Perfect Obedience: The Dangers of Blind Faith

My mother chose to "marry" a polygamist prophet, Onias, the founder of the School of the Prophets. Her explanation for connecting with a sect of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. The FDLS have recently been made




A part of me was happy to leave behind the futility of trying to solve the stubborn problems in our marriage; another part looked forward to a bright new future together with my newly appointed true husband and his wife, Millie, who eagerly awaited our arrival at the other end of the rails. It was a special honor for me to wed this godly man, who was deemed worthy to have two wives and live in the most holy principle of polygamy, or as the fundamentalist Mormons prefer to call it, plural marriage.

It was right out of the Bible, and I had tried my whole life to live by its principles: “And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, we will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel; only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach. I was blessed indeed to be right up there as the #2 wife of the one who waited for us in that faraway land to the north; surely it was the will of God.

While my estranged mind mulled over this brave new world we were entering, my emotions simply shut down. They’d been grated raw by the turbulence of the past, and there seemed nothing left to feel. I tried to jumpstart myself into sensing some spark of vitality. I should be overflowing with joy, happiness, fear; this is probably the most important move of my life. But my emotional state remained numb.

My relief at leaving behind a turbulent marriage balanced out any fear of the unknown, and together they canceled out any net feelings at all. So I just relaxed into the rhythms of the wheels and let my mind take over until my heart could get unstuck.

The strain of pretending to have a wonderful family life was finally over. Admittedly it was a relief to learn that no one was to blame for our troubled union—we had just married the wrong partner; but I believed that it was all going to be fixed now by obedience to God’s will in this new spiritual marriage—to the man God had chosen for me.

John was relieved too, at being able to set down the burden of family life he had never wanted. No divorce was necessary. We could just disregard the laws of man; they were irrelevant now. The Kingdom had come and the children and I were bound for glory land on the night train. And the thundering glory train continued to devour the rails mile by mile, until in time we crossed over the border into Canada, where we could freely live "The Principle." I was eager to begin.


Living by the Bible

Once the initial idea had time to settle, it actually made a lot of sense, especially since the Bible itself was written by polygamists: Abraham with his three wives: Sarah, Hagar and Keturah; Jacob with his four: Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah; Solomon. My yes, there was Solomon, whose hundreds of wives must have been a very mixed blessing indeed with all of those mother-in-laws, as the joke went.

Polygamy was certainly a doctrine that made those who practiced it peculiar. Those who obeyed God were spoken of as …a holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth.

Holy. Chosen. Above all the nations. Those words had been the healing balm of Gilead, anointing my weary head with soothing oil. As it was dabbed on, it dried up the emotional wounds that for so long had openly bled out through a river of salty tears. I was someone who felt overlooked when it came to any kind of recognition or favor. But as I swayed back and forth on the train, it comforted me to think how God was finally rewarding me for my lifetime of devotion.

I was about to become quite peculiar indeed, but for the most part, I honestly felt confident that this was the right thing to do. Inside the least part, though, tiny gnawing doubts continued to peck away at my peace of mind, nibbling it into little crumbs of confusion. I did not have what it takes to handle too much freedom, and I willingly, even eagerly, submitted to the feel of this new yoke.

It comforted me with its promise of the wonderful security that comes from perfect obedience to the will of God—and a bonus one-way ticket to salvation in the celestial kingdom. As co-wives, Millie and I believed that our shared husband held the key that would one day unlock the door to the highest heaven for us all, in the fullness of its celestial glory, when he would escort us inside those grand gates of pearl, one of us on each arm.

According to the plan given by the 19th century Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, all good and worthy Mormon men were scheduled to key open those grand gates of pearl and usher in their many wives when they all got to their reward. In fact, polygamy, or celestial marriage, was the only way for the righteous to get to the very top of Heaven. Others could make it to the lower levels, the telestial and terrestrial, but the highest celestial kingdom was reserved for polygamists. It was clearly there in the Bible; all we needed was to have our eyes opened to it.


Polygamy in modern America

My mind reviewed what I had come to learn about Mormon polygamy; and my decision to become a plural wife. Where had this crazy idea come from, anyway? This was 20th century America, where cement sidewalks and concrete had long ago tamed the virgin prairies of yesteryear, and polygamy was only an antiquated remnant of a way of life in faraway tribal cultures that had yet to be modernized; surely it had no place in today’s civilization.

But, early in the 1800s, a growing number of people had come to believe that God was speaking to them once again in these latter days, through their modern-day prophet. They called themselves The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but because they introduced the Book of Mormon to the world, the world in turn dubbed them the Mormons. Today there are literally thousands of believers who live by this higher law they call The Principle.

Their extreme abuses have caused some of them to come to the attention of the authorities, but most Mormons, or Latter-day Saints as they prefer to call themselves, try to distance themselves from these early teachings. They appear to be very ordinary people who find their church to be a gathering place to socialize and build up one another’s faith, much like any other church today—an image they carefully nurture.

There is, of course, one notable exception—they do have a history of polygamy, which has actually been held in abeyance since 1890, but is still very much an integral part of their doctrines. Also, they alone consider the Book of Mormon equal to the Bible, witnessing of Jesus Christ and his appearance in the Americas. I was proud to own a matched set of these dual Scriptures, each neatly bound with black leather. They zipped open to offer up a broad menu of spiritual beliefs that could take a lifetime to digest.


The roots of religion

And as converts to Mormonism, this is really where our story begins; eating too hungrily from that menu. Overcoming the effects of starvation requires a special introduction of select foods, and spiritual malnutrition is no different. The introduction of so much learning so fast was too much for our weakened constitutions.

But in the beginning John and I delighted in seeing the world in a brand new way. Our blinders had been taken off and we had become sponges absorbing all of the new lessons along the pathways that walked us through the familiar Bible passages of our youth, bringing the old black-and-white images into bright, living color. We could hardly get enough knowledge to satisfy our immense hunger for more.

Originally, our religious roots had been set down in the conservative, Midwestern values of the Bible belt, but Mormonism has a way of grafting its own branch of alien doctrine into one’s existing faith and growing an entirely new mutation. John and I had not yet met when the world began to buffet us around, and we each encountered this new belief system in our greatest weakness, pretty well shattered and disillusioned with what life had to offer.

John had been raised Catholic and had just completed a stint in the military that had left him an angry and embittered young man. Serious illness had cut short my own two-year teaching mission for the Lutheran church in Papua New Guinea. The combination of growing up in a German household where Dad was the undisputed master and my earnest desire to live up to the patriarchal ideal of the Bible was no match for John’s more liberated offerings. I didn’t see that I needed to be liberated; I just wanted a man who was smarter, stronger and better than I was; like my cousin expressed once to me, “I want a man who can dominate me.” Clearly we were from the old school!

There’s no zeal like that of a new [Mormon] convert

I was still recovering from my illness and culture shock when I attended a Billy Graham crusade near my new home in Minneapolis. Some claustrophobia set in so I sought a bit of relief and solitude out in the hallway; there I found stacks of books and literature placed for sale. I came across a couple of anti-Mormon booklets and figured I could use them as ammunition to win back my family. To appease them, I had visited their church once back in Iowa, to meet Brother John, who didn’t impress me, being a Mormon and all.

But as I thumbed through these books and pamphlets, what I was reading struck me with a red flag. They were saying some things about the Mormon Church that differed from what I had experienced in my brief encounter. It was puzzling and perplexing indeed, and I just wanted to know what the real truth was. I decided to find out for myself what they actually believed, so I called the missionaries, who flung open the door to a future full of adventure and a whole lot of learning.

The friendly young missionaries who arrived at my doorstep were called elders, even though they were both younger than I was. Elder Peterson and Elder Crane proceeded to answer all of my questions with such utter confidence and ease that I was eventually convinced that they were telling the truth.

On October 9, 1969, I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons. I soon returned home for Christmas, this time far more interested in Brother John. However, although I found myself scanning the pews to spot him, he was nowhere to be seen. Rumor had it that he had moved out to Utah. By then, I myself yearned to be with the Saints in Zion, so I quit my job and bought a one-way ticket to Zion, as Mormon country in Utah is called.

At the YWCA I met Jan and Aloha, Loie for short; Jan was to become my roommate and Loie would later be my bridesmaid. I would meet many more wonderful Mormons in my new Utah home, but mostly I loved visiting Temple Square and taking advantage of the peace and quiet. There I would write letters to everyone I knew, telling them of the wonderful things I was learning, that all seemed to heighten and deepen my understanding of the “true gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Any questions that came up would continue to have pat answers waiting for me, and it made me feel so secure to never again have to grapple with life’s mysteries. My over wearied soul could take a rest from trying to figure it all out, and I could turn over my thinking to those in the know—those bearing the holy priesthood of Melchizedek.

The Mormons taught that there was a latter-day priesthood on Earth that was named after Melchizedek, King of Salem in the Bible. This priesthood constituted the authority to act in God’s name here on Earth, and was presented to Joseph Smith in these latter days. He in turn passed it on to every worthy male in the church. It contained the keys to the kingdom of God, to seal up whatever needed to be sealed on earth as it was in heaven.

Amen. No thinking was necessary any more, just a reassuring understanding of how God was indeed speaking to his flock in these latter days, and no question had to remain unanswered. We laughed at the story of how even with a living prophet, sometimes you just had to take things on faith. He had been asked where the Lost Tribes of Israel were, and he replied if we knew where they were, then they wouldn’t be lost.

I would later look at those earlier questions, or rather those pat answers, through a lens that had been dipped in a reality that darkened the shades of rose, but I was convinced then that the world was so perfect; everything had an answer or an explanation, and whatever didn’t could be taken on faith. Indeed, must be taken on faith; there’s a reason it’s often referred to as blind faith.


Divine intervention

My mother wrote that Brother John had moved out to Salt Lake, too, but when I asked her if she had any contact information, she let me know that it would be too forward of me to take any improper initiative. I was, after all, from the old school, where the woman waited and the man acted. I had to laugh, though, at her misunderstanding of the nature of Utah Mormondom. Out here in the Midwest there is just one ward, which is what the meetinghouse is called, but she had no way of knowing that the phone book has pages and pages of wards out in Mormon country. Mormons there thought it was pretty funny when she assured me that I would no doubt meet him in “the ward” out there anyway!

As it turned out, my wait was not long before I did meet Brother John one night on Temple Square. He had gotten a job there, and on one of my letter-writing pilgrimages, I spotted him across a crowded room. He told me a funny story of how words can be misunderstood. When he was talking to someone about what he thought was doing ceilings in the temple, he learned that they were instead doing sealings, where husbands and wives are believed to be sealed for eternity.

We chatted and chatted, and finally I brought him to meet Jan, my former roommate. She embarrassed both of us with her strange reaction; she looked at him, then at me, and said, “Oh my, I think he’s the right one!” Neither of us said anything, but acted as though we hadn’t heard her.

Then I eagerly brought him over to meet the Butterfields, the family who had invited me to live with them. They soon retired for the night, but John and I kept talking and didn’t stop until I got a call to substitute teach at 7:00 the next morning!

At one point, I retreated to the bathroom to pray about what Jan had said, because here was this man I hardly knew, and she’d said he was the right man for me. Of course, by this time, I had already been indoctrinated that marriage is expected of every Latter-day Saint and the idea was beginning to warm inside me.

Throughout the night, I’d had the nagging thought that maybe she was right. It seemed too good to be true, but when I petitioned the Lord for the third time, I received what the Mormons call a burning of the bosom, where something registers so forcefully in your bosom, that you just KNOW it is a truth.

And the truth was that John and I would indeed mate and bear six children. It just didn’t happen to work out that we stayed together. And oddly enough, I’ve always had the idea that both were right for us. Who decides? Is it random fate, or purely “God’s will” or do we actually have some input from the other side, behind the mortal veil that separates us from whatever world may lie out there beyond our understanding.

The latter has greater appeal somehow than the notion that we are just floaters carried along on a cosmic current, or victims of random chance, or even of a god who can’t decide what’s best. For all the problems we had, though, I never doubted that somehow this had been a divine appointment. However, that just made it all the more difficult to understand why it would turn out so very badly.

Fascinating womanhood

Eventually my life had reached the point where it was no longer possible to sustain the illusion of a happy, fulfilled marriage, and something had to be done. Preserving the sanctity of marriage was something that I never figured I’d have to worry about, judging from my barren dating years.

But when this handsome young man we called Brother John had come along, I gladly embraced the opportunity to marry and raise a family. In an age where divorce was so rampant, I thought it was vitally important to present a role model for the younger generation. And, of course, I so wanted it to be perfect. My sister had even written a poem for us, ending with —a perfect pair!

But John was not cooperating. The bonds of matrimony were tightening into a noose around our necks, and threatened to cut off our spiritual circulation. Helen Andelin had promised true bliss by simply following the precepts in her book, Fascinating Womanhood, but life had clearly become a curse instead. I tried harder and harder to be a submissive and obedient wife, like the dutiful Biblical models we were to emulate, only to be caught in deeper and deeper unhappiness, just like one of those Chinese finger puzzles.

To me, there seemed no explanation for the lack of conjugal blessings, and for John, his resentment of the patriarchal blessing he had received in the Church knew no bounds. These blessings are believed to come to church members directly from God, through the hands of the church patriarch. They are individually tailored to help avoid the pitfalls along the slippery slope of worldliness, and are considered very sacred to Mormons.

A common theme seemed to run through them, with variations; marrying in the temple and having lots of babies would bring the blessings of being a mother in Zion or the men would be called to do very important work out in the world, helping to establish the kingdom of God here on earth. It was unthinkable that anyone would dare question something that came so directly from the hand of God.

Thus it was that John had reluctantly accepted his “blessing,” even though he harbored a yearning for life in a cloistered monastery, which would have better suited his studious nature; God’s will was pretty well sealed, signed and delivered on October 29, 1970, as we married in the Salt Lake temple for time and all eternity.

At least that was the way it was supposed to turn out. As my unhappiness had swelled beyond any bounds, I had continually reinforced my own determination to dutifully submit to John’s spiritual authority. Now there’s a ripe irony for you. It’s practically inconceivable when I think of it now; the impossibility of paring such unequally yoked individuals together.

Here was a liberated man who had no desire whatsoever to assume the distasteful role of patriarch; then there was me, who continually tried to cajole and coax—and ultimately force—into a role he simply did not want. I was simply carrying the Biblical teaching of male supremacy to its logical conclusion. Like Paul had outlined in the Corinthians the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man. What a quixotic challenge it was to try to submit to someone who didn’t want to be submitted to!

In the grand eternal scheme of things, though, at least a good Mormon woman gets to be the head of her children—a nice and tidy arrangement for everyone. In the divine order of things, even little girls were the heads of their dollies or pets, where they could learn their proper, penultimate place in the pecking order of submission, in preparation for their life down the road—in service to their spiritual head and master. I was aiming to become the most dedicated daughter of God, the best mother in Zion—and a submissive helpmate that the apostle Paul would have admired—a true Proverbial wife.


Onias

Back home, after my rather futile effort to bring about some change through a bit of distance, things had become more hopeless than ever. However, it wasn’t too long before we got a phone call that was to completely turn our little world upside-down!

It had been several years since we had had anything to do with anyone from the Church, and that included Onias, the prophet from Canada. But from the get-go, the fact that he had managed to track us down like he did seemed to be more than coincidental. He seemed to know about our marital difficulties, and as we talked, he proposed the solution to our problems, which led to the adventurous train ride over the border.

And what a relief it must have been for John to finally discharge a responsibility he had never wanted in the first place, one that had been imposed upon him as a sacred duty; that of being a family patriarch. How happy he must have been to learn by divine revelation that our marriage had been wrong from the beginning, and it was finally being made right by my obedience.

I was taking Deborah, 6, David, 4, and their little brother, Daniel, to our new life in Canada, where we would have a new spiritual head, the rightful leader of our family. Man’s laws didn’t matter. What did matter was the priesthood authority to seal up a marriage, and we were both happy and most grateful to have found it at long last.

His wife, Millie, had welcomed me on the phone, and I was eager to get to know her better and taste the blessings of polygamous life, of living “The Principle.” With a right foundation, happiness just had to be the natural fruit of righteousness.

At the time I knew nothing about another young mother named Carolyn Jessop, who would one day write a book about how she had to flee in the middle of the night with her eight children. She tells her compelling story in the book, Escape. In a rather rich irony, she had lived in the very netherworld of polygamy to which I myself was fleeing for refuge!

All I could see at the time were what seemed to be such plain marks of divinity about Onias, just like Charles Manson had been said to carry. Susan Atkins writes about her life with him in his family cult, and how he would seem to have some special antennae with which he could predict a future event or have some insight into people. His name, after all, was Manson, the son of man.

Discernment can be challenging, and there was nothing about this humble man that warranted distrust. It wasn’t that we were relying on the arm of flesh. In our weakness, we certainly prayed about how to find the right leadership, just like Jon Krakauer describes in his captivating tale of how the Lafferty brothers prayed before they killed their victims. They wanted to be certain that they were indeed doing the will of God, but how in the world could they get such a clear answer that led them to proceed with their dastardly deeds of killing innocents? Clearly we weren’t the only ones having issues with discernment!

Back in Salt Lake, we had briefly met this man, Onias. John and I were both avid readers, and it was not at all unusual for me to spend a good deal of time at the library, when I wasn’t at the genealogy library, where I worked full time poring over family records. One day, at an unsuspecting moment, this little blue book on the shelf seemed to grab my attention. I perused it and thought it looked interesting, so I checked it out and brought it home to share with John.

It was called The book of Onias, and it was a series of revelations that seemed to be the voice of God speaking to a modern-day prophet. We noted a reference to another country, and eventually we tracked down the author to this other country— Canada. The author was Robert C. Crossfield, aka Onias the prophet. He seemed to fulfill the role of the One mighty and strong:

One Mighty and Strong is a person of unknown identity who was the subject of an 1832 prophecy by Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, echoing the words and prophecy of Isaiah 28:2. The One Mighty and Strong was said by Smith to be one who would "set in order the house of God" and arrange for the "inheritances of the [Latter Day] Saints". Since this prophecy was uttered, many Latter Day Saints have claimed to be or to have otherwise identified the One Mighty and Strong, and many schismatic Latter Day Saint sects have arisen as a result of these claims.—Wikipedia

By then, we were both working for the church, and had begun to see a lot of problems. They say at first the church can do no wrong, and then it can do no right. Supposedly a convert is supposed to settle somewhere in the middle, like a pendulum, but we never had that opportunity.

After a lengthy phone call, Onias said he was driving down to Salt Lake soon, and we could visit with him then. He arrived with his two daughters, dressed in “polyg” clothing, long dresses, uncut upturned hair, and a polite, submissive demeanor. He rested a while on the bed with our little baby making a tiny bundle on his chest. He struck me as so very fatherly and involved with children. He had five of his own back in Canada.

But that was about it. Soon afterward, John had gotten angry at life in general, and the whole Utah scene in particular, and we ended up moving back home to the Midwest. We never heard from Onias again—until that fateful day in December, 1976.


The end of the trail

The rest of the story continued, or rather concluded, at a little Canadian town, ironically named Trail, in southern Alberta province. Sure enough, Onias and his wife, Millie, were standing there at the station, anxiously awaiting the arrival of their new family members. From the depot we drove across the Milk River to the little town of Trail. It had been a long trip, but the newness of it all had given me a second wind.

We visited and got acquainted. It seemed we’d always known each other and the conversation flowed freely. We had previously met their two daughters on Bob’s visit to Salt Lake soon after Deborah’s birth, where this winding trail had begun, and it was good to see them again.

Millie busied herself with baking Christmas goodies, a tasty fruit cake that we delivered to her friends and neighbors, and she seemed to have a sense of humor that I enjoyed. We spent Christmas with them, and in the hustle-bustle of the season, we were all pretty well caught up in gift exchanges and celebrating the season. Life with this sister wife seemed to be off to a good start, and shortly afterward she took the children so Bob and I could go to a motel for some privacy.

We were “married” in every sense of the word. But this marriage was very different; Bob was interested in the kids and me, or so it seemed at first. We could talk and that was quite a plus for a change!

There in that little motel room, we got better acquainted and in keeping with the spiritual nature of our relationship, he introduced me to the higher law of foot washing. No one could say I wasn’t humble, because nothing in me objected to this, even though it wasn’t mutual as I recall. It was an odd sort of pride/humility core that emerged. Proud to have been chosen, yet humbling myself more and more to gain the favor of the Lord. I guess you could say I was proud of my humility, but then, they say that’s just the time you actually lose it!

There was definitely a lord-and-master element to it all, and was completely one-sided. In a hierarchical setting, there has to be a pyramid of importance, and the male was right up there next to God in that. In Mormon theology, males will one day become gods themselves. As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.

And on his way to becoming God, Onias secured an apartment in Lethbridge for the boys and me, and placed Deborah in a school run by polygamists in a nearby town. We made a honeymoon trip to Salt Lake, where the boys and I met several of the polygamist families he knew. It’s funny how the memory retains little fragments of history, and the one thing that stands out in my mind is one of the meals we ate with a polygamous family.

The events of the next few days faded rather quickly, I think, as I tried to hide them in the recesses of my mind after I discovered the match wasn’t made in Heaven after all. One clue seemed to be the way he would describe in vivid detail the fates of those who had rejected his message. On the surface, it seemed like a simple narrative, but there was a tiny degree of satisfaction that didn’t seem appropriate. Actually, the fates of the unfaithful are widely known in Mormon circles. People who abandon their faith are called apostates and suffer in the lowest hell for having given up their testimony.

Once a month at fast and testimony meetings, people are encouraged to get up and publicly bear their testimony to the truth of the gospel. This continual reinforcement among the members weaves the strands of belief into a tie that binds them together in one big gospel family. However, those who fall away after having “received a testimony” are described with such ever-present menacing pronouncements as “he went into darkness” or “she lost her light” or similar phrases.

They are ostracized as though their darkness would draw out the light from other members, so they must stay away in order to retain their good standing in the Church. It can be a cruel process indeed, but these days it’s secular enough that it doesn’t hold the powerful sway that it did in the isolation of former times. I’m not sure exactly what it was that convinced me, but it didn’t take long to figure out that I needed to get out of that situation and the sooner the better.

I missed Deborah and John and began to yearn for the old problems. They say the devil you know is easier than the devil you don’t know. And all I knew was that once again, something was wrong, and I found myself between the devil and the deep, white snow of Canada.