When the Church Cracked Down On Right-Wing Extremism

Excerpts from an article in The Salt Lake Tribune, 29 Nov 1992 Sunday Edition, Page A1

IT'S JUDGMENT DAY FOR FAR RIGHT

by Chris Jorgensen and Peggy Fletcher Stack

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is purging hundreds of
Mormon dissidents who church officials say are preoccupied unduly with
Armageddon.

This massive housecleaning may be one of the church's largest since the
1850's, when thousands were excommunicated for everything from poor
hygiene and low church attendance to disobeying the Ten Commandments.

In recent months, Mormons from Utah, Nevada, Arizona and Idaho have been
expelled and many others have been threatened. Numbers are impossible to
determine because excommunication records are guarded closely.

Don LeFevre, LDS spokesman, would not confirm that mass excommunications
are unfolding. However, he did say LDS Church leaders increasingly have
been concerned about ultraconservative "super patriots" and survivalists,
many of whom have quit their jobs and moved their families to mountain
retreats.

Those interviewed by The Salt Lake Tribune say they have faced church
discipline for a range of transgressions - from having too much emergency
food storage to adhering to the doomsday predictions of popular Mormon
presidential candidate Bo Gritz, who received more than 28,000 Utah votes
in the November election.

Targeted are those obsessed with the early speeches of LDS Church President
Ezra Taft Benson and who believe the ailing, 93-year-old leader has been
silenced because his opinions no longer are politically popular.

"We support President Benson 100%," says Elaine Harmston, who was excommun-
icated from her Manti ward last month with her husband, Jim. "He has warned
us thoroughly. But there are some brethren who speak 180 degrees against him."

LDS Church leaders worry that some members are taking too literally state-
ments made decades ago by Elder Benson before he became president.

In a recent speech, Elder Malcolm Jeppson, a member of the Second Quorum of
the Seventy who oversees the Utah-South region of the church, urged Mormons
not to "take out of context words and statements made by church presidents
that were given at a different time and circumstance than the present."

He urges Mormons "walking on the fringes of our faith to seek the safety of
the center."

...Among activities sounding the alarm at stake houses across the West:

  o The practice of home schooling.
  o Having leanings or membership in the John Birch Society.
  o An inordinate preoccupation with food storage.
  o Reading doomsday books and other material unapproved by the church.
  
...By the new standards, "President Benson wouldn't even be allowed to stay
in the church," says a prominent Utah Mormon, referring to the leader's
association with the ultraconservative John Birch Society.

...The extreme actions taken by LDS Church leaders indicate their sense of
urgency in squelching the survivalist movement among their ranks. No fewer
than three LDS general authorities spoke directly to fringe Mormons at
the October conference.