A guest post by Chad Nielsen, introducing his new book, Fragments of Revelation: Exploring the Book of Doctrine and Covenants.
By Common Consent Press recently published my new book, Fragments of Revelation: Exploring the Book of Doctrine and Covenants. As the title implies, it is a collection of essays reflecting on the text of the Doctrine and Covenants. The collection includes theological musings on interpretations, examinations of the ideas portrayed in the documents and how those ideas have evolved in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since the time the revelations were recorded, stories from Church history that relate to the revelations and the things they taught, and wrestling with concerns and anxieties about the texts and history. It had its origins in the last time the Church’s annual “Come, Follow Me” curriculum was focused on the Doctrine and Covenants.
Back in 2021, I spent most of the year on the Times and Seasons blog writing essays that reflected on the Doctrine and Covenants. Each week I would study the relevant sections in the scriptures, then go to the book, Joseph Smith’s Revelations: A Doctrine and Covenants Study Companion from the Joseph Smith Papers to study more about the context and textual history of the documents that were being discussed. After that, I would write a blog post on some idea or topic that caught my attention or connected to an area of interest for me. I quickly found that those essays served as a forum for expressing and consolidating years of reading, writing, and thinking about the history and doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was an exciting project that helped me to engage with the Sunday School curriculum and the scriptures. Beyond that, I hoped to help other members of the Church to more deeply immerse themselves in the scriptures, theology, and history of the Church through synthesizing scholarship in what I hoped would be an engaging approach.
In the process of working on this project, I found that while there is a solid body of research on the Doctrine and Covenants, the available literature was nowhere as extensive as the Book of Mormon (let alone the Bible). Thus, the essays also served as a contribution towards expanding that body of literature, made available online for free in a format that would allow for some automated translation into other languages. Even after 2021, however, I continued to tinker with the essays, to read more, and to write more based on the ideas I was encountering or putting together.
The project was partially inspired by the book, Buried Treasures: Reading the Book of Mormon Again for the First Time by Michael Austin. The origin of Buried Treasures was also a series of blog posts—created as Austin engaged with the Book of Mormon—that were later published through By Common Consent Press in book format. Thus, even as I started my work in writing the 2021 essays, I had the idea in the back of my mind that I would like to eventually publish them as a book. During 2022 and 2023, I compiled many of the essays together into a single document and worked to refine and update them, incorporating a few other pieces I had written in different contexts that fit well with the rest while doing so. Once I was happy with it, I reached out to By Common Consent Press to see if they would be interested in publishing it.
I waited with bated breath as they reviewed what I had submitted. Gratefully, they were interested and excited about the idea, though we weren’t sure if we could get it out in time to release before the 2025 cycle of “Come Follow Me” started. I would have been happy to wait and let it be published in 2028, before the 2029 cycle, but a small army of university students at Utah Valley University stepped forward and worked to complete the editing process. These volunteers, led by Lori Forsyth and Jennifer Duque, devoted a considerable amount of time and energy towards making this publication possible: Anna Taylor, Riley Bess, Braxtyn Birrell, Jasmine Wakley, Gabrielle Bond, Victoria Black, and Allison Secrist. In particular, Anna Taylor spent an extra measure of time and effort to wrangle a beast of a bibliography. Thanks to their effort, as well as others from the staff of By Common Consent Press, the book is ready to go. I’m proud of the results and hope that they will be appreciated and enjoyed!
Chad Nielsen’s three great intellectual passions in life are science, history and religious studies, and music. He has pursued a career in biotechnology, but maintains an active interest in both of his other passions. Chad is a four-time winning contestant in the Arrington Writing Award competition held at Utah State University and has presented at the Society of Mormon Philosophy and Theology. He is a practicing Latter-day Saint who currently serves as a member of the Bells at Temple Square and writes for the Latter-day Saint blogs Times and Seasons and From the Desk.