Open Canon

An 1831 revelation recorded by Joseph Smith established a unique framework for what Latter Day Saints could consider scripture. As published in the nascent church’s Doctrine and Covenants in 1835, Smith wrote that “whatsoever [those ordained to proclaim the gospel] shall speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost, shall be scripture; shall be the will of the Lord; shall be the mind of the Lord; shall be the word of the Lord; shall be the voice of the Lord, and the power of God unto salvation” (148). In Open Canon: Scriptures of the Latter Day Saint Tradition, editors Christine Elyse Blythe, Christopher James Blythe, and Jay Burton showcase just how fruitful the proliferation of scripture has been within the branches of Smith’s restoration movement. Bringing together case studies from a variety of Latter Day Saint denominations, they seek to frame each example within a singular scriptural tradition—one whose core identity demands belief in a perpetually open canon.

Although Open Canon is an anthology divided into three parts comprising sixteen essays, as a comparative project, it envisions a sum greater than its parts. It intends to reveal something, not only about each splinter production discussed, but about the very nature of scripture and religion itself. Readers are reminded from the onset that “what makes a text ‘scripture’ is not based on its content but on its presentation and/or reception. ‘Scripture’ only exists where someone has categorized it as such” (6). Indeed, there exists an “authority of scriptural logic” that “shapes—and continues to influence—a religious community, sometimes even in the absence of charismatic leadership” (18). This understanding yields new insights into Mormon history, such as positioning the succession crisis of 1844 as not merely a problem of who would lead the church, but of “adjudicating among the scriptural stories, injunctions, and myriad revelations” that had and would be recorded (31). The task of sifting “speculative musings” from “prophetic utterance” would give shape to a very broad spectrum of Mormon and Mormon-adjacent groups that continue to debate the scope of an open canon to this day (33).

More broadly still, Open Canon places the scriptures of the Latter Day Saint tradition in conversation with patterns of community formation and rupturing scattered throughout American religious history. By homing in on the process of creating and canonizing scripture, Open Canon highlights scripture’s role in delineating insiders and outsiders, in validating (or invalidating) claims to authority, and in creating “tensions between human and textual moorings that have produced schisms among Christians in many eras” (37). By contextualizing Mormonism’s leveraging of sacred text—from Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon in New York’s antebellum spiritual hothouse to Matthew Philip Gil’s Book of Jeranek in the 21^st century British Isles—Open Canon taps into a “longer history of struggles over scriptural practice” that “allows us to recognize that religious divisions are not entirely the product of personalities . . . They are also connected to the power we bestow on texts and our reading of those texts” (32).

Open Canon begins with a series of introductory essays and then transitions into an examination of the reception history of Joseph Smith’s own revelations. The book concludes with case studies in new Latter Day Saint scripture from the 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st centuries. Through it all, readers are provided a crash course in early and more contemporary Mormon history that looks “carefully at how works of scripture common to different branches have nonetheless operated as functionally different texts” (66). As might be expected in covering a movement that encompasses hundreds of institutions, Open Canon is in some ways like the proverbial river, a mile wide but only an inch deep. If, as Kathleen Flake argues in her contribution to the book, “prophets may write scripture” but “only believing communities can construct canon” (120), this metaphorical river is wanting in that it mostly soaks the seers and systems that have brought forth scripture while only sprinkling the societies of Latter Day Saints who have consistently grappled with it on the ground. The distinct chapters do not always flow smoothly into each other and may have benefited from a formal conclusion connecting key characters and takeaways more readily. 

Overall, however, Open Canon is a fascinating primer that delivers on its promise to provide a “comparative terrain, which does not neglect any of the three centuries in which Mormonism has flourished” and in which “we can, in short, better understand how an essential dimension of religion functions” (xxviii). Some aspects of the Latter Day Saint scriptural tradition introduced in Open Canon beg further plumbing. These include the material power of scripture as a relic and as a tangible symbol of authority (see Christopher C. Smith’s chapter “The Hidden Records of Central Utah and the Struggle for Religious Authority”) and the role of women in producing, accepting, and using the canon (see Janiece Johnsons’ chapter “Lucy Mack Smith and Her Sacred Text,” and Jay Burton’s chapter “Scriptures for the Children of Zion: The Revelations of Sydney and Phebe Rigdon”). Through its assortment of minable insights, Open Canon makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of scripture within the Latter Day Saint tradition. It also provides a unique vantage point for understanding that tradition on the whole.

William Perez is a PhD student in American religious history at Florida State University.

William Perez

Date Of Review:

October 11, 2023