Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith in Atheists and Skeptics

Mar 23, 2010 David rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, religion, sociology, crime, american-history, history, audiobook, mormon

Really fascinating history of the Mormon church. Although it tells the story of a violent crime taking place among a modern polygamist offshoot of the LDS, Krakauer goes into the (often violent) history of the Mormon church, and why the polygamous fundamentalists who are still around are not quite so removed from their mainstream brethren as the LDS would like to claim. Nonetheless, this is not a Mormon-bashing book. Nowhere does Krakauer treat the Mormon faith itself with disrespect. He also de ...more

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Aug 06, 2010 Leslie rated it really liked it

For someone who was immersed in fundamentalist Christianity from birth, reading this book on some levels seemed to speak to my early thoughts, doubts, and curiosities I used to have. I could never understand why anyone would believe in a relatively new religion, like Mormonism. After all, what about all those people who went to hell because the religion hadn’t been invented yet (I guess they thought of that: baptism for the dead). The stories surrounding Joseph Smith (and all other “new” religio ...more

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Jul 22, 2014 Lenka rated it it was amazing

"Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off. Anything can happen. Absolutely anything."
This is the best non-fiction I've read in years: well-written, interesting, captivating.
It opens with a story of two Mormon fundamentalists who decide to kill their sister-in-law and her baby because that's what god told them to do. This story is interwoven through the whole "Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off. Anything can happen. Absolutely anything."
This is the best non-fiction I've read in years: well-written, interesting, captivating.
It opens with a story of two Mormon fundamentalists who decide to kill their sister-in-law and her baby because that's what god told them to do. This story is interwoven through the whole book and one can't help but be shocked at how these people show no remorse and how they really believe that god would (coincidentally) tell them to kill people they don't like.
The author states that he wanted to write a book on religion and chose Mormonism because he grew up among them. I think Mormonism is an excellent choice for another reason: it originated relatively recently, making us able to take a peek at something I've been puzzling over for years: how is it possible for one, albeit charismatic, person to fool millions? Krakauer (at least partly) explains: "Many people would also argue that virtually everyone who has introduced a new framework of religious beliefs to the world—from Jesus to Muhammad to Joseph Smith to Ron Lafferty—fits the diagnosis for narcissistic personality disorder." Well...that paints the picture of religious people as simply being exceptionally prone to manipulation by mentally atypical individuals, but I think it hits the spot. That said, although the book deals only with Mormonism (and some of its fundamentalist sects) I think it generalizes pretty well to many other belief systems: there comes a charismatic narcissist who pulls a nice story out of his ass, and suddenly there are thousands of his followers who think they stand above the law if their god commands them to rape, kill or plunder.
“It's amazing how gullible people are. But you have to remember what a huge comfort the religion is. It provides all the answers. It makes life simple. Nothing makes you feel better than doing what the prophet commands you to do. And that's a real big part of what holds this religion together: it's not having to make those critical decisions that many of us have to make, and be responsible for your decisions.”
But, in the end, as one of the apostates realizes: “Some things in life are more important than being happy. Like being free to think for yourself." ...more

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May 16, 2010 Kaylana rated it really liked it

Shelves: lds, nonfiction, polygamy, crime, fundamentalism, read-2010

I remember hearing when this book first came out how evil it was...basically an anti-Mormon book and to runaway from it. Now...definitely not Anti-Mormon unless you consider documented history "anti."

I thought Krakauer was very fair in his telling of religious history of Mormonism in how it corresponds to the religious thinking of the Laffertys.

I did a lot of crying in this one. It was hard to get through. It shocks me how crazy one family can be.

One interesting note is I was hoping he would ge ...more

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Mar 10, 2013 Mimi V rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, 2013, edie

Under the Banner of Heaven has two storylines. One is the founding of the Church of the Latter Day Saints; the other is the more recent story of fundamentalist LDS members – people who more closely adhere to the original teachings of Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith was a con man. Even before he created a religion that now has millions of adherents, he was already a con man. Smith worked as a “professional diviner,” supposedly able to find treasure with the aid of magical stones. He was never once succ Under the Banner of Heaven has two storylines. One is the founding of the Church of the Latter Day Saints; the other is the more recent story of fundamentalist LDS members – people who more closely adhere to the original teachings of Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith was a con man. Even before he created a religion that now has millions of adherents, he was already a con man. Smith worked as a “professional diviner,” supposedly able to find treasure with the aid of magical stones. He was never once successful, and was eventually charged with fraud. (Some would say if you hire a person to magically find treasure that you deserve what you get. I would be one of those people.) Only months afterward (in 1827,) Smith found a real treasure with the help of the angel Moroni: he was told of “a sacred text inscribed on solid gold plates.” Moroni, however, wouldn’t allow him to dig up the plates. When he was finally allowed to unearth the plates he was given magical spectacles that allowed him to translate the foreign characters inscribed in the gold plates. Unfortunately, Smith let someone take the transcript and the special magic glasses and they are lost. So Smith has to translate the plates again without the help of the magic spectacles; instead he uses a magic rock to help him. I don’t know if these were the same magical rocks that failed at finding treasure.

Thus begins Mormonism and Smith’s frequent conversations with the angel Moroni and with the almighty god himself. He convinces his first acolyte (the same one who lost the original translation) to put up the money to have his Book of Mormon published because “god wants him to do it.” Smith continues to have ‘revelations’ and directs his followers according to what “god” has told him. Mormons move from New York State and look to settle down somewhere that they can control the government, as well as the spiritual lives, of the people. They keep running into trouble – people don’t take kindly to the superior and clan-like attitudes of the Mormons. They are not opposed to violent confrontations with the locals. Smith had a militia with nearly half the number of men that were then in the entire US army. The destruction of a printing press in Illinois (on which was printed some disparaging remarks about the Mormons) resulted eventually in Smith’s death, a martyrdom that’s still a compelling story to the LDS.

Smith began to take “spiritual” wives, secretly, as early as 1833 after a revelation from god. He had been considering this since he found the ‘gold tablets’ but was afraid to introduce it because of the reaction that it would provoke. He kept this revelation from god secret because he sent up a ‘test balloon’ of sorts in 1842 but it was poorly received. He also kept his additional wives a secret from his wife Emma. In 1835 she found her husband with one of his so-called “wives” and threw the woman out of her house. Joseph, however, “because that rapture was so wholly consuming, and felt so good, it struck him as impossible that God might possibly frown on such a thing…The Lord…must surely have intended man to know the love of more than one wife or He wouldn’t have made the prospect so enticing.” (Lucky for him that the Lord wanted men to have more than one wife and not the other way around, huh?) He only shared the information of his additional wives with a trusted few at the higher echelons of the religion; some of them, too, indulged in this god-given right to take on multiple wives (also called celestial wives or spiritual wives.) Of course, only men were in the higher echelons of the religion.

Polygamy presented problems for Smith and the church aside from his own wife’s anger. The federal government was very interested in putting an end to this practice, resulting in a number of altercations with the Mormons. The Mormons resented this interference, and retaliated. The Mormons attacked what they refer to as the ‘gentiles’ (which, oddly enough, includes Jews. Anybody who isn’t Mormon is a gentile, according to them.)

Brigham Young was the next leader of the Mormons, and eventually led them to Utah, still looking for a place to establish their own kingdom. At that time, Utah was a territory. It was a real blow when Utah became a state in the US. Krakauer continues the story of the Mormons, including many of the violent interactions that they had along the way.

The other storyline is more recent. Two brothers (Ron and Dan) kill the wife of one of their other brothers (Allen,) along with her infant daughter. Her ‘crime’ was supporting the wife of Ron when she decided to leave him, get a divorce, and move out of state. Ron’s wife’s decampment was brought on by the increasingly bizarre beliefs of the brothers; fundamentalist beliefs that hew more closely to the original teachings of Joseph Smith. Members of this fundamentalist Mormon group treat women and children as mere property. And they are not even property of the husbands/fathers in the family. They belong to the prophet. The prophet decides who marries and when. The prophet can force a man from the group (which is routinely done with young men to reduce competition for the females in the group. Note that I don’t specify eligible females. Women are married off at very young ages – as young as 9 and often to family members.) If a man somehow displeases the prophet, he can be banished and the prophet can decide who gets the man’s property – including his wives and children.

Krakauer writes about how the three brothers’ ended up plotting and committing murders, using their prophet’s teachings as the sick reasons for their crimes. My favorite parts was the one week ‘spiritual marriage’ that one of the brothers had. After a week, he and the woman decided that they weren’t right for each other and split up. Ah, the sanctity of marriage.

Krakauer is a good writer; this story is so unbelievable and well written that it reads like a novel.
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