Rulon Jeffs

Rulon Timpson Jeffs (December 6, 1909 – September 8, 2002), known to followers as Uncle Rulon, was the President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church), a Mormon fundamentalist organization based in Colorado City, Arizona, from 1986 until his death in 2002.^[1] Jeffs was responsible for incorporating the organization, formerly known as the "Priesthood Work", on February 6, 1991.

Biography

Jeffs, born in Salt Lake City on December 6, 1909, was the son of first generation fundamentalist David William Ward Jeffs and his plural wife Nettie Lenora Timpson. The elder Jeffs lived his polygamous lifestyle in secret, and Rulon spent the first ten years of his life under the pseudonym Rulon Jennings.^[3] Jeffs was raised a member of Latter-day Saint (LDS Church), his father not introducing him to the teachings of the fundamentalist movement until September 25, 1938, at the elder Jeffs's birthday dinner, where he presented his son with a copy of Joseph W. Musser's Truth magazine.^[3] Rulon embraced the fundamentalist message after meeting Musser and John Y. Barlow. In 1940, he secretly took a plural wife, for which his first wife, Zola (daughter of LDS Church apostle Hugh B. Brown, and great-granddaughter of Brigham Young), divorced him.^[3]

In the spring of 1945, Jeffs, who had been working in northern Idaho since 1943, returned to Salt Lake City, where he was ordained a High Priest Apostle by John Y. Barlow on April 19. Jeffs was a protege of both Barlow and later Priesthood Council senior Leroy S. Johnson, who compared their relationship to that of Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball. Jeffs assumed the leadership of the group after Johnson's death in 1986.

It was reported that at the time of Jeffs's death at age 92 that he may have had as many as 75 wives and 65 children;^[2] other sources indicate that Jeffs may have been survived by 19 or 20 wives and "about 60 children," including 33 sons.^[4] According to author Jon Krakauer, who chronicles the FLDS Church and the Jeffs family in Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, several of Jeffs's wives were underage (as young as 14 and 15) at the time they were married to him.^[5] Shortly after his death, one of Jeffs's sons, Warren Jeffs, asserted his own leadership of the FLDS Church and subsequently married all but two of his father's widows, figuratively making him the stepfather of many of his siblings and solidifying his political position in the community.

Works

• Jeffs, Rulon (1996). Sermons of President Rulon Jeffs (8 vols.). Hildale, Utah: Twin City Courier Press. 
• —— (1997). History of Priesthood Succession in the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times and Some Challenges to the One Man Rule. Also Includes Personal History of President Rulon Jeffs. Hildale, Utah: Twin City Courier Press. 
• —— (2000). Priesthood Articles. Hildale, Utah: Twin City Courier Press. 

See also

• List of Mormon fundamentalist leaders

References

External links

• Official FLDS website
• Official FLDS website: President Rulon Jeffs at the Wayback Machine (archived March 30, 2010)
• Rulon Jeffs at Find a Grave