Apostolic United Brethren

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The Apostolic United Brethren (abbreviated AUB) is a polygamous Mormon fundamentalist sect within the Latter Day Saint movement. The sect is not affiliated with the well-known Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The AUB has had a temple in Ozumba, Mexico since the 1990s or earlier, and an Endowment house in Utah since the early 1980s.

The title Apostolic United Brethren is not generally used by members, who prefer to call it The Work, The Priesthood or The Group. Those outside the faith sometimes refer to it as the Allred Group, because two of its presidents have had that surname. Members of the AUB do not refer to their organization as a "church" and, unlike nearly all other Mormon fundamentalists groups, regard the LDS church as a legitimate, if wayward and diminished, divine institution. The sect does not have any ties to other Churches of the Brethren and associated groups.

1 Membership
2 Organization
3 Meetings
4 Doctrines & Practices
5 History
6 External links

[edit] Membership

There are between 5000 and 8000 members of the AUB, most in Utah and Mexico. The headquarters of the AUB is in Bluffdale, Utah, where it has a chapel, school, archives, and sports field.

The AUB has communities in Rocky Ridge, Utah; Harvest Haven (in Eagle Mountain, Utah); Cedar City, Utah; Granite, Utah; Pinesdale, Montana; Lovell, Wyoming; Mesa, Arizona; Humansville, Missouri; and Ozumba, Mexico. It operates at least 3 private schools (many families also home school or send their children to public schools).

[edit] Organization

The AUB is headed by a President of the Priesthood, next in authority is a Priesthood Council (of which he is a part). Below this in the hierarchy are Presidents of the Seventy, High Priests, Elders, Aaronic Priesthood members, the women's Relief Society, Sunday School, Young Women's, Boy Scouts, and the children's Primary organizations (which may be different according to region). On a local level there are Bishops, Priesthood Council representatives, and Patriarchs.

[edit] Meetings

General Sacrament (which is open to the public) and Sunday School Meetings (as well as many private family Sunday Schools) take place on Sundays, as do some Priesthood classes.

Relief Society (a women's organization), Young Women's, Primary and Scouting take place throughout the week.

At meetinghouses, dances, firesides, musical events, plays, and classes often take place.

[edit] Doctrines & Practices

The AUB accept the Articles of Faith, written by Joseph Smith to summarize LDS beliefs. They believe the LDS Church is still fulfilling a divine role in spreading the Book of Mormon and other basic doctrines of Mormonism and in doing genealogy.

However, the AUB is best known for their belief in plural marriage, the United Order, the Adam-God doctrine, and what is commonly called the 1886 Meeting (see History section). Child and spouse abuse and incest are considered serious sins, and those members who perpetrate such crimes are excommunicated and the victims are encouraged to report such incidents to the police.

[edit] History

The AUB's claims to authority are based around the accounts of John Wickersham Woolley, Lorin Calvin Woolley and others, of a meeting in September 1886 between LDS Church President John Taylor, the Woolleys and others. Prior to the meeting, Taylor is said to have met with the [deceased] church founder, Joseph Smith, Jr., and Jesus Christ and to have received a revelation commanding that plural marriage should not cease, but be kept alive by a separate group from the church, who would preserve the doctrine on earth. The following day the Woolleys, as well as Taylor's counselor George Q. Cannon and others, were set apart to keep "the principle" alive.

Members of the AUB see their history as going back to Joseph Smith and to the beliefs he espoused and practices he established. They believe that the LDS Church has made unacceptable changes to doctrines and ordinances. The members of the AUB see it as their responsibility to keep them alive in the form they were originally given and to live all the laws God has commanded. Each doctrine or practice changed or abandoned by the LDS church is in turn perpetuated by the AUB.

Until the 1950s, Mormon fundamentalists were largely one group, but with the ordination in 1951 of Rulon C. Allred by Joseph W. Musser, who then presided over the fundamentalists, the fundamentalists in Colorado City, Arizona (formerly known as Short Creek), became more distant and within a few years formed their own group—now called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The shooting of Rulon C. Allred by Rena Chynoweth in 1977 (under the direction of Ervil LeBaron) brought the AUB into the spotlight. Allred was succeeded by his brother, Owen A. Allred, who died in 2005 and was replaced by his appointed successor, J. LaMoine Jenson.