The 1954 Mormon Fundamentalist Schism turned a disputed succession into a lasting division of the movement. After Joseph Musser’s failing health raised the question of who would lead, he appointed Rulon Allred as his heir despite opposition from supporters of LeRoy Johnson, whom John Y. Barlow had identified as his preferred successor. When Musser died in 1954, Johnson and Allred led rival groups, separating the Short Creek community from the branch based in the Salt Lake Valley.

Succession Disputed

After John Y. Barlow died in 1949, leadership passed to Joseph Musser, a respected follower who was soon debilitated by a series of strokes. Rulon Allred, a naturopath and fellow polygamist, treated Musser; as Musser became dependent on him, their relationship took on importance beyond medical care. In 1951, while gravely ill, Musser appointed Allred his second elder and heir apparent.

That decision collided with another account of legitimate succession. Barlow had specified before his death that LeRoy Johnson should succeed him as prophet. The dispute was therefore not merely over personal preference: each camp could point to a different basis for authority, Musser’s appointment or Barlow’s stated choice. The resulting hostility between Johnson’s supporters and Allred’s camp became strong enough to divide the movement.

The 1954 Split

Following Musser’s death in 1954, Johnson assumed leadership of the larger splinter group, which remained in Short Creek. It called itself the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and was also known as the United Effort Plan, or UEP. Allred became prophet of the rival Apostolic United Brethren, based 280 miles north in the Salt Lake Valley.

The division established separate communities and leadership lines within a movement whose members shared a commitment to fundamentalist Mormon teachings. The groups’ competing claims echoed a wider tension between personal succession and institutional authority: the split did not settle which line possessed the rightful mantle, but made the disagreement organizational and enduring.

Diverging Paths

After the division, the Short Creek community had little further involvement with the Allred group and kept a low profile beyond its immediate community. The Apostolic United Brethren, by contrast, drew greater attention. On May 10, 1977, two women belonging to another breakaway sect, the LeBaron clan, entered Allred’s office in Murray while he was treating patients, shot him, and left. This later event belongs to the history of the separate Allred branch; it did not reunite the groups or resolve the succession dispute.

The schism’s significance lies in how a contested transfer of prophetic authority produced durable institutional separation. In Colorado City and Bountiful, believers’ portraits of their prophetic lineage included Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, John W. Woolley, Lorin C. Woolley, John Y. Barlow, LeRoy Johnson, and Rulon Jeffs; other fundamentalist communities honored a somewhat different succession. The split thus left the movement with distinct branches and differing accounts of who carried its priesthood authority forward.