'The Blessing That’s Anticipated Here Will Be Realized in the Next Life': The Development of Modern Latter-day Saint Marital Sealing Rules

Abstract

Sealing rules, which govern wedding rituals in Latter-day Saint temples, constitute a hitherto unstudied religious law of marriage that has evolved from the first introduction of sealing rituals in the 1840s to the present. This paper provides an account of the development of modern sealing rules. Beginning in 1888, the Latter-day Saints had to clearly differentiate the religious rules governing sealings from the secular legal rules governing marriage. This process was complicated by the practice of proxy sealings for deceased ancestors, which meant rules had to be promulgated for both the living and the dead. There are basically three strata of sealing rules that have survived into the present. The first layer was promulgated as part of the Church’s abandonment of plural marriage in the first three decades of the 20th century. The second strata was promulgated in the second half of the 20th century. These rules focus on posthumous sealings and were vital in facilitating temple worship as a regular part of Latter-day Saint practice. Finally, there is a third strata laid down at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century that respond to the sexual revolution by accommodating the rise of no-fault divorce and making efforts at the margins to mitigate the gender inegalitarianism of earlier rules without fundamentally rewriting them. The result is a system of sealing rules that maintains continuity while adapting to meet practical demands. However, because the different rules were promulgated at different times in response to different practical and theological imperatives, the system contains tensions and contradictions and cannot be mapped onto a single, consistent theological vision.

Keywords: Marriage law, Latter-day Saints, Mormonism, sealings, temple, canon law