19 hours ago, Mothra said:
Thank you again for all this fascinating information. It had never occurred to me that post-Merry weddings would have been official Mormon/FLDS ceremonies--sealings--because they all seemed so casual about observing their religion in other ways...
The Brown parents have always indicated, on the show, that they had religious sealings at their "church," and that the ceremonies were secret and sacred. They've said on camera that they wouldn't talk more about their weddings. In other words, they've made no secret of it being secret.
The parents are not mainstream LDS (i.e. they are not part of the mainstream church known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), and they are not part of the FLDS (the Rulon Jeffs/Warren Jeffs group, whose full name is The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or FLDS for short).
The Brown parents are (or at least were) members of the AUB (Apostolic United Brethren, aka the Allred Group).
20 hours ago, Mothra said:
(did any of the children go away to serve as missionaries, for example?)
I don't know if the AUB has missionaries now. They didn't used to.
None of the sects that are outside of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is all that big. I'm not sure they'd even have the ability to establish a mandatory missions program.
Regardless, none of the OG13 Brown kids are part of the AUB, or any other fundamentalist Mormon sect, as far as we know. I think perhaps the one benefit the kids realized from being on the show is that they broke free of Mormon fundamentalism.
Certainly none of Meri, Janelle, and Christine's kids are Mormon fundamentalists. I'm not sure about Robyn's kids (although Mykelti and Gwen have seemed to indicate that none of the kids will be involved in polygamy, and the way this was said, it seemed to include Robyn's older kids).
As I understand it (from Gwendlyn and Mykelti's content) the adult kids are a mix of evangelical Christian, mainstream LDS, and agnostic/atheist, with a little bit of paganism.
20 hours ago, Mothra said:
What they presented, to me at least, was "normal" American wedding stuff, with the exception of Kotex being the officiant of some services. How crafty and deceitful of them! It would have been a simple matter to announce that cameras were not permitted at the "real" Mormon wedding, and then moved on to the reception, which we apparently *were* invited to.
I was only talking about the Brown parents' weddings (Kody's weddings to Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn).
The adult children's weddings, featured on Sister Wives, were not AUB weddings, or any kind of Mormon wedding.
They were just "normal American" weddings. No one was being deceitful about that. You took my previous post as saying much more than it did.
20 hours ago, Mothra said:
If the goal was to demystify polygamy, that's another big fail. Not not showing the ceremony but in trusting the viewer to accept that there is a sacrosanct part of the religion that outsiders are not welcome to participate in. I think we are adults enough to understand that someone's true religious beliefs might not be something they want on TV, especially since those beliefs or misinterpretation of those beliefs have led literally to people dying in their defense.
I don't know how else to say that they couldn't have shown the parents' spiritual weddings (sealing ceremonies) on TV. They take place in an Endowment House and are secret ceremonies which are only open to adult, baptized, members in good standing. They cannot even talk about the ceremony on TV. The sect won't let them.
I don't think the goal was ever to demystify polygamy though. I think the goal was to make it look less threatening -- to put another face on it other than the one the Warren Jeffs' FLDS put out, of child brides in prairie dresses.
They wanted it decriminalized and/or legalized. They didn't care if the rest of America understood it. They cared that they be allowed to practice their brand of the faith, which doesn't include the marriage of minors.
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