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Summary:
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.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
When Men Become Gods
Customer Rating:
This is an interesting book. The book follows the career of Warren Steed Jeffs, the Prophet of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah. Warren Steed Jeffs was the son of the previous Prophet of the group. When his father became infirm in his old age, Jeffs proceeded to take over the group by a variety of what might be called unscrupulous methods. His methods of ruling his "flock" included intimation, separating men from their families and giving their wives to someone else, forcing teenage boys to leave the community on trumped up charges, forcing underage girls into marriage. There were several statements I sort of disagreed with. The author uses the phrase "forcing underage girls into marriage with older men." In some cases, the "older man" was also barely old enough to be legal. When the government of Arizona decided to go after Jeffs, they did so with the knowledge that they could be accused of crossing the bounds of Constitutional protection of religious practices as they had done in 1953, when they raided the homes in the same town and arrested all the men for practicing bigotry - and as the state of Texas did when they raided Yearning for Zion Ranch in 2008. The state of Arizona sent in an investigator who made friendships with some who had been excommunicated, who had their wives and children taken from them, who were ready to prove that they had been persecuted without cause. The state of Arizona convinced the state of Utah to join in investigating Warren Jeffs for trafficking in women and underage girls. It does a lot in explaining why the state of Texas went into Yearning for Zion Ranch and took all the children - although in doing so, they crossed the line that Arizona and Utah were being so careful not to cross.
A sad state of affairs
Customer Rating:
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.
Meticulous research; not emotionally biased
Customer Rating:
I know, I know, I should wait until I finish reading this. But I am 2/3 of the way through this book, and it gets better every day. I can't wait another moment. I bought it because I worked with Mr. Singular in Denver 25 years ago. He was a great writer then, and he's better now.
This book goes way beyond everyone's repulsion at the sex-with-a-minor charges or the polygamist-cult aversions most of us have. It drills way down into the history of all of the players in this drama. A saga like this doesn't grow and build for as many years as this one has unless it's complex and has a huge cast of characters with a variety of needs/lusts.
It covers the willingness of the U.S. government to turn a blind eye for many decades (and still seems to be doing so, in many cases). It names names, and introduces us to the people who got passionately involved in exposing Jeffs and his cohorts for what they really stand for. And, perhaps best of all, Singular tells us the stories of the women who were (are) victimized by this man and his way of life. It shows us how they each came to the realization that the way of life they'd grown up with was wrong, and how they extricated themselves. It introduces us to others who have come in from the outside to protect them, and why.
This freak has affected so many people--Singular also goes into great detail about the society of "Lost Boys"--countless "useless" male teens (these communities have an excess of men, who are useless because they can't carry children) he threw out of their homes and cast into the streets with no education, no skills, and no normal socialization experience--and the efforts to save them. Efforts that seem to be working.
Others have written books on this subject, but I venture to say this is the best researched and most detailed. This book shows us how easily a religion becomes a cult. At the end of it all, which religion doesn't have a dark side?
Read this book if you have read "Stolen Innocence"
Customer Rating:
First of all, I need to point out that indeed Warren Jeffs is not a "Mormon Polygamoust." He is a fundamentalist Mormon, which the author does enforce many times throughout the book. I wonder why this is part of the title...
Anyway, I found this book very objectively written, and very respectful of the FLDS members themselves, which I applaud fullheartedly, however, the book wasn't as interesting as I expected it to be. It was full of legal jargon and drawn out courtroom scenes.
This is certainly worth the read if you have read "Stolen Innocence" by Elissa Wall. It puts her story in a different light and very interesting to compare the two books.
Jeffs is not Mormon - get the title right
Customer Rating:
Warren Jeffs is indeed a twisted man. But the author is either ignorant or has an unexpressed agenda. I've done some reading on the Mormon's enough to know that they excommunicate polygamists like Jeffs, or in his case, his father who started this sect.
So, to include in the title of the book the phrase "mormon polygamist Warren Jeffs" is misleading. In fact, I understand it to be an oxymoron -- once a mormon becomes a polygamist, he is excommunicated, so can no longer call himself a mormon (since "mormon" refers to the Church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints -- the one with HQ in salt lake). But then again, the author may have done so purposely in order to sell more books which, after all, is the objective, true?
I would look elsewhere for info on these Fundamentalist LDS groups and for info on the Mormons themselves.
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