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Anyone know if any of the nearly 10,000 members of the polygamist Mormon sect the Apostolic United Brethren are Black or what their policy of Blacks holding the Priesthood is?

Nomomo wrote:Anyone know if any of the nearly 10,000 members of the polygamist Mormon sect the Apostolic United Brethren are Black or what their policy of Blacks holding the Priesthood is?

It's difficult to get stats on a group that lives under the radar in order to avoid the law.

Nomomo wrote:Anyone know if any of the nearly 10,000 members of the polygamist Mormon sect the Apostolic United Brethren are Black or what their policy of Blacks holding the Priesthood is?

I don't know off the top of my head, but I've sent a query to someone who might. I'll let you know if it pans out.

Well, that was fast.

According to my friend, the AUB absolutely does not ordain blacks. There is a break-off group or two that are sympathetic to ordaining blacks, but the ordination of blacks is one of the issues which the AUB feels caused the mainstream LDS church to lose the "true priesthood."

I'd be suprised if there was a Fundamentalist group that did ordain blacks. Lineage is too important to these groups.

MrStakhanovite wrote:I'd be suprised if there was a Fundamentalist group that did ordain blacks. Lineage is too important to these groups.

That, and the reason the LDS church had to switch to ordaining blacks was because they were well-known enough to receive significant outside pressure, and they were big enough to be carrying out large missions among mixed-black populations such as Brazil.

The smaller fundamentalist groups don't have those problems.

MsJack wrote:Well, that was fast.

According to my friend, the AUB absolutely does not ordain blacks. There is a break-off group or two that are sympathetic to ordaining blacks, but the ordination of blacks is one of the issues which the AUB feels caused the mainstream LDS church to lose the "true priesthood."

Interesting. I would have thought that these groups would perceive that the mainstream LDS Church lost their "true priesthood" long before 1978, since the main cause of the splinter was polygamy.

MsJack wrote:Well, that was fast.

According to my friend, the AUB absolutely does not ordain blacks. There is a break-off group or two that are sympathetic to ordaining blacks, but the ordination of blacks is one of the issues which the AUB feels caused the mainstream LDS church to lose the "true priesthood."

Thanks for the reply. I suspected something like this may be the case.

I understand that the Bluffdale group use the same ploy as the Southern Utah sects of having their wives get welfare assistance claiming to be single mothers and then turning the checks over to the men.

I wonder how they deal with the excess male problem. I believe "The Lost Boys" had all been booted out of a different Southern Utah polygamist group. I am curious what the AUB's solution to the problem of the production of excess males is.

Nomomo,

The Bluffdale group does not teach nor generally practice participation in government welfare. As in all populations, there are certainly a small percentage who are on welfare. The Utah State attorney's office did a study a couple of years ago and concluded that the use of welfare among fundamentalist groups was less than the population as a whole. I become rather annoyed at the accusations in this vein.

As for "lost boys," the AUB are not a tightly closed community. There is a flow of people in and out, and there are female converts and marriages to nonmembers and plenty of monogamous marriages within the group. Thus a surplus of young men looking for marriage partners has not been seen, much less boys who are "forced to leave."

I hope this helps answer some of your misperceptions.

Bored in Vernal wrote:Nomomo,

The Bluffdale group does not teach nor generally practice participation in government welfare. As in all populations, there are certainly a small percentage who are on welfare. The Utah State attorney's office did a study a couple of years ago and concluded that the use of welfare among fundamentalist groups was less than the population as a whole. I become rather annoyed at the accusations in this vein.

As for "lost boys," the AUB are not a tightly closed community. There is a flow of people in and out, and there are female converts and marriages to nonmembers and plenty of monogamous marriages within the group. Thus a surplus of young men looking for marriage partners has not been seen, much less boys who are "forced to leave."

I hope this helps answer some of your misperceptions.

Vernal, welcome to MDB.

What is the source for your information about the flow of people in and out of the AUB?