4****

But men have been committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankind began believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions…. Plenty of these religious extremists have been homegrown, corn-fed Americans.

This was truly one of the most bizarre and weirdest books I have ever read.

At first, picking up this book I thought this was a true crime book about the murders of Erica and Brenda Lafferty. But it was just not that. It was a deep dive into Mormonism and especially fundamental Mormon beliefs.

Before starting this, I knew next to nothing about Mormonism other than what I had learned from a South Park episode… which might not be the best reliance for information.

This delved into this curious subjects. The forming of the religion, it’s history (especially the more bloodier history that the heads of the Mormon church want to omit), the sects that formed away from mainstream Mormonism, and those that left the religion.

This also focused on the murders of Brenda and Erica Lafferty, planned and committed by Brenda’s brothers-in-law, Dan and Rob Lafferty. Both argue that these murders were ordered by “divine revelation”- God had told Rob and Dan to commit these murders.

Most of this book had me thinking “what the fuck!?” especially in relation to polygamy, the suppression of important history, incest and harm to the many girls/women of the fundamentalist community. It also had me wide eyed at how the level of control of the fundamentalist religion spread through courts, police stations, towns; so that when girls reported a rape or tried to run away, they were punished and returned to their abusers.

Brenda Lafferty did not want to submit to the fundamentalist Mormon beliefs that her in-laws held, and for this, as well as her outspoken ways and helping other women leave their abusive husbands, she was murdered.

Thank God that’s over (no pun intended)!

This book may have been confused about what it was or maybe it’s just me thats confused, but by the end of this (or, to be more accurate, well before the middle) I felt saturated with history and facts(?) to the point that I could no longer distinguish what was referring to Mormonism and what was FLDS. The crime discussed on the cover doesn’t feel central to the book, and I didn’t get a true sense of where the author was placing blame...narcissistic personality disorder or FLDS doctrine. I feel a little drained after this. 2 stars

I grew up in a baptist family as a missionary kid. I struggled with my faith as a teenager, but settled into an uneasy balance and considered myself a Christian until I turned 30. At this point, I had Jehova's witnesses coming to my door, chatting me up - I was new in town, in a new country - and eventually insisting I take a stand. They would not rest easy that I was a baptist, that was not enough. So I had to examine why I could not believe Jehova's witnesses interpretation of Christianity and in doing this, I also had to explore the faith I had. This took a few days, and at the end of the process I had abandoned all the invisible friends provided by Christianity. I will never forget how the faces of the Jehova's witnesses changed from beaming anticipation to shock when I said that the result of examining their truth was that I had become an atheist.

This non-ficiton novel centers around the brutal murder of a young woman Brenda, and her toddler baby Erica. Interspersed with the very bloody and violent history of mormons. This book explores the creation of religion and can put any sane human being off the entire project for good. Religion is not in itself evil, but it's a focusing lens on humanity bringing out both the best and the worst. This book gives an excellent view on the very worst: committing heinous crimes in the name of God.

Morality is no way connected to religion. Wonder at nature does not require faith or any kind of higher spiritual awareness. I have lost nothing and gained an acute awareness of the need to appreciate everything I have in this life, knowing I could be snuffed out of existence at any point between now and the next fifty years.

An impressive undertaking by Jon Krakauer. A book of history, the tale of a modern religion, an extreme sect and a cold hearted murder.

Those ingredients would attract a vast array of audience: and indeed it did and still do. A nonfiction that narrates a history of the latter day church - the Mormons- their tale, their beginning with Joseph Smith and the story of the Golden plates. Polygamy, and how that tenant in the historical church caused a schism and gave birth to the fundamental LDS, that believes in polygamy, while the main stream LDS, shunned away from polygamy for various political and religious reasons.

The Lafferty brothers... fundamental LDS with a mission.. under a banner of heaven they are fighting for polygamy. Their illegal way of life and how it caused sadness and grief to a community.. and the lost lives of women who wanted to escape this society. This book also praises the women who left the polygamous life which some family trees looked like nuclear power plant blueprints than a normal family tree.

A very informative and I believe controversial book for any one who is a Mormon. Eye opening, interesting and shocking.

Jon Krakauer did not disappoint! Under the Banner of Heaven was everything I hoped it would be: well researched, expansive, historical, thoughtful, and, most importantly, incredibly readable. If you are interested in the extremes of humanity, religious fundamentalism, American history, or true crime, read this book!

Under the Banner of Heaven has an astonishingly vast scope. Krakauer interweaves the founding of the Mormon church with present day religious fundamentalists who have twisted Mormon doctrine to condone all sorts of heinous crimes, including murder. The book centers around Ron and Dan Lafferty, brothers who unwaveringly believe that God ordered them to murder an innocent woman and her baby. Perhaps most chillingly, they feel no remorse.

I was fascinated by almost every aspect of this book, but I was especially drawn to Krakauer’s discussion of religious extremism and mental health. In a country founded on religious freedom, what makes one person’s faith valid and another’s “crazy”? Are the Lafferty brothers fit to stand trial? Or are they mentally ill?

Do be warned that I struggled to keep up with all the names in this book. I think that was partially because I was on vacation while reading and partially because polygamy creates an intricate spiderweb of family connections that is hard to keep track of.

Under the Banner of Heaven is investigative journalism at its best. I was equally as invested in learning about the church’s founding, persecution, and eventual migration out west as I was about getting a peak inside the lives of modern day polygamists. Even if you don’t normally read nonfiction, I highly recommend this book. I couldn’t put it down.

This book annoyed me in several ways. Krakauer was such a great storyteller in "Into Thin Air", but his skills abandoned him here. He also doesn't hold religion in very high esteem, and he lumps all religious belief systems together as being equally delusional. It's been awhile since I read it, so there are probably many more annoyances.

This book was an eyeopener for me, as I came into it knowing next to nothing about Mormonism, perhaps a state to which I wish I could now return. Under the Banner of Heaven is ostensibly an investigation of a religiously motivated double homicide, but that is a much smaller part of the book than you might imagine. This is lucky, as I am squeamish and uncomfortable with the details of real cases and there are several pages here that I wish I could scrub from my mind. This is always a problem for me with true crime.

Squeamishness aside this was a compelling read as it dives deep into the history of the Mormon religion. A faith with an ultra-conservative fundamentalist branch and a violent history ( of course that can be said of all world religions ). It is hard to review this book without revealing ones own bias's and I fully admit to not being able to find any real logic to the foundation stories upon which this particular faith is based. I lack the ability to understand why millions of people accept this as their "one true religion". However, with my own bias aside I do think this is an intriguing look at the phenomenon of prophets and the natural consequences of a religion that makes it possible for almost anyone to channel the voice of god and thus justify some truly heinous acts.

Of course some might argue Krakauer has chosen a particularly vile crime committed by men excommunicated from the church to illustrate his points. But unfortunately this is not the only example of "violent faith" in this book. I was particularly chilled by the stories from living women that collectively reveal the toxic underside of the fundamentalist branch of Mormonism. A culture of polygamy that provides a cover for underage sex, incest, marital assault and a resolutely patriarchal culture in which woman have no opportunity to take an active leadership role.

Despite being harangued by the church for inaccuracies and conflating fundamentalist practises with the mainstream Mormon church, Krakauer, I think, does a more than admirable job of delineating the two. I found this to be a thoroughly researched and highly readable account of the birth of a new and rapidly growing religion. Indirectly it also provide me with a lot of context for the ultra-right wing strain of American politics that is increasingly coming to the fore.

4 stars

Under the Banner of Heaven is a book I was supposed to read many years ago and never did. Back when it came out, I was a part of a high school book club at my local library and this was the book selected for one of the meetings and I just…. never got around to it. Fifteen years later is better than never, right?

This book examines a couple of different things. One is the brutal murder of a woman named Brenda and her small child. The men who murdered her, insisted they received a commandment from God to do so. So this book covers the murder but also goes into the history and foundation of the Mormon religion in order to better understand what happened here.

I’m not a huge fan of organized religion in general, so a lot of what was talked about in this book that I think was supposed to be shocking wasn’t for me. I was disturbed of course, but I pretty much expected all the weirdness and horrible things. To clarify, I don’t think this book is representative of an entire religion, but there are factions of religion that are very much about control and abuse and it’s not just one religion.

I definitely expected this book to be more focused on the murder than an overview of Mormonism and its history, but I still enjoyed it very much and found much of what was covered fascinating. They’re releasing a tv series of this book on hulu this year and I will definitely be watching, I’m curious how they’re going to adapt a book like this.

The Hulu production of this story was accurate and, sadly, it's happened again....
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The serial killers bring a sensationalist flavor to this story, but the book is really about what living in a polygamist cult is like, about sex-obsessed men, sick men, besotted men, and the women they brutalize. When a father is "marrying" and raping his own daughters it's genuine sociopathy.

This is what early Mormonism was like under both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and that's the author's point.

I have no natural interest in cults, but Mormonism was put before me several times over a number of years. I did my homework. For example, we met a couple in our SoCal days where the woman had set out to convert the man to the LDS religion, but his research of its true history, published by ex-Mormons, convinced her to leave. What the rank and file, and certainly what non-Mormons hear, is a whitewash.

The Mormons followed an Old Testament model. Joseph Smith decided that if Solomon could have multiple wives, he could. By all accounts he was a tall, handsome, strapping, charismatic man. He could have his pick.

A special revelation to Smith did the trick. It's codified in Doctrines and Covenants 132. Note that, as was the case with the Golden Tablets, it's rendered in "King James English" and that into section 54 it contains a direct rebuke to Smith's wife, Emma, who was understandably skeptical of such a "revelation."

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/s...

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The Heartland agenda....

https://religiondispatches.org/mormon...

Wow. I'm slowly becoming more of a fan of non-fiction, and this book is great for that! Krakauer gives a well-researched (judging from the length of the bibliography) account of the history of the Mormon church, interwoven with an absolutely chilling look at Mormon Fundamentalist communities that practice polygamy in the desert wilds of Utah, Arizona, and Canada. These people are nuts, plain and simple. I can have a limited respect for a watered-down and spiritualist form of religion, but this kind of extremism is just insane. It's a completely irrational justification for the worst kinds of human behavior, including domestic violence, rape, sexual abuse, and, what is central to Krakauer's story, murder.

Krakauer has been accused by some of not presenting an even-handed account, and I think it's true that it's easy to see that he thinks Mormon fundamentalism is absurd. On the other hand, it's a rare person who doesn't. And Krakauer refrains (for the most part) from actively condemning or poking fun at his subjects, although it would be very easy to do so. He lets the absurdities of Mormon history and belief speak for themselves. No direct criticism could be so damning.

Particularly interesting is the part of the book where Krakauer talks about religion and insanity. He focuses on the story of Ron Lafferty, a Mormon fundamentalist who participates in the brutal murder of a young woman and her 18 month old daughter. During Ron's trial, the prosecution works hard to make the case that Ron, despite his history of hearing voices and his belief that an evil spirit is trying to enter his body through his anus, is mentally competent to stand trial. And part of that argument is arguing that these totally absurd and violent beliefs are really just as rational as any other religious person's beliefs. And since they are, we cannot judge Ron to be insane, because that would be saying that all religious people are insane. In the absence of any rational reason for believing in one version of the supernatural as opposed to another, it is indeed difficult to argue that one belief system is insane, while another deserves to be endorsed by nearly every candidate for the president of the United States. Food for thought, for sure.

Glitch! I already rated & reviewed this.

I'm not going to finish this book. So far, he is recounting the history of the Mormon church without listing a single positive thing. He has taken every exaggerated idea, including some of his own making, and used those to support a warped idea of something that I hold pretty close to my heart. It's kind of the same problem I had with Mark Freiden's The World Is Flat. He only told one side of the story, to praise the ideals of capitalism. My analogy would be like sitting a three year old down and telling them about every terrible thing you have ever done in your life to explain how you got to be their parent. It would hurt them a great deal and it would weaken their ideals about you while accomplishing absolutely nothing as far as helping them understand you as their parent. I understand that is the perspective of both books, to tell the one side to build their argument, however, this one is just not for me.
Krakauer has done a very good job, though, of taking an awful lot of information and trying to weave a pretty concise history out of a lot of convoluted material.
(See what I did right there, Jon. I gave a kind of negative review, but also found something good in it.)