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When Men Become Gods: Mormon Polygamist Warren Jeffs, His Cult of Fear, and the Women Who Fought Back
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Product Description
In When Men Become Gods, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Singular casts a light on a dark corner of religious extremism. He reveals a group of fundamentalists operating in the present-day United States, where teenage girls are kept in virtual bondage in the name of upholding the “sacred principle” of polygamy.
As the leader and self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, a sect of Mormonism based in isolated southern Utah, Warren Jeffs held sway over thousands of followers for nearly a decade. His rule was utterly tyrannical. In addition to coercing young girls into polygamous marriages with older men, Jeffs reputedly took scores of wives, many of whom were his father’s widows. Television, radio, and newspapers were shunned, creating a hidden community where polygamy was prized above all else.
But in 2007, after a two-year manhunt that landed him on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, Jeffs’s reign was forcefully ended. He was convicted of rape as an accomplice for his role in arranging a marriage between a fourteen-year-old girl and her nineteen-year-old first cousin.
In When Men Become Gods, Edgar Award nominee Stephen Singular traces Jeffs’s rise to power and the concerted effort that led to his downfall. It was a movement championed by law enforcement, private investigators, the Feds, and perhaps most vocal of all, a group of former polygamous wives seeking to liberate young women from the arranged marriages they’d once endured. The book offers new revelations into a nearly impenetrable enclave---a place of nineteenth-century attire, inbreeding, and eerie seclusion---providing readers with a rare glimpse into a tradition that’s almost a century old, but that has only now been exposed.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #283279 in Books
- Published on: 2008-04-21
- Released on: 2008-04-21
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780312372484
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This ripped-from-the-headlines exposé uncovers the rise and fall of polygamist Warren Jeffs, former leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). Based on interviews with ex-members, newspaper stories and trial records, it provides a raw and bracing account of Jeffs's sex crimes and fugitive years. Unfortunately, Singular's account is not burdened by nuance or significant attention to history or theology, ignoring important prior research on Mormon fundamentalism and painting all polygamists with the same broad brush. Some of this could be forgiven if Singular's lapses in understanding Mormon fundamentalism were not exacerbated by his frequent tactic of comparing the FLDS to Islamic extremists, which evokes the intended fear response but remains tenuous. However, the book's second half, which hews closely to the chronology of Jeffs's flight from the law and the individuals who helped to bring him to justice, is more balanced than the first. Singular is a strong writer who uses pacing, dialogue and drama to good effect. Readers will find this a troubling and fascinating, if careless, account. (May)
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From Booklist
As president, prophet, seer, and revelator of the Hilldale, Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), Warren Jeffs sought to preserve the perquisites of office and the religious practices he inherited from his father and predecessor in office, Rulon Jeffs. His interstate flight to avoid prosecution on charges related to arranging plural marriages between adult men and underage girls (some of them first cousins) in his congregation threatened to disrupt his plans in a big way. Eventually apprehended and convicted of being an accessory to rape, Jeffs resigned his church offices. Singular takes us into Jeffs’ world and the two-year manhunt for him throughout FLDS territory in southern Utah, in which nineteenth-century attire and inbreeding were the rule. In bringing Jeffs to justice, prosecutors first had to gain access to the isolated, reclusive people of Jeffs’ empire. They were aided in this by a heroic group of women who left plural marriages and sought to liberate other young women from them, and this story is their absorbing story, too. --Mike Tribby
Review
Praise for Stephen Singular
“A gripping and chilling tale . . . A solid account that will both fascinate and horrify.”
---Publishers Weekly on Unholy Messenger
“A chilling examination of American-born right-wing terrorism.”
---Chicago Tribune on Talked to Death
Customer Reviews
The PROPER way to deal with fundamentalists
Singular here presents, with his customary thorough research and straightforward reporting, an example of using the process of law to deal with resolving differing religious beliefs and practices when they come into conflict with constitutional law. This book chronicles how the Utah and Arizona authorities overcame their mistakes in the 1953 raid on the FLDS community by carefully investigating the present situation at length and targeting only those individuals and specific acts which violated the law, and building a case. This stands in sharp contrast to the recent Texas raid on the Yearning For Zion ranch, which was an indiscriminate attack upon the FLDS way of life - a sledgehammer approach more like the 1953 raid.
By following individuals as the book progresses, Singular brings the reader into the narrative while explaining the legal processes at work. He does not pass judgment upon the basic beliefs of the FLDS, but does expose their practices of brainwashing, polygamy, and child molestation as well as their financial abuses.
In his afterword, he points out the parallels to the way we are dealing with other patriarchal cultures with differing religions abroad. When Men Become Gods is an examination of the difficult choices we must make at the intersection of freedom of religious beliefs and practices with human rights. If we are to live our Constitution, we must respect the rights of others and not let legal authority become a tyranny itself if we value our own freedoms.
In a time when understanding differing cultures has never been more important, this book has valuable insights to ponder.
Excellent expose of cult leader Warren Jeffs
This book is an indepth look at the creation of the Fundementalist Church of the Latter Day Saints, the offshoot of traditional Mormonism that has its roots on the border of Arizona and Utah. This group has recently been in the news because after their move to Texas, the authorities there swept in and took away over 400 children in order to investigate charges of forced marriages by underage girls. While the case there has fizzled out, perhaps it wouldn't have if the entire country read this book. The FLDS embraced polygamy and left the LDS church when it abandoned it in return for Utah achieving statehood in the late 1890s. The people of Colorado City Arizona and Hildale Utah are deeply under the spell of their leader Warren Jeffs. Jeffs, who took command of the group after the death of his father, put the entire community under his spell and after reading and studying Hitler and Napoleon, began breaking up families and using his power to reward those most faithful to him. All of the property in the entire community was turned over to him, and the group "bled the beast" by taking hundreds of millions of dollars in state welfare aid each year. Women who fled the cult started exposing the dirty secrets of Jeffs: his 180 wives, girls married at the age of 14, schools closed down, young men kicked out of town so they wouldn't compete with the older men for wives. The sins of Jeffs are many, and Singular does a terrific job of enumerating them. He lays out the case that put Jeffs on the FBIs most wanted list and eventually brought about his capture. Jeffs was found guilty of abetting a rape in late 2007, and charges against him are still pending. Singular offers up some hope for the communities he writes about, but I wish that he had been able to give more information about the YFZ (Yearning for Zion) Ranch in Texas where many of the staunchest holdouts have taken refuge. For more information about this read Carolyn Jessop's fantastic memoir, Escape, and watch Laurie Allen's DVD Banking on Heaven. Taken all three together, they are excellent exposes of this cult-like group. I give this book 5 stars.
A sad state of affairs
The author explains how the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) church began. When people began following the teachings of Joseph Smith, and believed him to be a Prophet of God, they followed his teachings and were polygamists, because Smith told the people that a revelation from God told him that men were to take multiple wives in order to build up the kindom of God by allowing unborn soles bodies in which to incarnate. This continued until the United States outlawed multiple wives and began to imprison men who were practicing this. At that time the standing leader of the LDS (Mormons) said he had had a revelation from God that pologamy would no longer be accepted.
Many men and women did not believe these revelations, and moved around hiding their pologmany. From this, two cities on the borderline of Colorado and Arizona were "born," and the people migrated to this region. Nestled away near the desert, this group lived in peace for years under the leadership of a President AND several men who made up the governing board of the FLDS church. Problems existed for women and children even with the governing body.
Warren Jeff's was a man who liked to study Hitler, and how he controlled his victims. As the elder men died, Jeff's was put in as the current Prophet. Jeff's was able to disolve all the committee men, and ruled himself with no one watching what he was doing. Under his leadership, the people lived in total fear. All their money was taken and placed in a community fund that Jeff's controlled. Children were molested by Jeffs, both boys and girls, and it was not uncommon for him to knock on a member's door and demand they allow their 13 or 14 year old daughter to marry someone HE had picked out, stating that God directed him.
During his reign, all pets were taken out of town and killed on one day, boys were kicked out literally on the streets for minor offenses in order to keep the young girls available to be married to old men.
The police force, judge, county government, etc were all FLDS members and ruled by Jeffs. Men who complained were sent packing, and their wives and children were given to other men.
Men, boys, women and young girls began to speak out, and eventually the FBI became involved.
The author tells the story well, ending with the conviction of Jeff's for the rape of two 14 year old girls, and sodomizing a boy. It is well written, interestering, and answers a lot of questions that arose recently with the government taking 400 children from the compound.
