She believes Jeffs has done so "as a way to mark himself" in the eyes of his followers and for future generations. "His contribution is very different from his father's. There is now physical and tangible evidence of his time there. I think El Dorado is sort of a metaphor for the FLDS vision of the good life or of Zion. It's just amazing that he bought that idea so much he wanted to build it and had enough people behind that would help him do it."

She sees some similarities "between the building effort in Texas and the story of Enoch that Joseph Smith was fascinated with — a lot in this most recent building effort to construct a physical environment that could be 'lifted up in the last days."'

As such, she dismisses speculation that Jeffs' imprisonment will result in the demise of his church or fundamentalism in general: "They have survived these kinds of crises multiple times in history. Persecution is tied to their identity and tends to pull them closer together rather than splinter them apart."

She also wonders whether law enforcement is overreacting in its precautions around transporting Jeffs, placing SWAT teams in and around the courthouse and preparing for a violent confrontation. "They may threaten or talk in bold rhetoric, but they have no history of that. I think it speaks to their deep religious commitment. They tend to be pretty idealistic about America as a system of government that should protect their rights, and one of those would be to practice their religion in the way they think they should."

The FLDS Church in particular "has a stability to them that has grown through the decades. They first organized as a group in late 1920s and have an 80-year history under their belt. That makes it possible from outside to sort of predict reactions," Bradley adds.

She says that drawing parallels with other offshoot groups like the Branch Davidians is an apples/oranges comparison that doesn't have the perspective of a long history to draw on. "Not to say that tomorrow some terrible thing won't happen. But with the benefit of history or time, there's nothing to predict a violent confrontation."

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E-mail: carrie@desnews.com, jarvik@desnews.com