Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

An incredible look inside the Mormon faith. Bone-chilling.

Review of the audiobook narrated by Scott Brick.

Under the Banner of Heaven is a often disturbing, sometimes enlightening look at the dark side of the Mormon faith and history, focusing on polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalists. The various accounts of the abuse and forced marriage of adolescent children and the detailed description of the murder of a mother and baby (the latter of which, while brief, is the most disturbing thing I've ever read) make this a book not for the faint of heart.

I don't like the framing of this book. We're essentially introduced to all of the evils of and in the history of the Mormon faith and there isn't much mentioned on the positive side to balance it out. While the modern day narrative purports to talk specifically about the Fundamentalist wing of the faith (those who still practice and preach polygamy), I often felt like the writing was referring to the entirety of Mormondom. About half of the book is set in modern times and primarily about the double murder committed by Ron and Dan Lafferty, with side tours about a few other unsavory Mormon Fundamentalists (including the abductor of Elizabeth Smart).

The other half of the book is about about the birth of Mormonism centering on Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Having a religion founded during times when third party reporting could be done about it is unique among the prevailing religions of this country. That allows us to know much about the founding and also much about the founder, Joseph Smith. I found this part of the book to be very interesting, although like the rest of the book focused much more on the negative than the positive.

Scott Brick is an excellent narrator for books like this and was enjoyable to listen to. This is the sixth or seventh book narrated by him that I've listened to thus far.

Final verdict: 3 star story, 5 star narration, 3 stars overall

Sam fakt, że czytałam tę książkę z przerwami przez dwa miesiące mówi wszystko.
Główny minus to chaos i brak interesującego opowiedzenia historii. Przez to myślę, że książka jest dla tych którzy znają już temat i z góry wiedzą o czym czytają. Niektóre fragmenty (morderstwo, które jest niejako osią książki i kilka innych) są ciekawe i przypominają mi Krakauer'a z jego "Missouli..". Cała reszta sucha, poplątana i encyklopedyczna. Nie da się tego czytać ciurkiem, a przerwy sprawiają, że nie pamięta się co było wcześniej... Z książki niestety też nic nie wynika, przynajmniej dla mnie, prócz tego co wiemy na wstępie od momentu przeczytania tytułu. Osobom nie wdrożonym w temat odradzam.

This is a hard book for me to review given that I have quite a few Mormon friends and that although my own philosophy leans more towards existentialism than anything else, I feel it's differents strokes for different folks. I am led inescapably by this book to view Mormonism as a cult that has changed and adapted as was expedient given the various political currents ebbing and waning.

I've seen, here in the West Indies, how a cult can gain both the practice and the legitimacy of an established religion within a few generations. There are two routes to this. The first is the government is willing to recognise it and allow it tax-exempt status in which case it becomes part of the establishment The second is that it becomes an issue of political-correctness and people and the media must appear to pay the cult at least the lip-service of respect whether or not it deserves it. I'm talking about Rastafarianism of course. And I've read it here in this book as a cult developed into what would become the FLDS (still a cult) and the mainstream Mormons.

With Rastafarians, the first generation that had major public visibility, was reggae, Bob Marley. The second generation were the rastas with their locks that were making records, and many of my friends. The third generation are the grandchildren, my friends' children brought up in the 'religion'. The fourth are the very young, the great grandchildren.

In the first generation, the founder either seeks influence and power as with Mormonism, or is deified, Haile Selassie in Rastafarianism. In the second generation the founding truths and myths and the legends surrounding the founders or the deified one have coalesced into a body of oral and written literature that will form the holy books. This will become the work of sacred reference that will be consulted when laws are changed or introduced and which will be used when moral laws are decided.

As an aside in all cults and religions it seems to be that men will use the holy books to justify their treatment of women. There are no established religions that have been created by women, the development and administration of religion is a man's game.

In the third generation, the grandchildren are in the same situation as the children of people belonging to religions thousands of years old - they do not remember a time, nor do their parents when they and their families were not believers and theirs is a history and established pattern of worship and traditions to draw upon.

When the religion is still a cult, the goverment and courts will not allow the teachings of that cult to be a defence for crimes committed. There is much of this, including a truly unholy massacre in this book. But once the cult has the weight of an established religion, then the religion becomes a legitimate defence to crime, the crime has been committed Under the Banner of Heaven.

As with all Karakauer books, its very well-written in quite a journalistic style and is well worth a read even if you totally disagree with my interpretation of it.

read originally 2008, reviewed 2015
review rewritten 3 March 2020

This book makes a lot of big promises, but it suffers from several serious flaws:

1. Lack of focus.
2. Too long.
3. Preposterous claim.
4. Boring

This is a true crime novel--maybe--set against the history of the Mormon Church--but not really--trying to tie in a couple of murders committed by a couple of sickos--all too common--into an historical and political climate of post-terrorist, millennial religious revival--unsuccessfully.

For true crime, it's shockingly dull, and the crime is committed by the middle of the book, but you already know it's going to happen because it's committed in the prologue, too. The characters aren't interesting, their motivations are the ordinary motivations of religious sickos, and the detail is presented tediously.

The Mormon Church is presented as entirely to blame for the murderers' thoughts and the victims, and for Elizabeth Smart's abduction and captivity. It's crammed full of historical detail that might be interesting but it's presented in such a snide, disrespectful tone that it's just a rip on the Church. At one point the author grudgingly admits that Mormonism is no stranger or objectively odd than any other religion (once you get right down to it) but he nonetheless mocks it and its adherents. He continually harps on its sexism, as if every other religion in the Western World were a paragon of equality and political fairness. Odder still is the fact that his murderers and enablers aren't even Mormon. They invented a religion based on Mormonism, but it's taken to such an extreme that the Mormon Church has disassociated itself with them and is cited frequently by the author as denying that what these guys practice is the same religion.

I made it to page 175 where the murders happened, and then the book jumped to another overly detailed of the history of Joseph Smith and friends and I was only halfway through the book. I guess the rest of it is how the Mormons got to Utah and the court case, but considering everyone knew who committed the murder--they'd told maybe ten people they were going to do it and they confessed immediately and you knew this already from the book--there was no suspense about that. The psychological profile of a religious killer is known already. I can't imagine what you would need to keep writing about.

There are also too many footnotes, on diverse and vaguely interesting tidbits, some of them half a page long. It adds to the lack of focus. It's just a scrambled book about a tragedy.

Everything seems to be coming up polygamy of late, down to the HBO series, Big Love. So perhaps this was shocking and provocative and informative a few years ago, but the fundamentalist polygamist sects are very much in the public consciousness now and this book doesn't give any new information. What I found most interesting were the similarities to some of the characters in that television show to some of the fundamentalist profiles in the book. None of them were similar to the point of being "inspired by," I don't think, but things like the Romanian immigrant becoming a plural wife reminded me of Ana, and the daughters of prophets all over the place reminded me of Nikki, and the Mormon wives of Mormon men who adopt polygamy reminded me of Barb. Of course, this is in circumstance only. Bill Paxton's family makes me wish I had a sister wife sometimes. I'd certainly get a lot more done.

In July 1984, Dan Lafferty entered the home of his brother Allen, in American Folk Utah, and killed Allen's wife and her (15 month old) daughter.
Dan, currently serving a life time sentence, does not regret these murders and is willing to "explain" them. His brother , Ron, is on death row and claims that he got a revelation from God to "remove" Brenda.

Using the murder of Brenda and her infant daughter as a starting point, Jon Krakauer presents Mormon fundamentalism in its historical context and refers to many issues including:
The steps people take to become fundamentalists.
The way from fundamentalism to violence.
The thin line between fundamentalist religion and insanity.
The conflict between the religion history ,specifically the religious scripts and modern life.

Mormon fundamentalists technically are not Mormons. They don't belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Church which abandoned ''plural marriage'' in 1890. Some live small towns, evading anti-bigamy laws with lawful and "spiritual" wives. You can find ''independents,'' who belong to no particular fundamentalist and blend into the landscape.

It seems as if fundamentalist Mormonism is a magnet for (Mormon) people (men) who are essentially violent, come from a violent background. They are or become on the fringe of society and in some cases insane. The fact that the Mormon religion accepts personal revelations puts oil on the fire.

After reading Educated, which describes fundamentalist Mormons who mainly harm themselves and their family, this book gives us a bigger picture.

While the book specifically states the fact that the vast majority of Mormons are law loving people and have nothing to do with this type of violence, it gives us a glimpse of this type of fundamental religion violence and it's roots.

n  n

4.0 to 4.5 stars. For non-fiction, this book had me absolutely riveted from the very beginning. This true crime narative has three main themes, all of which I think Krakauer accomplishes extremely well. First, this is a true crime story of the brutal double murder of Brenda Lafferty and her 15 month old baby girl at the hands Ron and Dan Lafferty (the older brothers of Brenda’s husband). Second, is a survey of the origin and early history of Mormonism and the basic doctrines of the Mormon faith. Third, the book details the deep divide and animosity between the Mormon church and the various fundamentalist Mormon sects, including the one to which the murderers belonged. These three story-lines are not broken down into sections but are interwoven throughout the book. However, for simplicity I will address each separately.

THE MURDERS
On July 24, 1984, Brenda and Eric Lafferty, wife and daughter of Allen Lafferty, were brutally murdered by Allen’s older brothers Ronald and Dan Lafferty. The book begins with an account of the murders and several of the newspaper articles that covered it and then layers in the story of Ron and Dan and the events leading up to the killing throughout the rest of the book. One quote from the book that still haunts me occurs in the first few pages when Dan describes the murder of his 15 months old niece:

n  He [describes] how he found his fifteen-month-old niece, Erica, standing in her crib, smiling up at him. ‘I spoke to her for a minute,’ Lafferty recalls. ‘I told her, I’m not sure what this is all about, but apparently it’s God’s will that you leave this world; perhaps we can talk about it later.’ And then he ended her life with a ten-inch boning knife.n

For me, as a father of two little girls, this is one of the most disturbing passages I have ever read.

THE HISTORY OF MORMONISM
The second component of the book is a fairly detailed overview of the founding and early history of the Mormon church. I am not joking when I say that before I began reading this book, almost everything I knew about the Mormon faith came from watching South Park.
n  n
I thought the early history of the church was fascinating, especially the descriptions of the tension and actual armed conflicts between LDS supporters and (1) Missouri residents and militia in 1838 (aka the Missouri Mormon War), (2) the Illinois Militia in 1844 (aka Illinois Mormon War) and (3) the U.S. Government in 1857-58 (aka the Utah War). For those not familiar with these conflicts or this period of American History, I think you will find it very interesting.

FUNDAMENTALIST MORMONISM
The most compelling aspect of the book for me was the description of various fundamentalist Mormon sects, including their basic beliefs and the amount of influence and control they maintain over their followers. Krakauer goes on to describe the deep animosity that the fundamentalists have for the mainstream Mormon church (and vice versa). While there are many points of contention between the two, the major theological difference is over polygamy which the fundamentalists believe is a sacred duty required by God. He states in the Prologue of the book:

n   Mormon authorities treat the fundamentalists as they would a crazy uncle - they try to keep the "polygs" hidden in the attic, safely out of sight, but the fundamentalists always seem to be sneaking out in public at inopportune moment to create unsavory scenes, embarrassing the entire LDS clan.n

Krakauer also describes how the fundamentalist Mormons view the U.S. Government as Satan and believe that stealing from the government (either in the form of educational grants for cities which they control or in the form of welfare for their numerous wives and children) is their sacred duty. He says, “Fundamentalists call defrauding the government ‘bleeding the beast’ and regard it as a virtuous act.”

For example, the largest fundamentalist sect is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as the United Effort Plan (UEP). At the time the book was written, the UEP was run by Rulon T. Jeffs (aka Uncle Rulon) out of the town of Colorado City, AZ on the border between Arizona and Utah. Colorado City has a population of about 5000 all of which belong to the UEP and the town gets between $4Millon and $6Million a year in public education funding and other grants. The power base of the town stems from Uncle Rulon who had approximately 75 wives (many as young as 13-14) and over 65 children. BTW, no member of the town is able to watch TV, read a newspaper or have any interaction with the outside world.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I thought this was a compelling read. Krakauer does a great job of layering in a ton of interesting background while keeping the narrative of the events leading up the brutal murders moving forward. I was impressed with how well Krakauer avoided letting the narrative get bogged down although that could just be my fascination with the subject matter. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!.

I don't know where to start with this book -- I couldn't put it down. It was enthralling.