I thoroughly enjoyed Jon Krakauer's books, Into the Wild and Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster. His research is thorough and detailed.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith covers the beginnings of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS: Mormon) religion in the U.S. in the 1800s and carries it forward to the tragic murders in 1984 when a sister-in-law and her fifteen-month old daughter were brutally murdered by her two brothers-in-law.

There was a lot of history that I was not familiar with including that Joseph Smith ran for President of the U.S., the U.S. declared war on the Mormons (the Utah War) in 1857 but fortunately not a shot was fired, and the horrific Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857 when 120 people emigrating from Arkansas to Utah were slaughtered. Seventeen people were spared---all under the age of five.

Krakauer covers the role of polygamy in the Mormon faith. It is now primarily practiced by Mormon Fundamentalists.

Krakauer also provides details and insights into other faiths and how violence and a sense of supreme importance/rule can play into religion.

I read the book, Escape, which details Carolyn Jessop's life as a member of the Fundamentalist LDS and her escape from it. I highly recommend it.

The low rating isn't because the book is poorly written--it's not. At times the book is fascinating and at times horrifying (my husband just finished it too and found it riveting). The subject matter, however was pretty dark and gruesome for me personally to enjoy. Although well researched and even-handed at times, as he explored the "underbelly" of Mormonism, there was undercurrent of contempt from the author. It showed in the description of a man with a comb-over, liver spots and bad grammar who Krakauer chose to represent contemporary LDS people, it showed in the comment of an extreme fundamentalist defector who believed that only a Mormon girl would be caught in Elizabeth Smart's situation (how would she know? she lived in a completely different culture), it showed in the obvious omissions in the teachings of Joseph Smith (like basic articles of faith that promote tolerance of other religions). I'd be interested in reading the authors' response to criticism in the second edition. Thanks to my friend for the recommendation--it certainly has given me a lot of food for thought.

Mormonism. I don't get it.

In this dated bestseller on Mormon fundamentalism, Jon Krakauer applies a somewhat incohesive journalistic approach to an otherwise fascinating topic. Unfortunately his efforts ended just before the well known Warren Jeffs case of 2006. A search for more recent books on the sect turns up few promising options beyond a number of victim's accounts. An exception may be "Prophet's Prey" written by one of the investigators, which is popular but has garnered little critical notice.

Krakauer had previously written two acclaimed books; one about the McCandless Alaska story "Into the Wild", and another on his own role in the ill fated 1996 Everest disaster "Into Thin Air" (both were made into movies). He first became known in his career as a writer for Outside magazine and other popular periodicals. It could be that he has a greater affinity for outdoor adventure writing due to his personal experience as a mountaineer. I haven't read either of these books, but plan to.

"Banner of Heaven" is problematic in several ways however. It begins reasonably enough with the history of the Mormon mainstream Latter Day Saints (LDS) and their relationship with the Fundamentalist Saints (FLDS). The LDS renounced polygamy in 1890 under legal and military pressure. The FLDS correctly saw polygamy as a tenet of the original faith, as per the sacred texts of their founding prophet Joseph Smith. This part of the story is delivered in a clear and concise manner.

The difficulties begin as the book proceeds. Ostensibly the book is about the 1984 double murders committed by two brothers who had been excommunicated from the church. The reader is led upon a circuitous trail of persons and incidents at the Arizona FLDS headquarters, and within the fundamentalist community at large. Some of these accounts are little more than digests of contemporary newspaper articles, while others are interviews that were conducted by the author himself.

The storyline moves back and forth between the early history of the church and recent FLDS incidents. Alternating time periods in each chapter interrupt the narrative flow. A shifting cast of characters complicates the sequence of events. Only during the very end a message on Mormon fundamentalism is delivered by an apostate from the faith. His insight is that the power of religion is based on not having to make critical decisions or being responsible for your own actions.

LDS criticism of this book attacks the premise that religion is irrational. In the murder trial an insanity defense is rebutted by their argument that the brothers beliefs are no more irrational than other mainstream religious views. The role of religion in society may be debated on reason or belief, but little light is shed here on the question. Although abuse of religious freedom is amply shown, the dilemma of where 1st Amendment rights should end and the rule of law begins is largely left unexamined.

In one passage a FLDS wife protests that the group is being judged by 19th century moral standards. Bigamy was then thought to have been more heinous than slavery, whereas now all sorts of liberalized sexual relations are tolerated. More pertinently the FLDS are being held to 20th century standards, when adolescent marriage came to be considered immoral and illegal. Child sexual abuse protections continue to be contended by religious zealots who are far beyond the pale of polygamy.

Gripping, riveting, fascinating...this is a very powerful book that has left me shaken to realize the nature and extent of dangerous religious fanatics existing under the radar in America. This book is an examination of a brutal double murder committed by Mormon fundamentalists, set within a larger, extremely well researched and documented history of the LDS movement, including the (now) mainstream LDS church and the various fundamentalist breakaway sects. The violent nature and obsession with "blood atonement" that characterized the Mormons of the nineteenth century, perpetuated through the twentieth century by the fundamentalists obsessed with polygamy, make such murders seem like an inevitable outcome of an insular culture of zealots led by charlatans driven by revelations and never held accountable or responsible for their excesses. The mainstreaming of the Mormons throughout the twentieth century has been a remarkable feat, yet it almost guarantees that fundamentalists will pull more and more converts from the continually swelling ranks of this growing religion. And religious extremists, fanatics, and zealots can be more of a danger to their own communities, and to society at large, than most of us are comfortable realizing or admitting. Few of us want to curtail America's traditions of and constitutional protections of religious freedom, so all I can say after reading this book is: be aware--very aware--of your surroundings and with whom you are interacting. It's not just a crazy world "out there"...it can be plenty insane within our own borders.

As I said earlier (https://www.goodreads.com/user_status...), I'm not sure I want to watch the series based on this; the book is heavy enough. But it has been interesting to read this as "Mormon Momtok" trends and the conservative non-debate on gun rights and access to abortion continues. The book isn't linear but covers the founding of the Mormon religion and several fundamentalist sects through 2002. Much of the criticism from LDS readers seems to miss Krakauer's focus on fundamentalism and on the religion's origins.

06.07.22: A current (2022) article on the Great Salt Lake and surrounding areas, rather easy to visualize after reading the book:

As the Great Salt Lake Dries Up, Utah Faces An ‘Environmental Nuclear Bomb’ https://nyti.ms/3xa2Acp

UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN: A STORY OF VIOLENT FAITH BY JON KRAKAUER: I finished Under the Banner of Heaven two days ago now, and I haven't written the review yet, waiting to see if anything would change in my mind about Mormons, and so far nothing has. I still think it's a horribly misogynistic religion that goes even further than all other religions I know to take away all responsibility, independent thought, and individualism, and literally sacrifice oneself to god and whoever is your president and high lord protector (the title isn't exactly this, but is just as preposterous), whether you be regular Mormon or fundamentalist -- of course, he is a man, without a doubt.

The crux of the book is the deaths of Eric and her eight or so year-old daughter at the hands of the Lafferty brothers who still can't decide who officially slit the girls throats.

While the book managed to enrage me throughout, it did serve to educate and enlighten me on the religion in general, and on the important differences between the fundamentalists and the Latter Day Saints (LDS). The book also presents the history of Mormonism with Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and what led to the creation of the religion, its development through the decades and centuries, with the Mormons being ostracized wherever they went, until they settled in the deserts of Utah and set about completely ignoring the US government and living their lives as they saw fit. The Church of Latter Day Saints continues to do this to some degree today, and the fundamentalists especially, thriving on it.

So let's clear up the main thing first: polygamy. The Church of Latter Day Saints condones and doesn't allow polygamy, after changing this steadfast rule from the D&C (Doctrine and Covenants -- the rulebook which Mormons go by as put down by Joseph Smith, with additions made by Brigham Young and successive "prophets") in the nineteenth century when the government essentially pressured them into doing this, since polygamy was (AND STILL IS!) illegal in every state. But in a religion where everyone from the president to the lowly devout woman has the ability to talk with god and receive his instruction; splitting, and the formation of break-off sects and groups is as inevitable as night come sunset. And it it's these break-off groups that form their own churches and communes (Colorado City in Utah is one of these), and they are the fundamentalists groups who believe that the LDS have fallen from the true ruling of god and take it upon themselves to adhere to the D&C as they see fit. The result is a town like Colorado City, in the middle of the desert, isolated, as they like it. There polygamy is a way of life; if you don't subscribe to this way, you are pressured and then ostracized. It is also in this town where anywhere from thirteen to sixteen year-old girls are ordered, yes, ordered by the president to marry whatever man the president decrees, without any choice in the matter. Ordered to marry that man, live with him, and whose sole duty is to bear as many children as possible, no questions asked . . . or you're going to hell! This is the truth. This is life in Colorado City. It is also here that instances of rape and pedophilia are becoming common place, as fathers take a liking to their eleven year-old daughters (whether they be biologically or adopted through marriage), rape them, and them force them to marry their fathers.

And it seems pretty pathetic when our president makes it his duty to prevent homosexual marriage from ever being considered, even though homosexuality is a genetic predisposition and is what you simply are, while in Utah there are groups doing what I said above and millions of people worry that it is the homosexuals who risk destroying the sanctity of marriage. Fuck that, is my response.

Read the rest of the review at BookBanter.

For more reviews, and author interviews, go to BookBanter.

Mainstream Mormonism is bad enough, their founder being a lying reprobate, their history requiring rewriting and concealment, their faith being founded upon the absurdities of conservative Christianity to which a dollop of nineteenth century forgery and now-disproven anthropological fancy has been added. I've marvelled at the credulity of these people and the perdurance of their church. I've also met my share of them, including one of their bishops, an educated man with whom I was related through marriage.

How is it then that they can still exist? Much of it is upbringing certainly, some of it is insularity, mostly may simply be the fact that day-to-day it works, that the Church of the Latter Day Saints cares for its own, that the community is a good one for raising families.

Mainline Mormonism is pretty bad, but fundamentalist, unreconstructed, less politically compromised Mormonism, the Mormonism of the founders, is far worse and this book tells how.

This is a great, well-researched book on fundamentalist Mormons that will freak you out. Half the book is true-crime drama and the other half is an excellent history of LDS and the many fundamentalist sects that splintered off in order to practice Mormonism Joseph Smith-style (which included polygamy as a key principle).

I learned a lot about Mormonism from this book, however I initially felt that Krakauer was a little unfair to mainstream Mormons. In his discussion of the history of both LDS and FLDS, he at times blurs the line between the two very different groups.

On the other hand, LDS is a less than 180 years old, meaning its entire history--a bloody, hate-filled, and bizarre one at that--has been documented. (Note: "bloody, hate-filled, and bizarre" could be used to describe just about any religion, in my opinion.) Thus, Krakauer was not maliciously criticizing the Mormon church; he was simply relaying publicly available, historical information, information that was necessary for understanding the bizarre FLDS world. Joseph Smith, LDS founder, was a con-artist and a womanizer. Brigham Young, who moved the Mormons to the American West, condoned violence and was complicit in a mass slaughter of 140 innocent people (the Mountain Meadows massacre). Present-day Mormons no longer practice polygamy (and ills such as racism are less institutionalized within the church), but they cannot escape some very harsh (and fairly recent) truths regarding the founding of their religion. The antics of Smith and Young alone are enough to make me wonder how the religion could have possibly lived on, let alone become the fastest-growing religion in the world.

The book skips around a bit and you get the sense that Krakauer wasn't sure exactly what he wanted to focus on, but it's definitely worth the read.

Martin Harris "Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb," Lucy Harris, "Smart, smart, smart, smart, smart." Heehee. I love you, South Park.

This book scared the living crap out of me. As Americans we're terrified (and rightly so, if you ask me) Middle Eastern culture, where extremism causes sexually frustrated men to take multiple wives while using religion as their validation for violence. Scary as hell. Yet it happens in our own backyards in the form of Fundamental Mormonism, and it's treated as a small inconvenience.

The stories former FLDS members who describe incest, kidnapping, rape, and molestation in the FDLS church have stayed with me for over 5 years since reading this book. Then,
my ears perked up when the FLDS church in Texas was raided last April, and 400+ children removed due to sexual abuse allegations. Two months later, the kids are given back. Heh. Texas justice? I think not.

Someone should send the Texas judges this gripping/frightening read that just happens to be a true story ... maybe they'd think twice before handing children back to extremists.

For the rest of us, mega-informative.

Somehow, in Krakauer's and every other story of Christian fundamentalism and extremism that is exposed, those involved justification for doing evil and ignoring good is all founded on extreme and polarizing doctrines. Polygamy. Holy Wars. Visions. Revelation. Line of succession. All legitimate things to think and worry about, but they seem to completely ignore the important things that Christ taught while on earth. Say...something like....blessed are the peacemakers. And loving our neighbors. And repentance, hope, forgiveness, charity and love. I think until we master these, the mysteries and promise of further knowledge is a long ways away.

Kraukauer argues that religion, particularly the history of the LDS religion is prone to produce extremists who do more harm than good. Much like that of Islamic fundamentalists, the religion's history is one of violence and secrecy.

I can't say he is entirely wrong. I do think there is a propensity for believers to fall into extreme behavior. However, while Krakauer believes it has something to do with the doctrine or leaders, I believe it is entirely due to opposition.

Good things - the best things - are perverted the most.

Religion, a means to learn about and worship God. And yet, so much evil, so much harm throughout history to His children has been brought about by its name. I don't believe any evil has been done by those truly devoted to God. I really don't. It has all been done by those influenced, knowingly or not, by the great deceiver, Satan. I think those who don't believe, like Krakauer himself, find it awfully easy to find fault with faith, with religion, because they focus and magnify the imperfections of man. He translates it into an imperfect or non-existent God, which is easy for him to do. He has the proof. Look! This man murdered his sister-in-law! That is no God I believe in. Well, Jon, neither do I.

In fact, every single one of his sources was a dissenter or apostate...as if they had the inside track to truth. Shading, innuendo, rumors and hearsay are all given as proof and fact of corruption and deception.

While I'm not naive enough to think that the LDS church has no black eyes in its history, I can't admire a critic who presents only one side of a story. Krakauer commits a real blunder by limiting the story of faith to people who claim none or have an extremely warped sense of it. And he certainly didn't provide justice to my cousin's story.

Brenda Lafferty's story was a story about the LDS faith. Of goodness. Of kindness and strength in helping her neighbor. Of a willingness to stand up to evil and unholiness. Brenda Lafferty's story is the real story of a believer.

Gosh, I still feel a bit stunned. This book gives you a lot to think about, and it does it with a thwack.

Basically this is story of the Lafferty brothers, born into a deeply fundamentalist Mormon family with a sometimes brutal but sometimes loving father, whom they adored. As they grew older they really went off the rails, and they did so by becoming even more fundamentalist than their father, immersing themselves in old Mormon writings, and living their lives by these tenets, in a way that was both obsessional and extremely eccentric. Finally, one of them committed two murders, believing this to be God’s will….. a direct revelation in response to the prayers of his oldest brother.

I see it in terms of a follie en famille

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C...

At their trial they had several psychiatrists and psychologists on either side of the court room, some arguing for the defence of psychiatric illness, others arguing that they were in fact sane, and it was the writings and beliefs of the Mormon Church that had led them to this impasse. The author steps back in his assessment of the situation, and readers are left to make up their own minds.

Points raised include:

*The regular Mormon Church and its history.

*The Fundamentalist Mormon Church (which is quite different to the standard church in several ways).

*Mormon missionaries:
There are currently more than 60,000 missionaries around the world.
Their average conversion rate is 2 – 3 people per year.

*The spectacular rise of Mormonism:
It’s the fastest-growing church in the Western Hemisphere. At the last count there were eleven million Saints the world over.

*The nature of religion:
”Religious faith is an answer to the problem of life… The majority of mankind want or need some all-embracing belief system which purports to provide an answer to life’s mysteries, and are not necessarily dismayed by the discovery that their belief system, which they proclaim as “the truth”, is incompatible with the beliefs of other people. One man’s faith is another man’s delusion….
Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the number of people subscribing to it.”
Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay (Quoted in the book).

*The difference between fanaticism and mental illness.

*The effects of socialization, and the cultures we are born into.

*The power of charismatic gurus and leaders:
Josepth Smith, the founder of the Mormons, was obviously a real hot wire. The author rests a lot of the success of Mormonism purely on the power of his charisma.

*The role of outside hostility in shaping communities:
There has often been huge animosity (& fighting) between Mormon communities and the people around them, and this seems, if anything, to have cemented their loyalties to the church and one another.

* The power of the right message at the right time:
Before Joseph Smith there was Calvinism – a harsh religion. Then came Joseph Smith, with the concept of a loving God. It was much more attractive to people, and people converted to Mormonism with enthusiasm.

* The origins and culture of polygamy in America:
Joseph Smith was obviously a philanderer of the first order, but his religious beliefs meant he had to make these relationships right in the eyes of God, so he married all the women he fell in lust with. As polygamy was banned in American law, I think these ‘marriages’ were probably not legal under American law.
Polygamists were not lax in their relationships – they had very strict rules about how they conducted them. There were all sorts of rules.
A lot of their relationships seem incestuous, or otherwise questionable. One woman spoke of being married to her uncle, and often these ‘marriages’ were to young girls. Joseph’s youngest wife was fourteen. He married her when he was thirty-eight.
In 1890 President Wilford Woodruff announced that he had received a revelation that polygamy had to be relinquished. This became known as the Woodruff Manifesto. At first this just drove it underground, but by 1920, most Saints and their leaders had turned against it. Nowadays it is only found in some of the fundamentalist Mormon sects.

*Racism in the Mormon Church:
For a long time African-Americans were not allowed to be ordained into the church, then, in 1978, President Spencer W Kimball had a revelation in which the Lord commanded that the Latter day Saint priesthood be open to males of all races. This initiated a slow shift in attitudes.


*Fundamentalism and right wing politics:
Unsurprisingly, the two go together,

It was fascinating to read about the story of the origins of the Mormon Church, and the way that it has changed direction on several occasions via ‘revelations’ to the leaders of the church. I was also astonished to learn more about polygamy in the history of the church. It was not what I expected, and sounded extremely suspect to me in all respects. Most of all I was left with a strong distaste for fundamentalism in all its manifestations. I disliked it before. I dislike it even more now. Also the extraordinary story of Mormon beginnings – which are part of our recent history (it only came into being 183 years ago) - cannot help but light up the degree to which older religions have similarly extraordinary stories. The difference is the latter are part of our culture, and to a great extent part of our psyche.

A very interesting book indeed.

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An excellent 2 part programme on Mormons (kindly recommended by Catherine). Available until 2016.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1460817958/

http://video.pbs.org/video/1460862784/