Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

by Jon Krakauer

it was “man’s law, which you disdain, that saved your life.”

or four bullets through the heart at close range. Ron chose the latter.

Many of Hofmann’s forgeries were intended to discredit Joseph Smith and the sacred history of Mormonism; more than four hundred of these fraudulent artifacts were purchased by the LDS Church (which believed they were authentic), then squirreled away in a vault to keep them from the public eye.

Something to hide, it seems.

There is a dark side to religious devotion that is too often ignored or denied. 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.

But men have been committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankind began believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions. Muhammad is not the only prophet whose words have been used to sanction barbarism; history has not lacked for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and even Buddhists who have been motivated by scripture to butcher innocents. Plenty of these religious extremists have been homegrown, corn-fed Americans.

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. A delicious rage quickens his pulse, fueled by the sins and shortcomings of lesser mortals, who are soiling the world wherever he looks. His perspective narrows until the last remnants of proportion are shed from his life. Through immoderation, he experiences something akin to rapture.

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. Common sense is no match for the voice of God—as the actions of Dan Lafferty vividly attest.

At last count there were more than eleven million Saints the world over, and Mormonism is the fastest-growing faith in the Western Hemisphere. At present in the United States there are more Mormons than Presbyterians or Episcopalians. On the planet as a whole, there are now more Mormons than Jews. Mormonism is considered in some sober academic circles to be well on its way to becoming a major world religion—the first such faith to emerge since Islam. Next

Mormon Fundamentalism;

“They have no connection with us whatever. They don’t belong to the church. There are actually no Mormon Fundamentalists.”

Comparitve to other religionss extremists ?

both LDS and FLDS consider him to be a prophet comparable in stature to Moses and Isaiah.

Joseph smith

unlike their present-day Mormon compatriots, Mormon Fundamentalists passionately believe that Saints have a divine obligation to take multiple wives. Followers of the FLDS faith engage in polygamy, they explain, as a matter of religious duty.

leaders of the mainstream church are extremely discomfited by these legions of polygamous brethren.

So Mormons dont believe in polygamy ?

idiosyncrasy

Define

The religious literature handed out by the earnest young missionaries in Temple Square makes no mention of the fact that Joseph Smith—still the religion’s focal personage—married at least thirty-three women, and probably as many as forty-eight.

Nor does it mention that the youngest of these wives was just fourteen years old when Joseph explained to her that God had commanded that s...

This both titillated and shocked the sensibilities of Victorian-era Americans, who tended to regard polygamy as a brutish practice on a par with slavery.

Utah War,

Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887,

Research

With their feet held fast to the fire, the Saints ultimately had no choice but to renounce polygamy. But even as LDS leaders publicly claimed, in 1890, to have relinquished the practice, they quietly dispatched bands of Mormons to establish polygamous colonies in Mexico and Canada, and some of the highest-ranking LDS authorities secretly continued to take multiple wives and perform plural marriages well into the twentieth century.

emphatically rejected the practice, and actually began urging government agencies to prosecute polygamists.

The LDS Church acquired the trappings of a conventional faith so successfully that it is now widely considered to be the quintessential American religion.

that the LDS leadership abandoned one of the religion’s most crucial theological tenets for the sake of political expediency.

In forsaking Section 132—the sacred principle of plural marriage—the LDS Church has gone badly astray, they warn.

already here

False prophet, antichrist

Canaan Mountain. All but a handful of the town’s residents are Mormon Fundamentalists. They live in this patch of desert in the hope of being left alone to follow the sacred principle of plural marriage without interference from government authorities or the LDS Church.

Colorado City is home to at least three Mormon Fundamentalist sects, including the world’s largest: the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

ninety-two-year-old tax accountant–turned–prophet named Rulon T. Jeffs.* “Uncle Rulon,”

the residents of Colorado City believe that Uncle Rulon is the “one mighty and strong” whose coming was prophesied by Joseph in 1832.

his adoptive grandfather, LeRoy Johnson, was the prophet who immediately preceded Uncle Rulon as the leader of Colorado City.

Members of the religion, he explains, are forbidden to watch television or read magazines or newspapers.

People try to do the right thing, but they’re only human.”

life in Colorado City under Rulon Jeffs bears more than a passing resemblance to life in Kabul under the Taliban.

Should do a taliban study

Uncle Rulon has married an estimated seventy-five women with whom he has fathered at least sixty-five children; several of his wives were given to him in marriage when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties.

Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

Brigham’s warning that for those who commit such unspeakable sins as homosexuality, or having sexual intercourse with a member of the African race, “the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.”

To avoid prosecution, typically men in Colorado City will legally marry only the first of their wives; subsequent wives, although “spiritually married” to their husband by Uncle Rulon, thus remain single mothers in the eyes of the state. This has the added benefit of allowing the enormous families in town to qualify for welfare and other forms of public assistance. 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.

Colorado City has received $1.9 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pave its streets, improve the fire department, and upgrade the water system. Immediately south of the city limits, the federal government built a $2.8 million airport that serves almost no one beyond the fundamentalist community. Thirty-three percent of the town’s residents receive food stamps—compared to the state average of 4.7 percent. Currently the residents of Colorado City receive eight dollars in government services for every dollar they pay in taxes; by comparison, residents in the rest of Mohave County, Arizona, receive just over a dollar in services per tax dollar paid.

“We’re taught that it’s the Lord’s way of manipulating the system to take care of his chosen people.” Fundamentalists call defrauding the government “bleeding the beast” and regard it as a virtuous act. Uncle Rulon and his followers believe that the earth is seven thousand years old and that men have never walked on the moon;

residents of Colorado City are forbidden to have any contact with people outside the UEP—including family members who have left the religion. DeLoy, as it happens, is one such apostate.

If his wife catches him having a conversation with me, she’ll take all the children, and Uncle Rulon will marry her to some other man within hours.

And David will be what the locals call a ‘eunuch’: a man who is allowed to remain in the religion but who has had his family taken from him—like what was supposed to happen to me when I left the Work.”

But in a matter of moments it had become apparent to me that this man wasn’t really communicating with God, or he would have known that what he accused me of was a lie. Right then and there I decided to leave the Work, even though I knew it would mean the end of my life as I knew it.”

within twenty-four hours Uncle Rulon dispatched someone to DeLoy’s house to take away his wives and children. According

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. Uncle

But both of DeLoy’s wives declined to leave him. Uncle Rulon was flabbergasted. “The priesthood means far more than family or anything else,” explains DeLoy. “For my wives to defy Uncle Rulon and stick with me, even though I was going straight to hell—that was unheard of.” DeLoy’s spouses, and all his children except the three oldest, thus became apostates, too.

the faithful are taught that apostates are more wicked than Gentiles, or even mainline Mormons.

Warren Jeffs (Uncle Rulon’s son and heir apparent) emphasized that an apostate “is the most dark person on earth.”

And although DeLoy had built and paid for his home, the UEP owns all the land within the city limits, including the lot on which DeLoy’s house was built.

Here is a community—many of the women, sadly, right along with the men—unalterably dedicated to the wicked theory that every maturing girl child should be forced into the bondage of multiple wifehood with men of all ages for the sole purpose of producing more children to be reared to become more chattels of this totally lawless enterprise.