The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

In the family of Mormon revelatory literature, if the Book of Mormon is the flashy older sibling who gets all the attention, then the Doctrine and Covenants (D&C) is the quiet younger sibling doing most of the work even though no one outside the family pays any attention.

In my estimation, the D&C is essential reading if you want to grasp the contours of the LDS Church as it exists today. That doesn’t mean it’s light or even riveting reading, unless you’ve always nursed a secret wish show more that the minutes of the deacon board were holy writ requiring study and meditation.

This, of course, is what makes reviews like this hard. From the glowing online reviews of the D&C by Mormons who feel elevated by its contents, I gather I lack the inner witness to vibe with these prophecies, so many of which are fairly pedestrian organizations and reorganizations of Church affairs.

That’s not to say I can’t appreciate the historical drama beneath even the most mundane revelations. The first generation of Mormons were a dynamic bunch devoted to an uphill climb against trenchant opposition, and occasionally against the factionalists and doubters and backsliders in their own midst.

The effort to erect a new (they would say “restored”) Church in the teeth of so much difficulty attracted a stream of revelations to Joseph Smith in the early 1830s, which were collected, published, adjusted, and augmented periodically through the years as the D&C.

This is where you find the distinctive Mormon doctrines and Church polity that we know today. For example, the unique teaching of the celestial, telestial, and terrestrial kingdoms is the fruit of Smith’s labors to translate the Book of Revelation; and baptism for the dead is unfolded in the D&C.

Here you find the teaching that the Father and the Son are flesh and blood, whereas the Holy Spirit is spirit. Here is the resurrection of saved men as angels, the exaltation of the most righteous as gods, the institution of plural marriage by Smith in the 1840s, and its retirement in 1890 by the Church.

The Presidency of the Church is here established, along with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the bishoprics, and the Aaronic and Melchizedekian priesthoods. The impression I get is that the existence of the LDS Church today is a credit to the attention Smith gave to organizing an institution that could survive his death.

And that leads to another impression I gained; namely, that Joseph Smith himself must have exerted a measure of winsome magnetism to pull this off. Smith demanded a lot of himself and sunk deeply into debt for the sake of the Church, but he likewise demanded a lot of his people.

Much of the D&C is devoted to laying down the law with regard to specific members contributing their wealth to the treasury of the Church, and to upending their lives to send them to Zion in Missouri, or to Kirtland, or on far-flung missions to the “east countries” or to the Lamanites on the American frontier.

Smith must have exerted impressive personal pull to wield such power, greater even than the apostles. In contrast to their light fiscal touch, with which they settled for encouragement or silence when it came to giving, Smith brooked no private property if the LDS Church needed funds badly enough.

Also in contrast to the apostles, who encouraged the early Christians to work quietly and faithfully as members of their local communities, Smith erected barriers to commerce with the “Gentiles” that worked beautifully to section off the LDS Church as a people apart.

In the revelation that any liquid is permissible for communion, the express purpose is to end the necessity for payments to the Church’s enemies for sacramental wine. Medical aid is forbidden if it comes from the Church’s enemies. No one is to become indebted to the Church’s enemies.

Moreover, salvation depends in part on belief in the Book of Mormon and baptism in the Mormon Church. Sacred and secular ordinances thus combine to create a system of belief and practice which seems uncompromisingly exclusive, at least to me.

In fact, the system is so exclusive that it’s hard for me to understand how Mormon missionaries can claim a shared Christianity with someone like me. Seems pretty clear Smith would’ve considered me on the wrong side of the strait gate, stuck in a system of dead works that avails me nothing.

Where my Mormon friends and I might agree is that the D&C is worth your time, although our reasons would differ. A Mormon might consider it a chance for you to receive a testimony of its truth, and I consider it crucial to understand how divergent the LDS Church is from what I consider Christianity. Sure, these motives might be so different as to be oppositional, even confrontational; but in a disagreeable world it’s nice to have at least one point of agreement, so we take what we can get. show less

This was just like the first book, for me. As it started, possibly because it's been so long since I finished the first book, I was underwhelmed. Who were these people? And what made their story more worth telling than the other hundreds of average people who had stories to tell? And then, as it progressed, I found out that I should care-- very much.

No story is ordinary, but I think that the compilers did a good job of choosing people who were, in a way, outsiders. There's stories of show more separation, divorce, abandonment, disagreements(Heber J!), doubts (BH Roberts), and struggles. Most remarkable, I felt, were the twin historical humps of polygamy and the MMM(Mountain Meadows Massacre).

With polygamy, there were stories that ran the gamut from difficult spouses, to mushy lovers. And the MMM was a horrific set of domino-esqe choices that led to tragedy. * But they spare no feelings and attach plenty of blame. But, when placed in context, many of the "juicier" topics were understandable. They didn't always make sense (I still wanted to shake Mr. Haight and say "what were you thinking?") but you saw how each action may have affected the other.

I'm still not quite sure WHY Lorenzo Snow was ignored as much as he was. And some people I never did come to like(Please someone teach me to like Eliza R. Snow!). And I feel like they left out a couple of stories(Emmaline Wells had a good one, I heard), but they didn't really have a place in the narrative.

End note-- if you think, like others thought, that women were steamrolled over because of their religion, think again and read chapter 25.

*I must say, though, I did feel like they didn't really end the story. I'm pretty sure most people will want to know what happened to John D. Lee and Isaac Haight in terms of punishment. show less

Uncharitably, I can say the Book of Mormon reads like a meme: “I forced an AI to spend 1000 hours reading the Bible and then write a new Bible based on that information.” I found it derivative, repetitive, hackneyed, and nigh unreadable for long boring stretches.

The problem with this assessment is two-fold. First, I don’t want to be uncharitable. Second, this assessment is too lazy. It’s not hard to sit outside and criticize. What I tried to do instead was understand why Mormonism show more caught fire when it did in the way that it did, and I do have some thoughts.

First, there’s a deliberate simplicity to the Book of Mormon. “Plain speaking” recurs often as a mark of the righteous, in contrast to the “priestcrafts” of those who bury the truth in convoluted theologies that bind the laity to a caste of theologians who care nothing for the poor and the downtrodden.

Many “plain spoken” teachings of the book resonate, I suspect, with many an average church-goer today. The fall into sin was not only accounted for in God’s plan, but required because without sin there is no free will — and God would never trammel a man’s free will.

There’s no reason to ask why prophecy and healing and tongues ceased, because they never ceased — God is the same yesterday and today and forever. The revelation of Jesus was not limited to one corner of the globe — salvation is only through the name of Jesus and all have heard his name.

The atonement is not limited but infinite, and guarantees resurrection for all from the first death. We’re responsible to live righteously in this probationary period if we want to escape the second death. There’s an internally logical simplicity to the Book of Mormon that could appeal to someone who’s exhausted by lofty churchmen with their complicated empty words and conceited empty lives.

Also, none of the weird stuff is in the Book of Mormon. Plural marriage is outright condemned in Jacob 2-3 and Ether 10, and is tacitly absent in the social welfare system of Mosiah 21. There’s not a trace of the complicated system of righteous men achieving exaltation to godhood. I assume these were later revelations, but I’m open to correction from someone who knows more than I do.

If you’re not theologically grounded, there isn’t anything freaky here to put your back up. I can understand how the “plain speaking” of the Book of Mormon might appeal as an alternative to crusty orthodoxies that seem more interested in their own power structures than in living like Jesus.

Second, the Book of Mormon is very much a work of its time. Americans were fascinated by the vanished Mound Builders, so the idea of great precursor civilizations was in the air. The agnostic teachings of the false prophet Korihor sound an awful lot like 19th-century scientific materialism.

In the east, the social panic of Anti-Masonry echoes in the secret rites of the Gadianton robbers. In the west, the opening of the hinterlands to settlement provides an obvious escape route for persecuted Mormons in the same way that Lehi and his family fled to the American wilderness ahead of judgment.

I even find theological justification for “management” of Native American populations. In the account of the final triumph of the godless Lamanites over the apostate Nephites, the path to redemption for the Lamanites includes laying aside weapons and forswearing violence.

Since Mormon anthropology considers Native American tribes as degraded remnants of the Lamanites, it’s not difficult to sense the prejudices of expanding white America. Tribes that submit peacefully are on the path to redemption, and those that resist are wicked Lamanites practically begging for conquest.

As I read it, the Book of Mormon appeared at the only time it could have found such explosive success. Rising tensions over slavery threatened the geopolitical order, rising materialism undermined the spiritual order, rising disillusionment with organized religion left people religiously hungry but spiritually adrift, and rising consciousness of extinct civilizations made the discovery of ancient records plausible. If this is right, then the rise of Mormonism is not as hard to understand as it might first appear.

I set out in this review to be charitable, and I’m not sure I succeeded. No doubt, a devout Mormon would consider this nothing but a polite attack on their faith, a reduction of a movement of God to a quirky side effect of social and historical forces.

There’s probably some truth to that. I didn’t finish my reading of the Book of Mormon with an inclination to convert, but I do feel I understand its appeal in its time. Even today, progressive Mormons like fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, who seems to acknowledge the fictional nature of the book’s narrative, considers it a story through which God molds the character of his people.

Given this sort of adaptability in the teeth of advancing knowledge, not to mention Mormonism’s long track record of cohesive community and hard work, I suspect that both the faith and its book will survive for some time regardless of how strange or outdated it appears outside the walls of the temple. show less

Love, love, love. This is one of those rare shows where the first viewing is entertainment, the second is appreciation of structure, and the third is just admiration for how confidently it commits to its own ridiculousness.

I saw it three times in the early years, and the soundtrack is still on my iPod, which feels like the most honest possible archival record of obsession.

It is sharp, chaotic, and far more musically clever than it has any right to be given its general emotional chaos.