This is Christmas week, so I’m going to do my best to throw some holiday cheer into this post. There’s a good chance we will actually make to the year 2021: It’s only ten days away. This time around we aren’t looking for a happy new year … just a new year. Because any year will be better than the last one. By the time President-Elect Joe Biden is inaugurated, some of you readers will have received one of the new Covid vaccines. By April Fool’s Day, half or more of us might get a vaccine. In 2021, you might very well strike up a conversation with a stranger with, “So, which vaccine did you get?” In the year 2021 we can go to restaurants again, we can shop in a store instead of on Amazon, we can have friends over for a dinner party, and we can safely ignore Trump’s tweets (because he will be a noisy ex-President rather than our Commander-in-Chief). We will hopefully measure national Covid deaths in dozens, not thousands, by mid-year. I am hopeful and confident that 2021 will be a good year.
And in the year 2021 we will begin a new year in the LDS Sunday School curriculum, which will cover the Doctrine and Covenants. Sometimes the D&C year covers LDS history as much as the D&C as a book of scripture, but this year the focus seems to be primarily on the D&C sections as texts. The manual is available online: Come Follow Me — For Individuals and Families: Doctrine and Covenants 2021. In light of hawkgrrrl’s Unpopular Norms post last week, here is your first discussion question for the day: Are you doing the Come Follow Me curriculum at home? Every week? Once a month? Not ever? If I had to guess, I’d say maybe one in three active LDS are doing any regular study at home, and maybe one in six are doing it more or less once per week.
I had thought that with the release of the first two Saints volumes (the new four-volume officially sponsored and published history of the LDS Church) the focus this year would have been on the history. I thought those volumes would be the focus of study and reading. Nope. Maybe next time. Here are the last four chapters in the new study manual:
- Nov. 29 – Dec. 5: D&C 137 and 138
- Dec. 6-12: Articles of Faith and Official Declarations 1 and 2
- Dec. 13-19: The Family: A Proclamation to the World
- Dec. 20-26: Christmas
It sure looks like the Articles of Faith, the two official declarations (the newish title now applied to the 1890 Manifesto and the 1978 announcement ending the priesthood and temple ban for those of African ancestry), and the Proclamation are becoming informally upgraded to scriptural status. Second discussion question: How do you feel about the Proclamation on the Family taking one more step toward canonization?
The final topic to throw out there is what books you might use or recommend for those who are reading the D&C along with the lessons but want a good reference book or a meatier discussion of the issues raised in varioius D&C sections. Here are a few of my recommendations:
- Revelations in Context, a bunch of topical essays put together by historians in the LDS History Dept. These are quite informative, offer great historical context to most of the sections, and can be used in teaching LDS Gospel Doctrine class without the visiting stake high council guy verbally wiping the dust off his feet in your direction in class.
- Steven C. Harper’s Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants: A Guided Tour through Modern Revelations (Deseret Book, 2008). Short and sweet chapters of three or four pages for each section of the D&C. A paperback version with a different cover was issued in 2020, but it doesn’t appear to be a revised version or second edition.
- Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling. So much of the D&C revolves around Joseph Smith that this JS bio doubles as historical context for the D&C. Bushman’s commentary on the contrast between revelations and translations, for example, and his doctrinal analysis and discussion of the meatiest sections of the D&C (76, 84, 88, and 93, as I recall) are excellent.
One book that’s missing is a good critical edition of the D&C, or at least a good study edition. For the New Testament, there was Thomas Wayment’s excellent The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-day Saints. For the Book of Mormon, there was the Maxwell Institute’s Study Edition, by Grant Hardy. I just can’t think of a similar book for the D&C short of digging into the Joseph Smith Papers Project. Here is the best place to access some of the JSPP material:
- Joseph Smith’s Revelations: A Doctrine and Covenants Study Companion. This is a really great resource.
So here is your third and final discussion question: Any other books you use or recommend for those stalwart students of the D&C who are going to read it, section by section, with this year’s Come Follow Me study program?
In closing, safe travels to all during this Christmas week. May we all survive until we get through the line for a vaccine shot or two. Sympathy and condolences to all those who have lost a friend or family member earlier in 2020. Sober and quiet Happy Holidays to all. May 2021 shine brighter on you and your family.
Wheat & Tares 
Dave, you certainly have an optimistic outlook for 2021. Once Biden takes the oath, the sun will burst through the clouds , then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars. If the vaccines are effective, which I certainly hope, just remember those wheels were set in motion by the Trump administration.
Here’s my prediction, at least one for now. Once Biden is in, the media will make a pathetic attempt at appearing “objective” by posing questions like “Is Joe Biden up to the task of being President?” You know, discussions they should have been having BEFORE the election. How do I know this? Past incidents.
Answers to you questions: My family is together just one evening per week, and that’s dinner/movie night. Our youngest attends seminary and the rest do private study. The proclamation on family is more spiritual than some sections of the D&C, so I’m okay with it. I have a commentary on the D&C but it’s through the RLDS; only half of it relevant now.
Put away the MAGA hat, MGG. Please.
My in-laws have us do a Zoom meeting each Sunday to discuss the Come, Follow Me curricula for the week. It works well enough, and gives our family study some direction and discussion. It usually goes better than Gospel Doctrine, at least.
One thing that was pointed out to me when I wrote a post about The Family: A Proclamation to the World taking another step to back-door canonization by its inclusion in a manual focused on our scriptures that I had overlooked was that the Christmas week’s reading is The Living Christ document, which begs the question of whether that is also being upgraded to pseudo-canonical status and potentially dilutes the step towards canonization for the Proclamation.
In any case, I wish they had spread out the Official Declarations out over a couple weeks rather than jamming all of the history and discussion surrounding those documents (as well as the Articles of Faith) into one week. It could have been easily arranged with the amount of material we’re working with this year. But, I suppose I’m also in the camp of wishing the year was focused on the history of the Church rather than the D&C alone. Given that the goal is to release Saints volumes every 18 months, all four should be out in early 2023, which would give more than enough time for a manual to be based around them in 2025, so that’s a possibility.
As far as books for accompanying study, I’ve been noticing that D&C seems to be lacking in resources, especially compared to all the other volumes of scriptures we have. Between the JSPP and the other resources you listed, the historical context of the sections is pretty well covered, but I’m not aware of a lot of material delving into other ways of looking at the texts. I wrote a post that asked for suggestions of books over at Times and Seasons and got almost no response beyond Ben Spackman sharing his Church history suggested reading list. I did recently picked up James Faulconer’s new book that was published by the Maxwell Institute, which explores theology and Joseph Smith’s Revelations. I haven’t read it quite yet, but it might be a relevant resource to explore (https://mi.byu.edu/faulconer-to/).
Was surprised to see the Joseph Smith’s Revelation available through the Gospel Library app. Hopefully, it will make preparing a lesson a tad easier.
Also, but if you need a chuckle in the face of all this COVID misery, check out Match.com’s commercial on Youtube matching Satan and an anthropomorphized 2020 (no product endorsement intended). Here’s to 2021!
tRump admin operation Warp Speed had nothing to do with the development of the vaccine. It was largely funded by Europe. However, the vaccine did receive a deployment guarantee mid-Summer. The tRump admin, however, turned down a Pfizer offer for more doses of the vaccine, either through incompetence, malice, or both.
William Hartley “My Fellow Servants: Essays on the History of the Priesthood” is a great supplementary resource when considering some of the interpretive history and implementation of D&C and priesthood. I love this book.
P and vajra2, relax. Trump is on his way out and the quicker you move on, the better off you will be.
Besides, Biden is going to do something that will make the vaccine look like small by comparison. Biden will cure cancer in the next 4 years. He said so during the primaries on more than one occasion. He didn’t say increase funding for cancer research or work harder. He said if elected he would CURE cancer. If you or a loved one is suffering from the scourge of cancer, your cure is on the horizon. Just hold on for no more than 4 years and all will be well, thanks to President Biden. As we all know he tragically lost a son to brain cancer so he wouldn’t cynically make such an outlandish promise, would he?
Forget Trump and praise Biden who will finally liberate us from cancer! He already took care of the Trump cancer and can move on to the more difficult cancers. The press will, of course, hold Biden to that promise and chronicle every step towards his cancer cure. More warp speed please. Merry Christmas indeed.
Sorry for the thread Jack. I’m just excited to finally be rid of cancer. Thank you President Biden.
Just finished Revelations in Context and found these interesting tidbits (color me cynical):
Oliver Cowdery used a divining rod/sprout which was later changed in D&C to “the gift of Aaron” – see pp. 17-19
JESSE GAUSE !!
Other revelations of “convenience” which don’t seem to hold up almost 200 years later as a foundation to God’s true church…
I don’t remember the last time I studied the D&C in church but agree it’s interesting that CFM is following that instead of church history. Because a lot of the D&C is actually super weird. I wonder if that’s why we don’t have a lot of commentaries. The last time I discussed section 132 in class I was in a really different faith stage and I am not sure I can keep my mouth shut about it this time around.
Anyway, to answer your questions:
1-I have generally done the CFM readings for the week as I like being on the same page with people at church, but I have found the manual to be, well, garbage. Sorry if anyone here wrote it. Rather than helping me contemplate and learn from scriptures on their own terms it just tries to shoehorn topics that in some cases have very little to do with the reading and in others actually to me seek contradicted by the reading (or only supported by a misreading). I’ll give the D&C one a try but suspect I won’t be able to stomach it.
2-if we are going to be studying the family proclamation then I hope we get to supplement with some of the great blog posts (I know there are some at rational faiths) and podcasts (such as RFM and Bill Reel) that give the true history of it. Every time a Mormon bears his testimony that the proclamation was inspired because it came before anyone knew that gay marriage was going to be an thing, an angel loses its wings. Setting aside the dubious historical origins, that document that enshrines the 1950’s heteronormative nuclear family as the new God we Mormons worship has caused so much pain and devastation and confusion to people who don’t fit the mold (like women who work outside the home and single-parent families and LGBTQ people). It’s theeeeeeeee worst.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
p, I sort of opened the door, so I can’t really complain if Mark Gibson Gibson walked through it. Pardon me.
Chad, thanks for chiming in. Yes, it sure seems like they could give one week to each Official Declaration and discuss those historical episodes separately. As for D&C resources, I forgot a good one: Hearken O Ye People: The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith’s Ohio Revelations (Greg Kofford Books, 2010). I’ve gotta read the whole thing this time around.
Chet, that’s the point. Revelations in Context has some real good historical detail in it, the kind you might not expect to find in an LDS publication.
Elisa, I’ll second your view of the manual. It seems like a real teaching opportunity, a chance to upgrade LDS scriptural knowledge and historical awareness, and instead they use every week to hit the four or five LDS institutional imperatives: pay your tithing, accept every calling, your leaders are wonderful and darn near flawless, get your butts in the pew on Sunday.
Seems like this would be the curriculum year to discuss those things that are true but in the past labeled as not very useful.
@Chet yes, but definitely not going to happen.
@Elisa, I’ll third the opinion that the shoehorning of scriptures into a few ideas that the Church emphasizes while ignoring a lot of the actual context or statements is my biggest frustration with the “Come, Follow Me” manuals (though I am grateful to have a wife that is willing to occasionally go down rabbit holes with me about how the sections in “Come, Follow Me” do so, which is probably part of what makes it bearable for me). And I will now forever think of Ziff’s post “D&C 132 for Kids” (https://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2020/08/03/dc-132-for-kids/) whenever I study and discuss that section at Church. It’s … well … yeah, like you said, there are some pretty weird things in the D&C.
P.S. I love your statement: “Every time a Mormon bears his testimony that the proclamation was inspired because it came before anyone knew that gay marriage was going to be an thing, an angel loses its wings.” I’ve always wondered how all these people missed out on the fact that the gay rights movement was around for decades before the 1990s and how they also missed that homosexuality is something that’s been around long enough to come up in ancient documents like Leviticus.
@Chad Nielsen I hadn’t seen that ZD post. Awesome. I think many people sorta skim over D&C 132 and also pretend / assume it’s about temple sealings generally. But if you read it on its own terms it’s not. And if you have some of the context (Emma asking for a second husband and being mad at Joseph’s other wives) it’s even worse. Everyone needs to read In Sacred Loneliness, Emma Hale Smith: Mormon Enigma, and Ghost of Eternal Polygamy this year in connection with section 132.
There’s also just a ton of other crazy stuff in the D&C. I was reading a section a few weeks ago that went into great detail about Adam’s descendants and how old they lived to be etc. and it dawned on me that that’s probably why the Church would never come out and say Adam wasn’t a real person. It’s not because we insist that the Bible is historical but because that would also call into question Joseph Smith’s revelations in the D&C.
This year could be an opportunity to embrace and wrestle with the idea that not everything in the D&C is inspired / scripture and then figure out how we can remain engaged in our faith anyway. I suspect, however, that it won’t be and that it will all be whitewashed justifications and misreadings and claims that it’s 100% scripture. I am not super interested in that.
I think of the proclamations like creeds: creeds may contain or refer to doctrine, but a creed isn’t doctrine.
Last time we covered D&C in Sunday school was pretty devastating to my ability to go to church. I think that year was the year I decided I won’t be able to hold a teaching calling. My belief has been changed for a long time, but I had figured I could teach but just stick to the things I believed. Well, that year in Sunday school I realized that the teaching manuals call on the teacher to avoid important topics, changing the whole meaning of D&C 132, and I decided I can’t do it.
Since then I have rarely attended Sunday school. I don’t have the stomach to listen to the teacher speak of the first vision without the multiple accounts, or read D&C 132 carefully skipping all the uncomfortable verses. I’m not willing to speak up about it, not convinced it would be appropriate anyway, but I’m uncomfortable sitting in silence.
Thanks for the reading suggestions. I’ll consider them.
Elisa, do you think it’s a coincidence that Section 132 is assigned for an even numbered week that Sunday School classes don’t meet? I certainly don’t. Getting knee deep into the messiness of Church History is absolutely not what this curriculum is intended to do and so we’ll continue to manufacture faith crises as people find out from outside sources the things we wish weren’t true about our history.
@Not a Cougar interesting … but we would still cover that in YW (where I am) or RS.
Whatever we do, I don’t think I can sit quietly while people talk about polygamy being from God. It wasn’t good for the people then and it’s not good now.
Elisa, if you go to the Gospel Library app under “Come, Follow Me”, and then click on “Relief Society and Elders Quorum,” the instructions indicate the curriculum for 2021 is conference talks from October 2020. Also, the YW/YM lesson for the week that Section 132 covers is about Eternal Marriage and doesn’t mention polygamy. Yes, we’re supposed to study Section 132 on our own during the second week of November, but it isn’t designed to be studied in a class setting per the approved curriculum. Yikes.
I should have added that I understand that your ward or stake might have another arrangement for scheduling, and if so, I applaud the decision.
@Not a Cougar we follow that schedule and you’re right that the YW/AP lesson is on eternal marriage and obviously no mention of polygamy. Not surprising but at least it isn’t suggesting that the instructor bear testimony of the truthfulness of polygamy …
I had forgotten that RS does conference talks instead of CFM.