Scriptural and Legal Literalism

Scriptural and Legal Literalism is the practice of reading selected sacred and civic texts as authoritative, fixed instructions for conduct. In the book, it links Dan Lafferty’s personal campaign against government requirements to a broader history of disputes over who may interpret law and whose rules should prevail. The concept is not simply a preference for scripture over secular rules: it also describes a way of treating language as direct, complete, and decisive, leaving little room for ambiguity or circumstance.

Definition and Scope

The book presents literalism as a method of interpretation with practical consequences. In Dan’s view, the Book of Mormon, The Peace Maker, the United States Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence belonged to a single body of sacred authority. Their sentences connected their readers to God and were, for him, absolute and unchanging. Righteous people therefore had a duty to organize their lives around what he took to be their plain meaning.

This approach assumes that selected words can be read at face value according to one incontrovertible interpretation. As the discussion of Dan’s beliefs emphasizes, that leaves little allowance for nuance, ambiguity, or changing circumstances. The same interpretive confidence can cross between religious and political domains: constitutional language is not treated as a framework to be applied through negotiation, but as an authoritative text whose correct reading establishes what government may do.

The distinction matters because the book describes more than one kind of legal claim. Dan reads constitutional limits as commands that release individuals from particular government obligations. Mormon leaders in earlier settings also invoked divine authority, but coupled that claim with institutions and local systems of enforcement. Those positions share a challenge to the supremacy of ordinary state or federal law, yet they are not identical in their aims or organization.

Dan Lafferty’s Constitutional Campaign

Dan usually led family discussions about a government he believed had exceeded its constitutionally permitted reach. Drawing on scripture, he argued that the government had no right to require citizens to obtain licenses, pay taxes, or submit to the burden of a Social Security number. He framed those requirements not as isolated rules but as signs of government control over ordinary life. His stated alternative was the inherent right to carry out basic human activities without permission.

After praying for guidance and receiving confirmation that he was acting according to the Lord’s wishes, Dan sent his driver’s license back to Utah, revoked his marriage license, and returned his Social Security card. He also disregarded posted speed limits, which he considered illegal, and said he would drive carefully instead. His refusal extended to taxes of every kind, including sales tax on purchases in local stores; that decision led to repeated confrontations with cashiers. The sequence shows how an interpretive conclusion became a daily practice, bringing his asserted religious and constitutional obligations into direct contact with ordinary law and commerce.

In the summer of 1982, Dan carried his argument into local politics by declaring himself a candidate for Utah County sheriff. He spoke at public forums, wrote letters to the Provo newspaper, gave radio interviews, and rode in small-town parades. His campaign promised to enforce laws according to a scrupulously literal reading of the Constitution. He said his motive was to restore the primacy of common-law juries and constitutional fundamentals. The bid made his interpretation more than a private refusal: he sought public office to make it a principle of local enforcement.

Competing Legal Orders in Mormon History

The book places Dan’s personal challenge alongside earlier contests over religious and civic authority. Nauvoo was not merely a city under Joseph Smith’s leadership; it was described as a theocratic principality with unusually broad sovereign rights. The Illinois General Assembly granted those powers through a charter passed in December 1840, when the state hoped to attract settlers and sympathy for the Mormons remained high after their expulsion from Missouri. The charter established a political and legal setting in which local religious authority could operate with exceptional autonomy.

In Deseret, Brigham Young’s government treated God’s law as superior to the laws of men, especially laws imposed by non-Mormons. The Saints established a legal system designed so that, when religious and civil law conflicted, divine law would prevail. Because Utah remained a territory, federal courts were supposed to retain legal power. The Utah Territorial Legislature, dominated by Mormons, expanded the authority of local probate courts controlled by Brigham, thereby taking jurisdiction away from the federal government. Most probate judges were Mormon bishops, and juries were made up almost entirely of Mormons who based their verdicts on instructions from church leaders. Here the conflict was institutional as well as interpretive: competing claims of authority were built into courts, appointments, and verdicts.

Religious Liberty and Public Conflict

Later disputes over plural marriage brought another vocabulary into the conflict: constitutional freedom. After the 1953 raid on Short Creek, photographs of children being taken from their mothers helped generate public sympathy for the fundamentalists. They presented themselves as law-abiding Mormons seeking to exercise constitutionally protected freedoms. The raid was widely seen as religious persecution by overzealous government agencies; the Arizona Republic criticized it as a misuse of public funds. Governor Pyle lost office in 1954, an outcome the book links largely to the raid, while the arrests and trials cost taxpayers $600,000. By 1956, all those arrested had been released and reunited with their families in Short Creek, and members of the United Effort Plan resumed living the Principle as taught by Joseph Smith.

The public argument persisted as plural marriage received further attention. In 2000, Thomas Arthur Green’s prosecution for bigamy and first-degree felony rape of a child became a major media spectacle, while the earlier Kingston trial had received far less attention outside Utah. Colorado City’s polygamous police chief, Sam Roundy, defended privacy within homes and asked whether the community had a right to practice its religion. These accounts show that constitutional language could serve as a public defense of religious practice, while criminal prosecutions brought the limits of that defense into dispute. They do not establish that every polygamist interpreted law as Dan did; rather, they show how claims of protected belief entered a wider struggle over state authority and accountability.

Significance

The concept clarifies how apparently incompatible positions can both appeal to authoritative texts. Dan used a literal reading of scripture and the Constitution to reject government demands and to seek office on that basis. Mormon leaders in Nauvoo and Deseret claimed religious authority through charters, courts, and local government. Fundamentalist communities later invoked constitutional freedoms in response to state intervention. Across these settings, legal pluralism is not an abstract theory but a lived contest among religious command, civic law, local institutions, and individual conduct.

The book’s account also marks a tension within literalism itself. A text treated as unambiguous still requires someone to determine what it means and how it applies. Dan’s private judgments, church leaders’ instructions to juries, and public claims of religious liberty occupy different positions in that interpretive struggle. The consequences range from returned documents and unpaid taxes to rival legal systems and costly state prosecutions. Literalism therefore names both a reading practice and a contest over who has the authority to make that reading govern.