Huh - okay.

[kyburg]

I sat in on a very interesting discussion today at the annual Sunstone conference about schisms in the Mormon church. According to scholar Newell Bringhurst there are currently 80 active groups that trace their religious roots to the faith founded by Joseph Smith.

Of course, fundamentalist Mormons are one of those branches -- a branch with schisms of its own.

Anne Wilde, a co-founder of Principle Voices, was on the panel and spoke about fundamentalist Mormons. She gave the latest estimate of numbers, which shows nothing has changed since her last count in 2005. There are currently 37,000 fundamentalist Mormons today, she said.

According to Wilde, there are about 15,000 independent fundamentalists. Independents follow no leader, belong to no group and instead consider the husband/father the patriarch of the family. About half of the independents are in plural families, Wilde said. That is the same count she gave in 2005.

The Apostolic United Brethren hasn't added or lost members, either. Wilde said they have 7,500 members. Centennial Park is static at 1,500 members. So is the Davis County Cooperative Society, which still has 1,500 members. She estimates there are about 1,500 people in various smaller groups.

The only group that she believes has shifted its numbers is the FLDS. She put the number at 8,000, down from 10,000 in 2005. But she still counts those lost 2,000 in her overall count, saying many probably still hold their fundamentalist beliefs. That group would include teens who've left the community as well as families who no longer follow Warren Jeffs.

I think the FLDS numbers are lower. The Census puts the count at about 6,500 in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. The twin towns are the homebase of the FLDS, though many have now spread out to South Dakota, Nevada, Texas and other outposts.

Some of the 6,500 counted in the two towns actually belong to the Centennial Park community and some are apostates from the FLDS group.

So when I write about the FLDS I use the figure ''6,000 or so.''

Polygamy by the numbers - I have Brooke Adams' blog in my bookmarks, so I get to peruse it once in a great while.

I'm definitely not Catholic; so if I'm Christian - I'm Protestant by default. Some kind of something, at least.

Usn's kinda meet in His name, fight and go hold services in our own garages (at least, that's what I remember from my childhood). Those Mormon folk? Gee, they were all one body - or so I thought.

Now I don't feel so bad. :D

Comments

[redqueenofevil.livejournal.com]

Have you read Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven," by chance? Lots of exploration of the fundamentalist side of Mormonism.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

The reading list for this subject is vast, varied - and largely untapped by me.

I should put this one on the list, yes?

[redqueenofevil.livejournal.com]

It's dark. But very informative. Some say the author wasn't terribly objective, but you do get a really good sense of the history.

[bitpig.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely not Catholic; so if I'm Christian - I'm Protestant by default.

Not at all. You might be an Evangelical, or Orthodox, or an Anglican, for example.

Of course, the Roman Catholic Church is, like Kellogg's Corn Flakes, "the Original and Best"...

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

No, most of the time those labels are subsets of the larger two.

(And those Eastern Orthodox folks might take exception to your assertions. ^_^)

Note the word "most" gets used a lot in my vocab when discussing these institutions. The most clearly defining feature is that everyone's mileage may vary.

It really doesn't matter who got there first; getting there at all is what counts, neh?