Basic training for mainstream LDS fundamentalist living: Part I of II

The Manti Tabernacle.

By Chadwick LaVerl Hyde

“With all my heart I believe that the best place to prepare for … eternal life is in the home.”
- LDS President David O. McKay

“The most important of the Lord’s work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own homes.”
- LDS President Harold B. Lee

Let’s be honest. You’ve heard about polygamy being practiced by former members of the church and you’ve seen the mainstream church leadership decry it as apostasy. Maybe you went to an online chatroom and had a discussion with some older members who knew aunts or uncles that lived in polygamous homes. They spoke lovingly or reverently about those times. Perhaps you met a scholarly apologist at a church university who studied just a little too much of Joseph Smith Jr.’s personal life and private letters, and explained Section 132 in an entirely different way than you’re used to.

All of us have a story.

To every adventure there is a beginning. Every journey starts with the first few steps. Living the fundamentals, or fulness, of the gospel doesn’t have an end. The journey is the goal—it is the crucible that opens exaltation up after the first works of the gospel are solid in your life.

Let’s say those first steps led you to ogdenkraut.com and you clicked the menu and scrolled through the read books online. You possibly started perusing Kraut's 95 Theses, or the Holy Priesthood volumes, Adam-Michael, Rebaptism, or even Jesus Was Married. You realized that Kraut was a learned compiler of fundamentalist or covenant-restorative LDS religion. He’s a fundamentalist version of Bruce R. McKonkie, without any public pretense.

On an off chance, you may have heard of the Collective or “Order” as lived by the Kingston Group, or may have chatted with a few members at the businesses they own in Utah. Or maybe an Apostolic United Brethren member that runs an electrician subcontracting company—you know, the one that wires all the houses in the new subdivision you live in. On a trip through Orem, you may have run into missionaries from Christ's Church (known also as The Branch or Peterson Group). 

Then, six months into your questions and answers, you have devoured the Journal of Discourses, the teachings of Brigham Young, you know all about the revelation given to John Taylor in Centerville, Utah in the fall of 1886 on plural celestial marriage. You have further studied how LDS President Heber J. Grant and a group of brethren sanitized doctrines, ceremonies and even garments to accommodate gentile living standards—for what appears to be socio-political reasons (statehood and civic solidarity). The background for each mainstream LDS is nearly identical. You meet with groups, you chat, ask questions, watch sacraments performed, listen to talks, barbeque together and feel inspired, but then what?

You look around and realize that your entire family is mainstream LDS. Two of your sons (or even brothers) are on missions in South America or Europe. Your stake president is your father-in-law. Every room in your house has a Christus statue, or a piano with the appropriate lace cover, and a picture of a temple and President Russell M. Nelson on it.

You’re stuck. You know Joseph and the brethren lived and died to bring the fulness of the gospel to the earth. You know the ordinances in the gentile LDS church spoken of in 3 Nephi:20-21 have been traduced. You know that only through the practice of plural marriage, and through living all the covenants you bring yourself into celestial harmony and rid yourself and your family of unwanted terrestrial or telestial influences.

You also know that the Kingdom of God is a real and tangible thing. A Council of 50, as it were. You understand completely that the law of consecration is not a suggestion but a law—and must be lived voluntarily. What do you do?

This article hopes to give those in the mainstream who have forayed out into the protective gates of sanctified covenant living—back into Joseph Smith Mormonism or covenant Christian LDS lifestyles. This is known as fundamentalism, a term that is sometimes used warily by adherents of covenant Mormonism. I call it covenant LDS living.

Imagine, you’re a counselor in the Elders quorum and you (along with your wife) have vowed with another sister member in all sacredness unto living the principle—the work. Your families have been rebaptized and reconfirmed by Taylorite key-holding Wooley-Musserites, or others with what they understand are equal priesthood keys. What do you do next? Taking those first steps into fundamental denominations or even venturing out into the patriarchal method of independent fundamentalism can be daunting.

I present to you some suggestions to get you through the first few years of mainstream fundamentalism (living the fulness of the gospel while remaining in the mainstream church). This will give you the time to live the work while adhering to friendships and traditions in the mainstream church.

The time will inevitably come when you will have to part ways, but by and large mainstream fundamentalism can be the primary and the very first method for many returning to the covenant path of our original LDS faith.

• I cannot stress this enough. Read “Family Kingdom” by Samuel Taylor, the son of the mistreated apostle John W. Taylor (who was the son of John Taylor the prophet). This is how church confrontation is avoided.
• Avoid outwardly decrying the apostasy you will inevitably see in the mainstream church. Do not sharpen verbal axes in priesthood or gospel doctrine classes and then fancy yourself a Samuel the Lamanite on a Zarahemlan wall. Love and understand. Peer pressure and the esteem of our fellow man has become huge in mainstream LDS culture. It is a telestial/terrestrial, honor-bound form of our worship and it has its rules and regulations. Instead, pray to see and understand the perspective of the mainstream points. You will see that proselytizing efforts are nearly 90% of the doctrine you will hear. Only the basic principles are taught. Everyone’s behavior is guided to teaching the gentiles appropriate morality and duty. See this as a prophetic necessity. The gospel (not the fulness of it, but merely the gospel of salvation it says) will be taught to the entire world. Everywhere. If the mainstream church has given up celestial law, they certainly have not given up terrestrial social standards. And the mainstreamers are experts at assimilation. This is not to be underappreciated. Nearly all fundamentalists (I believe about 99%) come from the tender embraces of mainstream friendshipping and conversion. You think teaching tithing to gentiles is hard? Try teaching plural celestial marriage, consecration/United Order or progression of priesthood and kingdoms. It is like teaching linear equations to toddlers. The milk and meat metaphor.
• Love the Aaronic order of our faith—even if they have forgotten the gift of the ministering of angels. Further, never mistake your righteous intentions for their daily walk of faith. There are thousands in the mainstream LDS whose lives are better settled and spent than many of ours—who only miss the opportunity for exaltation for the lack of knowledge, not faith. See them as you, without access to knowledge. Granted there are hard nosed, cliquish boors who believe councils and church courts are nothing more than popularity contests; but see them as the exception and you will glide through this phase of your conversion unto the fulness of the gospel with peace.
• Place your prayer circle altar area in the privacy of an upstairs room in your home with curtained windows, far away from the social areas in your house.
• Seat yourself with your first wife and family in sacrament and other meetings. If you have sister wives and families, have them attend other wards on Sunday.
• Avoid fraternizing with mainstream members except for the barest of necessity. Weddings, family reunions, etc.
• Perform sacrament at home before church.
• Perform mainstream duties without your family members.
• If you get drawn into a doctrinal argument, develop an apologist tone. Always timestamp certain doctrines like plural celestial marriage, etc. Argue in the past tense.
• Have separate houses that abut each other and refer to sister wives and children as “friends” to others. The first wife should be comfortable explaining family friendships rather than the husband to mainstream seekers or gentiles. This sets a comfortable tone for even the stodgiest of interrogators.
• See your duty in the mainstream church as maintaining peace. This will make the time you spend there more enjoyable and the transition from mainstream back to full covenant lifestyle far more sweet.

These suggestions are for keeping a low profile in the mainstream church. As children from sister wives come into the family, it will become more and more difficult to keep these arrangements private. 

Remember that mainstream fundamentalism is a transitional practice. At some point another denomination or independent covenant LDS lifestyle will become necessary.

You can reach me at fundamentalistmag@gmail.com.