Mormon Fundamentalism

Mormon Fundamentalism is a movement formed by Latter-day Saints who rejected the official abandonment of plural marriage and sought to preserve what they regarded as the founding principles of their religion. In the book, this conviction is not simply a defense of one marital practice: it becomes a claim about who has authority to interpret revelation, whether divine law can override civil law, and how completely religious leaders may govern their followers’ lives.

Origins and Religious Claims

The movement emerged from opposition to the 1890 Manifesto, which announced the end of official Church support for plural marriage. The Manifesto did not immediately end the practice: senior leaders privately advised members to continue it discreetly, and plural marriages were performed in secret. When that contradiction became public, a movement within the Church demanded enforcement of the Manifesto. By the 1920s, most members and their leaders had turned against plural marriage and supported prosecuting people who continued it.

Those who resisted argued that the Manifesto had not revoked Section 132 of The Doctrine and Covenants, the revelation Joseph Smith had received in 1843 concerning plural marriage. They interpreted the change as a suspension under temporary circumstances, not a permanent cancellation of a divine commandment. Their argument drew particular force from John Taylor's 1886 Revelation on Plural Marriage. In the account given by the book, John Taylor affirmed that commandments remained binding unless revoked by God or by God’s authority, and said that the law of plural marriage had not been revoked.

The revelation was associated with a meeting at which John Taylor authorized several men, including Samuel Bateman and John W. Woolley, to perform plural marriages and ordain others to do so. He also foretold a future period of spiritual and temporal bondage and the coming of the figure described in Section 85 of The Doctrine and Covenants as one mighty and strong. The meeting’s authenticity has been disputed by leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For Mormon Fundamentalists, however, it supplied a sacred authorization to continue practices the central institution had abandoned. The movement thus defined loyalty to the earlier doctrine as fidelity to the faith, even when that loyalty brought exclusion from the Church and conflict with the law.

Authority, Law, and Community

The book places Mormon Fundamentalism within a broader history of religious communities claiming jurisdiction beyond the reach of ordinary civil government. In Nauvoo, Joseph Smith used a charter granted by Illinois to lead a city with unusually broad sovereign powers. Later, in Utah Territory, Brigham Young’s followers treated the laws of God as superior to laws made by non-Mormons. The Utah Territorial Legislature expanded the authority of local probate courts controlled by Brigham Young; many judges were Mormon bishops, and juries were largely composed of Church members. Federal officials complained that this system displaced federal authority and made the territory a theocratic dictatorship. These episodes provide historical context for the fundamentalist conviction that religious authority need not yield when it conflicts with the state.

That conflict appears in the movement’s practical dealings with government as well as in its theology. In Colorado City, Arizona, followers of Rulon Jeffs regarded the governments of Arizona, Utah, and the United States as hostile to their community, yet the community received substantial public assistance. Members described public money as ultimately coming from God and treated evading the government’s rules as serving the faithful. The book also records residents’ claim that their private religious arrangements were no business of the state, set against the fact that plural marriage was illegal throughout the United States and Canada. The competing claims reveal a persistent divide between civil jurisdiction and a community’s own account of divine obligation.

Obedience and Everyday Control

The book describes a marked hierarchy in fundamentalist communities: men hold priesthood authority, prophets receive the revelations that direct the faithful, and women are expected to serve their husbands, bear children, and raise them within the religion. The same strong emphasis on obedience also exists in the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but the book presents fundamentalist communities as carrying it further. Leaders’ authority can reach far beyond doctrine into ordinary choices and family relationships.

In Colorado City, Arizona, Rulon Jeffs’s control is described as extending through municipal government, the police force, and the schools. Members were forbidden to watch television or read newspapers and magazines. Some nevertheless secretly bought satellite dishes, hiding them to watch television; after Rulon Jeffs condemned the practice in sermons, dishes were discarded in the desert, only for the practice to return gradually over the following years. The cycle shows how a public rule could be enforced through religious warning and communal pressure while being privately evaded.

The boundaries of the community could extend to contact with outsiders and former members. DeLoy Bateman, who had left the religion, lived near his brother David, but the two were not free to speak openly. DeLoy said that contact could cost David his family and standing in the community. When DeLoy stopped attending a weekly priesthood meeting, Rulon Jeffs sent someone to take his wives and children, on the grounds that they belonged to the priesthood rather than to him. Both wives refused to leave. Their decision meant that they and most of the children also left the religious community. This episode makes the movement’s claims about obedience concrete: departure could threaten not only an individual’s religious identity but also the family ties through which community authority operated.

Dissent, Exit, and Continuing Appeal

The movement’s own boundaries are maintained through sharp distinctions between the faithful and those who leave. In Colorado City, Arizona, apostates were portrayed as especially wicked, even in comparison with non-Mormons or members of the mainstream Church. The warning that those who departed would be condemned reinforced the material consequences of exit, including separation from a community and the possibility of losing family relationships. Yet the book’s accounts also show that people did leave, and that some family members chose to leave with them.

Mormon Fundamentalism is not presented as a single institution or an unchanging set of beliefs. Dan Lafferty’s path illustrates how a search for the original faith could produce successive breaks. Before his imprisonment, he had become convinced that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had gone astray when it ended plural marriage, and he promoted resistance to government requirements such as licenses, taxes, and Social Security numbers. Later, he said that his beliefs had changed: he had left both the mainstream Church and fundamentalism. He continued to criticize organized religion and described his present faith as drawing on several religious sources. His trajectory shows both the movement’s appeal to those who see religious history as a story of corruption and the instability of the claim that a return to fundamentals will settle every contradiction.

The book also follows Pamela and David Coronado, who joined the Work of Onias in 1984 after reading The Book of Onias and attending a meeting at the Lafferty family home in Provo. David’s family history included flight from violence associated with the LeBaron clan; as an adult, he nevertheless came to regard fundamentalist Mormonism as the true path to God, and Pamela came to share his view. The murders of Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty led to public suspicion and the Coronados’ excommunication from the Church, but did not end their faith in Onias or their belief in plural marriage. Their experience underscores the movement’s capacity to attract people from the mainstream Church and to sustain commitment despite stigma and rupture.

Historical Significance

The movement’s persistence is bound to the mainstreaming of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As the Church moved away from plural marriage and toward greater acceptance in American public life, some members continued to seek the fervor and doctrines they associated with Joseph Smith’s original vision. The book presents this as an irony of institutional change: the more the mainstream Church leaves its most controversial early practices behind, the more clearly those practices can serve as a rallying point for fundamentalists.

Across its histories and contemporary examples, Mormon Fundamentalism is defined by a tension between restoration and separation. Its adherents seek continuity with teachings they believe the central Church has abandoned, while developing communities in which prophets and priesthood leaders exercise authority over law, information, marriage, and family. That combination helps explain both the movement’s resilience and its recurring collisions with civil institutions and with members who choose to leave.