the new and everlasting covenant

The new and everlasting covenant is the name Joseph Smith gave to plural marriage in a revelation later canonized as Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. The phrase makes marriage more than a private or civil bond: it places the practice within a divinely commanded covenant, promises spiritual consequence for obedience, and supplies religious leaders with a language of authority. Across the book, that language travels from Joseph Smith’s secret teaching in Nauvoo into later disputes over church legitimacy, family control, and the reach of state law.

Meaning and Scriptural Status

In the revelation, plural marriage is presented as a sacred requirement rather than an optional custom. The text makes obedience binding on those to whom the law has been revealed and warns of damnation for rejecting the covenant. Joseph Smith taught that plural marriage belonged among the most important doctrines revealed to humanity and connected it to the fullness of exaltation in the afterlife. The covenant’s force therefore rests on a promised spiritual outcome and a threat of spiritual loss: a marital arrangement is framed as a test of fidelity to God.

The doctrine became part of a central scripture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That canonical status gave it significance beyond the private relationships through which it was practiced. The book describes the revelation as reverberating through American society long after it was written, in part because its claim of divine authority collided with both public opinion and civil law. The phrase thus names a religious commitment and marks a continuing struggle over who may define marriage and whose law governs it.

Nauvoo: Secrecy, Disclosure, and Canonization

Joseph Smith had considered plural marriage for years but hesitated to introduce it openly, fearing that the Saints would recoil. In Nauvoo, he used The Peace Maker, a pamphlet printed by the church press in 1842, as a possible way to test the public response. John D. Lee later described Joseph Smith as having arranged for a man to assemble biblical passages on plural or celestial marriage and advocate the doctrine. The pamphlet provoked an uproar. Joseph Smith publicly disavowed knowledge of its publication, although the account presents him as having endorsed the project behind the scenes. Its failure to prepare members for the doctrine exposed the gap between public denial and private practice.

On July 12, 1843, Joseph Smith formally recorded the revelation that became Section 132. Unlike other theological developments of the Nauvoo period, this revelation remained secret and was not acknowledged until 1852, eight years after his death. The delay is central to the expression’s history: a doctrine eventually made scriptural had first circulated within a restricted circle, while Joseph Smith publicly denied plural marriage. Some members of his inner circle knew of the practice or had seen the revelation, but disclosure did not mean agreement.

The revelation also addressed Emma Smith directly. She opposed her husband’s plural marriages and challenged him over them. Hyrum Smith urged Joseph Smith to write down the revelation, believing that its explanation could persuade Emma to accept the doctrine and bring peace to the household. The resulting text repeatedly named her. In the narrative, this origin complicates the covenant’s presentation as a general theological principle: its formal statement also answered a particular marital conflict and sought to direct the conduct of the wife being asked to accept it.

Religious Authority and Family Order

After Joseph Smith’s death, Brigham Young led the Saints west and continued to uphold plural marriage. The book describes the practice as central to the religious order established in the Great Basin, even as it became a target of national opposition. The 1857 Utah War did not remove Brigham Young from power or end the doctrine. Later legislative and judicial pressure culminated in the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, which disincorporated the church and transferred substantial church property to federal control. In 1890, church leaders publicly renounced the practice, while Mormon colonies were established in Mexico and Canada and some high-ranking authorities continued plural marriages in secret into the twentieth century.

In later fundamentalist communities, the covenant’s claim to divine authority is shown operating through family structure and priesthood rule. Rulon Jeffs taught total submission and presided over a community in which religious marriages could be arranged by leaders. He had an estimated seventy-five wives and at least sixty-five children; several wives were married to him at fourteen or fifteen, when he was in his eighties. Under the community’s rules, men generally had a legal marriage only to their first wife, while additional wives were considered spiritually married. The state therefore treated those women as single mothers, a status that also enabled large families to qualify for public assistance.

The book’s account of DeLoy Bateman makes the stakes of leaving this order explicit. After DeLoy decided to leave the Work, Rulon Jeffs sent someone to take his wives and children, whom UEP doctrine treated as belonging to the priesthood rather than to husbands or parents. Jeffs ordered that they be given to another man. Both wives refused to leave DeLoy, and all but the three oldest children became apostates along with him. The covenant’s religious vocabulary stands beside a system in which authority could claim power over spouses and children; their refusal showed that its commands did not always secure compliance.

Contested Uses and Lasting Tension

The expression also appears in the account of Elizabeth Smart’s abduction. Mitchell used the familiar religious language of the new and everlasting covenant in a self-styled ritual intended to bind the girl to him in marriage. The episode shows how a term with scriptural standing could be appropriated outside the authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and deployed by a self-appointed religious interpreter. Its appearance there is not evidence that the church authorized the act; rather, it demonstrates the danger of treating familiar religious language as self-validating when detached from accountable authority.

The phrase’s history is consequently marked by a persistent conflict between spiritual promise and earthly power. It could signify exaltation and covenantal obedience, but it also helped justify leaders’ claims over marriage and family life. Its canonical status did not end disagreement: opponents within Joseph Smith’s circle resisted it, national authorities sought to suppress the practice, and later communities continued to organize lives around it. The covenant endured not as a settled definition of marriage but as a disputed claim about revelation, obedience, and who possesses the authority to make a religious command binding.