The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Denomination·Founded 1935 CE·Estimates before the 2008 raid ran to around 10,000 members. The church publishes nothing, many members have left, and no current figure is reliable.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints → The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

The recordCherish Families — support in Short Creek, founded by people who grew up there

Branch
Overview Belief 3How to Live 1Practice 1Stories & Scripture 1 You × The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Discussion

History & overview

The full story →

Keep the covenant the main church let go.

The largest of the Mormon fundamentalist bodies, formed among families at Short Creek — now Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona — who held that the LDS Church's 1890 renunciation of plural marriage abandoned a commandment rather than obeyed a law. Property is consecrated to a communal trust, marriages are assigned by the prophet, and the church has been led since 2002 by Warren Jeffs, who has directed it from a Texas prison since 2011.

On the record

Warren Jeffs was placed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list in May 2006 and arrested that August. A 2007 Utah conviction as an accomplice to rape was overturned by the Utah Supreme Court in 2010. On 4 August 2011 a jury in Tom Green County, Texas convicted him of two counts of sexual assault of a child — one twelve years old, one fifteen — on evidence taken in the April 2008 raid on the YFZ Ranch, including his own audio recording of one assault and DNA establishing paternity in the other. On 9 August 2011 he was sentenced to life imprisonment plus twenty years, the terms to run consecutively. He has continued to direct the church from prison.

Why it is filed this way

Scholarship files the FLDS two ways at once. Mormon studies treats it as a denomination of the Latter-day Saint tradition, holding the same scripture and the same priesthood theology and differing on one commandment; the study of new religious movements treats it as a high-demand movement organised around a living prophet. It is carried as a denomination here because the descent, the canon and the theology are all Latter-day Saint and neither side disputes that.

Reduced and dispersed. Utah took control of the United Effort Plan trust in 2005, the Texas ranch was seized in 2014, and Hildale and Colorado City are no longer run by the church. Members remain, and Warren Jeffs remains the prophet.

DeitiesThe theology is Mormon — God the Father with a body of flesh and bone, Jesus Christ as his son — with exaltation held to require the plural marriage covenant, which the LDS Church denies and has denied since 1890.
Founded1935 CE · Short Creek, on the Utah–Arizona line
AfterlifeDegrees of glory; the celestial kingdom entered through the new and everlasting covenant of marriage
TextsThe Bible (King James) · The Book of Mormon · The Doctrine and Covenants, section 132

The map

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →
c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1517 CE Protestantism 1830 CE The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1935 CE The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →
The 1890 Manifesto was a surrender, not a revelation. The LDS Church renounced plural marriage under federal pressure. Mormon fundamentalists hold that a commandment given in Doctrine and Covenants 132 cannot be withdrawn for legal convenience. Go deeper — context & 1 source →
One man holds the keys. The prophet holds the priesthood alone and delegates nothing that matters — marriages, property, membership. It is the doctrine that made Warren Jeffs' hold on the church survive his imprisonment. Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →
W Warren Jeffs, prophet since 2002. He succeeded his father Rulon, expelled hundreds of men and reassigned their families, and was convicted in Texas in 2011 of sexually assaulting two children. He still holds the office from prison. Domain Revelation, marriage, property, and membershipStanding Holds the keys of the priesthood alone. He has directed the church from a Texas prison since 2011 Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →
Placement marriage. The prophet assigns spouses by revelation, sometimes to people who have not met. It is the practice at the centre of the church's theology and at the centre of the Texas prosecutions. When Once in a lifetime, and at the prophet's directionWho The prophet, the man, and the woman assigned Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in
Judaism — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Christianity — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

1 cited texts
  1. Doctrine and Covenants 132:61 where it is cited →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.

Numbers count Panfaith activity only — never real-world adherence.

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