Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints (FLDS)
An Apologetics Index research resource

Jenny Larson has been a skeptic since she was a child living in a polygamous, fundamentalist Mormon community. "The prophet when I was growing up was a big, fat pig," she asserts. Now 59, she's out of the sect and known for helping other women leave. Larson's enemies tell her she'll wind up in hell. Those she's rescued think otherwise. "They say Aunt Jenny is an agent of the devil," says Dusty Lato, one of many who sought her assistance over the years. "But to me she was a godsend."

The sect, officially called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, separated from the Mormon church when it renounced plural marriage in 1890. Based in Colorado City, Ariz., the sect's estimated 4,000 residents believe polygamy and large families will gain them access to the highest tier of heaven. Women reportedly bear an average of 10 children each.

''It's a cult is what it is,'' says Larson. ''They tell you who to marry, what to wear. People there are so brainwashed, they're like puppets. The leader says 'frog,' and they jump. It's unreal.''

For the last decade, Larson has run an underground railroad of sorts, sheltering young women who run away from the isolated community, helping them find jobs, offering moral support, and collecting donations. Many of the teen-agers are her nieces or cousins; some are underage.
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As principal of Alta Academy for 22 years, Warren Jeffs was a stickler for the little things. Sloppy handwriting, an untucked shirttail, a bad grade -- all were signs of a personal flaw that needed to be confessed, corrected and often punished.

Now, as president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the scope of his dominion has grown from 300 students in the Salt Lake Valley to 10,000 people on the Arizona Strip.

His discipline has hardened into law, and his goal is perfection on earth. To err is to risk one's eternal salvation.

"I believe Warren is trying to accomplish something that even God hasn't heretofore," said a close associate. "To be able to pull together a captive group of followers who are measured by a mortal man as being perfectly united in mind and body and purpose."

Never a public man, Jeffs, 48, exercises power over his people from a walled compound on Utah Avenue in Hildale. Outside, there are whispers about why he recently exiled so many men, whose families might be scattered next, and whether a wholesale decampment to Mexico is in the works.
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Fundamentalists believe they are following the "true" Mormon faith as laid down by founder Joseph Smith, while the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is "out of order" because of its disavowal of plural marriage, the United Order and other early doctrines.

The LDS Church's 1978 decision to give the priesthood to black men, in particular, galls fundamentalists.

But it is their marriage views that are most often noted by outsiders.

All trace their priesthood authority to conduct plural marriage back to LDS Church President John Taylor, whom they say had the doctrine confirmed to him in a 1886 revelation.

Fundamentalists believe monogamy is limiting for both men and women -- men because their sexual drive enables them to father more children than one woman can bear, and women because a certain percentage will never find a worthy man to marry and thus be unable to fulfill God's edict to "be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth."

Plural marriage allows a man and his "ladies" greater opportunity to provide bodies for waiting heavenly spirits and increases their ability to populate this and future worlds; righteous plural marriage brings access to the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom.

This belief aside, Utah's three largest fundamentalist groups have developed distinctive cultures. The FLDS church is the most restrictive when it comes to lifestyle.

Independent fundamentalists believe these organized groups are in error given early counsel to avoid structure or collection of tithing.

A consultant for the Utah Attorney General's office, John R. Llewellyn is recognized as an expert on Mormon Fundamentalism and polygamy. A retired Salt Lake County Sheriff's Lieutenant, he specialized in sex crime investigation that included polygamy complaints, and was a polygamist for a time. [...] Polygamy expert and retired law enforcement officer John Llewellyn provides a dramatic inside look at each of the polygamist groups, how they began, how they rule their people, their beliefs, and how many are living off your tax dollars. He explores serious human rights abuses that occur in many groups such as forcing young girls to marry men old enough to be their father. A former friend of Tom Green, the author provides deep background on Tom’s life and polygamist activities. John explores the fascinating underground fraud by the various groups and evaluates Brian David Mitchell’s efforts to turn Elizabeth Smart into a compliant plural wife. Finally, he takes a hard look at the possible value of decriminalizing polygamy so that the many hidden abuses, including tens of millions of dollars of welfare fraud when polygamist wives pose as single mothers with children, can be brought out into the open and finally be dealt with realistically.

In 1984, Ron and Dan Lafferty murdered the wife and infant daughter of their younger brother Allen. The crimes were noteworthy not merely for their brutality but for the brothers' claim that they were acting on direct orders from God. In Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer tells the story of the killers and their crime but also explores the shadowy world of Mormon fundamentalism from which the two emerged. The Mormon Church was founded, in part, on the idea that true believers could speak directly with God. But while the mainstream church attempted to be more palatable to the general public by rejecting the controversial tenet of polygamy, fundamentalist splinter groups saw this as apostasy and took to the hills to live what they believed to be a righteous life. When their beliefs are challenged or their patriarchal, cult-like order defied, these still-active groups, according to Krakauer, are capable of fighting back with tremendous violence. While Krakauer's research into the history of the church is admirably extensive, the real power of the book comes from present-day information, notably jailhouse interviews with Dan Lafferty.