LeRoy Johnson—Rulon Jeffs

LeRoy Johnson—Rulon Jeffs is a succession relationship that reshaped the Short Creek community: when Johnson died in 1986, Rulon Jeffs assumed leadership, but his claim to Johnson’s mantle was challenged and the resulting split carried nearly a third of the community away. The transfer linked two successive prophets while exposing how fragile unity could be when religious authority depended on contested claims to priesthood leadership.

Roots of the Succession

The leadership transition grew out of an established fundamentalist lineage. LeRoy Johnson was born at Lee’s Ferry in 1888, where his father had been sent with two wives and their children to help maintain the river crossing. After the 1890 Manifesto, the remote settlements of Lee’s Ferry and Short Creek attracted polygamists seeking to continue plural marriage. In 1928, as outsiders gained easier access to Lee’s Ferry, Johnson and members of his family moved to Short Creek, which was more isolated.

John Y. Barlow later cultivated a close relationship with the Short Creek community and with Johnson in particular. After Barlow died in 1949, leadership passed to Joseph Musser, but Musser’s serious illness soon made succession a matter of dispute. In 1951, Musser appointed Rulon Allred as his second elder and heir apparent, despite objections from those who believed Johnson should succeed him, as Barlow had specified. The disagreement split the fundamentalist movement: after Musser died in 1954, Johnson led the larger group that remained in Short Creek, while Allred led a separate community. This earlier conflict established the stakes of prophetic succession well before Johnson’s own death.

Johnson’s Death and Rulon Jeffs’s Claim

Johnson died at ninety-eight in 1986. His followers had expected him to live forever, and his death left the community uncertain about what would follow. Rulon Jeffs assumed leadership, but his right to claim Johnson’s mantle was furiously contested by supporters of Marion Hammon, a prominent bishop. Nearly a third of the community followed Hammon out of the existing congregation, settling in the desert across the highway and establishing a separate church known as the Second Ward. Johnson’s succession thus did not produce a single, uncontested continuation of his authority: it produced rival congregations, each denouncing the other as apostate and warning of its spiritual ruin.

Authority in the Community

Rulon Jeffs’s leadership rested on a demanding model of obedience. His sermons emphasized submission, and the book describes his authority as extending beyond religious teaching into civic and family life. Colorado City’s officials, police force, and public-school leadership answered to him; members were also forbidden to watch television or read newspapers and magazines. Rules against contact with people outside the United Effort Plan extended even to family members who had left the faith. These controls show what the transfer of prophetic authority meant in practice: the successor’s power reached into the community’s information, relationships, and daily governance.

The contrast between continuity and division is central to the relationship. Rulon Jeffs took over the leadership Johnson had held, but the split around his claim showed that succession alone could not settle who possessed legitimate authority. The First Ward and Second Ward remained divided, with each side treating the other as religiously disloyal. The dispute therefore made the transfer both a change of leader and a lasting division in the community Johnson had led.

A Recurrent Succession Crisis

The pattern recurred after Rulon Jeffs died. His son Warren Jeffs moved quickly to take control, having already run the church during his father’s prolonged illness, but he did not receive the affection that followers had shown Johnson or Rulon Jeffs. The account describes further threatened divisions after Rulon’s death. This later transition does not erase the distinct 1986 conflict; it underscores how the community’s continuity depended on successive claims to prophetic authority, while each transfer could renew uncertainty and fracture the group.