Jon Krakauer. Under
the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. New York:
Doubleday, 2003.
By
T. Joe Willey
(April 26, 2004)
Adventists tend to be prickly about comparisons
of themselves to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, commonly called Mormons. Such comparisons
often occur because both religions claim to have had a prophet
who had direct communication from God (in fact both use the
same illustrator to show an angel with light from heaven guiding
the prophet).
Furthermore, both had origins in Jacksonian
America and both maintain an earnest missionary program, baptizing
new converts by immersion. Both frame an unambiguous struggle
between good and evil, and both see God’s own peculiar
people living in the Last Days. In addition, both have addressed
the date of Christ’s Second Coming. Although Adventists
never officially practiced polygamy, both groups avoid alcohol,
tobacco, gambling, tea, and coffee.
However, there are many differences. Mormons
do not believe that Jesus died on the cross for man’s
sins. Unlike Adventists, Mormons further believe that each
adherent can achieve an extraordinarily intimate relationship
with God, including personal revelations from the Lord.
In preparing for the Second Coming of Christ,
such revelations may produce deeply disturbing extremes of
religious belief. Jon Krakauer creates a chilling narrative
of messianic delusion, savage violence, and unyielding faith
in his recent book Under the Banner of Heaven. A Story
of Violent Faith, which is concerned with such revelations.
Under the Banner of Heaven unravels the
meaning behind the sickening murders of a young mother, Brenda
Lafferty, and her fifteen-month-old daughter, Erica, who lived
near Salt Lake City. The slayings appear to have been ritualistic,
and the murderers were caught within a few days. They turned
out to be two brothers of Brenda’s husband and Mormon
fundamentalists who believed that God had ordered them to
kill their brother’s wife and child. Brenda and the two
brothers had disagreed over many issues, among them the practice
of polygamy, or in LDS terminology, "celestial marriage."
In a most disturbing revelation, one of the
brothers, Ron Lafferty, wrote:
Thus Saith [sic] the lord unto
My servants the Prophets. It is my will and commandment that
ye remove the following individuals in order that My work
might go forward.… And it is My will that they be removed
in rapid succession and that an example be made of them in
order that others might see the fate of those who fight against
the true Saints of God.
This revelation gained great significance from
a passage in the Book of Mormon, in which the Lord
commands Nephi, an obedient prophet, to cut off the head of
Laban of Jerusalem. The story turns up in both the Book
of Mormon and the Old Testament. "Behold the Lord
slayeth the wicked to bring forth His righteous purposes:
It is better that one man should perish, than that a nation
should dwindle and perish in unbelief."
Krakauer weaves the history of LDS teaching
about celestial marriage into this book. He looks into modern
LDS fundamentalist communities that continue to believe the
First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects their marital
customs. He discusses the recent abduction of Utah teenager
Elizabeth Smart, whose "forced marriage" raises
questions as to whether the practice has been fully renounced.
Indeed, according to Krakauer, an estimated
40 to 100 thousand Mormon fundamentalists currently believe
that their mainstream coreligionists have gone astray, particularly
over polygamy. Consequently, the official Salt Lake Church
does not recognize fundamentalist Mormons. Many, including
the Lafferty brothers (currently in prison), have been excommunicated.
Officially, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints has expressed deep dissatisfaction with Under the
Banner of Heaven. "Although the book may appeal to
gullible persons who rise to such bait like trout to a fly
hook," reads one of its press releases, "serious
readers who want to understand Latter-day Saints and their
history need not waste their time on it."
Reading Under the Banner of Heaven helps
one understand that a religious belief driven to a nightmarish
inferno deep in human consciousness can emerge in lethal self-destruction.
After 9-11, there should be no doubt that this destructiveness
can come from many different directions, from every religious
belief. To me, Krakauer’s closing remarks came about
as close as one can get to understanding the meaning of such
tendencies.
There are some ten thousand extant
religious sects—each with its own cosmology, each with
its own answer for the meaning of life and death. Most assert
that the other 9,999 not only have it completely wrong but
are instruments of evil, besides.… I’ve come to
terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable corollary
of life. An abundance of mystery is simply part of the bargain—which
doesn’t strike me as something to lament. Accepting the
essential inscrutability of existence, in any case, is surely
preferable to its opposite: capitulating to the tyranny of
intransigent belief.
And if I remain in the dark about our purpose
here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived
at an understanding of a few more modest truths: Most of
us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got
here, and why—which is to say, most of us ache to know
the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that
ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive.
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