Church of Jesus Christ in Solemn Assembly

The Church of Jesus Christ in Solemn Assembly was a polygamist religious sect founded by Alex Joseph after his excommunication from Mormonism. Its documented public identity was closely associated with Joseph himself: a former police officer, prolific polygamist, local politician, and unconventional religious thinker whose appetite for publicity helped make the group visible to international audiences.

Origin and Leadership

Joseph had been raised in the Greek Orthodox faith and converted to Mormonism in 1965. Four years later, after he began taking plural wives, he was excommunicated. He then founded the Church of Jesus Christ in Solemn Assembly. The account identifies Joseph as the sect’s founder and most prominent representative; it does not describe a broader leadership structure. Joseph married at least twenty-one women, a biographical fact that situates the group within the polygamist religious milieu without establishing how its members or households were organized.

Public Office and Publicity

In 1983, shortly before Dan and Ron Lafferty visited him, Joseph won election as mayor of Big Water on a Libertarian platform. He promised to make the town a tax-free sanctuary and later boasted that he was the only polygamist elected to public office in the United States. He also served as commander of the Lake Powell Coast Guard Auxiliary. These roles gave Joseph a conspicuous public profile beyond his religious leadership, while his self-deprecating wit and idiosyncratic views made him an appealing subject for international news media.

Beliefs and Contact with the Laffertys

Joseph’s theology was notably unconventional. Late in life, he came to believe that Jesus Christ had been a visionary seaman who discovered the secret of transoceanic navigation and was crucified by the Romans as a result. The available account presents this as Joseph’s distinctive belief, not as a doctrine attributed to every member of the Church of Jesus Christ in Solemn Assembly.

The Laffertys’ visit places Joseph’s group within the religious landscape Dan was exploring, but the evidence does not establish that either brother joined the sect. Dan had developed his own fundamentalist convictions through independent study and had not yet allied himself with an established fundamentalist church or prophet. After the brothers’ arrest, he said he had left Alex Joseph’s compound in Big Water around July 22, shortly before the murders. His account confirms recent contact with Joseph’s compound, but does not by itself establish the nature or duration of that contact.

Later History

Joseph died of colon cancer in 1998, aged sixty-two. The account supplies no subsequent history of the Church of Jesus Christ in Solemn Assembly, so its later leadership, membership, and institutional development remain unspecified. In the book’s narrative, the sect is most clearly defined through Joseph’s combination of plural marriage, local political ambition, media visibility, and personal theological innovation.