JJ, thanks for brightening my morning. Ouch.

This whole situation, the breaking up of this FLDS community, is bred from our hatred for some of God's children because they're different.

Maybe I missed something in my scripture study, but I can't find where Christ said it was okay to hate others, as long as they were sufficiently different.

We can all agree it's not okay to hate illegal immigrants or gays. A lot of compassion has been preached during recent years about these segments of our society, yet we still love to hate the polygamists.

And holding hatred in our hearts will always make for a dreary outlook, a fatalistic view that our own Shangri-La will never come to fruition.

The Book of Mormon post-Christ and the early Mormon pioneer "united order" societies failed for the same reasons. If we're going to point the magnifying glass, don't forget to look inward as well.

Appreciate so much your insight, too bad our mortal frailties get in the way of our spiritual desires. All good intentions need to be built on a solid foundation.
Finding that foundation is most important and essential, and the building materials needs to be of the highest caliber as well. Trying to do that outside of the blueprints designated by the Master Builder will always lead, eventually to failure.

You forgot to mention the Oneida community. We still use their silverware, even though the utopian aspirations dissipated. And you forgot to mention the Mormon's Orderville that lasted for a little while.

But "Zion" in Utah has certainly gone the way of the world, too, hasn't it!

it isn't that it cannot be done, ..."they had all things in common and there were no poor among them...."

Formalized religions ("Churches") spend so much time and effort bickering and trying to distinguish themselves from one another by confessing the sins of other Churches, and by their own claims to exclusivity and "truth." Have they never read John9:49-50?

The opposite of hierarchy is equality. Jesus was a radical egalitarian. We cannot be Gods or saviors because we cannot be like Jesus. He was God. We are not. We can only be MEMBERS of Christ in his risen, mystical body in which there are no distinctions of superiority/inferiority. (see Galatians3:26-28).

Jesus did not found a church or advocate a politics. When he spoke of "the kingdom of God" ("heaven's reign") he was not referring to a church or any other organization. We enter the heavenly reign by sharing Jesus' own intimacy with the Father - by becoming members of Jesus' mystical body. All earthly societies fall short - none of them, no state, no church, no organization - can be equated with God's kingdom. Claims to a faith-based politics or to a "true church" substitute a false religion for heaven's reign - which is a form of idolatry.