Several nifty reading charts are out there for keeping track of your progress as you read the standard works (for example, they used to hand one out with the seminary Scripture Mastery cards or include a chart in the manual; other charts form a picture or text). This one, however, is different because it also depicts the larger narrative outline of the Doctrine and Covenants, to help you get the big picture (this is particularly helpful because the D&C is the only standard work that lacks a storyline, making it extra challenging to understand the context of the revelations). For example, the first 40 sections happen in New York (and nearby Pennsylvania), and these New York revelations have been further subdivided into four “Units” that are kind of like chapters in a novel, based on when there are major thematic turns in the storyline. A few longer units are subdivided even further.

I’ve created multiple versions of this chart. First is the basic version, and since the D&C is relatively short, I was able to fit the chart on a half-page. Second is a chronological version, which I fit on the other half of the page (more on the chronology below).

Third, I expanded the chronological version to include all the chapters in Saints, the Church’s 4-volume history, so if you’re feeling ambitious you can read them in tandem. (The Church’s D&C Index to Saints sort of attempts to do something similar, but doesn’t really help a person read in order.)

All three of these versions are combined into the two-page PDF that you can download above.

I also made a few kids’ versions. They take the half-page chronological version from above, and on the other half of the page add some fun images of pioneer-looking characters (thank you, stock photos from online costume stores!). Every kid likes to imagine themselves in the shoes of a supporting character, right? All three pages are combined into one PDF that you can download below. 

Explanations

Early Church History (during the presidencies of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young) divides pretty neatly into five periods, each corresponding to a geographical region.

• 1820–1830. New York (and Pennsylvania)
• 1831–1837.  Ohio
• 1838–1839. Missouri
• 1839–1845. Illinois
• 1846–now. The West (and later the World)

These divisions are used in my reading chart above. Note that I also used this same five-color scheme in all my Study Aids for the Doctrine and Covenants to show the same broad divisions. These D&C study aids include my Come Follow Me Reading Schedule, my Section Titles and Divisions in a Chronological Reading Checklist [forthcoming], my Geographical Timeline of Early Church History, and my biggest ongoing project: the StoryGuide Scriptures. I highly recommend looking through all these study aids and using them to orient yourself when reading the Doctrine and Covenants, and sharing them with others. In particular, of all the study aids I’ve created and placed on this website, I think those last two—the timeline and the StoryGuide edition of the D&C—are perhaps the most significant and useful.

So the first level on the chart is labeled “Parts,” and there are five. Then the next level of division I’ve called “Units.” As you can see, I ended up finding it made the most sense to divide it up into fourteen units (fifteen if you also count part 5 as a unit). These unit divisions are based on the most prominent shifts in the narrative that I could find, and break the sections into manageable chunks. Eventually I want to make video explaining all these unit divisions, because in the process of making them, you become more familiar with the story of the Restoration and are better able to remember key events.

I further subdivided a few of the longer units, to make each chunk of sections more manageable—again looking for intuitive seams in the storyline and trying to base them on things mentioned in the scripture text itself.

To the right of the part and unit names, I’ve also included a few dates for reference, just to see at a glance the flow of time. You may notice that about half the D&C clusters into just a three-year period. See my D&C section histogram for a visualization of this, as well as one spiritual insight we can learn from it.

I’ve also inserted checkboxes for Joseph Smith—History and the Articles of Faith, so you can see when those occurred.

Chronological Reading Chart

All but the first basic version of this chart place the D&C sections in chronological order. Most of the D&C is in chronological order, but because of lapses in record keeping (especially early on, as the Saints were only just beginning to understand the importance of record keeping), destruction and loss of records (primarily because of persecution), and some complexities in the publication and canonization history (especially from D&C 133 and on), some of the sections are numbered out of chronological order. In some cases, we may never know the exact dates some revelations were received, though it would be very helpful in understanding it (e.g., D&C 10). In most cases, it doesn’t significantly affect the intelligibility of the revelation, but in other cases it can be very disorienting when adjacent sections are from very different time periods and historical contexts (for example, section 137). And in general, reading the D&C in the sequence it happened can only improve understanding, so I made the chronological versions of this chart.

Although I wanted to keep the chart as simple as possible, I ultimately decided to distinguish between major and minor chronological “detours” or digressions. I found that all the chronological variations were either more than a year or less than three months, so I distinguished between them with yellow shading on the entire box or just in the corners. This way a reader who doesn’t want to get into the nitty gritty details can still get familiar with the eight major chronological detours: sections 74, 1, 133, 107 (roughly the first half), 99, 134, 137, and OD-1. I recommend lifting them out of canonical order and reading them back in chronological order because they simply make more sense within the storyline. Technically there are about a half-dozen other sections that are also numbered out of chronological order (for example, D&C 94 reads slightly differently when read in order, after D&C 97). But since they differ by less than three months, they aren’t wildly disorienting when read in simple canonical order. 

All these dates are based on my custom-designed StoryGuide Scriptures, which has icons in the margins that make it easy to read the scriptures in chronological order. My StoryGuide volume of the Doctrine and Covenants also includes a continuous storyline that runs between each section, providing context and historical outcomes for each section. Dates in the StoryGuide are based on the Church’s 2013 edition of the D&C and on its Joseph Smith Papers project. For a helpful discussion and examples of how better dates can alter the reading of a passage, see Woodford, “Discoveries.”

In the third version, “in Chronological Order with Saints,” in places where there was overlapping content, I generally put the Joseph Smith—History passage first, then the corresponding Saints chapter, then the corresponding scripture section(s). I really wish the designers of Saints had simply inserted margin icons for every section of the D&C, since I’m sure many readers want to try reading them together. Oh well. I’m currently annotating my PDF to include such margin icons; maybe I’ll share it if there’s enough interest expressed in the contents. Also let me know if you think the Saints chart should have an image of some kind to fill all that empty white space. 

Conclusion

I did not do a chart for the Seminary selected scripture passages because the new Seminary required reading list this year is now only 10 chapters long. 

If you liked this chart, I recommend looking at the other Study Aids for the Doctrine and Covenants I’ve made. 

I hoped this explanation has helped you know how to best use this chart for yourself and your family. If you have any questions or suggestions for improvement, I’m all ears; please comment below.

And since it’s always nice to see a chart as a clean shareable graphic, here’s a Pinterest-friendly version: