Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

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The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) is a split-off group of Mormon fundamentalism within the Latter-day Saint movement (also known as Rocky Mountain Mormons "). It is unrelated to the most famous Mormon denomination, LDS Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , from which it split at the beginning of the 20th century. Warren Jeffs has led the FLDS since 2002 . The headquarters were for a long time in Hildale , Utah, the twin city of Colorado City , Arizona, where many FLDS supporters also live. At the beginning of the 21st century it was relocated to Eldorado , Texas; a new temple was also built there. This makes the FLDS the fifth Mormon denomination to have built at least one temple. In addition to baptism, she wants to perform the other rites ("ordinances"), confirmation, ordination to the Melchizedek priesthood (it is only open to men), spirit outpouring ("temple endowment") and sealing (marriage).

The Temple of the FLDS in the Texas Eldorado (May 17, 2006)

Membership and Centers

Since the FLDS is very closed, the number of followers is not known. The population of the twin cities of Colorado City , Mohave County , Arizona, and Hildale, Washington County, Utah, whose territories largely belong to the FLDS, is estimated to be 6,000 to 10,000. The local numerical importance of the FLDS became apparent in 2000 when Warren Jeffs ordered church members to send their children out of public schools. As a result, the number of students in the Colorado City Unified School District fell from around 1,200 to around 250.

After the common land in Eldorado, Texas, has acquired the now "Yearning for Zion Ranch" ( "Longing for Zion Ranch") is called or "YFZ Ranch", the seats appear to be moved there. This is apparently linked to Warren Jeffs' move after newsreels showed pictures of children whose parents were imprisoned. At the same time, the move of the “most devout” members to the rapidly growing YFZ Ranch marked a turning point in the community. The FLDS members who remained in Colorado City and Hildale were permanently unsettled about their property rights and livelihoods, as the attorney general's office blocked the proceeds of the United Effort Plan, the property and the financial assets in the face of an initiated investigation. The FLDS also owns a settlement in Bountiful , British Columbia.

Special features of the teaching and its criticism

The Church considers polygyny, with the subordination of women to men, to be necessary so that man can attain the highest eternal salvation: the Godhead. In order to achieve this, a man must marry at least three women.

After between 400 and 1,000 young men were excluded for flimsy reasons in June 2005 in order to make more young women available to older men, there appears to have been unrest within the community. The FLDS fund was frozen and on June 10, 2005, Arizona issued an arrest warrant for church leader Warren Jeffs. He was accused of arranging a marriage between a minor and a 28-year-old already married man. Warren Jeffs himself married 60 women; his father and former head of the FLDS was married to 22 women and had 60 children.

In the FLDS, “ The Law of Placing” is applied. Weddings require the mediation of the prophet of the church, and he is also entitled to dissolve marriages at his own discretion and to give the women to other men. Even if this practice alleviates the shortage of brides, it appears to many - including FLDS members - to be inappropriately authoritarian.

In its Spring 2005 report, the Southern Poverty Law Center listed the FLDS as a "hate group" because their teachings contained racist elements. Among other things, Warren Jeffs said: "The black race is the people through whom the devil was always able to bring evil into the world".

Critics claim that Jeffs expressed a wish that the doctrine of the blood sacrifice , according to which grave sins can be atoned through the death of the sinner, be restored. Robert Richter, a former FLDS member, told the Phoenix New Times that Jeffs had repeatedly called for the blood sacrifice in his sermons. In addition, he had asked him, the judge, to produce a high-temperature incinerator that was able to destroy DNA evidence in the event of such victims.

The FLDS keeps the members from private property with reference to their understanding of the community of property of the Jerusalem original community . This is most evident in the “United Effort Plan” (UEP); he owns all church property, homes, most businesses, and most jobs in Colorado City and Hildale.

The Utah Attorney General initiated proceedings to secure the multi-million dollar UEP for residents of Colorado City and Hildale. The assets of the UEP and its trust companies have been placed under government supervision until Warren Jeffs and the FLDS are completely excluded from control.

The Church did not defend the property when it was confiscated by the authorities.

There have been many reports of the fraudulent use of social benefits, tax evasion, incest, fornication with minors, physical and psychological abuse and psychological terror - hidden behind a veil of secrecy, isolation and deprivation of liberty - in the FLDS-dominated communities. According to general estimates based on the 2000 US Census, 33 percent of followers receive benefits even though there is no unemployment.

It was also alleged that more than 400 youthful males, some as young as 13 years old, were excommunicated for minor reasons such as dating girls or listening to rock music. Former members point out that the cause of such measures lies in the polygyny competition between young and older men for wives. Sometimes such "lost boys" are simply abandoned on the country road.

Six young men have filed a lawsuit against Warren Jeffs and Sam Barlow, a former deputy sheriff of Mohave County , Arizona and close confidante of Jeffs, for "systematically excommunicating young men for the purpose of reducing competition for women."

Another problem appears to be the world's greatest prevalence of fumarase deficiency in Hildale and Colorado City. It is a very rare hereditary disease that causes significant intellectual disability. Geneticists see the reason for the fumarase deficit in the two places in the large proportion of marriages between close relatives, which can be traced back to the city founders Joseph Smith Jessop and John Yeates Barlow. Between 75 and 80 percent of the towns' nearly 10,000 residents are descended from one or both of them.

history

Two of the three-story houses in the Texan Eldorado

Polygyny has been widespread in the Hildale and Colorado City region since the early 20th century. According to FLDS historiography, Brigham Young visited the area and found that "this is the right place [and it] will one day be the head, not the tail, of the Church and ... the breadbasket of the Saints."

The towns were founded in 1913 under the name Short Creek as a parish of several homesteads. Polygynists from LDS Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, LDS, soon settled here. In 1935, the LDS Short Creeks excommunicated polygamists who had revoked the oath to renounce plural marriage after they began organizing under the leadership of John Y. Barlow. The settlement on the border of Utah and Arizona was particularly suitable for switching legal measures from one state over the invisible border to the other and thus evading it.

When Barlow's successor, Joseph White Musser, ordained naturopath Rulon C. Allred, a conflict arose in 1951. It was inspired by Allred's calling as chairman of the council of priests, the spiritual direction of the church. This dispute, as well as concerns about the growing number of underage women being forced to marry in Short Creek, created a split in the FLDS between the slightly less conservative Musser supporters and the extremely conservative advocates of community practice in Short Creek. Musser's followers eventually left the church and joined the Apostolic United Brethren, whose leader Allred became after Musser's death. The Short Creek group that became today's FLDS succeeded Leroy S. Johnson, a member of the Council of the Priests who died in 1986. Johnson's successor was Rulon Jeffs, who was succeeded in 2002 by his son Warren Jeffs.

Jon Krakauer reports in Murder on behalf of God that the Arizona police arrested numerous leading figures in the 1953 Short Creek Raid and brought them to Kingman to put an end to the church. However, there was abuse of women and children of the church by police forces, which caused a stir in the press. Public sentiment turned against the action and Governor John Howard Pyle's political career collapsed. After that, no politician dared to act against the FLDS for a long time.

Later developments

In 2003, the state of Utah increased its focus on the Church. Rodney Holm, police officer and FLDS member, was convicted of illicit sex with a 16- or 17-year-old teenager, bigamy in one case, and Ruth Stubbs' impregnation. The verdict is the first judicial measure against a church member since the Short Creek Raid. Jon Krakauer deals in his 2003 book Murder on behalf of God in the style of investigative journalism with individual aspects of the FLDS. He pays particular attention to the practice of polygyny among Mormon fundamentalists in the context of All Mormon history, with an emphasis on the Lafferty brothers who killed their sister-in-law and niece in the name of the faith.

In November 2003, FLDS member David Allred acquired the 5.5 km² Isaacs Ranch 6 km northeast of Eldorado, Texas, “as a hunting ground”. Between 30 and 40 construction workers were dispatched from Colorado City and Hildale to begin work. Three three-story buildings, each with 740 m² to 930 m², a concrete factory and a field were soon completed.

On January 10, 2004, the FLDS suffered a severe blow: Dan Barlow, Mayor of Colorado City, and about 20 other men were excommunicated, separated from their wives and children given to other men, and lost the right to live in the city . As a result, some young women are believed to have fled with the support of lawyers who oppose polygyny. Two of the young women, Fawn Broadbent and Fawn Holm, soon found themselves caught up in a widespread dispute over freedom and custody. On February 15, they escaped from state welfare and subsequently stayed in different countries.

After Flora Jessop, a high profile FLDS critic, appeared on an ABC primetime show on March 4, 2004, concerned Eldorado residents contacted her. She began her research and gave a press conference on May 25, 2004. In it she confirmed that the new neighbors are FLDS supporters.

On May 18, 2004, Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran and his deputy visited Colorado City. The FLDS officially announced that Schleicher County would be the future headquarters of the church. The Church began to build a temple there, the "Yearning for Zion Ranch" or "YFZ Ranch". It is surrounded by a wall. The Eldorado Success, a local newspaper, reported that the temple was dedicated on January 1, 2005 by Warren Jeffs.

In October 2004, it was reported that David Allred was planning to purchase a 24-acre parcel in Mancos , Colorado, between Cortez and Durango , but the Church denied this.

On July 11, 2005, eight men from the FLDS were charged with sexual contact with minors. At least some of them surrendered to Kingman, Arizona authorities. In May 2006 the FBI named Warren Jeffs on the list of the Ten Most Wanted Criminals in the United States for sexual misconduct against minors. In August 2006, he was accidentally caught on the highway north of Las Vegas. He was noticed during a routine traffic check because the registration of his car had expired. On November 21, 2007, Jeffs was sentenced to long imprisonment in St. George , Utah. The court found the leader of the Fundamentalist Church guilty of ordering a then 14-year-old, despite her resistance, to marry her five-year-old cousin and have sex with him. The 21-year-old at the trial had testified as a witness in the trial. Jeffs married the then 14-year-old girl in a motel in Nevada and asked her to give her body and soul to her husband. The verdict was overturned by the Utah Supreme Court in July 2010 because the judge misinformed the jury about the legal issues to be decided. Jeffs was extradited to Texas.

In a raid on April 5, 2008 on the sect's premises on the outskirts of Eldorado in western Texas, the police took 183 women and children into custody. There is a suspicion that they have been victims of sexual crimes and neglect. The Texan Department of Family and Protective Services Youth Department has been heavily criticized for further handling the cases. FLDS is alleged to have intimidated the agency and individual employees with legal threats in such a way that the cases were not handled properly. Contrary to the recommendations of its lawyers, the authorities never applied for the parents' custody to be lifted, but only for temporary residence in foster families. And the department did away with this in an increasing number of cases. The agency's lawyer, who was actually used as the head of the case, gave up his mandate when the department unilaterally discontinued over 400 individual cases, did not pursue them any further and thus also gave up the right to impose conditions on how the children should be dealt with. Because of the Department's inaction, on May 29, 2008, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the removal of the children was illegal and ordered the children to be returned to their parents.

On Thursday, August 4, 2011, Warren Jeffs was found guilty of sexually abusing two girls in San Angelo , Texas. He allegedly assaulted a twelve-year-old in 2006 and fathered a child with a 15-year-old who he abused in 2005. The offenses were then referred to as "spiritual marriage". Both women were not of legal age in the state of Texas. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment in the first case and an additional 20 years in prison in the second. He was also fined $ 10,000.

In July 2017, state power against the FLDS also became active in Bountiful, Canada: the two bishops of the Church, Winston Blackmore and James Oler, were convicted of polygamy. Both were state married to only one woman, but had 5 (Oler) and 24 (Blackmore) heavenly marriages (celestial marriages) according to the church understanding and lived with the women and a large number of children. Both said they would appeal.

literature

  • Jon Krakauer: Murder on behalf of God: a report on religious fundamentalism in the USA. 2nd Edition. Piper, Munich / Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-492-24276-6 (Original: Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. Randomhouse, 2004, ISBN 1-4000-3280-6 ; English-language excerpt on the publisher's website at [ 1] ).
  • Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer: Prisoners in the Name of God: My Escape from the Clutches of a Polygamist Sect. Ullstein, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86800-363-5 (Original: Escape. Visionary Classics, LLC, 2007).

Web links

Commons : Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints  - collection of images, videos, and audio files
  • Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- Day Saints : Official website (English)

Movies

Audio documents

German-language links

Links in English

Sources and References

  1. ↑ Deborah Frazier: Majestic temple rises in Texas oil country. Why the 10-story church was built there is a mystery ( Memento June 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ); in: Rocky Mountain News of July 16, 2005
  2. ^ Howard Fischer: State officials prepare to seize control of Colorado City school district ( Memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ); on: azstranet.com; News from November 8, 2005
  3. ^ A b Claire Hoffman: Satan's Accountant . In: Portfolio, Condé Nast, May 2008 (also online )
  4. ^ Southern Poverty Law Center: In His Own Words (quotations from Warren Jeffs) ( February 3, 2010 memento on the Internet Archive ); Intelligence Report, Spring 2005
  5. ^ John Dougherty: Wanted: Armed and Dangerous ( Memento September 1, 2006 in the Internet Archive ); Phoenix New Times; November 10, 2005
  6. ↑ Julian Borger: The lost boys, thrown out of US sect so that older men can marry more wives. The Guardian , June 14, 2005, accessed December 28, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Jason Szep: Polygamist community faces rare genetic disorder . Reuters , June 14, 2007, accessed December 28, 2017.
    Zaria Gorvett: The polygamous town facing genetic disaster. In: BBC Future . July 26, 2017, accessed December 28, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Salt Lake Tribune: Jeffs Ruling , July 29, 2010
  9. ↑ Katja Gelinsky: "Polygamy, Incest, Abuse" . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 6, 2008
  10. ↑ Die Presse: Sect Drama: The Children of the Polygamy Ranch ( Memento of May 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), April 7, 2008
  11. ↑ Janet Heimlich, No Refuge , Texas Observer, August 1, 2012
  12. ↑ CNN: Texas high court: Removal of sect kids 'not warranted'
  13. ^ Dennis Wagner: Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs gets life in prison . USA Today, August 9, 2011
  14. ^ Spiegel online: Former Mormon bishops convicted of polygamy , July 25, 2017
  15. ^ Mormon Statement: Church Response to Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. In: lds.org. June 27, 2003, archived from the original on January 20, 2007 ; accessed on February 15, 2020 (English). Answer by Jon Krakauer: A Response from the Author. In: randomhouse.com. July 3, 2003, archived from the original on August 19, 2004 ; accessed on February 15, 2020 (English).