Fundamentalists Charge LDS Church Has Fallen into Apostasy

By Sandra Tanner

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During the night of June 5th, 2002, someone crept into the Salt Lake City, Utah, home of Ed and Lois Smart, devout members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon), and kidnapped their fourteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth.

Jon Krakauer, in his 2003 best seller Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, noted:

Details of the audacious kidnapping were reported breathlessly and without pause by the news media, leaving much of the country aghast and riveted. When a massive investigation failed to locate Elizabeth or her unidentified abductor by summer’s end, people assumed the worst: that she had been subjected to some unspeakable ordeal and murdered.
(Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer, Doubleday, p. 41)

However, she was found almost a year later in an adjacent town, dressed in a disguise and accompanied by two former Mormons, Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee. Although LDS temple workers at one time, Mitchell and Barzee had gradually drifted to more radical views. The Salt Lake Tribune reported:

. . . he and Barzee attended church less and less. Mitchell spoke strange prophecies, balked at paying his tithing and refused to pay income taxes. He railed against materialism and hypocrisy, renounced mainstream Mormonism and viewed himself as a messenger from God. . . .

By the late 1990’s, Mitchell had grown a long beard and become a Jesus-like fixture on downtown Salt Lake City streets, extending his hand to passers-by with a plaintive, “Please help.” According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Lois Smart hired Mitchell in November, 2001, for five hours to help with some roofing work at the Smart home. Seven months later, the LDS Church excommunicated Mitchell and Barzee for their extreme views. That same week, Elizabeth Smart disappeared (Salt Lake Tribune, March 30, 2003, p. A15).

Evidently, after receiving various revelations that he was to enter polygamy, Mitchell remembered young Elizabeth Smart and decided she was God’s choice for his second wife. Since Mitchell had not been to the Smart’s home for several months the family evidently did not think to associate him with the kidnapping. Krakauer relates:

Mitchell marched Elizabeth at knifepoint four miles into the foothills west of her home. Upon reaching a secluded campsite in Dry Creek Canyon, he and Barzee conducted a weird, selfstyled wedding ritual to “seal” the girl to Mitchell in “the new and everlasting covenant”—a Mormon euphemism for polygamous marriage. (Under the Banner of Heaven, p. 44)

The Book of Immanuel David Isaiah

On April 6, 2002, Brian David Mitchell compiled his revelations in a 27-page work titled The Book of Immanuel David Isaiah. One revelation declared the current LDS Church leaders to be in apostasy and that Mitchell is now God’s chosen prophet: “One who is mighty and strong I have ordained in the stead of him who was ordained of God.” In another of Immanuel David’s revelations, Wanda Barzee is instructed:

“And thou shalt take into thy heart and home seven times seven sisters [wives], to love and to care for; forty-nine precious jewels in thy crown . . .” (Deseret News, March 15, 2003)

Thus it seems that Mitchell was planning to gather more wives than Joseph Smith, who had at least thirty-three (In Sacred Loneliness, Todd Compton, pp. 4-7; also “Wives of Joseph Smith“). Police believe he may have tried to kidnap Elizabeth’s cousin as well. The Salt Lake Tribune reported:

The Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case could be back on track by October. A 3rd District Court judge has ordered mental competency evaluations of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee to be completed by Sept. 29. . . .

Mitchell and Barzee are each charged with six felonies, including aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault. Two of the counts allege they attempted to kidnap Elizabeth’s 15-year-old cousin. (Salt Lake Tribune, August 28, 2003, p. B2)

The March 31, 2003, issue of People magazine reported:

Nine months after Elizabeth was taken at knifepoint from her bedroom as she slept, she emerged as if from nowhere on a busy street in Sandy, Utah, on March 12, after four people recognized the man she was with: Brian David Mitchell, 49, profiled days earlier on America’s Most Wanted. She was dirty and disguised and clearly under the spell of Mitchell, a religious fanatic who worked as a roofer at the Smarts’ home for a day in 2001 and who claimed to be a prophet named Immanuel. (People, March 31, 2003, p. 44)

Jon Krakauer explained:

As for Brian David Mitchell, in the days following his arrest he steadfastly insisted that he had done nothing wrong, arguing that forcing a fourteen-year-old girl into polygamous bondage was not a criminal act because it was a “call from God.” Speaking through an attorney, he explained that Elizabeth was “still his wife, and he still loves her and knows that she still loves him.” (Under the Banner of Heaven, pp. 48-49)

The Salt Lake Tribune observed that Mitchell is but one of a long line of self-proclaimed prophets in Mormon circles:

Brian David Mitchell, who calls himself Immanuel, . . . joined a notorious cast of characters who have attributed actions to conversations with the Almighty. . . .

Utah has its special brand of religious fanaticism that has cropped up again and again. Often it is associated with polygamy, which the LDS Church disavowed in 1890 and for which members are excommunicated.

In many cases, it also has been associated with the “one mighty and strong,” as described in the Doctrine and Covenants, . . .

The belief that anyone can receive revelation is a thread that runs through many of Utah’s most bizarre crimes, said historian D. Michael Quinn. “It will probably always be a problem, I would say, in Mormon culture . . .”

Elizabeth Smart’s disappearance is just the latest tale of claims of divine revelation gone bad. . . . But if history is a guide, it may not be the last time Utahns hear of self-proclaimed prophets. (Salt Lake Tribune, March 16, 2003, p. A10)

In the Footsteps of Joseph Smith

Besides Mitchell, dozens of Mormon men through the years have claimed to be Smith’s successor and God’s anointed to restore the original teachings, such as polygamy, to the LDS Church.

Joseph Smith’s revelation on plural marriage stated:

. . . if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another . . . and they are virgins, . . . then is he justified; . . . And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, . . . (Doctrine and Covenants 132:61-62)

Among Smith’s thirty-three plural wives were fourteen-year-old Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Apostle Heber C. Kimball, and at least six other teenagers. Possibly a dozen of Smith’s other wives were living in a polyandrous union, staying with their first husbands while being secretly wed to Smith. (See In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, by Todd Compton, pp. 4-7; also “Sacred Marriage or Secret Affair?”.)

While Joseph Smith did not physically kidnap any of his wives, he did use spiritual (psychological) coercion to get women to submit. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, married and a faithful Mormon, told how Joseph Smith had approached her to be his secret plural wife with the claim that God had sent an angel to him “three times between the year of ’34 and ’42 and said I [Smith] was to obey that principle [plural marriage] or he would lay (destroy) me” (In Sacred Loneliness, p. 212).

Todd Compton observed:

. . . Smith linked plural marriage with salvation, . . . If Mary accepted him as her husband, her place in heaven would be assured. (In Sacred Loneliness, p. 212)

Another young married woman, Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs, entered into a polyandrous marriage with Joseph Smith after she was informed:

. . . an angel with a drawn sword had stood over Smith and told him that if he did not establish polygamy, he would lose “his position and his life.” Zina, faced with the responsibility for his position as prophet, and even perhaps his life, finally acquiesced. (In Sacred Loneliness, pp. 80-81)

No explanation was given as to how married women met the criteria for “virgins” in Smith’s plural marriage revelation (Section 132 in the Doctrine and Covenants).

One Mighty and Strong

In 1832 the two main centers of LDS population were in Kirtland, Ohio and Independence, Missouri. The Mormons were to “consecrate” (turn over) all of their assets to the church and then receive back a portion for their own necessities (their “inheritance”), thus giving the church the funds to establish Zion, God’s kingdom on earth. This led to a number of problems, leaving Smith with doubts about Bishop Edward Partridge’s handling of affairs. Section 85 of the Doctrine and Covenants warned the bishop that if he did not perform his duties according to God’s will, another would be sent:

. . . I, the Lord God, will send one mighty and strong, holding the scepter of power in his hand, . . . to set in order the house of God, and to arrange by lot the inheritances of the saints whose names are found, and the names of their fathers, and of their children, enrolled in the book of the law of God. (Doctrine and Covenants 85:7)

[Bold in quotations is added for emphasis and does not appear in originals.]

This 1832 revelation was printed in various LDS publications but was not added to the canon of LDS scripture until 1876. While LDS leaders contend this situation was resolved during Smith’s lifetime, many continue to look for the “one mighty and strong . . . to set in order the house of God.” In fact, when Sec. 85 was added to the Doctrine and Covenants there was a footnote to this passage that informed the saints “A future messenger promised” (Doctrine and Covenants, Sec. 85, footnote ‘g’ in the 1883 and 1890 editions).

John Taylor’s 1886 Revelation

With increasing arrests and pressure from the U.S. government in the 1880’s to give up plural marriage, LDS Church President John Taylor, husband of at least 15 wives, had to go into hiding. During this time he recorded, but did not publish, a revelation that plural marriage should never be relinquished. Richard S. Van Wagoner, in his book Mormon Polygamy: A History, explained the impact of President Taylor’s 1886 revelation:

Mormon polygamists who today rationalize plural marriage on the grounds that polygamy can be rightly maintained by a special dispensation of priesthood authority independent from the church organization usually refer to themselves as Fundamentalists. Most Fundamentalists trace their authority to President John Taylor, who, on the underground at the John W. Woolley home in Centerville, Utah, in September 1886, allegedly “asked the Lord if it would not be right under the circumstances to discontinue plural marriages.” Taylor’s son, John W., claimed he found among his father’s papers after his death the response to this question— “a revelation given him of the Lord, and which is now in my possession, in which the Lord told him that the principle of plural marriage would never be overcome” (Abraham H. Cannon Journal, 29 March 1892). . . . (Mormon Polygamy, p. 183)

Taylor’s 1886 revelation would become the focal point of arguments and justifications made by later polygamists:¹

Fundamentalists insist that President Taylor secretly commissioned several priesthood holders to continue the practice of plural marriage as individuals rather than as church representatives. . . . Numerous Fundamentalists since have declared themselves the One Mighty and Strong. (Mormon Polygamy, pp. 183-184)

1890 Manifesto

Mormons had been practicing plural marriage since the 1840’s with the understanding that it was required by God as part of His “new and everlasting covenant of marriage.” Preaching in 1866, Brigham Young declared:

As the United States government continued to press the church to give up the practice, new laws were enacted to force compliance. In 1887 the Edmunds-Tucker Bill was passed which, among other things, “declared that marriages not publicly recorded were felonies . . . The most serious stipulation of the bill, however, was the threat to dissolve the legal entity of the church corporation and to confiscate all church property in excess of $50,000” (Mormon Polygamy, p. 133).

Historian B. Carmon Hardy explains:

Then, on September 24, 1890, President Woodruff produced his famous Manifesto, advising church members to obey the laws of the land as they related to polygamy. (Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage, by B. Carmon Hardy, p. 130)

However, many were left to wonder if this statement was to be considered a revelation or just an admonition. Did it mean all Mormons were to discontinue living with their plural families, refrain from having more children born to these unions, or just that they were not to take any additional wives. There seemed to be one policy for the public and another in private.

B. Carmon Hardy lists the names of 220 LDS men, including bishops, stake presidents and apostles, who continued to take plural wives after the Manifesto (see Solemn Covenant, Appendix II).

When examining just the time period from 1902 to April 1904 Richard Van Wagoner observed “at least sixty-three plural marriages were sealed throughout the church” (Mormon Polygamy, p. 159).

As the government and public became more aware of leaders marrying additional wives, sometimes out of the country, the church was under pressure to put a stop to all aspects of plural marriage. The spotlight was again turned on the church when Apostle Reed Smoot ran for the U.S. Senate. After winning the election he was challenged on his right to be seated. The Senate investigation took three years:

The Smoot Hearings (January 1904 to February 1907) examined far more than the specific charges brought against Smoot. The entire structure of the Mormon church was closely scrutinized by the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections. (Mormon Polygamy, p. 164)

Hardy explained that government dissatisfaction with Mormonism included more than just polygamy:

The church was under siege not only for the practice of polygamy but also for allegations that oaths involving threats of death were taken in the temples and that secret promises to avenge the martyrdom of early Mormon leaders were made. (Solemn Covenant, p. 128)

The oath to avenge the death of their slain leaders was dropped in the early 1900’s as a result of the government investigation relating to Senator Reed Smoot (seeEvolution of the Mormon Temple Ceremony, pp. 22-26, and Mysteries of Godliness, pp. 133-136).

Testimony presented in the hearings made it clear that a number of church leaders were continuing to father children with their polygamist wives and that some were taking additional wives.

Second Manifesto

Finally, on April 7, 1904, President Joseph F. Smith issued a second Manifesto declaring that members were to enter into no new plural marriages. However, these statements were understood by some to simply mean that there were to be no new marriages in the United States, that they did not apply to plural marriages in Mexico or outside of the country.

Richard Van Wagoner explained that most Mormons did not know that some of their leaders had secretly continued the practice of polygamy:

Though the 1904 Manifesto sought and obtained Mormon confirmation of President Smith’s statements before the Smoot hearings, most Saints knew little of the covert post-Manifesto polygamy that church leaders had been supporting. (Mormon Polygamy, p. 168)

Two apostles, John W. Taylor, son of President John Taylor, and Matthias F. Cowley, were dropped from the quorum for their continued practice of the principle (see Solemn Covenant, chapter 7).

Since LDS Church leaders had continued to enter into plural marriages long after the 1890 Manifesto some rank and file members felt that they also should continue then practice. When the church started to excommunicate those who entered the practice after the second manifesto, some started to feel the brethren had gone into apostasy.

Mormon Fundamentalists

A sore spot with the LDS Church is the use of the label “Mormon Fundamentalist.” The church insists that the term “Mormon” should not be applied to anyone other than members of their particular church. Jon Krakauer explained:

. . . LDS Church authorities bristle visibly when Mormons and Mormon Fundamentalists are even mentioned in the same breath. As Gordon B. Hinckley, the then-eighty-eight-year-old LDS president and prophet, emphasized during a 1998 television interview on Larry King Live, “They have no connection with us whatever. They don’t belong to the church. There are actually no Mormon Fundamentalists.”

Nevertheless, Mormons and those who call themselves Mormon Fundamentalists (or FLDS) believe in the same holy texts and the same sacred history. . . .

There are more than thirty thousand FLDS polygamists living in Canada, Mexico, and throughout the American West. Some experts estimate there may be as many as one hundred thousand. (Under the Banner of Heaven, pp. 4-5)

In his book, Mormon Polygamy: A History, Richard Van Wagoner discusses the growing number of individuals who declare they are either the One Mighty and Strong or claim authority to continue the practice of polygamy. Some trace their authority through an earlier ordination by President John Taylor:

In 1922, Fundamentalist Joseph W. Musser recorded several oral accounts of the 1886 revelation from Lorin Woolley and Daniel Bateman, another individual reported to be in attendance at the 1886 meeting. . . .

Musser records that President Taylor called together Samuel Bateman, Charles H. Wilkins, George Q. Cannon, John W. Woolley, and Lorin C. Woolley and gave them authority both to perform plural marriage ceremonies and to ordain others with authority to perform polygamous marriages, thus insuring that children would be born to polygamous parents each year thereafter to the Millennium. The account relates one of the most important prophetic statements in Fundamentalist history. “In the time of the seventh president of this Church,” Taylor reportedly said, “the Church would go into bondage both temporally and spiritually and in that day . . . the One Mighty and Strong spoken of in the 85th Section of the Doctrine and Covenants would come.”

Numerous Fundamentalists since have declared themselves the One Mighty and Strong. Such claims became a serious enough concern during President Joseph F. Smith’s administration that the First Presidency published a lengthy discussion of the matter in the 13 November 1905 Deseret News. Those proclaiming themselves the “One Mighty and Strong” were declared “vain and foolish men” who make the claim to “bolster up their vagaries of speculation, and in some cases their pretensions to great power and high positions they were to attain in the Church.” During a special priesthood meeting on 8 April 1912, President Smith announced that the “One Mighty and Strong to deliver as referred to in the D and C Sec. 85 has no application to the Church at present.” (A. W. Ivins Journal, 8 April 1912) President Smith made a total of nine public statements denouncing new polygamy during his administration . . . (Mormon Polygamy, p. 184)

Historian B. Carmon Hardy commented on the growing number of Fundamentalists:

While fundamentalist organizations became most visible in the 1930s, they had arisen from the environment of indistinct authority and inconsistent response surrounding Mormon plurality in the years following the Manifesto. It was during those years that some stalwarts began attaching large importance to a divine communication to former president John Taylor, in which he was told that plural marriage was an “everlasting covenant” and that its requirements could never be revoked. Fundamentalists additionally said that Taylor charged certain individuals with perpetuating the practice until the millennium. Linked with this was a prediction that the church would fall into apostasy, captive to the appetites of modern secular society. . . .

After succeeding Joseph F. Smith as president of the church in 1918, [Heber J.] Grant turned harshly against those contending for perpetuation of the principle. Although he had been a pluralist himself, Grant moved against those found to be contracting such unions with greater sharpness than any of his predecessors. (Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage, by B. Carmon Hardy, p. 341)

The growing number of dissidents and those claiming the prophetic mantle led President Joseph F. Smith, in 1909, to proclaim:

There never was a time, perhaps, when there were more false prophets than there are today, . . . We get letters from them, and commands and threats from them, and admonitions and warnings and revelations from them, nearly every day. Our table is frequented by revelations from false prophets, . . . some calling themselves “deliverers of Israel,” some calling themselves “the one mighty and strong, who is to deliver Israel out of bondage.” . . . We have these letters—those that we have not destroyed—stacked up almost by the cord. Some of these false prophets, these men to “deliver Israel,” and these foolish, unwise, unstable creatures, led about by every wind of doctrine have risen right in our own midst. (LDS Conference Report, October 1909, pp. 8-9)

However, the problem did not go away. Through the first half of the twentieth century numerous polygamist groups and colonies sprung up in the western United States, Canada and in Mexico. In 1945 Apostle Mark E. Peterson issued another warning:

So, Latter-day Saints, beware of false teachers. . . . when men come among you, . . . advocating the so-called practice of plural marriage, . . . or when a man comes among you declaring that the Church is off the track and that he is one mighty and strong sent to set the Church in order, . . . remember that such doctrines cause dissention among the people, that they cause disputes which lead to apostasy and that the Lord condemned disputes of that kind. (LDS Conference Report, October 1945, pp. 90-91)

Apostle Peterson’s warning also failed to stem the tide of new polygamist groups and those claiming to be the One Mighty and Strong.

Ken Driggs, writing in 1990 in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, gave this summary of the Fundamentalist’s objections to current Mormonism:

Fundamentalism is essentially a protest movement against the religious and cultural accommodations the Church made as it searched for a way to survive under the often savage pressures of the gentile world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Those accommodations began with the 1890 manifesto and gained speed during the long administration of President Grant. Fundamentalism strives to remain close to the Mormonism of the 1880’s, which is seen as the golden age of the faith. By studying fundamentalist beliefs, we better understand those changes. Although plural marriage is the most obvious topic, shifts and changes can also be seen in temple ceremonies, religious communalism, the Word of Wisdom, and the strong hold of religious leaders over the last century’s Mormons, a hold that is considerably diminished today. (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1990, vol. 23, no. 2, p. 59)

Mormons, Blacks and Fundamentalists

While Joseph Smith had allowed a few blacks to be ordained to the LDS priesthood, Brigham Young taught that they were not to receive those blessings until all the rest of Adam’s posterity had been given the chance.

The Bible teaches that when Cain killed Abel, in Genesis 4, God put a curse on Cain, announced in verses 11-12, stating that he would be a vagabond. When Cain complained that people would try to kill him, God put a mark on him to warn others not to take his life. Mormonism has traditionally taught that the mark was a black skin, the beginning of the Negro race, and priesthood was denied to his lineage. However, the Bible never depicts the mark as a color or racial origin of blacks.

Preaching in 1854, Brigham Young announced that blacks would not receive the priesthood until after the resurrection:

The Lord put a mark on him [Cain]; and there are some of his children in this room. When all the other children of Adam have had the privilege of receiving the Priesthood, and of coming into the kingdom of God, and of being redeemed from the four quarters of the earth, and have received their resurrection from the dead, then it will be time enough to remove the curse from Cain and his posterity. (Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, p. 143)

Brigham Young, while addressing the Territorial Legislature in 1852, declared that if the priesthood were ever given to the blacks it would be the end of LDS priesthood authority:

Speach by Gov. Young in Joint Session of the Legeslature. Feby. 5th 1852 giving his views on slavery. . . . Let this Church which is called the kingdom of God on the earth; we will sommons the first presidency, the twelve, the high counsel, the Bishoprick, and all the elders of Isreal, suppose we summons them to apear there, and here declare that it is right to mingle our seed, with the black race of Cain, that they shall come in with us and be pertakers with us of all the blessings God has given to us. On that very day, and hour we should do so, the preisthood is taken from this Church and kingdom and God leaves us to our fate. (Brigham Young Addresses, Ms d 1234, Box 48, folder 3, dated Feb. 5, 1852, LDS Church Historical Dept., typescript by H. Michael Marquardt.)

1978 Priesthood Change

Pressure mounted through the years for the LDS Church to give the priesthood to those of African lineage. During the 1960’s and 1970’s there were repeated demonstrations and articles denouncing the church’s position on race. Finally, in June of 1978 the LDS Church announced that the Lord “by revelation has confirmed that . . . all worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color” (Doctrine and Covenants, Official Declaration—2).

For Fundamentalist Mormons this was another sign that the LDS Church was in a state of apostasy. On July 23, 1978, a group calling itself Concerned Latter-Day Saints placed a full page ad in the Salt Lake Tribune denouncing the church for caving in to the pressure of the world and changing various doctrines, such as lifting the ban on blacks in the priesthood and giving up polygamy:

The trend of the Church, since its concession to the world in 1890, has been to apologize and to yield on one point after another, thus implying that the early Church leaders were in error. . . . The setting in order spoken of in Section 112 of the Doctrine and Covenants, to begin at the House of the Lord, cannot be far distant. . . .

There are still a few valiant, uncompromising men, within and without the official Church, whose integrity leaves no room for changing the doctrines and ordinances, breaking the everlasting covenant, or for presuming to bestow blessings out of season.
(Salt Lake Tribune, July 23, 1978, p. A16)

Many LDS fundamentalists who had tried to maintain their standing in the church while secretly practicing polygamy, withdrew from the church after the 1978 priesthood change. They felt that at that point the church had lost the priesthood.

Fundamentalists and Violence

While most Mormon fundamentalists are peaceful, a few have resorted to violence to enforce their beliefs. They take Brigham Young’s early sermons on personal blood atonement seriously. Brigham Young proclaimed:

There is not a man or woman, who violates the covenants made with their God, that will not be required to pay the debt. The blood of Christ will never wipe that out, your own blood must atone for it; . . .
(Journal of Discourses, vol. 3, p. 247)

Preaching in 1857, Brigham Young stated:

Will you love your brothers or sisters likewise, when they have committed a sin that cannot be atoned for without the shedding of their blood? Will you love that man or woman well enough to shed their blood? I could refer you to plenty of instances where men have been righteously slain, in order to atone for their sins. . . . This is loving our neighbour as ourselves; if he needs help, help him; and if he wants salvation and it is necessary to spill his blood on the earth in order that he may be saved, spill it.
(Journal of Discourses, vol. 4, pp. 219-220; see also excerpts of this sermon on our site.)

D. Michael Quinn gave this background on the blood atonement doctrine:

Some LDS historians have claimed that blood-atonement sermons were simply Brigham Young’s use of “rhetorical devices designed to frighten wayward individuals into conformity with Latter-day Saint principles” and to bluff anti-Mormons. . . . The first problem with such explanations is that official LDS sources show that as early as 1843 Joseph Smith and his counselor Sidney Rigdon advocated decapitation or throat-cutting as punishment for various crimes and sins.

Moreover, a decade before Utah’s reformation [in the 1850’s] Brigham Young’s private instructions show that he fully expected his trusted associates to kill various persons for violating religious obligations. The LDS church’s official history still quotes Young’s words to “the brethren” in February 1846: “I should be perfectly willing to see thieves have their throats cut.” (The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, p. 247)

Over the past thirty years several polygamists have been arrested for their religiously motivated murders. On January 29, 1988, the Deseret News, owned by the LDS Church, ran an article entitled “18 Deaths Tied to ‘One Mighty and Strong.’” In the article we read:

Ex-Mormons who have claimed to be that messenger have committed at least 18 murders and suicides in the past 15 years and are suspected of 10 others. . . . But splinter groups from the church say the One Mighty and Strong will yet come to restore order to the church forcefully — as when Christ cleansed the temple — because they claim the church fell when it altered early practices by banning polygamy in 1890 and ordaining blacks to the priesthood in 1978. . . .

Of concern to lawmen is that at least seven other leaders of Mormon splinter groups nationwide also claim to be the One Mighty and Strong. In interviews, all have said they are non-violent. But their rhetoric is sometimes the opposite. (Deseret News, January 29, 1988, p. A6)

The LeBarons

Possibly the most deadly group of Mormon fundamentalists was the LeBaron family. Claiming priesthood authority through the line of a few faithful men reportedly set apart by President John Taylor back in the 1880’s, the LeBaron brothers were convinced they were the true representatives of God on earth. Problems arose, however, when they each had competing claims of who was God’s chosen prophet. The two main contenders were Joel and Ervil. Krakauer comments:

Both Ervil and Joel were imbued with exceptional charisma—and both claimed to be the “one mighty and strong.” It was therefore inevitable, perhaps, that the LeBaron brothers would eventually clash. . . . On August 20, 1972, in the polygamist settlement of Los Molinos [Mexico], which Joel had established eight years earlier on the Baja Peninsula, he was shot in the throat and head, fatally, by a member of the group loyal to Ervil.

After he ordered the death of Joel, Ervil initiated a divinely inspired series of murders, resulting in the killing of at least five additional people through 1975 and the wounding of more than fifteen others. In March 1976 he was arrested for these crimes and held in a Mexican jail, . . .

Less than a year after he was incarcerated, Ervil was let out of jail. . . . Within a few months of his release, he had a disobedient daughter killed, and shortly after that arranged the murder of Rulon Allred (leader of a rival polygamist group), whose followers Ervil coveted and hoped to convert to his own group, the Church of the Lamb of God. (Under the Banner of Heaven, p. 266)

Joel and Ervil LeBaron

Ervil LeBaron was again arrested in Mexico, extradited to the United States and died suddenly of a heart attack in the Utah State Prison in 1981. However, he left behind a sort of hit list of those he thought deserved death. Several of his fifty-four children felt called to avenge their father’s death and take care of the dissenters. Krakauer commented:

Two men on the hit list were assassinated in 1987. Then, on June 27, 1988—the 144th anniversary of Joseph Smith’s martyrdom—three more people on the list, along with the eight-year-old daughter of one of them, were ambushed and gunned down. These latter four murders, which occurred within five minutes of one another at different sites in Texas three hundred miles apart, were carefully planned to occur at almost the exact hour that Joseph was fatally shot in the Carthage jail. Afterward, the Lambs of God bragged that they were responsible for the deaths of seventeen people all told. Because each of their victims had been killed as an act of blood atonement, the Lambs explained, the exterminations were justified in the eyes of the Lord.

In 1993, two of Ervil’s sons and one of his daughters were sentenced to life in prison for their involvement in some of these crimes. Two years after that, Aaron LeBaron, the mastermind of the gang, was captured . . . and in 1997 sentenced to forty-five years in prison. (Under the Banner of Heaven, p. 267)

Dan and Ron Lafferty

Another group competing for the position of One Mighty and Strong was the Lafferty family in Provo, Utah. Dan and Ron Lafferty both grew to adulthood as faithful Mormons, but their devotion eventually led them to more radical views. Dan convinced his brothers that they should return to the earlier church doctrines and practice polygamy.

As Ron embraced more and more of Dan’s teachings his marriage failed and his wife, Dianna, left him. Ron placed the blame on Brenda, one of his sisters-in-law, who did not approve of the brothers’ new beliefs. With dissension in the family, a solution was found in Brigham Young’s doctrine of blood atonement. Krakauer comments:

It didn’t take him [Dan] long to discover that polygamy wasn’t the only divine principle the modern LDS Church had abandoned in its eagerness to be accepted by American society. Dan learned that in the nineteenth century, both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young had preached about the righteousness of a sacred doctrine known as “blood atonement”; certain grievous acts committed against Mormons, as Brigham explained it, could be rectified only if the “sinners have their blood spilt upon the ground.” (Under the Banner of Heaven, p. 135)

Soon Ron Lafferty began having revelations, one of which stated:

“Thus Saith the lord unto My servants the Prophets. It is My will and commandment that ye remove the following individuals in order that My work might go forward. . . . First thy brother’s wife Brenda and her baby, then Chloe Low, then Richard Stowe. And it is My will that they be removed in rapid succession that an example be made of them in order that others might see the fate of those who fight against the true Saints of God.” (Ron Lafferty revelation, as quoted in Under the Banner of Heaven, pp. 163-164)

On July 24, 1984, a state holiday commemorating the arrival of the Mormon pioneers in Salt Lake Valley, Ron and Dan Lafferty forced their way into their brother Allen’s home in American Fork, Utah, and slit the throats of Brenda and her baby. On August 17, 1984, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that “the victim’s throats were slashed in what police speculated may have been a ritualistic murder.” As Ron awaits his execution, possibly next year, for the murders and Dan sits out his life sentence at the Utah State Prison, both remain convinced that they acted on God’s orders. (For more on the Laffertys see our article, “Blood Flows in Utah: Brigham Young’s Teachings Put Into Practice,” [Salt Lake City Messenger, no. 56, March 1985].)

The Fruits of Joseph and Brigham

Richard Van Wagoner observed:

Much of the development of Mormonism can be linked to the introduction, promotion, and eventual abnegation of polygamy. To those who accept Joseph Smith as a prophet of God, plural marriage can be evidence of his divine calling; to those who question or reject his prophetic claims, polygamy is more readily explained as evidence of his downfall. (Mormon Polygamy, p. 212)

Mormons often point to their strong emphasis on morals and family life as proof that Mormonism is true, appealing to Jesus’ statement in Matthew 7:20: “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” But this passage is not about judging a religious culture, but is a warning about false prophets “which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matt. 7:15). We must look at ALL of the LDS prophets’ doctrines, not just the ones that are acceptable today. Polygamy, blood atonement, lying and disobeying the laws of the land are also the fruits of LDS prophets.

Sometimes a Mormon will respond that one can find plenty of murders and misdeeds in Christianity’s past. The difference is Jesus never advocated murder and polygamy; Joseph Smith and Brigham Young did. Why should we accept their other doctrines if polygamy and blood atonement are not true? What criteria will the Mormons give us to determine when their prophets speak for God? Past president Ezra Taft Benson, speaking at BYU on February 26, 1980, gave his famous talk, “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophets.” In it he declared:

FIRST: The Prophet is the Only Man Who Speaks For The Lord in Everything. . . . We are to “give heed unto all his words”—as if from the Lord’s “own mouth.” . . .

FOURTH: The Prophet Will Never Lead The Church Astray. . . .

SIXTH: The Prophet Does Not Have to Say “Thus Saith the Lord” to Give Us Scripture. . . .

NINTH: The Prophet Can Receive Revelation on Any Matter—Temporal or Spiritual. . . .

FOURTEENTH: The Prophet And The Presidency— The Living Prophet And The First Presidency—Follow Them And Be Blessed—Reject Them and Suffer.
(Entire speech reprinted in our former publication, Following the Brethren [archived online].)

However, President Benson’s speech does not explain how a prophet can teach one thing on one occasion and the next prophet teach something just the opposite. If the LDS prophets cannot lead us astray, how are we to account for their contradictory teachings?

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Footnotes:

1. [Since the original publication of this article in 2003, the LDS church did (discretely) release President Taylor’s contested revelation on their website. See at: John Taylor revelation, 1886, September 27 (MS 34928). See also a Salt Lake Tribune article covering the release: “Commentary: LDS Church finally publishes a polygamy revelation it insisted for years didn’t exist,” (Benjamin E. Park, Religion News Service, June 17, 2025).] ↩︎

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