Under the Banner of Heaven

Rating:
Summary: Dispensable
Review: Krakauer's attempt to understand Mormonism mainly from reading a few anti-Mormon books fails predictably. There is no substitute for the actual experience of putting Mormon faith to the test, which I particularly have done for most of my life, and so many others. Jesus said that in order to know if His doctrine is from God, one has to live by it, which requires sincere faith before spiritual knowledge can be obtained.
The so-called "Mormon Fundamentalist" groups have splinted from the Mormon Church, not because they believe in the same doctrine as us, but because the don't believe in it, and have deformed it to suit their own course. We don't see them as "cousins that we try to hide in the attic", we have nothing to do with them.
It is true that a criminal and feeble mind can use religion to justify perverse acts, but when one knows Mormonism's true doctrine, it is clear that nobody performing such acts can be justified by such doctrine.
Finally, if a "Christian" finds it unbelievable that God can reveal truth to the individual when and how He pleases, such believer has to question him/herself wheter he/she believes on the Bible, to start with.

Rating:
Summary: Evil in the name of God
Review: Why do some people commit unspeakable evil and use their religion to justify it? To explore this question Jon Krakauer has written an eye-opening account of the violent history of the Mormon church which influenced the murders committed by Ron and Dan Lafferty in 1984. The brothers claim to have recieved a divine revelation ordering them to kill their sister-in-law and her young daughter. To this day the brothers have no remorse for their cold-blooded actions due to their belief that they were carrying out God's will.

Did you know the Mormons still shun inter-racial marriage to this day and the church didn't allow Afro-Americans into its priesthood until 1979. Of course women aren't allowed in the priesthood at all and polygamy is still widely practiced among the fundamentalist groups. In total this book displays what a crackpot lot the Mormons really are.

This book is well written, easy to read and thoroughly researched. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to gain insight into why atrocities are committed in the name of religion.

Rating:
Summary: Under the Banner of Heaven : A Story of Violent Faith
Review: On July 24, 1984, Dan and Ron Lafferty cut the throats of their brother Allan's wife, Brenda, and baby daughter, Erica, fulfilling part of a revelation Ron received from God. Ron is now on death row. Brother Dan, serving two life sentences for the murders, has never denied killing his sister-in-law and niece but has absolutely no remorse. I was doing God's will, he says, which is not a crime. Krakauer, best known for his adventure writing in Outside magazine and his books Into the Wild (1995) and Into Thin Air (1997), has shifted gears to tackle issues of faith in this true-crime/religious expose, which delves deep into the heart of Mormon fundamentalism, where revelations from God are commonplace and polygamy not only still exists but is a matter of religious duty. Alternating between the bloodier aspects of the origins of the Mormon Church (Joseph Smith Jr.'s lynching in Nauvoo, Illinois, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah) and some of the more extreme aspects of today's Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (fraud, incest, and murder), Krakauer's account is gripping yet deeply disturbing. Not only does he interview Dan, an admitted murderer, but also he talks with former child brides and victims of incest. Debbie Palmer, raised to be an obedient wife in FLDS, married at 14 and became a stepmother to 31 kids, including her own stepmother, which made her a stepmother to her stepmother, and thus a step grandmother to herself. -

Rating:
Summary: Gives an excellent basic understanding of this cult.
Review: Gives an excellent history of the Mormon cult. It would have been better as just a history from its beginnings, but the author cuts back and forth between the early history to the present day. Still, a very fast read.

Rating:
Summary: Laugh with the sinners, cry with the Latter-Day Saints
Review: Krakauer steps completely out of his comfort zone, writing high adventure tales, generally first-hand non-fiction, to produce this well-crafted history of an American religious movement, the church of the Latter Day Saints.

Those of us in the East know little of Mormonism, especially the story of its unusually founding. Here Krakauer interweaves a story of individual Mormom fundamentalists gone very bad with the less than 200 year history of the movement.

Krakauer gives us the full tale of the first prophet Joseph Smith, whose ultimate demise followed a reign of political intrigue, sexual scandals, charges of counterfeiting and occultism, aggressive tactics more typicallly associated with latter-day Philadelphia politicians, and various short-notice late-night movements around the country. Perhaps most famously Smith receives a directive from God that plural marriage is the path of the righteous, and a second directive to tell his first wife that she will be eternally damned if she does not cooperate.

After Smith goes on to his just rewards in a jail house shootout, Brigham Young (direct ancestor of the well-known Super Bowl quarterback Steve Young) leads the fledgeling organization into Utah. While all know that Utah is today the LDS headquarters, few remember that this was done to avoid the control of the US government, as Utah was Mexican territory when Young and his band appeared on the desert scene.

More bad relations with both Indians and Americans ensue, culminating in murders and atrocities committed on settlers crossing Utah on their way to the newly discovered California gold field settlements. Ultimately Federal troops appear and Washington legislators force the LDS to give up their polygamist ways in order to continue operations.

This restructuring of the church gives rise to the fundamentalist movement, which Krakauer traces in detail, as that small sect is ultimately responsible for a disproportionate amount of violence, right up to the present, including the disappearance of Elizabeth Smart. These fundamentalists, long outcast from main-stream Mormonism, embrace polygamy, literal reading of the scriptures, and prophecies of world destruction, leaving only the true believers intact.

This is a fascinating read, with the right mix of history and non-fictional accounts of the fundamentalist murder cases. One needs to learn this material to understand the history of our country.

Rating:
Summary: Inaccurate and biased
Review: This book is heavily biased and contains many inaccuracies. Some examples:

The author states that Joseph Smith "repeatedly demonstrated that he, himself, had little respect for the religious views of non-Mormons, and was unlikely to respect the constitutional rights of other faiths." However, this is contradicted by Joseph Smith's statements: "If it has been demonstrated that I have been willing to die for a Mormon, I am bold to declare before heaven that I am just as ready to die for a Presbyterian, a Baptist, or any other denomination. It is a love of liberty which inspires my soul, civil and religious liberty" (The Words of Joseph Smith, ASIN 0884944190). "We are not disposed, had we the power, to deprive any one of exercising that free independence of mind which heaven has so graciously bestowed upon the human family as one of its choices gifts" (History of the Church, II, pp. 6-7. ISBN 087747074X). Religious intolerance is also contrary to the Mormon church's official articles of faith (which were written by Joseph Smith): "Article 11 - We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege; let them worship how, where, or what they may."

Regarding the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the author states that Brigham Young "explicitly 'gave' the Indians all the emigrant cattle on the Old Spanish Trail.... The prophet's message to the Indian leaders was clear enough: He wanted them to attack the Fancher; wagon train. The morning after the meeting, the Paiutes left the City of the Saints at first light and started riding hard for southern Utah." There is no evidence that Young was referring specifically to the Fancher party. However, there is substantial evidence that the Indians at that meeting did not participate in the massacre. The author also ignores the fact that Brigham Young sent a letter specifically telling southern Utahns to leave the Fancher wagon train alone. Mormons today regard the massacre as a terrible tragedy. In 1999 when the Mormon church reconstructed its monument to the victims, the president of the church said, "There is no question in my mind that he [Brigham Young] was opposed to what happened. Had there been a faster means of communication, it never would have happened and history would have been different.... We have a Christian duty to honor, respect, and to do all feasible to remember and recognize those who died here."

If you want an accurate and objective discussion of the Mormon church and its history, this book is not a good choice. Reviewers in respected national publications have also panned this book:

The Boston Globe: "Trying to extrapolate profound truths from isolated examples of religious excess is a dangerous game. The Laffertys were not the first murderers to hear voices, and they won't be the last. But applying Krakauer's model, every David Berkowitz (''Son of Sam'') would provoke an inquiry into the sinister potential of Judaism.... Insofar as Krakauer recounts Mormonism's past, he does it poorly, using outdated sources and discredited reports to portray a Joseph Smith and a Mormonism reminiscent of 19th-century caricatures. His picture of contemporary Mormonism is also seriously misinformed.... His book is ultimately more about doing violence to a faith than uncovering the violence behind a faith." (The Boston Globe, Terryl L. Givens, 27 July 2003)

The Wall Street Journal: "This is all quite misleading. Anyone who has spent any time with members of the Mormon Church will know that Mormons are not today polygamous, let alone violent. Indeed the church produces some of the most productive, law abiding, patriotic and community-minded citizens the country has ever seen. True, 'Under the Banner of Heaven' is purportedly about the off-shoots of the Mormon church, whose members long for the days when the church allowed polygamy and banned blacks. But by linking the history of the church directly to these groups, and lightly skipping over the past 100 years of Mormon history, Mr. Krakauer implies that the fundamentalists are the rightful inheritors of the church's tradition." (The Wall Street Journal, Naomi Schaefer, 11 July 2003)

Rating:
Summary: Can't stop reading it or talking about it
Review: Krakauer's lastest book, on the surface is very different (in my opinion) from Into the Wild or Into Thin Air, when I finished reading it though I found that in many respects it is incredibly similar in terms of looking for an understanding of what human nature will drive people to do. Krakauer examined not just the murders of a woman and her child, but more importantly why did the killers do the crime and why were they so up front and honest about what they had done.

In examing why the crimes had been committed, Krakauer provides an intriguing history of the LDS church, albeit one that members of the modern church would heavily dispute. This history does an excellent job of providing a basis for understanding how the fundamentalists got to the point at which they did and why they continue to practice a belief system that landed most of the members of the church out of the church.

This book provides an interesting insight into the nature of people. Not just of those who blindly follow the FLDS or the LDS faith, but also of those who chose to abandon the faith as well. Anyone who is interested in learning more about the history of the LDS church or trying to understand why and how religion has such a powerful hold on people would be well advised to read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: Readers who pick up this book looking for a classic "true crime" story may be disappointed. Krakauer uses the story of the Lafferty brothers crime as a catalyst to analyze religious extremism. While the overall account is not necessarily flattering to the LDS religion as a whole, Krakauer is pretty careful to focus his critical eye on fundamentalist Mormons. As a non-Mormon Christian, I found the history of the early Mormon church fascinating. It also made me wonder how the early Christin church would appear today if we had the amount and type of contemporary historical sources available for analysis. Should us non-Mormons Christian's reading the book begin to feel a bit smug about their belief in Joseph Smith's revelation, we should remember that for all of us, the esence of faith is to believe in something we don't fully understand and can't prove. A good book makes you think; this one certainly does that.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Book in Many Ways
Review: This book can be described perhaps as many stories wrapped in one. It's the story of an upsetting murder by Mormon fundamentalists brothers of their sister-in-law and her baby in 1984. It's the story of Joseph Smith and the beginning history of the Mormon faith and their migrations from Ohio to Missouri to Illinois to Utah and ultimately Joseph's demise. It's the story of Brigham Young and the church's views regarding polygamy and other doctrines within the church. In other words, you get a brief overview of the whole religion from its beginning to present day formations plus you get on top of that the gruesome story of a murder and what drove these brothers to commit this atrocious act. The reader gets a chance to peer inside the minds of religious zealots and to see how irrational or outlandish some beliefs can be and what the consequences of this may be. As you read the book you get the feeling that Krakauer is both fascinated by Mormon culture but at the same time probably doesn't agree or even understand for sure how people could cling to beliefs that are in many ways unscientific, irrational, and for lack of better explanation downright nutty. However, he doesn't make fun of, or belittle the people who hold such beliefs but merely explains that it's more than likely a product of environment/culture and the yearning to be comforted...to have the answers given to us in times of distress. Ultimately though one has to come to the conclusion that life is a great mystery and that we don't always have all the answers and in fact God may not be talking to us or sending down aliens to probe our bodies. Really an excellent book that is both entertaining and educational. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Religion and violence
Review: Great book, but does Krakauer think he is handing us a revelation?! Religion is synonymous with violence? Who'da thunk?! Of course there synonymous, one only needs to dust of the history books and refresh their minds about events like the crusades, or try more modern history like "The Troubles" in Ireland, Palestine and Israel, Al Queda, or the recent violence in Iraq! Don't forget "Sacred" books like the bible were used to support things such as slavery! Isn't it funny that no man/woman has ever died in the name of Atheism?! A book like this is to be treasured as a book of true enlightenment and education! A must read!!