Customer Reviews

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

5 star:		(462)
4 star:		(208)
3 star:		(73)
2 star:		(47)
1 star:		(72)

 

 

"I was doing God's will, which is not a crime." - Dan Lafferty

The above quote is from a man who brutally murdered his fifteen month-old niece and her 24 year-old mother in their home while his younger brother was at work. Lafferty's older brother Ron convinced him to commit the crime by claiming that God had spoken to him and instructed that it should be that way. Both men were born and raised Mormons, but turned to radical Mormon fundamentalism as adults. Through their horrific story and the history of the Mormon church in genral, author Jon Krakauer examines the larger issue of how relgion leads some people to commit unspeakable acts.

"Under the Banner of Heaven" is not an anti-Mormon diatribe, as anyone who has actually read it can attest. Krakauer, who had such a massive success with "Into Thin Air," should be applauded for taking a risk following up that work with a potentially controversial project well outside his area of expertise. Part travelog and part history, "Under the Banner of Heaven" is a very unique true crime book as the various narrative threads are wound together by the author. The simple yet forceful narrative style that made Krakauer's Everest such compelling reading are very much evident here.

Overall, "Under the Banner of Heaven" is an outstanding true crime book that raises some disturbing theological questions.

Jon Krakauer admits he has become obsessed with extremes. It takes one form of extremism to go on an Everest climb, as he shows with "Into Thin Air." Now he returns to the West of his youth. Yet this is not the book he planned to write. Krakauer admits he wanted to describe how today's LDS Church, with their clean-cut, do-good approach, is at odds with its founding history.

Instead, he decided to write about fundamentalist Mormons. While the LDS Church declared polygamy illegal in 1890, it took time for the practice to end in the official church. Those who would not accept the changes continued polygamy, with groups moving to Mexico and Canada. And there are those who continue this practice today. Krakauer is determined to understand how this came to be. In order to do this, he must retell the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints.

While polygamy is no longer accepted by the current LDS authorities, the average Mormon seems less inclined to stamp it out. Krakauer shows several cases of gung-go district attorneys who go after polygamous families, and how these white knights are subsequently removed from office in the next election. He introduces us to small towns where everything and everyone in it answers to one man, the head of the Fundamentalist LDS church (FLDS). All property is owned by their church's corporation. And the girls are married by age 14. Krakauer finds many of them married to men who are already related to them, and at least a generation older. Women are seen as transferrable property, with marriages cancelled should any church member run afoul of the church leader.

And remember Elizabeth Smart? Here was a case of a modern Mormon family running into another FLDS wanna-be. Krakauer contrasts her case with another 14-year-old, a FLDS community member, who was hidden in another FLDS community when her sister tried to rescue her from an early marriage she didn't want. The difference between the media treatment of the two kidnap victims is horrifying.

All this is merely background for a shocking murder case, where two LDS members who moved toward FLDS decided to kill their sister-in-law for being a bad influence, and her two-year-old as well. Both men insisted they were acting on revelations from God. Krakauer turns this into the Court's unease with discussions of religious belief and sanity.

The negative reviews of this book appear to come from LDS members who are unhappy with Krakauer's history of their church. It's a pity they missed his important points on the danger of revealed religion (where anyone can justify anything), or the welfare fraud committed by FLDS communities (subsequent wives declare themselves single parents and don't identify the father, while living in a trailer in his backyard), or the uneasy relationship between mainline Mormons and latter-day polygamists. It's a shame they are unwilling to look at their own church's rapidly mutating scriptures, where Krakauer shows how doctrinal racism was not removed from church teachings until the 1970s. One might ask how many of them actually read the book rather than took the advice of their stake president to publicly condemn it.

Read it for yourself, then let us know. It is a fascinating, disturbing, insightful, and important book.

This is an extraordinary book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Though the Mormon Church has expressed it's hostility toward the book, as with all ostriches, they are simply sticking their head in the sand and asking the rest of us to follow suit. Thank goodness for people outside the Church who look in, and tell us what they see.

This is not an anti-mormon book, and the fact that Latter-day Saints and their leaders are so worked up about it seems to me to be a recognition that Krakauer is hitting pretty close to home. Ironically, he handles the modern LDS church with kid gloves, and is very careful to make the distinction between the Mormon Fundamentalits and the Mormons themselves. However, and this is the point that should be lost on no one, both churches hail from the same "common ancestors," and have evolved rather organically from those early prophets, most importantly Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and John Taylor. At the time of Wilford Woodruff the world saw a split, and those familiar with the paradigms of biological evolution will recognize exactly what was going on. Today we see two radically different organizations with radically different messages...but they came from the same place.

Here's another juicy item that must drive the Church nuts. The fundamentalists are perfectly justified in their position on polygamy, extreme patriarchy and racism. After all, if those were the "revealed word of God" back in the early days of the church, then who are the modern day leaders to deny that word of God today? Just because wicked governments :-) refuse to cooperate should be no reason to back away from the most important points of doctrine. If it was good enough for Daniel to not back down (resulting in being cast into the lions den) then it should be good enough for modern prophets to not back down, either. (Okay, it's pretty darn important for me to state that I'm simply pointing out the fundamentalist argument, not my own opinion...)

At the end of the book you are treated to the prosecution team's argument that religious thinking is NOT insane, even it is, on the face, irrational. Any religious person should be moved, not disturbed, by the thoughtful arguments made by the prosecution's witnesses, many of whom were Mormon.

There are those who review this book who claim that the history is all wrong because it isn't always consistent with the "faithful history" that Elder Boyd K. Packer et al promote, and which is often the only history Mormons are familiar. Krakauer has consumed a great deal of history, and has drawn some really important conclusions. To throw out his book as "inacurate" because of a few minor disagreements on interpretation of facts would be like throwing out the quantum theory because we can't actually "see" a quark. The viewer, or the reader, interprets what they see or read and comes to rational conclusions based on their assessment. I want to read what other people DECIDE ON THEIR OWN after doing the research, not the same, tired old stories that have been approved and fed to the sheep year after year after year. I 've read a ton of Church history, and nothing that Krakauer said raised any red flags for me. But if there is a mistake in his "facts" somewhere (and if it's there, it's tiny), then it is still immaterial. The conclusions that the reader draws as they read how religious zeal CAN lead the faithful far, far astray is dead-on, pun intended.

This is an excellent, excellent book, and no one, Mormon or otherwise, should be "afraid" to read it, or afraid to consider what the implications might be.

The vocal, unfavorable response to this book by many LDS people (I exclude the LDS Church, which had a pretty fair response) is unfortunate. What this reaction reveals is that as a people we continue to be very thin-skinned when it comes to any hint of an unfavorable review. In short, we have a persecution complex.

LDS people would do well to remember that there are other groups out there (Catholics, for one) with far more serious press issues who are dealing with these problems with far more honesty and grace.

The previous reviewers are correct about some of this book's faults. It does have some errors of fact, but to be fair, it does a far better job than most non-LDS examinations of this kind. Krakauer has a fair grasp of LDS history and culture. A faux-pas like calling Mark E. Peterson a prophet should not be grounds for dismissing the book altogether.

One must also remember that Krakauer is examining people who belong to the fringe of Mormon culture and placing them in the context of Mormon history. Though he should have been more careful about distinguishing between members of the LDS church and so called "fundamentalist Mormons" (this is, after all, a name taken from the name of one polygamist group), many LDS readers react as though he aimed criticism at the contemporary LDS Church.

Were I about to read this book for the first time, I would treat it as a "true crime" story that benefits from better than average writing and interesting (though somewhat sensationalist) historical treatment. The book is not history; it is a poignant reminder that religious fanaticism, be it Muslim (Usama bin Laden), Christian (David Koresh), or Mormon (Lafferty brothers), is potentially, and sometimes actually, deadly.

Hmmmm...have some of these harsh critics actually read the book?

I knew nothing about Mormonism before I read this story. But by the last hundred pages, I was thinking very emphatically to myself that Mr. Krakauer took GREAT PAINS to emphasize that the devil here were these two murderers, neither the Mormon religion itself nor even fundamentalist Mormons (although the latter are portrayed as being less blameless).

I did not pick up this book intending to come away with a comprehensive history of Mormonism. I did not pick up this book intending to read a true crime story.

No, contrary to some "misled" individuals who claim to have read this book, I picked up this book intending to read EXACTLY WHAT IT SAYS ON THE FRONT COVER, Einsteins. It states right on the cover, and I directly quote:

"On July 24, 1984, a woman and her infant daughter were murdered by two brothers who believed they were ordered to kill by God. The roots of their crime lie deep in the history of an American religion practiced by millions..."

What does this sentence mean to you? It doesn't say, "The Evils of the LDS Church" or "...two Mormon brothers..." For anyone reading those critiques that so harshly pan the book because it "wasn't what they expected," please read the quote that I have written here, and then tell me what you expect to read. I promise you that what you read into that quote is what you will get when you read this. These brothers' roots were indeed in LDS...that does not mean that LDS is wicked, and I never once saw it that way, even without any prior conceptions about LDS.

And as for you critics who think that Mr. Krakauer is biased because he is agnostic, I find it hard to believe that you could forgive him his well-researched and well-balanced, conscientious manuscript, no matter WHAT his spiritual values. If he was Jewish, you'd find something "biased" about that. And ditto if he was Lutheran, Catholic, or Mormon himself. No matter what religion he was, because he's writing about religion, you'd say he was biased.

Of course, the only "unbiased" person is the completely ignorant one. Everyone who learns something has an opinion about it. I dare any critic to tell me otherwise. But as far as this book is concerned, Mr. Krakauer has taken the utmost care to make the condemnation of this crime of which he writes as narrow and as specific as possible.

Mr. Krakauer points out to us time and time again that these are resentful, looney-tunes, fundamentalist, ex-communicated-Mormon brothers who murdered their sister-in-law. So unless you are a resentful, looney-tunes, fundamentalist, ex-communicated-Mormon brother who wants to murder their sister-in-law, know in advance that this book does not set out to offend you.

Read it to learn, not to judge, and ye shall be the wiser.

Two books have recently been published about cold blooded murder in Utah and figuring prominently in both is the LDS church -- the Mormons. The more publicized is Jon Krakauer's UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN. It is about recent (1984) murders and the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart committed by individual members of Mormon Fundamentalist sects that exist in southern Utah,Arizona and elsewhere. Krakauer says they may number 100,000. They have been excommunicated by LDS authorities for polygamy and other deviation, but claim to be following the original teachings of church founder Joseph Smith. Sally Denton writes in AMERICAN MASSACRE about the near annihilation of the Fancher-Baker wagon train at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah on 9/11/1857. That barbarous act, the slaughter of 120 defenseless men, women and children, according to Denton, may have been authorized by church leaders and was certainly carried out by Mormons who believed they had official sanction for their acts.

The two authors exhibit contrasting strengths as writers. Krakauer is the better prose stylist, but Denton has put together a more cohesive book. Krakauer succeeded in getting members of the Fundamentalist Mormon community (including the muderous Laffertys)to talk freely. He gives the reader an intimate, unspairing view of the crime and the criminals -- as Mailer did in THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG. The story of Smart's kidnapping gives the book a torn-from-the-headlines timliness. Krakauer uses the two contemporary incidents as a springboard to examine the LDS church's historical record of violence. He admits readily in interviews that he relied heavily on secondary sources (like historian D Michael Quinn) for his depiction of the historical aspects of Mormonism. Denton has done far more original historical research for her book: from reading diaries and oral histories in Arkansas (where the Fancher expedition originated) to combing through the National Archives, US Army records, and those of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She reconstructs the trial of John D Lee, the only man convicted of the atrocity, from court records, his diaries, and contemporary newspaper accounts. Denton provide chapter notes and an extensive bibliography to support her scholarship.

I recommend reading both books. At a time when Islamic religious extremism is on everyone's mind, we need to be reminded that the United States has produced and is producing its share of dangerous zealots. Krakauer refers to the Fundamentalist polygamists of southern Utah as "the American Taliban". In AMERICAN MASSACRE one can find the roots of the religious fanaticism that bears bitter fruit in UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN.

To me, the key to a good book, fiction or non-fiction, is whether it is told well.

Jon Krakauer is a gifted storyteller, and "Under The Banner Of Heaven" is a very well told story.

In addition to covering the 1984 murder of a woman and her child by self-proclaimed Mormon Fundamentalists (acting, as they claim, on a mission from God), Krakauer takes the time and patience to cover some of the history of the Morman religion. He interweaves historic events with the contemporary storyline and gives a kind of insight not common to a "True Crime" story.

For those wondering, Krakauer takes great care to explicitly draw the line between Mormons and Mormon Fundamentalists. This is a critical point in the book.

I had no information about the Mormon religion or its history and found this book engaging and very well written.

It's a good read, and thats what books are all about. I recommend this book to all.

Well-known author Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air, Into the Wild) originally wanted to write a book titled History and Belief that would focus "on the uneasy, highly charged relationship between the LDS Church and its past." In this not-yet-written book, he planned to see "how does a critical mind reconcile scientific and historical truth with religious doctrine? How does one sustain belief when confronted with facts that appear to refute it?"

Instead of writing this book, though, Krakauer's research led him to write about the dual July 24, 1984 murders committed by the infamous Lafferty brothers (Ron and Dan) in American Fork, Utah. The story told in Under the Banner of Heaven (paperback comes out July 2004) is both intriguing and revealing. In fact, Krakauer makes it very evident that the Laffertys not only held fast to Mormon fundamentalism and a deep-seeded belief in polygamy, but they were also closely aligned with the thinking of numerous early Mormon leaders, especially Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, the first two LDS prophets.

Krakauer opens the book by giving background information on the night when the actual murders that occurred. Ron and Dan brutally ambushed their younger brother Allan's infant daughter and his wife, Brenda, whom they blamed for causing Ron's wife to leave for Florida. The murders are not exactly described until the latter part of the book, but it should be understood that graphic details are given...and it's not a pretty sight.

However, this is more than just a tale centering on the Laffertys. Throughout the book, as the account is unfurled describing how the Laffertys got to the point of cold-blooded murder and thinking their actions were God-ordained, Krakauer weaves in the basic history of the LDS Church, starting with LDS founder Joseph Smith in chapter 5. Events such as Carthage, Mountain Meadow (he points out that only later was it called "Meadows"), and the Manifesto are detailed.

Krakauer intersperses the historical aspects of Mormonism with the different interpretations of this religion as explained by numerous leaders. Since many fundamentalists place special emphasis on polygamy, Krakauer highlights the more well-known polygamous individuals such as LeRoy Johnson, Brian David Mitchell (who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart), Tom Green, and the LeBarons. Displayed are the many problems associated with polygamy including incest, spousal abuse, septuagenarians marrying teenagers, and the stealing from the government.

Although the general history is accurate and can be easily supported, this book is not meant to be a historical work. In fact, Krakauer utilizes other researchers such as Fawn Brodie (No Man Knows My History), Will Bagley (Blood of the Prophets), and D. Michael Quinn. Thus, anyone hoping for new historical nuggets may be disappointed (though I did learn a few new things). Truly this book is tailor-made for the person who doesn't have a deep understanding of Mormonism's roots.

One thing that Krakauer does not provide is the in-text citations of his sources. Instead, he merely uses asterisks and provides the footnoted information at the bottom of the page. No resource/page number addresses are provided, meaning that the reader has to take the author's word for it. While there may be a place for these kinds of books, this type of documentation drives researchers who thrive on specific source/page information crazy. At the same time, Krakauer makes some very astute observations that show how he understands the many inconsistencies in Joseph Smith's philosophical system.

Under the Banner of Heaven, which hit the presses in July 2003, has infuriated many Mormons who consider this tome as an affront to their faith. After all, how dare the author insinuate that these Mormon Fundamentalists are even faintly related to the only true church on earth, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! Yet this thinking is quite flawed. As the author insinuates, if Smith and Young were to return to the earth today, certainly they would recognize the Fundamentalist churches as being more authentic than the LDS Church and its structure. Why should we think so poorly of these modern-day polygamists when their attitude is certainly shared by those who guided the church in the early years?

He has a point, though Mormons have flooded the Internet with their ranting protests. For instance, many of the more than 300+ reviews of this book on Amazon.com are LDS critics complaining that Krakauer is somehow anti-Mormon and therefore must have a vendetta against the Church. Thus, many of these reviewers give the book a "one star" rating and display their ignorance with archaic reviews, which clearly show they never read the book. This proves that there are many Mormons who are more concerned with their religion's public relations image rather than history or, egad, the truth. While Krakauer is an agnostic/atheist and is certainly no friend to Christianity, I believe that he holds no bigoted bent against the LDS Church.

Overall, I recommend this book, especially for those who would like to better understand the polygamist mindset that can be found throughout the western United States. Since I personally know polygamists from Utah, I commend Krakauer for accurately displaying the mentality that characterizes many of these sincere folk (i.e. "it's us against the world"). The only caution I would give is that the book is quite graphic when it comes to the description of the murders and the language used by the Lafferty boys.

Finally, though I certainly disagree with Krakauer on theology, I would like to encourage Krakauer to pursue the book he originally set out to write. Of course, Mormons will once again color him with that dirty "anti-Mormon" label, but I for one would be an interested observer should he ever complete that book.

And one last thing. More than 30 people have given this review negative ratings. I'm thinking this is so because you disagree with my point of view. However, you should not rate books based on whether or not you agree with the reviewer. Did I provide information that helped you decide whether or not you ought to buy this book? I think I have. Please be fair in your feedback...thanks.

First, I am a student attending BYU. Me and some colleages have read and studied this book, and even referenced some of the bibliography. It's factual. We know the difference between anti-mormon-sensationalism and factual, hardcore, historical fact. The latter, of course, is hard to swallow, especially for most Mormons regarding this book. The book has brought to light a lot of things most Mormons today do not wish to talk about.

Secondly, the book is written VERY VERY WELL. This is a book everyone should read who is interested in knowing more about the factual history of the Mormon faith, how it links to the Lafferty murders and Elizabeth Smart kidnapping, and how religion can promote finaticism and obsession in any faith.

All of us here at BYU really enjoyed this book. We recommend it to anyone with an open mind.

By the way, this has been a New York Bestseller for over 2 months now. I believe that says something!

It's intriguing to read the reviews of those who paint Krakauer's book as misguided or poorly researched. This book is a well-written, well-documented overview of the current Mormon and Fundamentalist Mormon faith. He beautifully relays the history of the Mormon church, and then explains the schism(s) that have erupted, resulting in various sects of Fundamental Mormonism.

This book wasn't written with the purpose of bashing Mormons; rather, it illustrates the bastardization of any religion that comes about when twisted minds utilize the religion to justify all their actions (ever heard of the Crusades?). To read about Dan Lafferty (a self-described Fundamentalist Mormon who beat his wife) guiltlessly explaining that God had told him to murder his sister-in-law and 15-month old niece is shattering. How can anyone reason with a nut like that?

If you wish to stretch your mind, learn a great deal, and recognize that America's religious roots aren't nearly as flawless as most like to believe, then this is a great book. If you prefer to wallow in ignorant bliss, leave it on the shelf.