New Religions and the Mediation of Non-Monogamy

Polyamory, Polygamy, and Reality Television

Michelle Mueller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367186906
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429588730
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion comparée

New Religions and the Mediation of Non-Monogamy examines the relationship between alternative American religions and the media representation of non-monogamies on reality-TV shows like Sister Wives, Seeking Sister Wife, and Polyamory: Married & Dating. The book is the first full-length study informed by fieldwork with Mormon polygamists and fieldwork with LGBTQ Neo-Pagan/Neo-Tantric polyamorists. The book tracks community members' responses to the new media about them, their engagement with television and other media, and the likeness of representations to actual populations through fieldwork and interviews.

The book highlights differences in socioeconomic privileges that shape Mormon polygamists' lives and LGBTQ polyamorists' lives, respectively. The polyamory movement receives support from liberal media. As reality TV has shifted the image of Mormon polygamy to one of liberal American middle-class culture, Mormon polygamists have gained in public favor. The media landscape of non-monogamy is mediated by, in addition to these alternative religious populations, the norms and practices of the reality-TV industry and by sociocultural and economic realities, including race and class.

This book adds to the fields of media studies, critical race and gender studies, new religious movements, and queer studies.

1 Twenty-first-century Mormon fundamentalism: Ethnographic observations

Field notes: “Spontaneous polygamist reunion in the Convention Center hallway”

A cluster of polygamists gathers in the conference center just outside a conference room door. They have just departed after a panel titled, “Mainstream Mormon Women Go Plural” (Draughon 2019), and there is a buzz of enthusiasm, excitement, reunions as well as new meetings.

I have remained inside the conference room, as a talk on Mormon polygamy by important historians follows the panel. As the buzz continues outside the conference room, I am rather excruciatingly torn between the two scholars presenting on Mormon polygamist history and the spontaneous convening of Mormon fundamentalists from different groups on the other side of the conference door. The volume in the hallway is loud, and I can barely stand the idea of missing out on the field data; I also don’t want to noticeably walk out from the session in progress. After some internal back-and-forth, I justify that my research method is human subjects research, and I step outside and join the group.

Women and men, the majority in their 40s (some younger, some older), are meeting folks from various Mormon fundamentalist (that is, polygamist) groups. There is excitement in meeting others, almost like they are distant cousins, and there is a real passionate interest in learning what the others’ family norms have been.

I am somewhat timid, not wanting to intervene in important reunions. I ease my way in, making eye contact with the folks I already know fairly well, and follow their lead. Do they recognize a value in my meeting other specific individuals in the crowd, in order that their stories be included in my book? My existing contacts have been consistently friendly and warm with me. They have been happy to introduce me to anyone in the group I inquire about and even to informally endorse my research project in the process. Any attention or introductions I am not receiving in this particular moment is clearly due to the raw excitement in the crowd.

I take note that my informant Jared is enthusiastically chatting it up with members of the other groups. His engagement reveals his deep interest in learning about the other groups and in building intrareligious bonds across the denominations.

I recognize that this is an opportunity that will soon be past. I awkwardly say hello to one of the LDS-women-gone-plural from the panel and offer her my hand to shake. She doesn’t know who I am or what my relationship to LDS or Mormon fundamentalism is. In the moments after the panel, I had been able to introduce myself and my research to her sister-wife, and I say something to that effect and that I appreciated hearing her perspective and would be in touch. She still doesn’t know who I am or what my interest in, but she accepts my awkward introduction and continues her other conversations.

I meet the Winder family. They are a media family, part of the cast of Seeking Sister Wife. Plus, we have a friend in common. Both of these factors make my introduction more expected, less awkward than the last. The Winders are Millennials, seemingly a handful of years younger than I am (maybe up to a decade younger, somewhere in their mid-20s). I speak with Colton for a bit. I ask about decision-making in their family. The response was a bit more patriarchal than I expected. Other Mormon fundamentalist families I know represent their decision-making as very democratic. Colton understands himself as the head of household, who “does what’s best for the family.” (At the time, I chalked it up to Colton’s personality and their particular family culture. Now, months later, I wonder if the approach would be different if there were a third wife, that is, a ratio other than one man to two women, which perhaps sets him up to be the deciding vote.)

Field notes: “Polygamist Burning Man”

I update my husband on an upcoming weekend trip to “the Rock,” more formally known as Rockland Ranch, a polygamist community beyond Moab. I know that what Quinn (our young son) and I do while on this trip is ultimately up to me and that Zack trusts my parenting instincts absolutely. Still, he’s Quinn’s father and I want to help him feel comfortable and in a co-driver’s seat.

“It’s a four-hour drive from here. It’s beyond Moab. They’re Independents, well, it’s a community of Independents. They settled there and there are some shared values, but they are not one sect.” I think for a moment. “They’re the hippie-est of the polygamists,” I explain. “I’ll be limited because I have Quinn—there’s hiking and ziplines, but there are also kids’ games on the schedule. I’ll have Quinn, but I’ll be able to observe from a distance what I can’t participate in.”

My husband, realizing I’m over-explaining as if justifying the trip, jumps to the punch. He says, “I get it. It’s like polygamist Burning Man.” He gets it.

Anthropologists and historians have represented the many individual sects of Mormon fundamentalism. In their publications, these researchers commonly provide individual profile descriptions for each group (C.f. Quinn 1998b; Wilde 2007; Bennion 2012, 27–53). In this format, each profile covers the specific history of the group including its prophetic lineage (that is, the succession of the group’s leaders), and the polygamy-related norms of each culture. These historic-ethnographic descriptions, particularly those by D. Michael Quinn and Janet Bennion, have provided clarity for readers. The reader of these compilations of sect profiles understands that Mormon fundamentalist groups are distinct and that their differences matter.

Founding stories are important to the members of such religious communities, and the differences are significant socially in that they actually shape and determine life experiences for the members of individual sects. While the method of offering profiles for different groups has effectually communicated the Mormon fundamentalist landscape to this point, I organize the information in a different way—thematically—because of the phenomenon I observed and its relation to the aims of this book. The current chapter focuses on my observations of today’s Mormon fundamentalists, the first section focusing on social aspects of the population, the second focusing on spirituality and lived religion among contemporary Mormon fundamentalists. Some parallels between reality-TV representation and the lived experiences of Mormon polygamists are noted, as well as are pieces that are absent from the televised representations.

Interdenominationalism in twenty-first-century Mormon fundamentalism

Separations between sects continue to exist; however, Mormon fundamentalists are communicating across sect lines seemingly more than before. I call this phenomenon interdenominationalism, and the new Hollywood institution of Mormon polygamy reality television is a key player (though not the only player) in this development.

It is important to note that this interdenominationalism is not entirely new. The Safety Net Committee was established as an outcome of a 2003 meeting between the Utah Attorney General’s Office, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, and Mormon fundamentalists (Family Support Center 2009, 9). The meeting happened largely because of the work of advocates through the polygamy rights organization, Principle Voices, which was founded by Anne Wilde and other polygamist women. “Safety Net” on the fictional show Big Love is based on this actual committee.

Though not entirely new, interdenominationalism is increasing within the population, and it is an outcome of several contemporary phenomena. Social media, Internet, television, and allies from the sociopolitical left all contribute to this growing interdenominationalism. Polygamy in Utah was only reduced from a felony to an infraction in 2020. As such changes are happening, increasingly more Mormon polygamists become more comfortable with the risks of being public. Less fear means that more may participate in online communities, which makes intrareligious dialogue more accessible. Since I have only been a participant-observer in the 2010s, I cannot represent the culture ethnographically in past decades. However, the interdenominational interest within the population seems intrinsically connected to Mormon fundamentalist life since the start of Sister Wives and to the political action connected with the polygamy rights movement.

Shared heritage of government suppression

Many outside of Mormon fundamentalism mistake FLDS and fundamentalist Mormon as synonyms. FLDS is the acronym for Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which is one denomination of Mormon fundamentalism.¹ FLDS is the sect whose women adopted the style of attire termed, by journalists, “prairie dresses,” which FLDS women themselves call “collars and cuffs” (Jessop 2019). In actuality, FLDS is one sect among several schismatic groups of Mormon fundamentalism. The sects include Kingstons, Centennial Park, Allred group, Christ’s Church, and the unorganized population who call themselves “Independent,” which seems to be growing more rapidly than the sects.

Aside from sharing doctrinal religious history, contemporary Mormon fundamentalists across sects are shaped by a heritage of government suppression, which I can best describe as kinship-trauma. The greatest source of generational trauma for contemporary Mormon fundamentalists is the US government’s raid on Short Creek in 1953. In this raid, US government officials, guided by LDS Mormons who were opponents to fundamentalism, charged on the polygamist community of Short Creek, which is on the state border between Utah and Arizona. (One crosses the street from Hildale, Utah, and is in Colorado City, Arizona, and vice versa.) In the raid, men were arrested and families split apart. Although polygamy had been criminalized for decades prior, the US government’s decision to act in 1953 aroused new fears in polygamists and caused generational trauma for the polygamists’ descendants. Baby Boomers raised in polygamist families were either children during the event or born in the years both following and shaped by the event.

The 1953 raid is a source of generational trauma, but the source of what I describe as “kinship-trauma” (experienced specifically by Mormon fundamentalists outside FLDS) is Warren Jeffs’s religious abuse of their Mormon fundamentalist kin. I use the term “kin” intentionally, as it applies in multiple ways. FLDS or formerly FLDS are kin to other Mormon fundamentalists in the sense that they are co-religionists, to an extent. There are denominational differences, but they share the same general beliefs including the principle of plural marriage. They are also kin, from a technical standpoint, in that members from the various sects have family members in the other groups. Denominational conversion by way of inter-marriage is common. If Mormon fundamentalists are not direct cousins to members of the FLDS, they are aware that they very well could have been.

Prior to its downfall, spurred on by the arrest and conviction of Warren Jeffs, FLDS had become the largest Mormon fundamentalist sect. At its height, the FLDS was estimated to have a membership of 8,000 to 10,000, which was likely around 22–26% of the Mormon fundamentalist population at the time (Family Support Center 2009, 11–22). But, the sect is much diminished now, since the arrest, trial, conviction, and imprisonment of FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs. The FLDS sect is now nearly non-existent (Anne Wilde, pers. comm.).

The outcome of Warren Jeffs’s abuse and the media surrounding it has been a bifurcation between FLDS and non-FLDS Mormon fundamentalists. The interdenominational dialogue I observed is defined by the understanding that, “There is the FLDS, and there’s everybody else,” meaning all other Mormon fundamentalists. While there are a few polygamists who have been public about the danger of other sects becoming like Jeffs’s FLDS, the general consensus is that no Mormon fundamentalist church is as isolated or controlled as FLDS was under Warren Jeffs.² The present interdenominationalism, therefore, does not include voices from FLDS.

In essence, the tragedy that befell the members of FLDS has become unifying for other Mormon fundamentalist sects. Non-FLDS Mormon fundamentalists mourn the harm done to families and kin under the abusive patriarch. They grieve for the youth and adults who were harmed, and they also resent the damage done to the name of Mormon fundamentalism as a result of Jeffs’s abusive behaviors and the media that focused on the problematic group without respect to differences between fundamentalist Mormons or fundamentalist Mormon sects. The distancing from FLDS of the rest of the Mormon fundamentalist population is clearly a response to Jeffs’s behavior and Jeffs’s conviction.

Media and polygamy rights

Media have become incredibly important for members of the various sects. The Mormon fundamentalists who choose to participate in media today—television, documentaries, radio, and Internet—frequently cite needing to change the narrative as their motivation. One informant used the direct phrase of “creating a non-Warren-Jeffs image.” Like other modern people, contemporary Mormon fundamentalists are saturated in media. While my informants tend to be relatively low-media or “TV-lite” people, they are aware of media images associated with their population. The grief non-FLDS Mormon fundamentalists experience is constructed with the input of media. This does not mean that their grief is any less real, just that their understanding cannot be separated from the impact of media images.

Coalition building has been underway long before the fall of FLDS. Principle Voices, a polygamist advocacy organization founded by polygamist women, in collaboration with the Utah attorney general’s office developed Safety Net, the inspiration for Bill Henrickson’s coalition of sects in Big Love (Darger et al. 2011, 290). However, the tragedy and the scandal associated with FLDS and Warren Jeffs has provided greater reason for Mormon fundamentalists of other sects to band together in opposition to human rights violations as well as working collectively to change the media narratives.

Although some members of the population were reticent around the time of the Sister Wives series premiere, nearly every member of my sample have had good things to say about the Kody Brown family and the Darger family and the work they have done to reset the image of polygamy to something more robust and accurate. Common names spoken of positively include “Kody Brown and his wives,” “the Dargers,” and “Enoch Foster.” On occasion, individuals would speak of negative and false representations in contemporary television, to which others would sympathetically grumble with recognition, and it was clear that they were referring to Escaping Polygamy.

Irrespective of changes in family dynamic as an outcome of celebrity status, the roots of Sister Wives are advocacy and activism. Kody Brown was introduced to television director Tim Gibbons via Anne Wilde, a known polygamist advocate (Wilde 2019). Plotlines have been informed by polygamy-related political issues the Browns wanted to make public. The second season focused on the Browns relocating to Las Vegas because of Utah’s criminalization of “purporting to marry” in its bigamy code. Multiple seasons tracked the fire-hoops the family went through for Kody to legally adopt his stepchildren. The Browns and other media families (the Dargers, the Fosters, the Brineys) are active in attending and even organizing the Salt Lake City protests.

The Internet is a platform that makes interdenominational conversations possible. I met three of my informants through their Speaking of Polygamy blog, and, through them, I learned about conversations taking place in Facebook threads. The media families use Twitter to post polygamy-related news; their posts are re-tweeted and commented on by members of the community. By its very nature, the Internet is accessible to various populations. Blogs like Speaking of Polygamy and polygamist celebrity Facebook pages open a door to virtual meetings attended by Mormon fundamentalists across denominations.

Use of public websites for these often legally incriminating conversations is a direct outcome of the Browns going public through the TLC show. In season one, the Browns claimed they were doing the show to come out of hiding, as a very personal and political move. This single series has indeed contributed to many other families (polygamists) coming out to varying degrees. Some families have followed the Browns’ direct example by being filmed for TLC’s newer shows, but, mostly, families are more willing to incriminate themselves by contributing blog posts or participating in a semi-public Facebook discussion. Sister Wives has therefore been a catalyst for the degree of interdenominational conversation characterizing Mormon fundamentalism today.

“More than one way to Mormon”: Allies from the Mormon left

The growing interdenominationalism has also been supported by growing inte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Image credits
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Researching “swingers” and “saints” on exhibit
• 1 Twenty-first-century Mormon fundamentalism: Ethnographic observations
• 2 From raids to rallies: Polygamy, class, and new media
• 3 Mormon polygamist spirituality in the twenty-first century
• 4 Gnostic esoterism in Mormon fundamentalism
• 5 Polyamory as religious sexual counter-culture: The new charmed circle
• 6 Sisterhood, patriarchy, and bromance: New perspectives on gender, labor, and power in polyamory and polygamy
• 7 Polygamy and polyamory in the era of The Bachelor: Intersectional observations regarding religion, media, and society
• References
• Index