Mormon Fundamentalism - History

History

The LDS Church began prohibiting the contracting of plural marriages within the United States in 1890 after a decree by the president of the church, Wilford Woodruff. However, the practice continued underground in the U.S. and openly in Mormon colonies in northern Mexico and southern Alberta. According to some sources, many polygamous men in the United States continued to live with their plural wives with the approval of church presidents Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, and Joseph F. Smith.

Some fundamentalists have argued that the 1890 Manifesto was not a real revelation of the kind given by God to Joseph Smith, Jr., Brigham Young, John Taylor and others, but rather was a politically expedient document intended by Woodruff to be a temporary measure until Utah Territory gained statehood. They make their argument based upon textual evidence and the fact that the "Manifesto" is not worded in accordance with similar revelations in the LDS scriptures. This argument further holds that after joining the Union, Utah would have had the authority to enact its own laws with respect to marriage, rather than being bound by U.S. territorial laws that prohibited polygamy. Before statehood could be granted in 1896, however, the federal government required Utah to include a provision in its state constitution stating that "polygamous or plural marriages are forever prohibited". Fundamentalists (and many scholars of Mormon history) also believe that a primary impetus for the 1890 Manifesto was the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, a stringent federal law that legally dissolved the LDS Church, disenfranchised women (who had been given the vote in Utah in 1870), and required voters to take an anti-polygamy oath before being permitted to vote in an election.

With the selection of Latter-day Saint Reed Smoot to be one of Utah's representatives to the U.S. Senate in 1903, national attention was again focused on the continuation of plural marriage in Utah, which culminated in the Reed Smoot hearings. In 1904, LDS Church president Joseph F. Smith issued a "Second Manifesto", after which time it became LDS Church policy to excommunicate those church members who entered into or solemnized new polygamous marriages. The seriousness with which this new measure was taken is evinced in the fact that no less eminent an LDS member than apostle John W. Taylor, son of the third president of the church, was excommunicated in 1911 for his continued opposition to the Manifesto.

Today, the LDS Church continues to excommunicate members who advocate early Mormon doctrines such as plural marriage, enter into or solemnize plural marriages (whether in the United States or elsewhere), or actively support Mormon fundamentalist or dissident groups. Although some LDS Church members continue to believe in the doctrine of plural marriage without practicing it, Joseph Smith's teachings on plural marriage remain part of the scriptural canon of the LDS Church. The LDS Church prevents any of its members who sympathize with Mormon fundamentalist teachings from entering its temples.

During the 1920s, a church dissenter named Lorin C. Woolley claimed a separate line of priesthood authority from the LDS Church's hierarchy, effectively setting in motion the development of Mormon fundamentalism. Most of the Mormon polygamous groups can trace their roots to Woolley's legacy.

For the most part, the Utah state government has left the Mormon fundamentalists to themselves unless their practices violate laws other than those prohibiting bigamy. For example, there have been recent prosecutions of men who belong to fundamentalist groups for marrying underage girls. In one highly publicized case, a man and one of his polygamist wives lost custody of all but one of their children until the wife separated herself from her husband. The largest government effort to crack down on the practices of fundamentalist Mormons was carried out in 1953 in what is today Colorado City, Arizona, which became known as the Short Creek Raid.

Other fundamental doctrines of the Latter Day Saint movement besides polygamy, notably the United Order (communalism), while equally important in the practices of some fundamentalist sects, have not come under the same scrutiny or approbation as has plural marriage, and the mainline LDS Church has mostly ignored this aspect of fundamentalism; in any case, no revelation or statement condemning it has ever been issued.