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Posted 24 Feb 2001   For week ended August 06, 2000
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News about Mormons, Mormonism,
and the LDS Church
Sent on Mormon-News: 03Aug00

Summarized by Kent Larsen

Is FLDS Church Withdrawing From World?

COLORADO CITY, ARIZONA -- For the past two Sundays Warren Jeffs, First Counselor in the First Presidency of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) has called for church members to leave the public schools and teach their children at home. He has also called for church members employed as teachers in the schools to quit and for church members to sever their ties to non-church members, including relatives. The moves could doom the four public schools in Colorado City and its sister town, Hilldale, Utah and further isolate the polygamous community from the outside world.

Jeffs counsel has led church-controlled markets and groceries to refuse to serve non-members and caused church members to sever even family ties with non-members. But Colorado City mayor Dan Barlow, who is also an official of the FLDS Church, says the moves are nothing more than an extension of the Chruch's past teachings and counsel. "This is not a rash move. The schools have been reducing enrollment for several years as people have taken on the responsibility of educating their children."

But former FLDS Church member Ben Bistline, attributes the move to ill will toward those that left the Church in a recent schism. "The people are pretty sad. Daughters can't visit mothers. They turn them away. It's all pretty silly."

Owen Allred of the polygamous United Apostolic Brethren says that even his relatives in the FLDS Church have been afraid to talk to him, "They are sticking their necks out every time they talk to me. I'm amazed something hasn't exploded right in their own ranks. It's really a dictatorship."

Even outsider Ruth A. Huth, a domestic violence counselor with the Utah Division of Child and Family Services, one of the few outsiders who were able to talk with those in the FLDS Church, because of her non-judgemental counsel, says she has now been shut out. "They used to call me. But now there is silence. Abuse doesn't just go away."

Mike King, special investigator for the Utah Attorney General's office, says that he has seen this kind of reaction before with other "cults." "It's just amazing to me that each of these cults are so much alike," says King. "These same kind of control tactics surface time and time again. It all comes down to dominion, control and power."

But Mayor Barlow says that is absurd, "Poppycock. That's just idiotic. . . . There's nothing sinister about this move. It's simply people exercising their American rights."

Sources:
SOCIETY'S LURES: Is Polygamous Sect Circling The Wagons?
Salt Lake Tribune 3Aug00 N5
By Greg Burton: Salt Lake Tribune

Polygamists Pull Kids From School
Salt Lake Tribune 2Aug00 N5
By Greg Burton: Salt Lake Tribune


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