GOSPEL WIKI

Gospel Wiki› Doctrine and Covenants› common consent

Common Consent

A short rule, stated twice in almost the same words, that runs underneath the whole church-order material: things are not merely announced to the church — they are put to it.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it. This page follows one phrase and the practices attached to it. Dates, places, and occasions are not in this wiki’s source text and are not stated.

Account

The rule

“And all things shall be done by common consent in the church, by much prayer and faith, for all things you shall receive by faith. Amen.” (D&C 26:2). The same rule is stated again in a different revelation with order added to it: “For all things must be done in order, and by common consent in the church, by the prayer of faith” (D&C 28:13).

The phrase “common consent” stands at five distinct frozen verses in the corpus, and all five are in the Doctrine and Covenants: the two above and D&C 104:71, 104:72, and 104:85, where the setting is a treasury rather than church government. No verse in the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, the Old Testament, or the New Testament carries the phrase.

The rule is not left abstract; several revelations name the decisions that require it.

Ordination to office: “No person is to be ordained to any office in this church, where there is a regularly organized branch of the same, without the vote of that church” (D&C 20:65), with a stated exception for places where no branch exists — the presiding elders, traveling bishops, high councilors, high priests and elders “may have the privilege of ordaining, where there is no branch of the church that a vote may be called” (D&C 20:66). Licences work the same way: “The elders are to receive their licenses from other elders, by vote of the church to which they belong, or from the conferences” (D&C 20:63).

Appointment to a specific office: a bishop is called in the revelation and then put to the church — “I give a commandment, that he should be appointed by the voice of the church, and ordained a bishop unto the church” (D&C 41:9). Presiding at a conference likewise: “my servant Joseph shall be appointed to preside over the conference by the voice of it” (D&C 28:10).

The minutes of the high council show the same two-step in operation: presidents “were acknowledged presidents by the voice of the council” and twelve high priests “were chosen to be a standing council for the church, by the unanimous voice of the council” (D&C 102:3); the president of the church “is appointed by revelation, and acknowledged in his administration by the voice of the church” (D&C 102:9). That last verse states both halves in one line — appointment by revelation, acknowledgement by voice — and is the clearest statement in this material of how the two are meant to fit together.

The rule also carries a limit, stated in the same breath as the consent requirement: “For, behold, these things have not been appointed unto him, neither shall anything be appointed unto any of this church contrary to the church covenants” (D&C 28:12). Consent operates within the covenants; it is not described as a power to alter them.

⚖️ Interpretation — weigh this. () A reader who knows the Book of Mormon will hear an echo of the Nephite reform in this rule, and the two do resemble each other: both make a body’s assent the ordinary way business is settled. The evidence: - D&C 26:2: “And all things shall be done by common consent in the church, by much prayer and faith, for all things you shall receive by faith. Amen.” - Mosiah 29:26: “Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people.”

The wording is not shared: the revelation says “common consent”, the Nephite law says “the voice of the people”, and the phrase “common consent” appears nowhere in the Book of Mormon (see the distribution above). The bodies differ too — a church in one case, a nation in the other — and the Nephite text supplies a justification about majorities and right that the revelation does not. What is textual is the parallel of mechanism; the claim that either stands behind the other is interpretive and is offered for the reader to weigh, not asserted. The phrase “the voice of the people” stands at twenty-four distinct frozen verses in the corpus, of which one is in the Doctrine and Covenants (D&C 134:3) and one in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 8:7); the rest are Book of Mormon verses, concentrated in the reign of the judges.

Significance

Two things sit together in this material without being reconciled by it. Officers are said to be appointed by revelation, and they are also said to be put to a vote — sometimes in the same verse (D&C 102:9), sometimes in the same sentence of commandment (D&C 41:9). The texts state both and do not explain the relation between them; neither does this page.

The distribution is itself worth noticing: a phrase that reads like an old constitutional formula appears only in the modern revelations, five times, and never in the ancient records the same corpus contains. That is a fact about vocabulary, not about ideas — the idea of a body’s assent is plainly present in the Book of Mormon under a different name — and the difference between the two claims is exactly the discipline this page tries to keep.

Key references

  • D&C 20:63–66 — licences and ordinations by vote, with the stated exception
  • D&C 26:2 — the rule, in its shortest form
  • D&C 28:10–13 — presiding by the voice of the conference; the covenant limit; order and consent together
  • D&C 41:9 — a bishop commanded to be appointed “by the voice of the church”
  • D&C 102:3, 102:9 — consent recorded in practice; appointment by revelation, acknowledgement by voice

Offices of the Church · The Councils of the Church · The Voice of the People · The Order of the Church · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants sections 20, 26, 28, 41, and 102 (verse text only; headnotes excluded), with D&C 104 and D&C 134 cited inside distribution disclosures. Cross-reference quoted from Mosiah 29; 1 Samuel 8 is cited, not quoted.

Every quote is verbatim from the frozen source text, cited to its exact reference and checked character-for-character; no quote crosses a verse boundary. One connection record is registered on this page, [interpretive] and asserted_by: wiki; it is rendered as a question to weigh and is not stated as settled. Phrase distributions are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by search at the time of writing.