Two Canons
The LDS Church and Community of Christ both identify the Doctrine and Covenants as open scripture, a canon that grows as living prophets receive new revelation. Both churches also remove, reclassify, and redesignate sections already canonized. What is added, when, by whom, and what is quietly taken away: this is the editorial record of two churches working from the same founding text and arriving, section by section, at two different books.
The two chronologies below run in parallel from a shared 1835 origin. Where they touch the same section number for different reasons, that point is marked as a hinge. A second, shorter section beyond the main chronology extends the comparison to the LDS Church's other standard work, the Pearl of Great Price, where the divergence is starker still.
An open canon is not a passive container that only grows. Every edition is also a record of what a given leadership, at a given moment, decided no longer belonged.
Parallel chronology
Section 101 removed, Section 132 canonized (LDS)
The LDS Church replaces the original Section 101, which affirmed monogamy outright, with the revelation on plural marriage, canonized October 10, 1880 through a sustaining vote and numbered Section 132. Twenty-six new sections are added in total. Community of Christ's parallel editions never adopt this section.
A second axis: the Book of Abraham
Section 132 documents one church retaining and one church never adopting the same Doctrine and Covenants text. A parallel, and in one respect starker, divergence runs through the LDS Church's other standard work, the Pearl of Great Price, and specifically its Book of Abraham. Where Section 132 was at least briefly shared canon before the churches diverged, the Book of Abraham was never Community of Christ scripture at any point in either church's history.
Origin and first publication
Smith begins working from Egyptian papyri purchased from a traveling antiquities exhibition in 1835, describing the resulting text as his translation of the writings of Abraham. The Book of Abraham is first published serially in the LDS periodical Times and Seasons in 1842.
Canonized as LDS scripture
The Pearl of Great Price, containing the Book of Abraham, is accepted as scripture by common consent in the same general conference that canonizes the D&C edition containing Section 132, the meeting at which John Taylor is also sustained as church president. Two separate standard works enter LDS canon at the same conference, by the same procedural vote.
Never adopted by the RLDS Church or Community of Christ
The Pearl of Great Price as a bound standard work has never been part of RLDS or Community of Christ canon. Community of Christ's own published position goes further than simple non-adoption: it holds that the Book of Abraham's content conflicts with the Bible and the Book of Mormon, a stated doctrinal objection rather than a procedural gap.
One book, one shared root, two different relationships to it
The Book of Abraham remains one of the LDS Church's four standard works today. It has no counterpart, partial or otherwise, in Community of Christ scripture. Unlike Section 132, which both churches at least handled as text before the LDS Church retained it and Community of Christ declined it, the Book of Abraham was never part of the shared textual inheritance the two churches otherwise divided between them.
A precise distinction matters here. Not all Pearl of Great Price material is equally foreign to the Community of Christ textual tradition: its Book of Moses section draws on Joseph Smith's inspired revision of Genesis, and the RLDS Church published its own edition of that same underlying Bible revision project in 1867, material Community of Christ still uses today as its Inspired Version. The Book of Abraham carries no equivalent shared lineage. It is not a shared text later divided by canonization choices, the way Section 132 was. It is LDS-only scripture from origin to present, with no RLDS or Community of Christ edition, translation, or textual ancestor at any point in either church's documented history.
Case study: Section 132, five operations on one text
No other section number in either church's canon has been kept, replaced, hidden, retained, and simply absent, each at a different moment, each an independent editorial decision made by whoever held the authority to make it at the time. Traced end to end, Section 132 is the clearest single demonstration that an open canon is not simply added to. It is actively curated, section by section, by each era's leadership.
Monogamy is canon
The original Section 101 states plainly that "one man should have one wife," explicitly addressing accusations of polygamy against the church.
Substitution, not addition
Section 101 is removed outright, not retained alongside new material, but replaced, by the revelation on plural marriage, which takes the vacated number 132.
Formal canonization
The new edition containing Section 132 is accepted by a sustaining vote of the membership in general conference, the same procedural mechanism used to canonize any other scripture.
Retained in name, hidden in practice
The Talmage abridgment keeps Section 132's number and doctrinal standing intact while cutting its full text from the widely circulated condensed edition. The text remains canon, but stops being commonly read.
Practice ends, text remains
The Manifesto ends new plural marriages. Section 132 is not removed from canon in response. The church distinguishes between renouncing a practice and renouncing the scripture that had commanded it.
Same section, opposite canons
Section 132 remains binding LDS scripture today. It has never appeared in any Community of Christ edition. The identical revelation is simultaneously eternal and non-existent, depending entirely on which institution's editorial history a reader is standing inside.
Reading the two canons together
Every editorial operation cataloged above was justified, at the time, as a return to what the record had truly always meant, never as an admission that the prior edition had been wrong to include or exclude what it did. The Lectures on Faith were removed as never having really been revelation. The RLDS temple-rite sections were redesignated as never having been properly approved. Section 101's replacement was framed as revelation superseding revelation, not error being corrected.
That consistent framing is itself the finding. An open canon lets each generation's leadership revise the received text while describing the revision as continuity rather than change, a mechanism that makes editorial power nearly invisible in the moment it is exercised, and visible only in retrospect, when two churches that started from the same 1835 book are found holding two different ones.
Sources
- Church News, "Doctrine and Covenants: History and evolution," July 11, 2021.
- Church History Department, "Ask Us: Top Five Reference Questions about Doctrine and Covenants Publishing," history.churchofjesuschrist.org.
- "Doctrine and Covenants," Wikipedia, on section numbering across the 1835, 1844, and 1876 editions.
- "Doctrine and Covenants," Academic Kids encyclopedia, on the 1876 replacement of original Section 101 with Section 132.
- FAIR, "Lectures on Faith," on the 1921 LDS removal and its stated rationale.
- "Omission of Section 132 from the D&C," Lehi's Library, citing Robert Woodford, "The Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants," on the Talmage abridgment.
- "Comparison of the Community of Christ and the LDS Church," Wikipedia, on the 1970 redesignation of sections 107, 109, and 110, and on Wallace B. Smith and Section 156.
- Mormonism Research Ministry, "Splinter Group: The Community of Christ," on Community of Christ's exclusion of Section 132 and 1970 removal of baptism-for-the-dead sections.
- Community of Christ, "History" (cofchrist.org), on the church's open-canon doctrine and successive prophet-presidents.
- Simple Wikipedia, "Community of Christ," on Stassi D. Cramm's June 1, 2025 ordination as ninth prophet-president.
- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham," Gospel Topics Essay, churchofjesuschrist.org, on the 1835 papyri, 1842 Times and Seasons publication, and 1880 canonization.
- "Pearl of Great Price (Mormonism)," Wikipedia, on the 1880 canonization and on Community of Christ's continued publication of related Book of Moses/JST material through its own Doctrine and Covenants and Inspired Version.
- BYU Studies Quarterly, review of The Pearl of Great Price: A Study Edition for Latter-day Saints, on the October 10, 1880 canonization occurring in the same conference as John Taylor's sustaining as church president.
- Mormonism Research Ministry, "Mormonism and the Community of Christ: Similarities and Differences," on Community of Christ's non-recognition of the Pearl of Great Price and its stated doctrinal objection to the Book of Abraham.
- Pearl of Great Price Central, "Introduction," on the RLDS Church's 1867 publication of Joseph Smith's Inspired Version and its relationship to the Book of Moses material.