Right to Practice My Religion According to the Dictates of My Own Conscience

Joseph Lyman Jessop trial (Life Magazine 1944)

It was an early spring morning on March 7th, 1944 in Salt Lake City when my father, Marvin Jessop then only eight years old, heard loud shouts and the hard scuffling of shoes outside his bedroom door.  In a chaotic scene designed to intimidate and scare, five police officers banged loudly before bursting through the doors of the sleeping polygamist household and began rummaging through bookcases, dressers, closets, and personal belongings as they worked their way upstairs to Lyman’s bedroom where he was ordered into the hallway. 

As the Jessop children emptied out of their beds and into the hallway to see the commotion they found their dad standing in his underwear surrounded by Salt Lake City police officers demanding answers to their questions. The officers began questioning the children as well, trying to catch them in a possible trap to be used as evidence regarding their religious practices. Marvin remembers that, “My Dad stood tall and straight—the best he could while surrounded by police officers–instructed us to not be afraid, assuring us we did not have to answer any of the questions, to which one police officer responded by punching Dad with his flashlight and barking at him to SHUSH...We’ll do with you how we please. You are under arrest!”

A similar scene unfolded in other polygamist homes throughout the Salt Lake Valley as an orchestrated raid by federal and state authorities designed to deal a fatal blow to the fledgling polygamist movement in Utah was carried out. Children of polygamists woke to their houses filled with police officers and their fathers being escorted to the back seats of cruisers. There was no resistance from the polygamists. In fact, in Rulon Allred’s home where my mother, Sharon who was only two years old at the time, Rulon actually asked one of his wives to fix breakfast for the police officers—which she did.

By the time the day was over, forty-six arrests had been made. The polygamist homes were searched for any scrap of incriminating evidence regarding beliefs and lifestyle, including hymn books, scriptures, and personal correspondence that might point to their polygamist practices. It was an ominous day forever burned into the memory of polygamists and to the present day serves as a constant reminder of just how precarious their rights have been, and still are when it comes to practicing their religion.

Polygamist men posing in front of  Utah State Prison 1944

My two grandfathers, Lyman Jessop and Rulon Allred along with other polygamist leaders, proudly stood trial and served prison time behind bars. Marvin Jessop, now eighty years old, remembers how tough it was to have his father in prison, as it took a devastating financial and emotional toll on their large family compelling them to pull together in order to make it through those difficult months. Even though it was hard Marvin nostalgically recalls the few times when he got to visit his dad at the prison yard and how, "I got to touch dad's fingers through the chain link fence."  Having their dad behind bars was hard on the Jessop family but they drew closer together with an even stronger religious conviction and, “Strengthen our resolve, our determination to be like him.”

The prisoners were eventually released, after nine months, under the signed promise to abandon their polygamist practices. The raid and prison sentences started what is known as the post manifesto polygamist “underground” days and signaled an ironic twist within the history of Mormonism.  

The mainstream Mormon Church had officially given up the practice of polygamy in 1890 with the issuing of the Manifesto due largely to an incredible amount of political and economic pressure from the federal government.  The result of that pressure prior to 1890 actually created a polygamist underground sub-culture within the church in order to avoid fines and jail time for breaking cohabitation laws.  Even after the 1890 Manifesto and up until 1904, when the church issued the so called Second Manifesto, the Church continued to privately and discretely sanction the practice of polygamy by sending polygamists outside U.S. jurisdiction to Mexico and Canada therefore furthering the sub culture of polygamy to stay alive within the shadows of the Church.

By the 1920’s however, the Church tried to aggressively distance itself from the practice of polygamy.  The once hounded and harassed church reversed roles and zealously collaborated with federal and state authorities by informing, spying on, and helping prosecute still practicing “apostate” polygamists.  The outcome was similar to what happened in the Church before the Manifesto in that it forced the modern day polygamist underground in an attempt to avoid the scolding hand of their "mother" church.  

Consequently, a love-hate relationship has emerged in the last seventy to eighty years between polygamists and the LDS Church.  Polygamists have tried to hang on to the historical church as founded by Joseph Smith, and in particular Brigham Young, yet distance themselves from what they perceive as a church in a state of apostasy from its founding principles. Some polygamists particularly those in the AUB group have felt like the bastard child of a church that created them but now refuses to acknowledge their existence. 

From the Churches view they see a group of people who have given up their privilege to be part of the Church because of half-truths, rumors, lies and falsehoods.   In some cases polygamist men skirted the edges of what could be described as stealing away young stalwart church women to become part of their polygamist families. Polygamist groups have essentially attached themselves as a barnacle to the underbelly of the LDS ship often making it very hard to distinguish what is ship and what is barnacle. 

As a fully active member of the LDS Church I support their stand in trying to distance and differentiate themselves from the dozens of off-shoot polygamist groups.  However, the history of how they have dealt with polygamists particularly their willing collaboration in raiding, prosecuting, and jailing them is one the Church should not be proud of.  Simply put, for a Church that spent its founding years being mobbed, robbed, fined, and imprisoned to later reverse roles in the wake of the 1890 manifesto is not right.  The LDS Church should have been the first to protect the religious rights of people to practice their religion according to the dictates of their own conscience.