Under the Banner of Heaven
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith - Jon Krakauer
Krakauer uses the barbaric 1984 murder of a woman and her 15 month old daughter in their home in American Fork, Utah by her fundamentalist Mormon brother’s-in-law, as the centerpiece of this fascinating examination of history of the Mormons, both the “mainstream” church and its wilder offshoots. In 1843, Church founder Joseph Smith included in the Doctrine and Covenants, one of three compilations of his divine revelations (along with the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price), Section 132, his doctrine of polygamy. This threw his nascent church into turmoil, resulting in several schisms (one splinter group led by his first wife!) and contributed greatly to a deep suspicion and unpopularity verging on hatred of the Mormons amongst the rest of American citizenry. In 1890, under intense pressure from the US government, polygamy was renounced by Wiford Woodruff, successor to Smith as the third president of the Church. This resulted anew in schism: this time between the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, headquartered in (and around) the Temple in Salt Lake, and the so-called Fundamentalist (FLDS) Church, a loose agglomeration of sects scattered around western North America. The latter are largely defined by their practice of polygamy and by their respective leader’s conviction that he is the embodiment of the apocalyptic vision contained in another passage (section 85) of the Doctrine and Covenants: “I, the Lord God will send one mighty and strong…to set in order the house of God." When the FLDS hits the news, its usually due to revelations of “arranged” plural marriages between underage girls and old men in their colonies (c.f. Warren Jeff’s group in Colorado City, Arizona) or murderous rampages born out of internecine hatred among sect leaders (Ervil LeBaron group).
Krakauer examines the early history of the church and highlights some of the less-advertised bits (e.g. Smith’s philandering as the root of his espousal of polygamy, Mormon involvement in the massacre of a “gentile” immigrant party in southern Utah during the reign of his successor, Brigham Young) as he follows the Lafferty brother’s physical and spiritual peregrination around the fringes of Mormon-dom. En-route to the murderous denouement, he introduces us to polygamist colonies and their millenarian prophets. By the end of the journey, he ends up essentially agreeing with them that the FLDS may actually have a closer connection to the origins and early history of the Mormon Church than does the rather sanitized and bureaucratic official church of Temple Square that tries (a little too earnestly, even disingenuously?) to distance itself from these elements.
He also examines general questions of religious inspiration, prophesy and divine revelation through history, the least satisfying and most derivative part of the book, and concludes the aforementioned have been responsible for much evil and little good in the world. His general counsel is: beware of those who claim to talk to God and speak for him. I would add: especially if they espouse heinous criminal acts like the murder of your brother’s wife and her infant daughter.
