John Taylor's 1886 Revelation Affirming Plural Marriage joined a claim of divine authority to a practical plan for continuing plural marriage after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came under growing pressure over the practice. Taylor gathered trusted followers, placed them under covenant to defend the principle, and authorized a small group to perform marriages and pass on that authority. The meeting's contested authenticity and its legacy made it a pivotal episode in the history of Mormon fundamentalism.

A revelation in a contested tradition

From its beginnings, Mormonism had presented revelation as a continuing source of religious truth. Joseph Smith encouraged members to seek personal guidance from God, but the possibility that different people might receive contradictory revelations threatened the prophet's control over church doctrine. In 1830, he restricted the receipt of church commandments and revelations to himself. Yet the appeal of direct revelation persisted, and competing claims to divine authority continued to produce schisms.

Taylor's own claim emerged during a period of secrecy. While staying at the home of John W. Woolley, he spent the night in his room; Woolley's son Lorin later recalled seeing light beneath the door and hearing three voices. In the morning, Taylor said he had spoken with Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ. The episode thus presented the revelation not simply as a new instruction, but as a continuation of authority associated with the church's founding prophet.

The covenant meeting

Taylor promptly assembled twelve trusted Saints, including John W. Woolley, Lorin C. Woolley, Samuel Bateman, and Daniel R. Bateman, to hear what he said God had revealed. He placed those present under covenant to defend celestial or plural marriage and to devote their lives, liberty, and property to its preservation. The promise made the principle a collective commitment, not merely a private belief.

Taylor warned that some would be ostracized or expelled from the Church for their faithfulness, and that some might lose their lives. He then selected five of those assembled, including Samuel Bateman and the Woolleys, and authorized them both to perform celestial marriages and to ordain others to do so. Their assigned task was to keep the practice going, so that children would continue to be born within plural marriage. The meeting lasted eight hours.

Authority beyond the meeting

The authorization created a means of carrying the practice forward through delegated religious authority. Its structure echoed the tension already present in Mormonism: a church could limit who was entitled to receive commandments, but claims of revelation could still be used to establish authority beyond the institution's control. The book later describes the School of the Prophets as requiring members to evaluate revelations presented to them, a different form of communal scrutiny from Taylor's covenant gathering.

The revelation also belongs to a longer conflict over the authority of religious principles and civil law. The book describes Mormon leaders defending plural marriage as a sacred practice while asserting that God's law took precedence over laws made by non-Mormons. Taylor's warning about ostracism and possible death gave the covenant a sense of anticipated cost; the authorization of five men, meanwhile, turned that warning into a plan for continuity.

Disputed legacy

The meeting's authenticity has been angrily disputed by leaders of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That dispute is central to the episode's significance: the same account that portrays Taylor as preserving a divine commandment became a contested source of authority for people who continued to defend plural marriage after the Church's official position changed.

The book identifies Taylor's revelation as a source from which the modern fundamentalist movement emerged, and connects its legacy to Dan Lafferty's conviction that the Church had gone astray by abandoning plural marriage. For him, the history of the principle supported a broader rejection of the modern Church's authority. The 1886 meeting therefore stands both as an attempted safeguard for a religious practice and as an example of how rival claims to revelation could sustain new movements beyond an established church.