Under the Banner of Heaven, a Study
of Violent Faith (2003)
Three Stars out of Five
Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer started his professional writing career in the early
1980’s by writing about his passion: mountain climbing. Following his work as a
journalist/writer for Outside
magazine in 1983 and his collection of essays in book form in 1990, he began
writing full length non-fiction books with “Into the Wild” in 1996 (made into a
magnificent movie in 2007) and “Into Thin Air” in 1997. Both of these books
were on the NY Times Best Seller list for months; in fact “Into Thin Air” was
on the short list for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. His third book is “Under the
Banner of Heaven” (2003), a recounting of a violent crime that is told in the
context of the history of the Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints – LDS) and contrasted to various modern polygamous sects that trace some
of their philosophical roots to the LDS church. One can see Krakauer’s
evolution as a writer through these three books, and in the case of the first
two, one can see a connection of subject matter; but consider the leap from
mountaineering and the outdoor life in the early writing to placing a double
murder by two evidently deranged religious zealots in the context of the
history for a major religious movement. This is a risky leap in direction; it
begs controversy from non-Mormons and the Mormon faithful alike.
Krakauer begins the
book with a re-telling of the brutal murder of a young mother and her toddler
daughter. She was Brenda Lafferty, married to the youngest of the Lafferty
brothers, a self-contained group of anti-tax/polygamous worshiping (if not practicing)
lapsed Mormons. The elder two brothers Ron and Dan entered Allen and Brenda’s
home in 1984 while Allen was away at work. Dan murdered Brenda, while Ron
killed Erica, the eighteen month-old baby (though Dan asserts he killed the
child too, there is contrary court testimony given on this point). The older
Laffertys blamed Brenda for disrupting their plans for a polygamous lifestyle
via her influence over Allen and Ron’s estranged wife. How Ron a former pillar
of the mainstream LDS community in the Provo region got to the point of murder
and how he explained his behavior via the established Mormon practice of
revelation (talking to God) is the purpose of Krakauer’s book.
From Krakauer’s point of view, he needs to detail the
history of Mormons from their origins in New York to their establishment in the
Utah Territory. Their story begins in 1823 with revelations from God to Joseph
Smith via the angel Moroni and a set of golden tablets. These tablets told the
story of an ancient people that left Palestine for the New World. Smith
published the book in 1830 and named it for the original historian that wrote
the book, Mormon. With his holy book, Smith formed a new church, the Church of
Christ. Smith grew his church via missionaries and ultimately left New York for
Jackson County MO. Smith’s new church experienced repeated problems in Missouri,
and eventually moved to Illinois where they founded Nauvoo. By 1844 Nauvoo was
a prosperous community but it had due to several reasons (the Mormon tendency
towards economic insularity, their different interpretation of the Bible’s
primacy vis-a-via the Book of Mormon, plus the new revelation by Smith as regards
polygamy) created a renewed level of anger and resentment by the surrounding
non-Mormon community. The issue of polygamy had also started a major split
within the LDS church: not all were in favor of it, and some were in fact strenuously
opposed to it. One such opponent began printing an opposing newspaper. When
Smith ordered the press to be destroyed, he was arrested and jailed in Carthage
IL by the non-LDS community. While he was incarcerated, he was with the willing
participation of his jailers, murdered on 27Jun1844. This brought to a head who
would lead the LDS church following Smith, the polygamous group led by Brigam
Young or an opposing, anti-polygamous group led by Smith’s younger brother.
Young won that battle, though the church did split into two
groups: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the Community of
Christ. Young’s much larger group came to the conclusion that they needed to
move out of the control of the US government, who they felt was at best indifferent
to the safety of the Saints (as they self-identified), or at worst, actively persecuting
them. Thus they chose to move to the
Utah Territory, then-governed by Mexico. They named their new land, Deseret
after a self-named desert bee, which Young felt to always be busy like his
fellow Saints. Following the conclusion of the Mexican-American War on 2Feb1848,
Utah Territory and the Mormons living there came under the governance of the
US. Following years of contention between Young (and two of his successors) and
the US government, the LDS Church leaders under Wilford Woodruff renounced
polygamy on 23Sep1890. While this benefited the Utahns by allowing them to
become a state six years later, it also precipitated another polygamy-based
schism within the LDS church. The new schismatics often refer to themselves as
Fundamental Latter Day Saints.
Krakauer includes within the book extensive sections
describing various polygamous groups living in the United States, Canada and
Mexico. Some of these groups are small like the Lafferty brothers, while some
are quite large and well organized like the Arizona Strip group recently led by
Warren Jeffs (now serving a 20 year prison sentence for child sexual assault).
Krakauer does not have the organized and documented history of the LDS church
to draw on when describing the various polygamous groups he investigates and as
such uses various first-hand accounts from current and former members of these
various “FLDS” groups. What he describes is little short of a reign of terror
in many cases. These groups tend to be led by zealous true believers who far too
often drift across the line from church leader into the realm of dictator.
There really cannot be a softer term for men (and they are always men) that run
their church and communities as their personal fiefdoms: dispensing wives and
removing wives and their children from favored and recalcitrant members; or
even worse, forcing fourteen old (if not younger) girls into such “marital”
relationships. To find any trace of a democratic institution in these
communities where all individuals have equal rights is a hopeless task.
It is my belief that Krakauer hoped with this book to show
several things: the history of the Mormon Church, the origin and death of
polygamy within that church, the birth of polygamy-based sects that broke away
from the mother church, and the genesis of criminal and quite frankly psychotic
behavior within these break-away groups. He does not suggest that the modern
LDS church fosters or is complacent with these polygamous groups. He does take
the church fathers to task for obscuring various contentious elements of Mormon
history (e.g. Smith’s polygamy, the church’s endorsement of polygamy in the
early days of the church, or the Mountain Meadow Massacre where 120 non-Mormon
immigrants from Arkansas passing through Utah were murdered by a band of
Mormons and Paiute Indians). He is very critical of the various polygamous
groups that call themselves members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church, or even
of the various groups that practice polygamy via the forced compliance these
groups apply to young girls. The problem with the book is that by tackling the
Lafferty murders, looking for a link to their religious zealotry to LDS
fundamentalism (this term is offensive to mainstream members of the LDS church
as they feel the FLDS members have no claim to the LDS part of their name),
describing the history of the mainstream LDS church and then trying to create a
link between these parts by asserting one can find a general basis for religiously based homicidal behavior is too ambitious for a single book; Krakauer fails to make
the argument in this case. Further, by conflating the LDS history with a modern
murder, he diverts attention from the Lafferty’s psychoses or indeed from a
more general argument for such psychoses within the various polygamous groups,
let alone within fundamentalist groups in general.
That the LDS church finds this book offensive is not a
surprise. I cannot imagine any religion finding any pleasure in having their
history linked to the murders committed by the two Lafferty brothers (and
abetted by other members of the family – including the grandmother and husband/father of
the deceased). That Krakauer argues for more openness from the LDS church about
their history does not seem germane to his study of “violent faith”; that is to
say the various extant polygamous groups. The biggest problem for me is that
while I can see the outline of an argument that polygamous groups have the
potential for violence and autocracy, this book does not make a good case for
it except by using anecdotal evidence. To be sure, the anecdotes are revolting
and disturbing, but they do not provide much more than a suggestion that there
is an incontrovertible linkage between polygamy and violence. I greatly enjoyed
Krakauer’s first two books, but feel he chose a subject he is not sufficiently
versed in (psycho-social forces within religions and the psychology of homicide) to make a strong case for his
point of view. This book has value in terms of its parts, but the sum of those
parts is in this case is less, rather than more than the total.
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