Under the Banner of Heaven

by Jon Krakauer

  SHORT CREEK

  Extreme and bizarre religious ideas are so commonplace in American history that it is difficult to speak of them as fringe at all. To speak of a fringe implies a mainstream, but in terms of numbers, perhaps the largest component of the religious spectrum in contemporary America remains what it has been since colonial times: a fundamentalist evangelicalism with powerful millenarian strands. The doomsday theme has never been far from the center of American religious thought. The nation has always had believers who responded to this threat by a determination to flee from the wrath to come, to separate themselves from the City of Destruction, even if that meant putting themselves at odds with the law and with their communities or families. . . . We can throughout American history find select and separatist groups who looked to a prophetic individual claiming divine revelation, in a setting that repudiated conventional assumptions about property, family life, and sexuality. They were marginal groups, peculiar people, people set apart from the world: the Shakers and the Ephrata community, the communes of Oneida and Amana, the followers of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

  PHILIP JENKINS,

  MYSTICS AND MESSIAHS

  Snaking diagonally across the top of Arizona, the Grand Canyon is a stupendous, 277-mile rent in the planet's hide that functions as a formidable natural barrier, effectively cutting off the northwestern corner from the rest of the state. This isolated wedge of backcountry—almost as big as New Jersey, yet traversed by a single paved highway—is known as the Arizona Strip, and it has one of the lowest population densities in the forty-eight conterminous states.

  There is, however, one relatively large municipality here. Colorado City, home to some nine thousand souls, is more than five times as populous as any other town in the district. Motorists driving west on Highway 389 across the parched barrens of the Uinkaret Plateau are apt to be surprised when, twenty-eight miles past Fredonia (population 1,036, the second-largest town on the Strip), Colorado City suddenly materializes in the middle of nowhere: a sprawl of small businesses and unusually large homes squatting beneath a towering escarpment of vermilion sandstone called Canaan Mountain. All but a handful of the town's residents are Mormon Fundamentalists. They live in this patch of desert in the hope of being left alone to follow the sacred principle of plural marriage without interference from government authorities or the LDS Church.

  Straddling the Utah-Arizona border, Colorado City is home to at least three Mormon Fundamentalist sects, including the world's largest: the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. More commonly known as the United Effort Plan, or UEP, it requires its members live in strict accordance with the commandments of a frail, ninety-two-year-old tax accountant–turned–prophet named Rulon T. Jeffs.* “Uncle Rulon,” as he is known to his followers, traces his divinely ordained leadership in an unbroken chain that leads directly back to Joseph Smith himself. Although his feeble bearing would seem to make him poorly cast for the role, the residents of Colorado City believe that Uncle Rulon is the “one mighty and strong” whose coming was prophesied by Joseph in 1832.

  “A lot of people here are convinced Uncle Rulon is going to live forever,” says DeLoy Bateman, a forty-eight-year-old science teacher at Colorado City High School. Not only was DeLoy born and raised in this faith, but his forebears were some of the religion's most illustrious figures: his great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather were among the thirteen founding members of the Mormon Fundamentalist Church, and his adoptive grandfather, LeRoy Johnson, was the prophet who immediately preceded Uncle Rulon as the leader of Colorado City. At the moment, DeLoy is driving his thirdhand Chevy van on a dirt road on the outskirts of town. One of his two wives and eight of his seventeen children are riding in the back. Suddenly he hits the brakes, and the van lurches to a stop on the shoulder. “Now there's an interesting sight,” DeLoy declares, sizing up the wreckage of a television satellite dish behind some sagebrush off the side of the road. “Looks like somebody had to get rid of their television. Hauled it out of town and dumped it.”

  Members of the religion, he explains, are forbidden to watch television or read magazines or newspapers. The temptations of the outside world loom large, however, and some members of the faith inevitably succumb. “As soon as you ban something,” DeLoy observes, “you make it incredibly attractive. People will sneak into St. George or Cedar City and buy themselves a dish, put it up where it can't easily be seen, and secretly watch TV during every free moment. Then one Sunday Uncle Rulon will give one of his sermons about the evils of television. He'll announce that he knows exactly who has one, and warn that everyone who does is putting their eternal souls in serious jeopardy.

  “Every time he does that, a bunch of satellite dishes immediately get dumped in the desert, like this one here. For two or three years afterward there won't be any televisions in town, but then, gradually, the dishes start secretly going up again, until the next crackdown. People try to do the right thing, but they're only human.”

  As the TV prohibition suggests, life in Colorado City under Rulon Jeffs bears more than a passing resemblance to life in Kabul under the Taliban. Uncle Rulon's word carries the weight of law. The mayor and every other city employee answers to him, as do the entire police force and the superintendent of public schools. Even animals are subject to his whim. Two years ago a Rottweiler killed a child in town. An edict went out that dogs would no longer be allowed within the city limits. A posse of young men was dispatched to round up all the canines, after which the unsuspecting pets were taken into a dry wash and shot.

  Uncle Rulon has married an estimated seventy-five women with whom he has fathered at least sixty-five children; several of his wives were given to him in marriage when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties. His sermons frequently stress the need for total submission. “I want to tell you that the greatest freedom you can enjoy is in obedience,” he has preached. “Perfect obedience produces perfect faith.” Like most FLDS prophets, his teachings rely heavily on fiery screeds penned in the nineteenth century by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Uncle Rulon likes to remind his followers of Brigham's warning that for those who commit such unspeakable sins as homosexuality, or having sexual intercourse with a member of the African race, “the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.”

  Polygamy is illegal in both Utah and Arizona. To avoid prosecution, typically men in Colorado City will legally marry only the first of their wives; subsequent wives, although “spiritually married” to their husband by Uncle Rulon, thus remain single mothers in the eyes of the state. This has the added benefit of allowing the enormous families in town to qualify for welfare and other forms of public assistance. Despite the fact that Uncle Rulon and his followers regard the governments of Arizona, Utah, and the United States as Satanic forces out to destroy the UEP, their polygamous community receives more than $6 million a year in public funds.

  More than $4 million of government largesse flows each year into the Colorado City public school district—which, according to the Phoenix New Times, “is operated primarily for the financial benefit of the FLDS Church and for the personal enrichment of FLDS school district leaders.” Reporter John Dougherty determined that school administrators have “plundered the district's treasury by running up thousands of dollars in personal expenses on district credit cards, purchasing expensive vehicles for their personal use and engaging in extensive travel. The spending spree culminated in December [2000], when the district purchased a $220,000 Cessna 210 airplane to facilitate trips by district personnel to cities across Arizona.”

  Colorado City has received $1.9 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pave its streets, improve the fire department, and upgrade the water system. Immediately south of the city limits, the federal government built a $2.8 million airport that serves almost no one beyond the fundamentalist community. Thirty-three percent of the town's residents receive food stamps—compared to the s
tate average of 4.7 percent. Currently the residents of Colorado City receive eight dollars in government services for every dollar they pay in taxes; by comparison, residents in the rest of Mohave County, Arizona, receive just over a dollar in services per tax dollar paid.

  “Uncle Rulon justifies all that assistance from the wicked government by explaining that really the money is coming from the Lord,” says DeLoy Bateman. “We're taught that it's the Lord's way of manipulating the system to take care of his chosen people.” Fundamentalists call defrauding the government “bleeding the beast” and regard it as a virtuous act.

  Uncle Rulon and his followers believe that the earth is seven thousand years old and that men have never walked on the moon; film clips showing Apollo astronauts on the lunar surface are part of an elaborate hoax foisted on the world by the American government, they say. In addition to the edict against watching television or reading newspapers, residents of Colorado City are forbidden to have any contact with people outside the UEP—including family members who have left the religion. DeLoy, as it happens, is one such apostate.

  DeLoy and his immense family live in a correspondingly immense house—at sixteen thousand square feet, it is more than five times as large as a typical three-bedroom home—which he built with his own hands in the middle of town. DeLoy's brother David lives in a similarly large home just a few yards away, on the other side of a six-foot fence. “My brother over the fence there,” says DeLoy, gesturing with his chin, “him and I are just as close as any two people on the planet. Our father was disabled when we were small children, so David and I raised each other. But now he isn't allowed to talk to me, because I'm no longer in the religion. If his wife catches him having a conversation with me, she'll take all the children, and Uncle Rulon will marry her to some other man within hours. And David will be what the locals call a ‘eunuch': a man who is allowed to remain in the religion but who has had his family taken from him—like what was supposed to happen to me when I left the Work.”

  DeLoy used to be a respected member of the religion. He has never touched a drop of alcohol or coffee, never smoked a cigarette, never uttered a profane word. He was unwavering in his obedience and made a point to keep his head down. Then, in 1996, relatives of his second wife began spreading scurrilous rumors about him. Somebody shared these rumors with the prophet, and the upshot, DeLoy laments, was that “Uncle Rulon called me into his office and made all kinds of accusations against me.”

  The prophet, DeLoy says, “was extremely angry—so angry he was actually vibrating, and spittle was flying out of his mouth as he spoke. The normal procedure when the prophet confronts you like that is to basically say, ‘I'm sorry I've done this to displease thee. What would thou have me do?' But this time I couldn't bring myself to do it. I just couldn't say it. There was simply no truth in what he had accused me of doing.

  “So I leaned over until my face was within inches of his, and then—real calmly, in a soft voice—I said, ‘Uncle Rulon, everything you have said is a lie, an absolute lie.' And he just sat back in his chair in total shock. This was not something anyone had ever done.”

  Upon arriving home DeLoy considered the enormity of what had just occurred: “Uncle Rulon spoke to God on a continual basis. All his wisdom and knowledge supposedly came straight from the Lord. But in a matter of moments it had become apparent to me that this man wasn't really communicating with God, or he would have known that what he accused me of was a lie. Right then and there I decided to leave the Work, even though I knew it would mean the end of my life as I knew it.”

  When DeLoy failed to show up for the weekly priesthood meeting on the following Sunday, within twenty-four hours Uncle Rulon dispatched someone to DeLoy's house to take away his wives and children. According to UEP dogma, wives do not belong to their husbands, nor do children belong to their parents; all are property of the priesthood and may be claimed at any time. Uncle Rulon decreed that DeLoy's wives and progeny were to be given to another, worthier man immediately.

  But both of DeLoy's wives declined to leave him. Uncle Rulon was flabbergasted. “The priesthood means far more than family or anything else,” explains DeLoy. “For my wives to defy Uncle Rulon and stick with me, even though I was going straight to hell—that was unheard of.” DeLoy's spouses, and all his children except the three oldest, thus became apostates, too.

  In Colorado City, the faithful are taught that apostates are more wicked than Gentiles, or even mainline Mormons.* In a sermon preached on July 16, 2000, Bishop Warren Jeffs (Uncle Rulon's son and heir apparent) emphasized that an apostate “is the most dark person on earth.” Apostates, he explained, have “turned traitor on the priesthood and their own existence, and they are led about by their master: Lucifer. . . . Apostates are literally tools of the devil.”

  When DeLoy apostatized, relatives who remained in the religion were forbidden to speak to him, his wives, or his apostate children ever again. And although DeLoy had built and paid for his home, the UEP owns all the land within the city limits, including the lot on which DeLoy's house was built. Uncle Rulon and the UEP have filed a legal action to take possession of DeLoy's house and are currently trying to evict him from Colorado City.

  It is no accident that Colorado City is a long way from anywhere. Short Creek, as the town was then known, was settled in the 1920s by a half dozen fundamentalist families wanting to live where they would be free to follow Joseph Smith's Most Holy Principle without outside interference. The UEP, failed to appreciate the extent to which polygamy has periodically stirred public passions, however.

  By the early 1950s the population of Short Creek had grown to more than four hundred. This so alarmed government officials and the LDS leadership in Salt Lake City that Arizona governor Howard Pyle, with church encouragement and financial backing, concocted an elaborate plan to raid the town and stamp out polygamy.* On July 26, 1953—eight months before DeLoy Bateman was born—some one hundred state police officers, forty county deputies, and dozens of troops from the Arizona National Guard drove into Short Creek in the predawn darkness and arrested 122 polygamous men and women, including DeLoy's father. The 263 children from these families were declared wards of the state, bussed four hundred miles to Kingman, Arizona, and placed in foster care.

  In a carefully worded, multipage statement defending the raid, Governor Pyle called it a “momentous police action against insurrection within [Arizona's] own borders.” He explained,

  The leaders of this mass violation of so many of our laws have boasted directly to Mohave county officers that their operations have grown so great that the State of Arizona was powerless to interfere.

  They have been shielded, as you know, by the geographic circumstances of Arizona's northernmost territory . . . the region beyond the Grand Canyon that is best known as “The Strip.”

  This is a land of high plateaus, dense forests, great breaks and gorges, rolling arid lands, and intense color . . . a land squeezed between the even higher plateaus of Utah and the Grand Canyon of Arizona.

  The community of Short Creek is 400 miles by the shortest road from the Mohave county seat of Kingman. . . .

  Massive cliffs rearing north of Short Creek's little central street provide a natural rock barrier to the north. To the east and west are the sweeping expanses of dry and almost barren plateaus before the forests begin. To the south there is the Grand Canyon.

  It is in this most isolated of all Arizona communities that this foulest of conspiracies has flourished and expanded in a terrifying geometric progression. Here has been a community entirely dedicated to the warped philosophy that a small handful of greedy and licentious men should have the right and the power to control the destiny of every human soul in the community.

  Here is a community—many of the women, sadly, right along with the men—unalterably dedicated to the wicked theory that every maturing girl child should be forced into the bondage of multiple wifehood with men of all ages for the sole purpose of producing more children to be
reared to become more chattels of this totally lawless enterprise.

  One day after the raid, the Deseret News, a daily newspaper owned by the LDS Church, editorialized in support of the action: “Utah and Arizona owe a debt of gratitude to Arizona's Howard Pyle . . . we hope the unfortunate activities at Short Creek will be cleaned up once and for all.”

  The raid made national headlines; it was even reported on the front page of the New York Times, with the same prominence given to a story announcing the armistice ending the Korean War. But to the dismay of the LDS leadership, most of the press presented the polygamists in a favorable light. Photographs of crying children being torn from their mothers' arms generated sympathy throughout the nation for the fundamentalists, who protested that they were upstanding, law-abiding Mormons simply trying to exercise their constitutionally protected freedoms.

  The raid was widely perceived as religious persecution by overly zealous government agencies, and it sparked a great outcry in support of the polygamists. The Arizona Republic, for example, criticized the action as “a misuse of public funds.” In 1954, Governor Pyle was voted out of office, thanks largely to the raid and the egg it left on his face. The arrests and subsequent trials cost taxpayers $600,000, yet by 1956 all the polygamists who had been arrested were out of jail and reunited with their families in Short Creek. Members of the UEP unapologetically resumed living the Principle as taught by Joseph Smith, and the population of the town continued to more than double each decade—a consequence of the community's giant families and astronomical birth rate.

  Paradoxically, the Short Creek raid proved to be a huge boon to the FLDS Church. Thanks to the backlash that followed the raid, for most of the next half century fundamentalists were able to practice polygamy throughout the Intermountain West with little state interference—until May 1998, when a battered and bruised teenage girl dialed 911 from a pay phone at a truck stop in northern Utah.