When Warren Jeffs was added to the FBI's most-wanted list, spokespeople for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were quick to point out it has nothing to do with the Fundamentalist Church Jeffs leads, and to ensure the media didn't imply it does. What the hell are they talking about?
The fundamentalists, then led by John Barlow and Joseph Musser, broke off from the main church in 1935 when Wilford Woodruff, president of the mainstream church, declared that he had been given a revalation "suspending" the practice of polygamy. The reasons he gave his followers included avoiding being denied statehood and being imprisoned and unable to lead his church. He never said polygamy was wrong.
His explanations didn't satisfy Barlow and Musser, who remained committed to polygamy, as it was the teaching of Joseph Smith, the founder of the church.
In short, the fundamentalists just continued to do what the rest of the church was too chicken to do but still believed in.
And polygamy's not the only thing church leaders, supposedly prophets of God, have changed their minds about. Until 1978, black men couldn't be in the priesthood, though all white men, unless they committed a horrible sin, could. The "revelation" came amid outcry from civil rights activists.
Brigham Young once preached that Adam was God. The church got rid of that theory when other Christians attacked it, claiming no church that teaches such a theory is in any way a Christian church.
The list goes on and on.
Church leaders need to realize they can't change the church's history. If they don't like it, why are they Mormons?
And, contrary to their claims, the phrase Mormon Fundamentalist is not an oxy moron. It refers to the morons who at least have balls enough to practice what they preach. The morons in the mainstream church are spineless.



