Biblical Usage
Some Bible translations use the term New Covenant. According to Replacement theology, this refers to the covenant or agreement made between God and Christians which is the replacement for the original covenant made between God and Israel (called Judaism) at Mount Sinai. For example, the NIV translation uses the phrase 9 times, the KJV translation uses it 3 times: Hebrews 8:8,13,12:24. Technically, according to Replacement theology, the New Covenant is put into effect at the very moment of the death of Christ, first mention in Matthew 27:50. Just as a will is not put into effect until the testator dies, so too, the New Covenant could not be put into effect until Christ died as is explained in the Book of Hebrews 9:16-18 (see Jeremiah 31:31-32, Hebrews 10:16, Hebrews 8:13, Matthew 26:28). Some use the term New Covenant to refer to the books of the New Testament.
Political Usage
The New Covenant was what President Bill Clinton called for in 1993 to symbolize the new type relationship that he was claiming to establish between the United States Government and its citizens.
Clinton's call for a "New Covenant" was seen as saying that the 12 previous years under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush represented a breaking of the traditional relationship between the American people and their government, presumably because of the close relationship between leaders in those Administrations and "big business" interests, as opposed to traditional Democratic constituencies such as labor unions, women's' groups, and minority group members. Clinton apparently hoped that this term would come to be used to describe the policies adopted by his Administration. The term had distinctly religious, specifically Judeo-Christian connotations. Perhaps at least in part for this reason, it was never widely adopted by the mass media or the American public at large, and thus is not as widely associated with Clinton and his policies as is the Square Deal with Theodore Roosevelt, the New Deal with Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Fair Deal with Harry S. Truman, the New Frontier with John F. Kennedy, or the Great Society with Lyndon Johnson. An alternate explanation is that due to Clinton's pragmatism, many saw his policies as less than a cohesive whole and more of a series of individual reactions to individual events and situations, rather than part of a vast overall plan.