Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

by Jon Krakauer

He still insists that he is innocent of any crime but, paradoxically, does not deny that he killed Brenda and Erica. When asked to explain how both these apparently contradictory statements can be true, he says, “I was doing God’s will, which is not a crime.”

As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane—as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout—there may be no more potent force than religion.

the real recompense is probably the obsession itself. This is no less true for the religious fanatic than for the fanatical pianist or fanatical mountain climber. As a result of his (or her) infatuation, existence overflows with purpose. Ambiguity vanishes from the fanatic’s worldview; a narcissistic sense of self-assurance displaces all doubt.

Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion.

President James Buchanan, sent the U.S. Army to invade Utah, dismantle Brigham Young’s theocracy, and eradicate polygamy. The so-called Utah War, however, neither removed Brigham from power nor ended the doctrine of plural marriage, to the annoyance and bafflement of a whole series of American presidents.

Extreme and bizarre religious ideas are so commonplace in American history that it is difficult to speak of them as fringe at all. To speak of a fringe implies a mainstream, but in terms of numbers, perhaps the largest component of the religious spectrum in contemporary America remains what it has been since colonial times: a fundamentalist evangelicalism with powerful millenarian strands.

Despite the fact that Uncle Rulon and his followers regard the governments of Arizona, Utah, and the United States as Satanic forces out to destroy the UEP, their polygamous community receives more than $6 million a year in public funds.

Fundamentalists call defrauding the government “bleeding the beast” and regard it as a virtuous act.

According to UEP dogma, wives do not belong to their husbands, nor do children belong to their parents; all are property of the priesthood and may be claimed at any time.

In spite of—or, more likely, precisely because of—the atmosphere of sexual repression in Bountiful, incest and other disturbing behaviors are rampant,

All religious belief is a function of nonrational faith. And faith, by its very definition, tends to be impervious to intellectual argument or academic criticism.

The doctrine of modern, continuing revelation, begun by Joseph Smith and accepted by most groups claiming descent, leaves social order open to counterclaims that strike at the heart of ecclesiastical order. If one person may speak for God, why may not another? By claiming an ongoing dialogue with divinity, Joseph Smith opened the door to a social force he could barely control.

since 1830, some two hundred schismatic Mormon sects have splintered off from Joseph’s original religion; in fact, sects continue to splinter off on an ongoing basis.

Opposition gives value to struggle and inculcates self-confidence. . . . It is difficult to imagine a successful Mormon Church without suffering, without the encouragement of it, without the memory of it. Persecution arguably was the only possible force that would have allowed the infant church to prosper.

within five years more than fifteen thousand of the Lord’s Elect were living in and around Nauvoo—ten times its current population—making it the second-largest municipality in Illinois. From nothing, the Saints created a city that rivaled Chicago.

Nauvoo was no mere city; it was a theocratic principality, with Joseph at its head, possessing sovereign rights and powers unique not only in Illinois but in the entire nation.

He commanded a well-armed and rigorously disciplined militia, the Nauvoo Legion, which boasted nearly half as many men as the entire American Army at the time,

in January 1844 Joseph announced his candidacy for president of the United States.

Although Joseph may not have ordered Rockwell to shoot Boggs, it was commonly understood by the faithful that it was a Saint’s sacred duty to assist in the fulfilling of prophecies when the opportunity arose.

Joseph’s brand of charisma seems to have been true to the original definition. He was imbued with that exceedingly rare magnetism possessed by history’s most celebrated religious leaders—an extraordinary spiritual power that always seems to be wrapped in both great mystery and great danger.

He offered a crystal-clear notion of right and wrong, an unambiguous definition of good and evil. And although his perspective was absolutist and unyielding, it presented a kinder, gentler alternative to Calvinism, which had been the ecclesiastical status quo in the early years of the American republic.

his theology in the end discarded all traces of Calvinism and became an ingenious blend of supernaturalism and materialism, which promised in heaven a continuation of all earthly pleasures—work, wealth, sex, and power.

His church was an attempt to erect a wall against modernity’s abundance of freedom, its unbridled celebration of the individual. Mormonism’s strictures and soothing assurances—its veneration of order—beckoned as a refuge from the complexity and manifold uncertainties of nineteenth-century America.

Joseph wasn’t by nature reflective or deliberative. He conducted his life impulsively, acting according to instinct and emotion. The Lord, it seemed to him, must surely have intended man to know the love of more than one wife or He wouldn’t have made the prospect so enticing.

As the prophet explained to his innermost circle in 1832, “he had inquired of the Lord concerning the principle of plurality of wives, and he received for answer that the principle of taking more wives than one is a true principle, but the time had not yet come for it to be practiced.” More correctly, the time had not yet come for the practice to be made public.

This burst of theological inspiration coincided with an extended eruption of libidinous energy. Between 1840 and 1844 God instructed the prophet to marry some forty women.

But Law was cut to a different pattern. Actually he was on the road to complete and ugly disillusionment, but he was walking backward away from the church, looking eagerly for something in the landscape to which he could cling, grasping at every tree and hedgerow. His desperate desire to reform the church made him far more formidable than if he had set out to damn the prophet and all his works.

divine entitlement

non-Mormons were especially alarmed by Joseph’s penchant for theocratic governance, as well as his apparent disregard for every article of the United States Constitution except those that assured Mormons the freedom to worship as they saw fit.

When Joseph ordered the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor, it confirmed a growing fear among non-Mormons that he was a megalomaniacal tyrant who posed a clear and present danger to the peace and stability of the region.

Joseph had taught that the laws of God take precedence over the laws of men.

increasingly what seemed most important concerned religious doctrine and its power to remedy the insidious evils inflicted by the government on its citizens.

The impetus for most fundamentalist movements—whether Mormon, Catholic, Evangelical Christian, Muslim, or Jewish—is a yearning to return to the mythical order and perfection of the original church.

her education was what they were afraid of. Because Brenda was confident in her beliefs, and her sense of right and wrong, and she wasn’t about to let anyone take that away from her.

at Nauvoo the innocent children of God realized their identity through their struggle against the evil followers of Satan, who dominated American society everywhere except in the city of the Saints. The problem, of course, with this kind of dichotomous myth is that, for the people who hold it, guilt and innocence become matters of belief, not evidence.

In Dr. Groesbeck’s learned opinion, this revelation was a delusional artifact, as were all Ron’s revelations, spawned by depression and his deeply entrenched narcissism, with no basis whatsoever in reality. Which is, of course, what nonbelievers typically say about people who have religious visions and revelations: that they’re crazy. The devout individuals on the receiving end of such visions, however, generally beg to differ,

The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

The contenders fell into two camps: those bitterly opposed to polygamy, who saw Joseph’s death as an opportunity to eradicate the practice before it gained traction, and those who had already taken plural wives and regarded polygamy as a divinely ordained principle that must be sustained.

the anti-polygamists focused their energies on giving the job to the departed prophet’s younger brother, Samuel H. Smith, instead. On July 30, however, just as it was looking as if he had the job locked up, Samuel abruptly died. Compelling circumstantial evidence suggests that he succumbed from poison administered by Hosea Stout, the chief of the Nauvoo police, who was loyal to Brigham Young and the other polygamists.

Grant explained to the Lord’s chosen that they had the “right to kill a sinner to save him, when he commits those crimes that can only be atoned for by shedding his blood.”

Buchanan dispatched a contingent of federal officials to restore the rule of law in Utah, including a new territorial governor to replace Brigham Young. More ominously, the new president ordered twenty-five hundred heavily armed soldiers to escort these officials into Salt Lake City and subdue the Saints if necessary. For all intents and purposes, the United States had declared war on the Mormons.

the wagon train from Arkansas was probably imperiled less by its affluence than by the Saints’ carefully nurtured sense of persecution—a mood that was stoked relentlessly from the pulpit that entire summer.

Out of the entire Fancher wagon train, only seventeen lives were spared—all of them children no more than five years old, deemed too young to remember enough to bear witness against the Saints.

I thought then that he was just finding out the difference between giving and executing orders for wholesale killing.”

the Saints gathered in a circle at the site of the mass murder to offer “thanks to God for delivering our enemies into our hands.” Then the overseers of the massacre reiterated “the necessity of always saying the Indians did it alone, and that the Mormons had nothing to do with it.

His soldiers gathered up whatever bones they could find, interred them in a common grave, and then laboriously hauled stones from the surrounding hillsides to build a massive, if crude, monument above it. At the apex of this rock pile, which was twelve feet high and fifty feet in circumference, they placed a wooden cross inscribed with the epigraph “Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord.”

By the time Brigham’s party departed the Mountain Meadows, the monument to the slaughtered emigrants had been obliterated.

especially given the Mormons’ unfortunate (and thoroughly documented) history of framing Indians for crimes that were actually committed by Latter-day Saints.

the combined sins of all the fifty men who were present were laid on the shoulders of John D. Lee.”

God is greater than the United States, and when the Government conflicts with heaven we will be ranged under the banner of heaven and against the Government.