UFOs, Antarctica Colonization, and Offshoot Mormons

Now begins the From Kolob in Peace Halloween Spooktacular. Throughout October I'll do a post a week, telling strange tales from the outer edge of Mormonism.

Ask someone to picture a Mormon offshoot group, and they’ll conjure up the prairie dresses of the FLDS or — if they’re a little hipper — the TLC-friendly suburban chic of the Apostolic United Brethren. Zoom out though, and the Mormon religion reveals itself as a fractal geometry of cults within cults, movements nested inside movements, revelations stacked on revelations. At the very fringes, you’ll find John Leabo and the Antarctica Development Interests.

Leabo started his Mormon career in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the second-largest branch of Mormonism. Founded by Emma Smith and dissenters from Brigham Young, the RLDS set up shop in Independence, Missouri. This town is eschatologically significant to Mormons — it was the location of the Garden of Eden, a special temple will be built there before the end of the world, and Jesus will return there to kick off the Apocalypse. As such, many Mormon offshoots are headquartered there. 

Leabo bounced around in this cultic miasma before splintering off to found his own group. Instead of relying solely on the revelations of Joseph Smith, Leabo absorbed the tropes of the 50s flying saucer craze, founding his new religion with a new goal: colonizing Antarctica.

As far as I can tell, Leabo first attempted to gain converts in the August, 1955 edition of UFO superstar Ray Palmer’s Mystic magazine. Sandwiched between techniques for summoning the astral Yada Di Shi'ite, hypnosis techniques, and an ad for “Solar Vision” was this ominous declaration:

ANTARCTICA

DEVELOPMENT INTERESTS Box 417, Port Angeles, Washington

through

"SCIENCE HARMONIZED TO GOD'S WORD"

tells how to obtain

PEACE AND PROSPERITY TO AMERICA

and reveals answers to the mysteries of Flying Saucers, Creation, Future, Reincarnation, Apparitions, Immortality, Mental Telepathy, etc. One dollar will pay cost for twelve articles on these subjects, but contributions are not mandatory, if funds last, since this is a non-profit movement for the advocation of a Zionic Welfare in the U.S. and Canada. Local Welfare groups, to aid ALL destitute, shall be situated in each locality. The headquarters shall be in the heart of America, so as to be equi-distant for all that wish to come for rehabilitation, and/or to live as demonstrated in the Book of Acts 4:32-35. Even an added INTEREST, in such a Zion, comes from the unknown Zionic DEVELOPMENT now in ANTARCTICA; from whom shall come eventual American salvation, and for which we claim scriptural and exploration proof. All creeds and races shall be welcome, since this movement is non-denominational. These 12 articles give complete details. Write us immediately, before you forget.

Clive Scott Chisholm, in Following the Wrong God Home provides more context for Leabo’s beliefs:

John Leabo - a former RLDS - founded the New American’s Mount Zion movement and what’s been called “a religiously oriented scientific and political association.” Operating Antarctica Development Interests, Leabo’s corporation “was begun in order to attract interest in the Lord’s development of Antarctica by the righteous people who reside there” – and he didn’t mean the scientific researchers already in residence. Leabo and his handful of followers believe there is an unknown race of people on the planet, possibly inhabiting the South Pole. Like Paul Solem, he claimed several UFO sightings.

Believing that mysterious races live at the poles is an obscure yet not unknown belief in Mormonism. As I’ve written previously, Joseph Smith taught that the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel settled at the North Pole after the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem. They aren’t there anymore, for the North Pole broke off this Earth and formed another planet. As recounted by Martha Cragun Cox:

The Prophet said… that at the North Pole is a convex or cup-shaped [depression] with the deepest sea resting there. The planet that belonged to that part of the world would in time return to its place, strike the Earth at the part, completing the sphere… When this planet nears the Earth astronomers will say a new comet has appeared.

Leabo’s theological innovation was to extend this teaching to the South Pole, although whether or not it also has a cup-shaped depression remains to be seen, for Leabo’s Antarctica colonization plan (obviously) didn’t go anywhere.

JPL: “This view of the Earth shows a wonderfully unique but physically impossible view of the southern hemisphere and Antarctica. While a spacecraft could find itself directly over the Earth's pole, roughly half of the image should be in darkness! This view was created by mosaicing together several images taken by Galileo over a 24 hour period and projecting them as they would be seen from above the pole.”

Tracking down Leabo’s life, and the history of his cult is difficult. For one, Leabo changed the name of his organization from Antarctica Development Interests to Universal Cooperative Fellowship, and then to New American's Mount Zion. Those last two names are so generic they get lost in the noise from every other American new religious movement — most claim to hold the secrets for God’s new Zion. Worse still, Leabo called his official publication the Christian Zion Equalitarian and then the Christian Zion Advocate — good luck tracking either of these names directly to Leabo. Oddly, it seems that at some point Leabo founded a political party and in this source, we get a rare detail from Leabo’s life: he was a nuclear scientist.

Besides the UFO and Antarctica beliefs, Leabo had your basic Mormon offshoot beliefs. He organized a board of directors, hiring one Dale Stewart Milne, who ended up as a pastor in the Unification Church after associating with various Missouri Mormon splinter groups. Leabo accepted the four standard LDS scriptures (the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price) and the more obscure “Word of the Lord Brought to Mankind by an Angel,” a scripture unique to the The Church with the Elijah Message. Interestingly, Leabo taught reincarnation. This isn’t a mainstream Mormon belief, but has gained some notoriety recently due to the theology of Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow, the Mormon child killers of Rexburg, Idaho.

Of course, Leabo had his own scriptural revelations — you kind of have to do this if you want to claim lineage from Joseph Smith — called “Work of the Levites, and Aaronites of Levi, for the New Jerusalem, and the Kingdom” and “The Harmonizing of Science and the Bible To Reveal Secrets of Life and Creation for Humanitarian Utopian Promotion.” These two books aren’t online, and as far as I can tell the only physical copies archived are in special collection box MSS 1634 at Brigham Young University. So if you’re ever in the area, snag me a copy.