Chapter 127. The Principle Lives On: Mormon Fundamentalism and the Polygamous Offshoots

The 1890 Manifesto ended plural marriage in the official church. It did not end what believers called “the Principle”. Mormon fundamentalists hold that Woodruff suspended, but could not revoke, Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. They built a chain of priesthood authority outside the LDS church, settled on the remote Utah–Arizona border, and repeatedly clashed with the state. This chapter follows the lineages, the raids of 1953 and 2008, Warren Jeffs’s rule and conviction, the Lafferty murders, and the testimony of women who left. Throughout, it sets out the legal conflict between religious liberty and child protection as each side presents it.

The 1886 revelation and the lineages

Krakauer traces fundamentalism to a revelation John Taylor reportedly received on 26 September 1886 while hiding from federal marshals in the home of John W. Woolley: “I have not revoked this law nor will I for it is everlasting”. Lorin Woolley later recounted seeing a light under Taylor’s door and hearing three voices, Taylor’s, Joseph Smith’s and Christ’s. Taylor then set apart five men, including the Woolleys and Samuel Bateman, to keep performing plural marriages “that no year passed by without children being born in the principle”. Krakauer notes that the authenticity of this meeting “has been angrily disputed by LDS General Authorities ever since” [Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven, #68073, Part III ch. 20]. Parson describes the same origin from the fundamentalist side. Lorin Woolley’s “Council of Friends”, including John Y. Barlow, Joseph Musser, Charles Zitting and Louis Kelsch, is the body from which “most fundamentalist Mormon groups derive their authority” [Parson, Polygamy, Women, and Higher Education, #74491, ch. 2].

The movement then split. Parson reports that after raids on Salt Lake City and Short Creek, in which “15 Council of Friends leaders and their wives were taken into custody”, some men signed renunciations of polygamy and others refused. After Barlow’s death in 1949, Musser brought in Rulon C. Allred, and their followers became the Allred Group or Apostolic United Brethren (AUB) on the Wasatch Front. The others followed Charles Zitting and Leroy S. Johnson and became the FLDS at Short Creek [Parson, #74491, ch. 2]. Krakauer records the violence among the splinters. Rulon Allred was shot dead in 1977 by women of Ervil LeBaron’s sect, whose leader was one of three LeBaron brothers to claim to be the “One Mighty and Strong” [Krakauer, #68073, Part IV].

Parson cites estimates of at least 15,000 independent polygamists and 30,000–100,000 polygamists in Utah overall, but warns that “the actual number is unknown” [Parson, #74491, ch. 2].

Short Creek 1953: the raid that backfired

The Arizona raid of 1953 is remembered by all sides. Rebecca Musser, raised in the FLDS, calls it “the largest mass arrest in modern American history, in which the entire community was taken from their homes”. She writes that “outsiders saw photos of children being ripped from their mothers’ arms. It was a public relations fiasco for Arizona governor Pyle, and it caused his campaign to backfire” [Musser & Cook, The Witness Wore Red, #66381, ch. 10]. Parson agrees that media coverage “turned public opinion against government action”, and that the raid drove the community “even deeper into secrecy but also emboldened fundamentalist church leaders”. Polygamous communities “were not seriously legally threatened again until 2008” [Parson, #74491, ch. 2]. Krakauer’s verdict is that “paradoxically, the Short Creek raid proved to be a huge boon to the FLDS Church” [Krakauer, #68073].

The political result, Musser says, was a town ruled by the church. “Every town official, municipal director, and police officer was FLDS, subject to the Prophet’s rule, not to state or federal laws… We literally became a law unto ourselves”. She also describes the economic doctrine of “bleed the Beast”. Celestial wives, “not considered legal wives”, applied for welfare in their maiden names, and “subsidies accounted for millions of dollars—much of the community’s income” [Musser & Cook, #66381, ch. 10]. Parson records the later state response. Government offices were searched in 2010. In 2014 Arizona moved to dissolve the Colorado City police department as “the enforcement wing of the FLDS Church”. That motion failed, but an order to reform the department was upheld [Parson, #74491, ch. 2].

Doctrine in the classroom

Musser attended Alta Academy, where Warren Jeffs was principal. She preserves what the “Priesthood History” curriculum taught: “You only get to Heaven through the living Prophet in your time. Because of this great power our living Prophet holds, he is everything to us”. The class taught that “even Jesus Christ engaged in plurality”, and that the 1890 document meant “the Mormons had sold out to the federal government”. The line of true prophets ran from John Taylor through John W. Woolley, Lorin C. Woolley, John Y. Barlow and Leroy S. Johnson to Rulon T. Jeffs, and “the entire history of the world had led to this one point”. Government was presented as corrupt throughout: “it had not only been improper but immoral for Lincoln to have fought for the rights of slaves. Mr. Jeffs had a particular dislike for blacks and considered them lower than whites”. The 1993 Waco siege was screened daily in class as a warning that “governments regularly lied, terrorized, and exterminated people like us” [Musser & Cook, #66381, ch. 4].

From Rulon to Warren Jeffs

Musser became a plural wife of the ageing prophet Rulon Jeffs. She recalls that the “eighty-nine-year-old Seer and Revelator had prophesized to us that he would live for 150 years” [Musser & Cook, #66381, ch. 9]. As he declined, Warren “acted more boldly in the name of his father”. He controlled access to the prophet and, by late 2000, was performing “as many as twenty marriages or more per week”. Brides as young as twelve were married off, and some unions were “deliberately staged to breed out rebellion” [Musser & Cook, #66381, ch. 10]. Rulon died on 8 September 2002, leaving “an estimated seventy-five bereft wives”. Warren, whom a sibling described as “a fanatic. Everything is black and white to him”, took control and removed Winston Blackmore as bishop in Bountiful, British Columbia [Krakauer, #68073, Part IV]. The reference shelf adds that within a week Warren married all but two of his father’s widows. One of the two, Rebecca Wall (Musser), fled [Wikipedia: Warren Jeffs].

Parson summarises the legal sequel. Jeffs called himself the FLDS “Godhead”, fled, and was found “in a red car” despite having banned the colour red. He was imprisoned in 2007, and his Utah accomplice-to-rape conviction was later overturned [Parson, #74491, ch. 2]. The reference shelf states that he was then convicted in Texas in 2011 of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old and a 12-year-old “child bride” and sentenced to life plus twenty years [Wikipedia: Warren Jeffs]. Musser herself became a witness against Warren Jeffs, the role that gave her memoir its title. Parson notes that the UEP trust, worth an estimated US$100 million, had been used by Jeffs to remove families who fell out of favour, until Utah took control and began selling the land to its residents [Parson, #74491].

Texas 2008: the YFZ raid

The second great raid divides the sources. Willis writes that police acted on a call from “Sarah”, supposedly a 16-year-old member, who “turned out… was, in fact, woman named Rozita Swinton, who later swore she had placed the call as a joke”. He says 412 children were taken into custody, and that “there were no signs of sexual abuse in any of the children” before the Texas Supreme Court ordered them returned. He concludes that “governments and individual citizens tend to assume the worst when it comes to cults” [Willis, American Cults, #63203]. Parson likewise calls the raid “predicated on a hoax call” and says it was widely seen as “handled poorly”. She counts 437 children removed and adds that “the investigation revealed that allegations of sexual abuse and underage marriage were true”, with 11 FLDS members convicted of bigamy or sexual assault and the ranch seized in 2014 [Parson, #74491, ch. 2]. The two books thus agree on the hoax and disagree on what the investigation found.

Violent faith: the Lafferty murders

Krakauer’s book is built around a different case. On 24 July 1984, Brenda Wright Lafferty, 24, and her 15-month-old daughter Erica were killed in American Fork, Utah, by Brenda’s brothers-in-law Ron and Dan Lafferty [Krakauer, #68073, Prologue]. Ron, a former city councilman, had moved “from an active Mormon and conservative Republican to a strict constitutionalist and excommunicated fundamentalist” who believed in “a return to the gold standard, strict constitutionalism and obedience only to ‘righteous laws'” [Krakauer, #68073, Prologue, quoting the Salt Lake Tribune]. Ron’s “removal revelation” declared: “It is My will and commandment that ye remove the following individuals in order that My work might go forward”. It named Brenda, Erica and two others as “obstacles in My path” [Krakauer, #68073, Part II]. Krakauer explains the brothers’ logic: “In the fundamentalist worldview, a sharp dividing line runs through all of creation”, so those God commanded to be removed “must, a priori, be wicked” [Krakauer, #68073, Part II]. Before the murders the brothers had toured polygamist communities, visiting the independent leaders Alex Joseph and John Bryant, both former followers of Rulon Allred [Krakauer, #68073, Part IV].

Krakauer also treats the later prosecutions as a test of the state’s will. In October 2002 the Utah attorney general’s office charged the FLDS member Holm with “felony bigamy and three counts of unlawful sex” for his relationship with a girl named Ruth. Krakauer notes that since the Kingston and Tom Green prosecutions, fundamentalists “have received support from the American Civil Liberties Union”. To the Barlow he quotes, “the Holm case is disturbingly reminiscent of the 1953 raid on Short Creek” [Krakauer, #68073].

Women, schooling and exit

Parson’s study follows three women, Emma, Mary and Sarah, through their exit into higher education. Mary’s schooling ended when “FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs banned members from attending the public schools” and later closed the private schools as well. Emma left school in tenth grade to avoid contact with a boy. Sarah finished an AUB private school without a diploma. In each case “a formal education was not viewed as a priority for polygamous women”, and church-controlled curricula valued literacy chiefly for reading church texts [Parson, #74491, ch. 6]. More broadly, Parson reports that leavers’ life stories show “a general lack of formal education; prevalence of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse; an absence of personal autonomy”. She notes that “fear of ‘eternal damnation,’ ‘blood atonement,'” and family pressure make leaving “virtually impossible” for some [Parson, #74491, ch. 2].

Liberty, harm and comparison

The sources frame the conflict differently. Ross classes “polygamist groups” with faith-healing churches as destructive cults that “deliberately mandate harm, which is then practiced systemically in the group” [Ross, Cults Inside Out, #62875, ch. 4]. Tandin, the Romanian police writer, describes the Kingston clan’s John Daniel Kingston as a polygamist businessman employing 1,500 family members and later brought before the courts [Tandin, Secte criminale, #23557]. On the other side, Parson notes that Utah has long declined to prosecute secret polygamy “for consenting adults”, the Tom Green trial being an exception. Willis stresses that the LDS church excommunicates polygamists, and that fundamentalism is a familiar pattern: “There are fundamentalists in every religion who believe their church has become too liberal” [Parson, #74491; Willis, #63203]. Loue gives the comparative and legal frame. Utah law bans plural marriage and most marriages under 16. Her cross-cultural survey, which ranges from Yoruba women who favoured polygyny for shared labour to Kuwaiti psychiatric data on distressed co-wives, concludes that women’s experience “can only be understood within a particular sociocultural and personal context” [Loue, Sexual Partnering, #32580, ch. 2].

Key points

• Fundamentalism rests on John Taylor’s disputed 1886 revelation and Lorin Woolley’s Council of Friends, from which the FLDS, the AUB, the Kingstons, Centennial Park and the violent LeBaron sect descend [Krakauer, #68073; Parson, #74491].
• The 1953 Short Creek raid backfired politically. Musser calls it the largest mass arrest in modern US history, and Krakauer calls it a “huge boon” to the FLDS [Musser, #66381; Krakauer, #68073; Parson, #74491].
• Musser describes a church-run town where officials and police obeyed “the Prophet’s rule” and welfare fraud was justified as “bleeding the Beast” [Musser, #66381].
• FLDS schooling taught salvation “only… through the living Prophet”, a plural-marrying Christ, and anti-government history, including the claim that Lincoln acted immorally [Musser, #66381].
• Warren Jeffs multiplied underage marriages and used the UEP trust as an instrument of control. He was convicted in Texas in 2011 and sentenced to life plus twenty years [Musser, #66381; Parson, #74491; Wikipedia: Warren Jeffs].
• On the 2008 YFZ raid, Willis (412 children, no abuse found) and Parson (437 children, abuse confirmed, 11 convictions) agree that a hoax call triggered it and disagree on what followed [Willis, #63203; Parson, #74491].
• Krakauer presents the 1984 Lafferty murders as “violent faith”. Ross and Parson stress harm to women and children, while others stress religious liberty and consenting adults [Krakauer, #68073; Ross, #62875; Parson, #74491; Loue, #32580].