The new speaker of the House is in a 'covenant marriage,' a religiously-influenced legal agreement that makes it harder to get a divorce

• Rep. Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House, is in a "covenant marriage."
• That's a religiously-influenced legal arrangement in which it's much harder to get a divorce.

If the newly-elected speaker of the House wants to get a divorce, he'll have a harder time doing so than most Americans.

That's because Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the fourth Republican to be nominated for the position since Kevin McCarthy's ouster three weeks ago, entered into what's known as a "covenant marriage" in 1999.

An evangelical Christian, Johnson is also a long-time opponent of same-sex marriage and has championed a bill similar to Florida's Parental Rights in Education Law — known to critics as "Don't Say Gay."

Under Louisiana state law, couples sign a document in which they agree to seek marital counseling before getting a divvorce. Additionally, couples can only get divorced on a limited set of grounds, including for adultery, if one partner committed a felony or faces imprisonment, or physical or sexual abuse.

In other words, it's not a no-fault divorce, in which couples can easily dissolve their marriage for any reason.

"A covenant marriage agreement may not be dissolved, rescinded, or otherwise terminated by the mutual consent of the spouses," reads the relevant portion of Louisiana state law.

Louisiana became the first state to pass a law to create covenant marriages in 1997, and Arizona and Arkansas later followed suit. It remains a relatively rare arrangement, with only 2% of Louisiana couples opting into it.

"My wife and I both come from traditional Christian households," Johnson told ABC in 2005. "My own parents are divorced. As anyone who goes through that knows, that was a traumatic thing for our whole family. I'm a big proponent of marriage and fidelity and all the things that go with it, and I've seen firsthand the devastation [divorce] can cause."

Johnson's wife, Kelly, told ABC that the arrangement "shows me that he wants it to be forever."

"I think that it would be a pretty big red flag if you asked your mate or your fiancé, 'Let's do a covenant marriage,' and they said they don't really want to do that," said Kelly Johnson.

In 2001, Johnson told a reporter that he had encouraged his friends to do the same thing.

"Because so few people have chosen covenant marriage in Louisiana, it seems like an unpopular idea," he said at the time. "It's not unpopular — it's just unknown. Once the message is out there, a whole lot more people will choose it."