way to her relationship to her father, Abish's story suggests Lamanite society's healthy gender relations in which men and women share domestic intimacy as parents, children, and spouses, contrasting with Nephite society's subjugation of women as victims. Furthermore, the overall story with Ammon, the Lamanite royalty, and Abish parallels John 11, in which Jesus revives Lazarus of Bethany from death, but Abish and the queen fill the role of Jesus. While the women in John 11 (Martha and Mary of Bethany) are corrected for their initial shortcomings in faith, Abish's story instead positions women as agents for their own and others' benefit, capable of fulfilling a salvific purpose. Some scholarship reads the Abish story less optimistically, still seeing an overriding misogyny in the Book of Mormon's narrative. Carol Lynn Pearson describes Abish's visionary conversion as her having "converted to the Lord because of a remarkable vision her father had had years before, not a vision of her own", rendering Abish a "spiritually dependent woman". Dale Luffman, an emeritus apostle for Community of Christ (the second-largest denomination of the Latter Day Saint movement), criticizes the lack of direct dialogue for Abish, writing that she "is not given 'voice,' only touch". Subverting hierarchy The narrative of Abish promotes a message in which God empowers the disenfranchised and subverts hierarchies. As the story leads up to Abish's appearance, "the focal point… shifts deliberately", Salleh and Olsen Hemming explain: the narrative first follows Ammon, a royal Nephite man; next Lamoni is at the center of the story, and he is not Nephite, but he is royal and male; after Lamoni faints, the story focuses on the queen, who lacks male privilege and Nephite privilege but retains class privilege as a monarch. When the whole royal household is unconscious, Abish becomes the effective protagonist despite lacking any form of privilege within the social stratifications in the Book of Mormon's narrative. Word choice unique in the Book of Mormon to the sequence involving Abish implies that within the framing narrative she partly provides the narratorial voice, leaving her impression on the story. With no social capital, Abish instead relies on spiritual empowerment and insight to