Sioux Falls, South Dakota – Jim Hill, the former investigator for the Utah Attorney General’s Office, spent a lot of time looking at polygamy and he came away with a nuanced view. Polygamy, he contends, isn’t necessarily a problem.
“It’s the sexual exploitation of children and, in my view, the financial exploitation of the women and children in the Kingston group (also known as the Order),” said Hill, outlining what he saw as the fundamental problem.
KELOLAND News has reached out to the Order for comment on this series, attempting to call Order leader Paul Kingston, and making contact with his brother, Jesse Kingston, who took down contact information for KELOLAND.
Hill reflected on some of the experiences he saw as an investigator that have molded his views on polygamy, or as many call it, plural marriage.
“I saw a lot of good people in the FLDS culture that actually believed in this plural marriage thing,” Hill said. “They were trying their best to do the right thing. They were trying their best to raise families. They were hardworking people. They were honest. They were trying to support their three or four wives and older children by working hard and being diligent.”
The issue for Hill was that in some situations, such as in the FLDS, there was abusive behavior at the top.
“That was the wrong part of polygamy, in my estimation, how they basically capitalized on all these people that were below them,” he said.
Jessica Christensen was part of a group called the Order which is not directly tied to the FLDS but it does have some similar beliefs. She describes a structure in which group leaders exploited those under their direction.
Like many children growing up in the Order, Christensen says she was a victim of child labor trafficking.
“It is hard as a kid, or even now, to realize how much we were trafficked,” Christensen said.
This trafficking is reflected in the comments her father, Daniel Kingston, had made. “It was very business oriented. The more children he had, the more of us, the bigger business he could build, and the more workers he would have.”
And what a big business he could have.
“I think I’m his 25th kid that he had,” Christensen said, reflecting on her family. Hyrum Keddington – the director of SDR Training Center, which according to Custer County property records, purchased the former FLDS compound in South Dakota – is her half-cousin, but he’s just one of many.
“There’s just too many,” Christensen said. “The last I was able to count, there would have been about 200 [siblings] and then cousins, there was like, 1,000, but that’s just from Daniel’s siblings. That wasn’t from the other half-wives of that side of the family.”
Christensen said these numbers weren’t based on speculation. “Not like me guessing,” she said. “I know.”
Even as a child, Christensen said, she realized something was wrong. She began working in a business setting at the age of seven, when she could recall going to work with her mother.
“We knew at the time we were hiding it because if outsiders come in, we would hide. There’s times I would hide in the closet,” she said.
Though Christensen began working at seven, she says the money she earned did not go to her, but to the Order.
Complicated history
The history of polygamy and Mormonism is a complicated one. Cristina Rosetti, a researcher and assistant professor at Utah Tech helped explain this history.
“By the time that Brigham Young becomes the leader of the LDS Church, you’ve got to be a polygamist,” said Rosetti. “That’s definitely downplayed now in the LDS church, but Brigham Young literally said that you will not become God – ‘Yea, even the son of God” – without entering into the principle of plural marriage.”
At that point in mainstream Mormon theology, Rosette explains, polygamy was required to reach heaven.
“Then 1890 rolls around and the LDS church says ‘never mind, we don’t do this anymore’, and that’s like a joke – what are we expecting? Mass divorce,” asks Rosetti. “So of course it doesn’t stop. In 1904, the LDS Church once again tries to convince an ever doubting nation that polygamy is over.”
When the first attempt at self-exorcizing polygamy from the LDS church came around in 1890, Utah had been up for statehood, explained Rosetti. The second time around, a man named Reed Smoot – a monogamous Mormon – was up for U.S. Senate, and there was a congressional hearing to seat him.
“The LDS church once again had to be like, ‘we promise we’re not polygamists’,” said Rosetti. “It also didn’t work because the president of the church – Joseph Smith – one of his plural wives gave birth in the middle of the hearings.”
In the 1930s, the LDS took much more drastic action under the leadership of president Heber J. Grant, a former polygamist himself.
Rosetti said it was in this period when the church released what is known as the third manifesto. “He not only says you cannot be a polygamist, but he says if you are in a position of authority – you are now obligated to excommunicate anyone who is,” she said.
That was the official end of polygamy in the mainstream LDS church, and Rosetti said many of those who were excommunicated went on to become the leaders of the fundamentalist movement.
The landscape of modern fundamentalist Mormonism is a wide one, with varied groups and practices. These include groups such as the Order and the FLDS, but also the Apostolic United Brethren; there is the community of Bountiful, in Canada that split off from the FLDS and was lead by Winston Blackmore before a power struggle split the group. It can be easy to look at two separate groups, and see them as the same. We should not do this, and Hill notes one area where the FLDS and the Order differ.
“I would never tell you that people involved in the FLDS were not intelligent people,” Hill said. “But one of the things I have a recollection with the Order is they — they’ve got attorneys — the sophistication level at the Order is immensely compounded.”
In more recent history, the nation has seen Mormon fundamentalism come to a level of prominence in popular culture through the downfall of the FLDS, portrayed to the public in media such as Netflix’s Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey.
This media shows the darker side of fundamentalism, a power and uniformity that Christensen spoke to.
“Like any group, they want cohesiveness,” said Christensen. “They control your resources because they want to keep you in it. They need to keep you wanting it — they have all these different strategic ways — they are controlling. They are manipulative, and they make you second guess yourself.”
The Order teaches mistrust of the outer world from the perspective of superiority, Christensen said. “They have kind of that Hitler mentality of a super-race, and they think they’re it,” she said.
Christensen emphasized the importance of pure Kingston blood. “My daughters,” Christensen said, “they all have their Kingston blood — they’re direct descendants of Christ — there’s so many layers.”
Christensen says the Order will go to extremes – or threaten to – to keep that blood. “I’ve had people make threats that when my daughters grow up, they’re going to get them married back into the group,” she said.
While non-fiction works like Under The Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer and Sam Brower’s investigative work Prophet’s Prey showcase real stories of people living within fundamentalist communities, they don’t represent – and do not claim to represent – the entirety of the community, focusing instead on the world of the FLDS.
Rosetti provides a broader picture, explaining while many families have left fundamentalist communities such as the FLDS, this does not mean they are always leaving behind fundamentalism itself.
There are also those living as fundamentalists, practicing polygamy, who have never been tied to a particular fundamentalist group.
“I think that’s the fastest growing form of fundamentalism right now,” Rosetti said.
Beyond the distinction of organized or independent fundamentalism is the question of what exactly defines a fundamentalist.
“When we think of fundamentalism, most people of course think of polygamy, but is fundamentalism based on the belief or the practice of polygamy,” questioned Rosetti. “Within any fundamentalist religion, there’s only a certain amount of women, so very few men are actually practicing polygamy.”
This raises the question of what makes a fundamentalist; belief or action?
“If I just believe that Adam is God and I share a garden with my neighbor, am I a fundamentalist Mormon? I don’t know,” said Rosetti. “Maybe.”
Even beyond the contrast between groups like the Order or the FLDS and more independent versions of fundamentalism, there are other factors as well. There are other groups such as the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB); there are polygamous Mormons living in Canada, and there are places like Centennial Park, Utah which is home to a fundamentalist sect which Rosetti explained split off from the FLDS in the 1980s.
There is also Mormon fundamentalism outside of structured groups.
“I was talking to a friend last night who’s a polygamist who isn’t part of the church,” Rosetti said. “Their family is generationally independent. You know, from the 1940s, independent since the inception of the movement.”
Similar to Hill, Rosetti expressed a belief that polygamy itself is not the defining problem with some fundamentalist sects. She herself had lobbied a bill in the Utah legislature aimed at reclassifying polygamy.
“I did lobby the bill, largely for harm reduction,” said Rosetti. “I do think it created the possibility for communities to be more open, and I think that can only be a positive.”
While Mormon fundamentalism is a large canopy beneath which there are many interpretations, in the next part of the series we will return to a more narrow focus, learning more about Jessica Christensen, and introducing her half-brother, Nephi, who also shared his story with us after leaving the religion.
