Splinter Groups Kingstons Doris Hanson Part 2

Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism.

Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. This week we've been talking about a group known as the Latter-day Church of Christ, otherwise known as the Davis County Cooperative Society.

It's based in Utah. They're also known as the Order, or in a more pejorative way, the Kingston Clan. Yesterday we had on the show our friend Doris Hansen, and she is back for today's program to talk a little bit more about her personal experiences in this group.

Let me welcome you back to the show. As we were talking about yesterday, Doris, we were talking about what it says on the website as opposed to what really goes on in this organization. When you read their website, I'm sure there's a lot of flags that go off because of your personal experience in this group. And would you say that their website, for the most part, is being truthful to people who might be inquiring as to what this organization believes? No, no, not truthful. They have polished it up to make themselves look real good and clean and happy, encouraging group. And when you get inside of their inner workings, they are not that at all.

It's just a facade. Well, we would love to hear a little bit more about your story. In yesterday's show, you gave us some tidbits about your relationship in the Kingston group, but today we'd like you to elaborate more on that. So could you tell us about your story and explain how you became a Christian?

Because I think that's important. Unfortunately, so many who come out of these groups end up not becoming a Christian, and certainly we don't see that as being a positive thing at all. But you have a relationship with the Jesus of the Bible. So go ahead and tell us your experience in this Kingston group and how and why you eventually came out and found Jesus to be your Savior.

I'd love to share and thank you for the opportunity of sharing part of my story. As I said before, I was born and raised in the Kingston group and my mother was a second wife. So I really had no choice but to be part of the group until I became this age. But I was blessed that I did get out before they arranged a plural marriage for me. So I did not partake in polygamy myself, but my mother did. And so I was raised in the polygamous family and it was not a good experience. I remember as an older child having questions about what we had been taught.

One of them was their racism. And that was one of my questions. Another one was why would God require polygamy and pain and poverty to go to heaven?

And my questions never got answered, but I did put them on the proverbial shelf hoping to get answers someday. One thing I don't understand now and I didn't then is why polygamists are determined that they need to be abusive in order to keep people from leaving their religion. This drives people away. It doesn't hold them, but guilt does hold them and so does shame. And I was raised in a family that used the abuse plus the shame and the guilt and the threats of an angry God. And he was breathing flames and smoke out of his nostrils because we were sinners. And of course I didn't like that God nor did I like my parents. They were mean and they were not safe people. And I sure didn't like most of the adult members of the polygamy group congregation.

There was really not much there to love or to trust. When I was 16 years old, my father told me that he was going to see to it that I got to heaven if he had to kick me all the way there. Now their heaven sounded like hell to me and I thought I was already living in hell.

So I really wasn't interested in going to their heaven. And it was at that moment that I made up my mind that I was going to run away from all of it just as soon as I could after I turned 18 years old. And from that point on, I lived for the day of my freedom. I was just tired of living in fear every day of my life. And I feared my father and his abuses. I feared almost every adult in the group. I feared of their threats and their interminable lectures and of course of my future in the group and every other aspect of my life.

It was not a pretty life. And just a few days after my 18th birthday, I did run. I had packed a small box of personal items and under a prearranged plan, I took off in the middle of the night. And when I got in the car and we had gone down the street and turned three or four street corners and I looked behind and saw that no one was following or chasing us, I had a sense of freedom that was indescribable. I never had to fear my father's abusive authority again.

He would never beat me up again. And it was a wonderful experience. Unfortunately, I was young and naive and emotionally still a child. There were no safe houses or shelters or anything else available to help escapees like me. I ended up in a situation that was just another form of entrapment or mind control. But I told myself this was better than the polygamy group. And it took me several years to get the resources and the courage to get out of it, which I finally did. But it would be 25 years after I ran away from the group before I became a Christian.

I call them my wilderness wandering years. I was never truly happy and all the guilt still buried deep within me. And I had no desire for God or for church or preaching and threats of eternal damnation because I didn't march to the tune of some angry, sadistic, greedy God, which was the polygamous teaching of God.

Of course, I didn't have a clue that the polygamy God was false. I was essentially running from God all those years. But one day it's like God was done with me running from him and he moved around in front of me. And I crashed right into his open and loving arms.

I was not searching for him. He allowed me, he brought me to the point where I just crashed right into him. What happened was a customer had brought some books into my office where I was working. And he said he was done with them.

I could have them if I wanted or give them to someone else who may want them. And I didn't know who this person was. I'd never met him before in my life. It was definitely one of those God things. And there were three or four books and a few audio tapes and all of them were religious. And I didn't do religion.

So they just sat there for several days. But one day I decided I'd look inside one of the books and be real careful not to get suckered up into some odd religious entrapment. But the book that first got my attention was entitled Mama, Mormonism and Me by Del Magir. And in that book, I read three little words that changed my life forever. And those words were God loves you.

And I was literally shocked. I had always thought God hated me, that he was out to get me. Now I'm learning that God loves me.

And I had to know more. And so that's when my journey began. It was in that book where I first discovered the violent and deceitful and ungodly activities of the early Mormons and polygamists. And I knew from then on that the Mormonism God wasn't real at that. And I was somehow released from my awful fear of pursuing the topic of God. Well, during that time, I had started reading the Bible a little bit. One day I landed in Ephesians chapter two, verses eight through 10, which tells us we're saved by grace through faith and not by works.

And I was blown out of the water. I could hardly believe what I was reading. And this, of course, fueled further study. I came across Isaiah 40, verse eight. It tells us that God's word would endure forever. Well, it hadn't been lost.

It hadn't been corrupted. And I'd been taught. And I knew at that moment that I could trust every single word I read in the Bible. And I was hooked. Well, I became a Christian by prayerfully, of course, accepting the truth of the person of Jesus and his sacrifice for me on the cross.

I thank Tim for paying my sin debt and assuring me that I would go to heaven because of my faith in Jesus and his works, not through my own attempt at good works. I had a lot of learning to do, but I knew that polygamy had nothing to do with works for salvation. And I knew the polygamy group, even all of the Mormonism, was not and had never been the kingdom of God as they claim.

I wanted desperately to share all this good news with my siblings because I have 15 of them. And I thought they would all be as excited about Grace as I was, but they weren't. I hit a brick wall with every single one of them. I was rejected and so was my message.

And of course, that was my first severe disappointment. Sadly, 25 years after I had escaped, there were still no resources. There were no Christian outreaches.

There were no helps organizations that helped women and girls who escaped from polygamy. Escapees either faded into the woodwork or they were found and forced back to the group. Well, I wanted to be instrumental in helping people, not just leave polygamy, but to learn and know the true gospel and the true Jesus and the true salvation experience. So in a nutshell, that's how I came to learn and accept the true gospel. It's an amazing journey from a lie to the truth. That is an amazing, powerful story, Doris. And did you ever get a chance to meet Granny Gear who wrote the book Mormonism, Mama and Me?

No. She was ill at the time I got saved. And I think it was just a few months or maybe a year or so after I became saved that she passed away. Wasn't unable to ever meet her. I was sad. I wanted to. She wore a prairie dress wherever she went and I had a chance to meet her and get to talk to her.

She was an amazing woman. Now you have a Christian ministry today and it's called Shield and Refuge, as we talked about earlier. Can you tell us a little bit more about your ministry and what you're doing to help those who were involved with polygamy?

Yes. Like I said, from the moment I became a Christian, I wanted God to use me to help polygamists know that they don't have to do what they're doing to go to heaven and that they don't have to suffer or share their husbands to please God. I grew up in that environment so I could relate to people who were raised in polygamy. But God had other plans for me the first few years. And it wasn't until the spring of 2008 that we launched the Shield and Refuge ministry at the same time that the DVD Lifting the Veil of Polygamy was released.

Main Street Church in Brigham City had produced many very good DVDs dealing with Mormonism and this was one of them. And I wanted to help people leave polygamy but also to be saved and not experience the years of wilderness wanderings that I did. The truth is, what eternal good does it do to reject the lie but never find or embrace the truth? The primary purpose of Shield and Refuge ministry is to bring biblical truth to polygamists. We do also help them escape if needed and we help them after they get out. We disciple them and offer eternal hope.

But our main purpose is to bring them the good news of the gospel of grace, who God really is and who God is not. You have a website, shieldandrefuge.org. We encourage our listeners to go and check out your resources there. And you have a TV show and it's called Polygamy, What Love Is This?

You've been doing this for a number of years. Can you quickly tell us a little bit about the broadcast that you do? Yes, we started our show in June of 2008. It was a live show on TV20 but their station sold and they changed their programming. But we continued to tape the weekly programs and then release them on our website, Roku TV and Vimeo and YouTube. We discuss Mormon doctrine and Mormon polygamy and we interview ex polygamists or even ex Mormons who were so negatively impacted with Joseph Smith's polygamy and so on.

All of our shows that we've taped, and there's hundreds of them at this point, can be found on our website, which is whatloveisthis.tv. Doris, I sure thank you for being on because I think a lot of people need to hear your story and if nothing else, little realizing what a lot of people are going through here in the state of Utah that belong to groups such as this. So I think your story is going to be very encouraging to those that are listening. Doris real quick, if somebody wants to get a hold of you, do they get a hold of you through shieldandrefuge.org or is there a better way? They can get a hold of me through shieldandrefuge.org and or from whatloveisthis.tv or they can email Doris at about polygamy.com. We've been talking to Doris Hansen, she's with Shield and Refuge Ministry, shieldandrefuge.org. Thanks Doris again for sharing your story with us. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org where you can request our free newsletter Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.