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Download Download International Journal for the Study of New Religions 3.1 (2012) 117–122 ISSN 2041-9511 (print) ISSN 2041-952X (online) doi:10.1558/ijsnr.v3i1.117 Book Reviews Saints under Siege: The Texas State Raid on the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, edited by Stuart A. Wright and James T. Richardson. New York University Press, 2011, 270pp., pb., $25.00; e-edition, $9.99. ISBN-13: 9780814795293. Keywords anticult movement (ACM), apostates, child abuse, Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS), polygamy, Yearning For Zion Ranch Reviewed by Spencer L. Allen, University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]. edu Identifying herself as Sarah Jessop—pregnant mother, abused 15 year old, and the seventh wife of the fictitious Yearning for Zion (YFZ) Ranch resi- dent Dale Barlow—Rozita Swinton’s call to the domestic violence hotline on April 3, 2008, set in motion a rescue mission and Texas state raid that would become the largest state custodial detention of children in U.S. history. As Saints under Siege demonstrates, however, Swinton—a 33-year-old woman from Colorado Springs—may have served as the catalyst for the raid on the 800-member Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) community near Eldorado, Texas, and the removal of 439 children from their families, but the raid on the YFZ Ranch was itself inevitable, given the state’s interest in minimizing the presence and influence of the FLDS community in Schleicher County, Texas. Saints under Siege’s strength resides in its multi-author and multi-hermeneutic approach as each chapter consid- ers a distinct set of historical, cultural, and political/legal realities underlying the raid. The volume examines how the raid could have been prevented if the authorities had either recognized their prejudices against new religious movements (NRMs) and their non-normative family structures, or recog- nized that their investigative methods had been developed with the intention to undermine the legitimacy of the YFZ community rather than protect chil- dren from unsubstantiated abuses. © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2012, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffied S3 8AF 118 Book Reviews After a general description of FLDS history, the major participants in the events leading up to the raid, and the raid itself, Wright and Richardson provide a brief overview of the volume’s three sections and its ten chapters. This division into three sections—Historical Context, Social and Cultural Dimensions, and Legal and Political Perspectives—enables the volume to lay its multi-hermeneutic foundation down so that the reader can more readily view the lens used in each chapter. The first section, Historical Context, comprises three chapters. The first two chapters, “The Past as Prologue: A Comparison of Short Creek and Eldorado Polygamy Raids,” by Martha Bradley Evans and “Rescuing Children? Government Raids and Child Abuse Allegations in Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspective” by Susan J. Palmer, provide com- parative analyses of raids on the FLDS and other NRMs. Evans’ contribution focuses on the 1953 raid and removal of 263 children from Short Creek, Ari- zona, the product of Governor Pyle’s desire to stop polygamy and the produc- tion of “white slaves” (26). According to Evans, not only did the investigation and unfolding of the 1953 raid foreshadow that of the 2008 raid, but it effec- tively taught the community to be suspect of a government that sought their destruction, providing fodder for the community’s persecution narrative (38) and increasing its isolationist tendencies. In chapter 2, Palmer provides four case studies of raids on non-FLDS NRMs outside of the United States (i.e., the Dukhhobos and the Apostles of Infinite Love in Canada, the Children of God/Family International in Australia, and the Ogyen Kunzang Choling in France and Belgium). Palmer maps each study onto a pattern to enhance the commonalities and argues that, in each case, the authorities used the raid and removal of children from the community primarily to exert government control over a deviant group that posed a threat to society’s mores (75). Chapter 3, “The Struggle for Legitimacy: Tensions between the LDS and FLDS” by Ryan T. Cragun, Michael Nielsen, and Heather Clingenpeel, focuses on the Church of Latter Day Saints’ (LDS) desire to distinguish itself from its religious rival, the polygamous FLDS community. Often, this entails a hyper renunciation of polygamy, even when doing so involves donating money to anti-polygamy originations that are also anti-Mormon (98). Simi- larly, additional doctrinal scrutiny (i.e., rejection of polygamy) is required of potential FLDS converts (i.e., those with polygamous backgrounds) than is required of non-FLDS converts (91–93). According to the authors, the LDS community makes extra effort to distance or distinguish itself from the FLDS community when events like the 2008 raid thrust the latter in the media spotlight because the LDS community needs to portray itself as a legitimate while maintaining its non-mainstream religious niche. © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2012 Book Reviews 119 The second section of the volume, Social and Cultural Dimensions, com- prises four chapters (chs. 4–7). The section begins with Michael William Hamilton’s “Reader Responses to the Yearning for Zion Ranch Raid and Its Aftermath on the Websites of the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News,” which explores the online comments made by readers to articles discussing the problem of polygamy. Hamilton groups the responses into three catego- ries: sacred experience, patriotism, and libertarianism (111). Typically, those readers who appeal to sacred experience in their comments tend to rationalize polygamy (without necessarily defending its modern practice), whereas those readers who appeal to patriotism generally consider themselves true Ameri- cans in contrast to the unpatriotic or un-American polygamists. In light of the previous chapter by Cragun, Nielsen, and Clingenpeel, however, the more interesting issue in Hamilton’s chapter is the LDS community’s desire to distance itself from the FLDS community. This is emphasized by the non- LDS-owned Salt Lake Tribune and its interest in reporting on polygamy, the YFZ Ranch, and Warren Jeffs, whereas the LDS-ownedDeseret News is more reticent about reporting on these issues (109). Chapter 5, “Deconstructing Official Rationales for the Texas Sate Raid on the FLDS” by Stuart A. Wright, explores the state’s reliance on self-proclaimed deprogramming experts, anticult movement (ACM) associates, and apostates to collect evidence against the FLDS community at the YFZ Ranch. Wright argues that the state too heavily depended on these FLDS opponents, whose credentials were lacking, and their methods suspect, to make its case and that the officials failed to corroborate that evidence offered by these opponents (135). Moreover, state authorities dismissed findings made by its own social workers and trained professionals, who were labeled “too sympathetic” by the FLDS opponents, that did not support the opponents’ evidence. Chapter 6, “Texas Redux: A Comparative Analysis of the FLDS and Branch Davidian Raids” by Stuart A. Wright and Jennifer Lara Fagen, largely extends Wright’s discussion from the previous chapter by comparing the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, with the 2008 raid at the YFZ Ranch. Wright and Fagen demonstrate that the 2008 raid could have been avoided had authorities learned from mistakes made in 1993. Indeed, Table 6.1 on page 154 quickly reveals that the same opponents leveled the same charges against both the Branch Davidians and the FLDS community, with some charges (e.g., child abuse) largely unfounded in both instances, and other charges (e.g., mass suicide and weapon stockpiling for a doomsday scenario) contrary to FLDS thought and the evidence uncovered after the raid (172). Chapter 7, “Large-Scale FLDS Raids: The Dangers and Appeal of Crime © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2012 120 Book Reviews Control Theater” by Camille B. Lalasz and Carlene Gonzales, explores the detrimental aftermath of the raids on the FLDS community both within the community itself and in the public sphere. After the 1953 raid, members of the Short Creek community not only resumed their polygamous lifestyle but also learned to loose faith in their government. Moreover, the initial support for Governor Pyle’s raid quickly dissipated after the public learned of the emotional turmoil experienced by the children of Short Creek—only to be returned to their parents as long as two years later (179). Because the Pyle’s 1953 raid failed in so many respects, the fallout from the 1953 raid, includ- ing the community’s increased distrust in the government, led to (and was likely repeated in) the 2008 raid on the YFZ Ranch. The volume’s third and final section, Legal and Political Perspectives, com- prises three chapters (chs. 8–10). Chapter 8, “Strategic Dissolution and the Politics of Oppression: Parallels in the State Raids on the Twelve Tribes and the FLDS” by Jean Swantko Wiseman, serves as a natural transition from section two. Like the discussions in chapters 5 and 6 concerning the state authorities’ over dependence on religious opponents and the ACM’s agen- das rather than state social workers and experts, Wiseman explores the 1984 raid in which the state of Vermont illegally seized 112 children from Island Pond’s Twelve Tribes Community (201). This raid was based on deprogram- mer Galen Kelly’s plan to destroy NRMs, like the Twelve Tribes Community in Vermont and the FLDS elsewhere, by focusing on the group as an abu- sive collective and its nontraditional family structures rather than actually demonstrating individual instances of abuse within a specific and particu- lar family (206). Wiseman argues that Kelly’s plan, especially establishing a strong relationship between the ACM community and law enforcement (204 and 216), has become an enduring aspect of extralegal attempts to remove children from their families under the guise of “saving children” from the alleged inherent abuses of non-normative family structures.
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