Apostolic United Brethren - History

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 Jesus Christ and the deceased church founder, Joseph Smith, Jr., and to have received a revelation commanding that plural marriage should not cease, but be kept alive by a group separate from the LDS Church. The following day, the Woolleys, as well as Taylor's counselor, George Q. Cannon, and others, were said to have been 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. Within a few years they formed their own group, which is now called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The shooting of Rulon C. Allred by Rena Chynoweth on May 10th, 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 February of 2005 and was replaced by his appointed successor, J. LaMoine Jenson.