Leroy S. Johnson

Leroy Sunderland Johnson (June 12, 1888 – November 25, 1986), known to his followers as Uncle Roy,^[3] was a leader of the Mormon fundamentalist group at Colorado City, Arizona (the future Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or FLDS Church), during the latter part of the twentieth century.

Biography

Leroy Sunderland Johnson was born on June 12, 1888, probably at Lee's Ferry, Arizona, to bigamist Warren Marshall Johnson, a first-generation convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), and one of his wives, Permelia Smith Johnson.^[4]

Johnson was baptized into the LDS Church at the age of eight, not long after Church President Wilford Woodruff's 1890 Manifesto banning polygamy was issued.^[5] Johnson took issue with the Manifesto, being very outspoken about his belief in "the Celestial Law" even before learning about the formal fundamentalist movement within Mormonism.^[6] His convictions were strengthened after traveling to Short Creek, Arizona, where a prominent polygamous community was coalescing, and acquainting himself with movement leaders such as John W. Woolley, Joseph White Musser, and John Y. Barlow.^[7]

Johnson and his wife Josephine were excommunicated from the LDS Church in 1935, along with most of the Short Creek Community, after refusing to sign an affidavit abandoning their belief in plural marriage. At this time Johnson chose to officially join the "Woolley group" of fundamentalists, the spiritual predecessor to the modern Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church), and was quickly ordained a member of the group's Council of the Priesthood by John Y. Barlow.^[8][9]

Johnson became a leader of the polygamous movement after Barlow's death in 1949. He did not initially consider his group a distinct organization from the Salt Lake-based Church, describing it simply as "the Fundamentalist division of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," but by 1952 he openly remarked that he and his followers "have separated ourselves from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as it now stands."^[10][11] Despite being plagued by incidents such as the 1953 Short Creek raid, Johnson's thirty-two year tenure as senior member of the Priesthood Council has been characterized as "a time of stability, growth, financial success, and greater public acceptance."^[12]

While Johnson is today recognized as a prophet of the FLDS Church, he only elusively made reference to his own prophetic status: "You have heard other men call me a prophet, but you have never heard me make the claim."^[13]

While acting as Prophet, Johnson dismissed J. Marion Hammon and Alma Adelbert Timpson from the Council of Friends.^[14] Hammon and Timpson went on to form the Centennial Park group of polygamists.

Following Johnson's death in Hildale, Utah on November 25, 1986, Rulon Jeffs succeeded him as leader of the FLDS Church. Although Johnson had been "very ill" and "fast fading into senility" for several years, his passing created a "climate of upheaval" within the community, during which the Church became increasingly authoritarian.^[15] The numbers of apostates gradually increased, spiking in the early twenty-first century with the turmoil accompanying the imprisonment of Jeffs' son, Church President Warren Jeffs, on two counts of child sexual assault.

In recent years, Johnson's tenure as Prophet has become a focal point for Fundamentalists disaffected with the modern FLDS. For instance, one of Warren Jeffs' brothers noted that "Uncle Roy" was a "warm, loving" prophet who "taught polygamy for the right reasons," whereas Jeffs "has no love for the people."^[16]

Johnson's birthday was celebrated as a holiday within the FLDS Church until the practice was discontinued by Warren Jeffs in 2003.^[17][18]

See also

• List of Mormon fundamentalist leaders

Notes

References