Latter Day Church of Christ

The Latter Day Church of Christ, also identified as the Kingston Clan, is mentioned in the book chiefly as part of the wider legal and political disputes surrounding Mormon fundamentalism and polygamy. The text records a conviction involving the Kingstons, but gives little information about the organization itself; its significance here is the way that case enters a broader argument over religious liberty, criminal law, and public claims of persecution.

Identification and Context

The book’s index identifies the Kingston Clan as the Latter Day Church of Christ. In the narrative, the Kingstons appear in a brief reference to a conviction that predates the first bigamy charge against Tom Green. The account does not specify the conviction’s offense, participants, or outcome beyond noting that it had already occurred.

That reference places the organization within the book’s discussion of Mormon fundamentalists and polygamy prosecutions, but it does not establish that every practice or position attributed elsewhere to fundamentalist communities applied to the Kingston group. The distinction matters: the text names the Kingstons as part of the legal history without supplying a detailed portrait of their internal organization.

Religious Liberty and Public Debate

The conviction is presented as an early point in a wider shift: Mormon fundamentalists increasingly received support from the American Civil Liberties Union and gay-rights activists in advancing claims of religious persecution. The book describes this alliance as uncomfortable and unexpected, since FLDS doctrine condemned homosexuality, while the coalition’s shared concern was keeping government out of private life. It also notes an opposing alignment, in which radical feminists joined the LDS Church in favor of aggressive prosecution of polygamists.

Within that debate, the Kingston case functions as an antecedent rather than a fully narrated episode. It helps explain why legal action against fundamentalist groups had already become entangled with arguments about constitutional protection and government authority before Green’s prosecution drew further attention.

Scope of the Account

The available text does not describe the Latter Day Church of Christ’s leadership, membership, religious teachings, or institutional development. Nor does it provide the circumstances of the Kingston conviction. The organization’s documented role in this account is therefore narrow but consequential: it is named as an earlier case in a conflict that linked polygamy enforcement to competing claims about religious freedom and persecution.