Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints belongs to the Latter Day Saint movement family of churches.

Governance: hierarchical.

A fundamentalist body that continued plural marriage after the LDS Church ended it — a separate organization the LDS Church repudiates.

Heritage

When the LDS Church formally ended plural marriage (manifestos of 1890 and 1904), some members continued the practice and were excommunicated; communities gathered from the 1930s at Short Creek on the Utah-Arizona line, today the twin towns of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona. The group organized as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, led in recent decades by Rulon Jeffs and then Warren Jeffs, who has been imprisoned since his 2011 conviction for crimes connected with underage marriages; the community has fractured and diminished since.

Theological family

The body describes itself as continuing the original teachings of the Latter Day Saint restoration, including plural marriage as a religious principle. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has repudiated plural marriage since 1890, excommunicates its practitioners, and states plainly that the FLDS is not part of it or affiliated with it. Trinitarian churches differ further with the whole movement over authority and Scripture; none of this is adjudicated here.

Who decides what

Hierarchical under a man regarded as prophet, with authority historically concentrated to a degree courts and former members have documented extensively.

What a first-time visitor would find

The community's worship is largely closed to outsiders; public knowledge of it comes principally from former members, journalists and court records rather than from the body itself.

What it has always cared about

Separation from the wider world as a religious principle; communal economic arrangements, historically through its United Effort Plan trust, later placed under court supervision.

Its gift to the wider church

None is claimed on the body's behalf; its story functions in American religious history chiefly as a caution — studied by every tradition — about closed authority. This record exists because congregations connected to the movement appear in national data and deserve accurate, sober description.

Commonly confused with

With the LDS Church, emphatically: the two are separate organizations, and the LDS Church repudiates the FLDS and plural marriage. Also with other, unrelated fundamentalist Latter Day Saint groups.

Range of views inside it

The movement has splintered, particularly since 2011; how many members remain, and under what leadership, is not reliably public.

A note from the mapmakers: This record is deliberately brief and factual. No US congregation count is published in RCMS 2020, and none is offered here. Nothing may be asserted of any specific congregation or community, and nothing in this record may be used to characterize individuals; the criminal convictions noted are matters of public court record. Sentences drawn from this record must state that the FLDS is separate from, and repudiated by, the LDS Church.

Sources: Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press) · Modern Polygamy in the United States: Historical, Cultural, and Legal Issues (Cardell K. Jacobson and Lara Burton, eds., Oxford University Press)

Where Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints churches are on the map

2 Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.

More of the Latter Day Saint movement story · Find these churches on the map