The FLDS break off from LDS?

[Bini]

What is the story behind the FLDS breaking off from the LDS? The wiki, in short, explains that the emerge of the FLDS was largely a result of members wanting to continue polygamy. Does anyone have speculations as to what blessings these men and women felt they'd receive as FLDS and not LDS? And, who was the Mormon prophet at this time? Was there any sort of general conference held addressing this great divide? This differing opinion must have split up many families. Do any of you have relatives on the FLDS side?

[SpiritDragon]

I can't tell you the story of the break without doing more research on the matter. I can tell you that the blessings they hoped to receive are the same as the blessings anyone hopes to receive by either staying within a certain faith construct or converting to another. The general followers simply believe that it is the right path, however I can't speak to the motives of the leadership who may well have known all along it was corrupt and were simply hoping to exert power over those they could get to follow them.

 

Even to this day people are still joining and creating fundamentalist mormon societies similar to the FLDS. Around 50 years ago a bunch of my 2-3x removed cousins joined a polygamous faction and moved away to some colony to practice. More recently half my family has been duped into some other garbage movement where they believe because they have learned a new way to pray that they have frequent theophany experiences. The problem is that too much of what they teach and practice just simply doesn't add up and correspond with the truth, but they believe they are more enlightened than the rest of us who are too hard-hearted to enjoy what they have.

[Just_A_Guy]

Bini, the website you want to go to is www.mormonfundamentalism.com.  It's run by an LDS member (Brian Hales, who's done so much excellent research on Joseph Smith's polygamy) who is an anesthesiologist by profession, but became interested in early LDS history after some extended family members of his were recruited by the FLDS.

 

Going from memory:  Basically, in the 1920s a guy named Woolley comes forward and claims that before John Taylor's death Taylor gathered some close associates and set up a "Council of Seven Friends".  The council was supposed to continue the practice of polygamy no matter what the mainstream LDS Church did.  Woolley was an LDS patriarch, as I recall, and he wrote about a "patriarchal order" of priesthood that functioned independently of the Salt Lake leadership.  By the time Woolley starts writing down his claims, he's the only one remaining alive of the people he claims were at this meeting with John Taylor; and as I recall he really didn't publicize his claims very aggressively--it was his son who sort of took the whole thing and ran with it, reconstituted the Council of Seven Friends, etc.  I don't think there was a formal schism or Conference session devoted to Woolley's claims--he and his successors just quietly tried to recruit members from the mainline LDS Church. 

 

The impression I get is that pretty much every time their leader dies, they have a fight over who should be the next leader and therefore split again--thus you have the LeBarons, the Allredites/AUB, the FLDS, the Centennial Park set, the Bountiful communities, Tom Green, the Kingstons . . . all technically independent of each other, but all pretty much tracing their doctrinal and authoritative claims back to Woolley, and from him back to Taylor and into the same prophetic line that we LDS recognize.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Just_A_Guy

[Bini]

Wow. That is fascinating. I've never known much about the split.

[Maureen]

In addition to what JAG mentioned:

 

A number of church leaders were opposed to the enforcement of the "Second Manifesto", including apostles John W. Taylor and Matthias F. Cowley. As a result of their opposition, both were expelled from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1906, and in 1911 Taylor was excommunicated for continued opposition.^[7] In 1909, Francis M. Lyman was put in charge of a committee to investigate plural marriages since the Second Manifesto that excommunicated people who had been involved in such practices.^[8]

 

As the church began to excommunicate those who continued to enter into plural marriages, some of those individuals began the Mormon fundamentalist movement. Many such dissidents were motivated by the belief that it was improper for the church to ban plural marriage, which they saw as an "eternal commandment", while others pointed out that neither the original nor the Second Manifestos were presented as revelations from God, as previous statements of important church doctrine had been.^[9]

 

Unlike the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church has not canonized the "Second Manifesto", but it nevertheless remains an accurate description of the church's attitude towards its members that enter into or solemnize polygamous marriages.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Manifesto

 

M.

[Just_A_Guy]

From what I understand, I think Wikipedia may be slightly overstating the link between the Second Manifesto and the rise of Mormon Fundamentalism.  There was about a twenty-year gap between the Second Manifesto and Woolley really taking off.  There was probably some private disaffection by individual members (and the implementation of it was quite messy--some men continued to cohabit with all their wives and just quit marrying new ones; others went further and abandoned all their wives but one); but the organized movement really begins in the mid-1920s.