It Practices What They Preach

The mainstream LDS renounced polygamy in 1890, but the disavowal came only under severe duress. At the time, the United States government was threatening to destroy the financial foundation of the church by seizing church assets. The widespread practice of polygamy was also preventing Utah from gaining long-sought-after statehood.

The church's fourth president and prophet, Wilford Woodruff, issued a "manifesto" asking members to abide by the civil laws of marriage that required monogamy.

Woodruff's declaration created a huge controversy within the LDS because it was seen by some members as a direct challenge to the teachings of Joseph Smith and to his immediate successor and fellow polygamist, Brigham Young. It was also viewed with suspicion by non-Mormons who believed that the church was only paying lip service to the government to get the feds off their backs.

Woodruff's manifesto accomplished the desired outcome: Utah's statehood was achieved in 1896, and the church survived without the LDS' deleting Section 132.

Abandoning polygamy proved to be very difficult for the Mormon Church. Even after Woodruff's manifesto, top church officials continued to sanction polygamous marriages in Mexico, Canada and elsewhere.

The LDS leadership's continued support of polygamy led to a contentious round of hearings before the United States Senate beginning in March 1904, and lasting three years.

During the hearings, then-LDS president and prophet Joseph F. Smith (the nephew of the church's founder) admitted that polygamous marriages had continued after the 1890 manifesto. Smith then issued a second manifesto in 1904 that once again called for the end of plural marriages by LDS members.

But that did not mean the LDS abandoned polygamy entirely.

It continues to conduct ceremonies in its 122 temples across the world where men are sealed to multiple wives who would only become their spouses in the afterlife.

Mainstream Mormons today fully embrace polygamy in the highest level of their complex heaven known as the "celestial kingdom."

Joseph Smith promised men who were faithful members of the Mormon "priesthood" a fabulous existence in the afterlife. As far-fetched as it may seem to the uninitiated, the exalted LDS males and their chosen spouses sealed to them in LDS temples on Earth are to rule over planets as gods and populate them with their offspring.

The fundamentalist Mormons of Colorado City and Hildale consider Warren Jeffs the true Mormon prophet. The fundamentalist faithful believe in the same heaven and promise of rule over planets. The primary difference between the FLDS of Colorado City and the LDS of Salt Lake City is that FLDS faithful do not wait to practice polygamy until after death.

Though largely out of sight and out of mind to most of us before Jeffs hit the headlines, the FLDS has openly practiced polygamy in the isolated communities north of the Grand Canyon for seven decades.

While Jeffs is attracting international attention for conducting polygamous marriages involving underage girls, many mainstream Mormons say their church quietly clings to its belief in polygamy.

"What I was taught when I was growing up was that plural marriage was an eternal principle and was supposedly never to be taken from the Earth after Joseph Smith started it," a former East Valley LDS bishop tells me. "Church leaders told us that it would be reinstated on the Earth by the church as soon as the church took over the government."

The former bishop, who asked that I not use his name because he feared reprisals from family members, is in his late 50s. He says many mainstream LDS church members his age and older privately support fundamentalist Mormon polygamists.

"One reason the polygamists were able to continue is because [mainstream] Mormons have sympathy for them and understand their reasons and knew that regular Mormons were going to come back and practice it someday," he said. "These people are considered heroes for continuing to practice polygamy."

Lifelong Colorado City resident Benjamin Bistline has carefully chronicled the history of FLDS polygamists in his book The Polygamists: A History of Colorado City.

Bistline, who quit the FLDS church more than 20 years ago and has since become a member of the mainstream church, says the LDS continues to believe that polygamy is a central part of its doctrine.

"We believe that plural marriage is a correct principle, but we are not commanded to live it today. We are commanded not to," Bistline says.

But if political conditions ever allow the reinstitution of polygamy, he says he and other church members would gladly return to the practice.

"If the Lord commands it and it's legal, we will do it," Bistline says.

The parallels between the LDS and the FLDS don't end with polygamy.

Both groups demand strict obedience to their respective prophets, whom they believe are infallible.

Both groups believe other religions and civil society are out to destroy them. Both are hostile to a free press and strongly encourage members to utilize only church-approved media.

Both demand that members tithe at least 10 percent of their incomes to qualify for the highest levels of the celestial kingdom.

Both call for shunning for life even family members who are kicked out of the church.