Stapley argues that Smith’s Nauvoo sealing rituals made eternal family relationships the structure of heaven itself. His account places plural marriage within this larger ritual system and traces the changes in sealing practice after Smith’s death.
- Jonathan A. Stapley, “Sealings,” The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology (2018): 34–56.
Where there were no sealed relationships, there was no heaven.