“All Things Shall Be Done by Common Consent in the Church”
Doctrine and Covenants 26:2
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.
Elder Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjödahl wrote:
“There are two forms of government. The one-man form does not recognize the right of the governed to a voice in the government. This is called autocracy, and is frequently referred to as ‘paternalism.’ Government by the ‘people’ means the rule of the majority, no matter by what means or methods that majority has been obtained. This is democracy. All human forms of government belong to one of these; they are either autocracies or democracies, or modifications of them. Both have merits, and also defects. In autocracies there is a tendency to disregard individual rights for the benefit of the few; in democracies the danger is that the worst element may obtain preponderance, because citizens of that class will employ means to gain their ends, which citizens with a big moral standard would never adopt. Democracies with party rule sometimes are exposed to all the evils of mob rule.
“In the Church of Christ where the government is that of the Kingdom of Heaven, neither autocracy nor democracy obtains, but government by common consent. That is to say, the initiative in all that pertains to the government of the Church rests with the Head of the Church, even our Lord Jesus Christ, and He exercises this sovereign function through His authorized servants, upon whom He has bestowed the Holy Priesthood: but it is the privilege of the people to accept, or reject, His laws and ordinances, for God has given every individual free agency. Obedience must be voluntary. The government of the Church has been called a theo-democracy. It is the form of government that will be general during the Millennium.”
(The Doctrine and Covenants Commentary, rev. ed. [1951], 131–32.)
Randal S. Chase spent his childhood years in Nephi, Utah, where his father was a dry land wheat farmer and a businessman. In 1959 their family moved to Salt Lake City and settled in the Holladay area. He served a full-time mission in the Central British (England Central) Mission from 1968 to 1970. He returned home and married Deborah Johnsen in 1971. They are the parents of six children—two daughters and four sons—and an ever-expanding number of grandchildren.
He was called to serve as a bishop at the age of 27 in the Sandy Crescent South Stake area of the Salt Lake Valley. He served six years in that capacity, and has since served as a high councilor, a stake executive secretary and clerk, and in many other stake and ward callings. Regardless of whatever other callings he has received over the years, one was nearly constant: He has taught Gospel Doctrine classes in every ward he has ever lived in as an adult—a total of 35 years.
Dr. Chase was a well-known media personality on Salt Lake City radio stations in the 1970s. He left on-air broadcasting in 1978 to develop and market a computer-based management, sales, and music programming system to radio and television stations in the United States, Canada, South America, and Australia. After the business was sold in 1984, he supported his family as a media and business consultant in the Salt Lake City area.
Having a great desire to teach young people of college age, he determined in the late 1980s to pursue his doctorate, and received his Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Utah in 1997. He has taught communication courses at that institution as well as at Salt Lake Community College and Dixie State University for 21 years. He served as Communication Department chair and is currently a full-time professor at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah.
Concurrently with his academic career, Brother Chase has served as a volunteer LDS Institute and Adult Education instructor in the CES system since 1994, both in Salt Lake City and St. George, where he currently teaches a weekly Adult Education class for three stakes in the Washington area. He has also conducted multiple Church History tours and seminars. During these years of gospel teaching, he has developed an extensive library of lesson plans and handouts which are the predecessors to these study guides.
Dr. Chase previously published a thirteen-volume series of study guides on the Book of Mormon, Church History, the Old Testament, and the New Testament. The series, titled Making Precious Things Plain, along with four smaller study guides on Isaiah, Jeremiah, the story of the Nativity, and the final week of our Lord’s atoning sacrifice, are designed to assist teachers and students of the gospel, as well as those who simply want to study on their own. Several of these books are also available in the Spanish language.
