It Practices What They Preach

Over the past several years, I have documented such activities and beliefs among fundamentalist church members during voluminous research -- which included hundreds of interviews -- on the polygamists of Colorado City and Hildale.

As for the LDS church, Steven Benson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist from the Arizona Republic and the eldest grandson of the late LDS Prophet Ezra Taft Benson, provides unique insight into mainstream Mormonism.

The editors at the state's largest newspaper refused to allow Benson to talk to me, but Benson and his wife, Mary Ann, explained their reasons for leaving the LDS very clearly in a provocative May 22, 1994, column that appeared in the Republic.

Consider this excerpt:

"After a lifetime of membership in the Mormon Church, we came to regard it as an institution beyond repair, its moral heart eaten out by the worms of deceit, intolerance and blind conformity.

"We see Mormonism in a state of significant spiritual and intellectual decay, corrupted by the systematic and unchecked abuse of ecclesiastical authority at the expense of individual liberty, honesty and truth, and led by men lacking in prophetic vision. It has become tyrannical in its control and authoritarian in its exercise of power; in short, it has become Red Square on Temple Square.

"From our own experience, we saw relentless attempts by Mormon Church authorities to compel us to 'pray, pay and obey' at the expense of honesty, integrity and individuality."

The Bensons' description of the mainstream church 12 years ago could be used verbatim to describe the current conditions of Warren Jeffs' FLDS.

The two religious groups are deeply intertwined. Their beliefs are based on the same scripture. They have the same founders. The key difference is that the FLDS practices what the LDS preaches.