Sentence:  Our endeavor to capture even a faint sense of how strenuous was the fight is muffled by our indifference to the very issue which in the Boston of 1848 seemed to <WSD>be</WSD> the central hope of its Christian survival , that of the literal , factual historicity of the miracles as reported in the Four Gospels . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  be identical to; be someone or something