John Taylor's 1886 Revelation on Plural Marriage

John Taylor's 1886 Revelation on Plural Marriage became a foundational text for Mormon Fundamentalists because it presented plural marriage not as a practice that could be permanently ended by church policy, but as a divine commandment that remained binding unless God revoked it. Its reported message, the covenant made by those who heard it, and the authority Taylor is said to have delegated helped sustain a religious movement outside the mainstream Church and gave its adherents a rival account of legitimate prophetic succession.

Background: Revelation and Authority

The revelation drew force from an unresolved tension in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: its founding emphasis on direct communication with God, and the institutional effort to reserve the authority to define church doctrine to its president. The Church’s supreme leader bore the title President, Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, reflecting the central place of continuing revelation in the faith. Joseph Smith had encouraged members to seek personal impressions from God, but the possibility of competing revelations threatened the prophet’s control over doctrine. In 1830, the same year the Church was incorporated, Joseph Smith announced a revelation restricting the receipt of church commandments and revelations to himself. The appetite for personal revelation nevertheless persisted, and disagreements over who could speak for God repeatedly contributed to new sects.

Plural marriage became a particularly consequential test of that authority. Mormon Fundamentalists argued that the 1890 Manifesto had not revoked Section 132 of The Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith’s revelation on plural marriage, but had suspended the practice under temporary pressure. They also looked to a revelation attributed to Taylor, who was hiding from federal officers seeking people charged with unlawful cohabitation. In the account embraced by fundamentalists, Taylor asked God whether the earlier commandment should be abandoned and received an unequivocal answer: the law had not been revoked, remained everlasting, and had to be obeyed by those seeking divine glory.

The Reported Revelation and Meeting

The account places the revelation on September 26, 1886, while Taylor was staying at the home of John W. Woolley. Woolley’s son Lorin later recalled seeing light beneath the door of Taylor’s room and hearing three distinct voices. The following morning, Taylor reportedly said that he had spent the night in conversation with Joseph Smith and that Jesus Christ had also been present. These details became part of the revelation’s sacred history: its authority rested not only on the commandment attributed to God, but also on the reported presence of the founding prophet and Christ.

Taylor then called a meeting of trusted followers, including John W. Woolley, Lorin C. Woolley, Samuel Bateman, and Daniel R. Bateman. According to the account, he shared the revelation and placed those present under covenant to defend celestial or plural marriage, dedicating their lives, liberty, and property to its support. The covenant transformed a claimed divine message into a collective obligation. Taylor warned that some might be ostracized or cast out by fellow church members and that some could lose their lives for their commitment. 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. The stated purpose was to ensure that plural marriages would continue from year to year.

The meeting reportedly lasted eight hours. As it concluded, Taylor prophesied that during the tenure of the Church’s seventh president, the Church would enter temporal and spiritual bondage, and that the One Mighty and Strong spoken of in Section 85 of The Doctrine and Covenants would come. The prediction tied the defense of plural marriage to a larger expectation: that an appointed figure would eventually set the house of God in order. The revelation therefore offered both an immediate warrant for continued practice and a future promise of religious restoration.

From Manifesto to Fundamentalist Covenant

The Church’s later acceptance of the Manifesto did not, in the fundamentalist interpretation, settle the matter. The Church’s First Presidency privately advised members to continue plural marriage for a time, and senior leaders secretly performed marriages after the public change in policy. When reports of those marriages became public, they provoked anger among non-Mormons and dissent among Mormons who wanted the Manifesto enforced. By the 1920s, most members and leaders had turned against plural marriage and supported prosecution of people who continued it.

For those who rejected that shift, Taylor’s reported revelation supplied a counter-authority. Its message was that a commandment remained in force unless revoked by God or divine authority; the institutional decision to end the practice could not, in itself, cancel the earlier law. The covenant and delegated authority also supplied a model for preserving the practice beyond the mainstream Church’s control. This was a form of legal and religious pluralism: federal law criminalized plural marriage, Church policy opposed it, and fundamentalist communities claimed a higher divine jurisdiction that required them to continue it. The conflict was not only over marriage, but over who had the right to interpret revelation and bind believers.

Legacy and Contested Authenticity

The meeting’s authenticity has been angrily disputed by General Authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The historical account therefore distinguishes between the revelation’s contested status and its documented significance as a belief: regardless of whether Church leaders accepted it, fundamentalists treated it as a sacred authorization. The book describes September 27, 1886, as a sacred date for adherents, while locating the revelation itself on September 26. They understood Taylor’s covenant as a duty to uphold plural marriage regardless of the course taken by the wider Church or the surrounding society.

That legacy took organizational form in competing communities and claims to prophetic succession. In the account of Colorado City, followers traced priesthood authority through a line of prophets from Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to John Taylor and later leaders. Other fundamentalist groups honored different successions, and disputes over who should inherit leadership produced schisms. The revelation’s enduring importance lies in how it joined doctrine to authority: it asserted that an institution could abandon a practice while believers still regarded God’s command as binding, and it gave those believers a covenant, a delegated structure, and a prophecy through which to defend that claim.