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2 Distinctive Doctrines 3 History |
Membership and Headquarters
The number of members of the church is unknown; however, their population is estimated at between 6,000 to 8,000 in the twin communities of Colorado City, Mohave County, Arizona and Hildale, Washington County, Utah. The church also has a colony in Bountiful, Canada. In each of these towns, the church is the primary influence and reason for being.
The church currently practices "The Law of Placing" under which all marriages are assigned by the prophet of the church. Many outside of the church, and some inside, view this practice as unduly authoritarian though it helps address by edict the problem of wife shortages. Under the Law of Placing, the prophet elects to give or take wives to or from men according to their worthiness.
According to FLDS accounts, Brigham Young visited the site of Hildale and Colorado City and stated that "this is the right place [and it] will someday be the head and not the tail of the church [and]...the granaries of the Saints."
In 1953, Arizona police authorities organized what became known as the "Short Creek Raid", in which numerous leaders were arrested and taken to Kingman, Arizona. However, public sentiment turned against the authorities after newsreels showed children being taken from their mothers and fathers being thrown in jail.
In 2003 the church received increased attention from the State of Utah when police officer Rodney Holm, a member of the church, was convicted of unlawful sexual conduct with a 16- or 17-year-old and one count of bigamy for his marriage to and impregnation of plural wife Ruth Stubbs. The conviction was the first legal action against a member of the church since an ill-fated 1953 raid from Arizona that doomed the political career of Governor Howard Pyle.
Allegations of welfare fraud, tax fraud, incest, statutory rape, physical, emotional and psychological abuse--hidden by a veil of secrecy, isolation, and deprivation--in the FLDS dominated communities have been widely reported in 2004 throughout United States media. It has been estimated that 33% of the men, women and children in the group are receiving state and federal aid, though 0% unemployment was reported in the 2000 census.
On January 10, 2004, the church suffered major upheaval when Dan Barlow, the mayor or Colorado City, and about 20 men were excommunicated from the church and stripped of their wives and children (who would be reassigned to other men), and the right to live in the town. As a result, a few teenage women reportedly fled the towns with the aid of anti-polygamy advocates.
Distinctive Doctrines
The church teaches plurality of wives as a general requirement for the highest eternal salvation of men. It is generally believed in the church that a man should have three wives to fulfill this requirement. Leader and Prophet Rulon T. Jeffs married 22 women and fathered more than 60 children. Critics of this belief say that its practice leads unavoidably to bride shortages and likely to child marriages, incest, and child abuse. History
The area of Hildale and Colorado City have a long history of polygamy, dating from the early decades of the 20th Century. The cities were once known as Short Creek, founded in 1913 as a ranching community; however, it soon became a gathering place from polygamist members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1935, the LDS Church excommunicated Short Creek's polygamist residents who refused to sign an oath renouncing polygamy, after which the FLDS Church was organized by John Y. Barlow, who would be the leader, and his friend Joseph White Musser. The location on the Utah-Arizona border was ideal because the group could avoid raids by one state by moving across the invisible state line to the other.