Jon Krakauer. Under The Banner of Heaven:: A Story of Violent Faith

Jon Krakauer.
Under the Banner of Heaven:

A Story of Violent Faith.
New York: Doubleday, 2003.
Reviewed by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp
O n the face of it, Jon Krakauer's latest piece of investigative journalism

is a gripping and gruesome story of the men behind the 1984 mur-
ders of Brenda and Erica Lafferty in American Fork, Utah. Dan and Ron
Lafferty, members of an upstanding Latter-day Saint family in Utah, had
become involved in the world of Mormon fundamentalism. It was through
their participation within this network of polygamous clans led by char-
ismatic leaders that the Lafferty brothers became convinced that plural
marriage should never have been abandoned, and it was also there they
discerned that God had called them to kill the wife and infant daughter of
their youngest brother, Allen.
Krakauer, a writer who has previously narrated accounts of high
adventure on Mount Everest and in the wilderness of Alaska, clearly revels
in tales of people who push the bounds of ordinary human experience.
Accordingly, in this latest book he draws together research on the history
of Mormonism, newspaper accounts of the murders, and interviews with
both the convicted murderers and those connected with them, to render a
dramatic and evocative description of the crime.
Yet as he also explains, his underlying motivation in taking on this
assignment was to better "grasp the nature of religious belief" (333). The
murder itself thus serves as an important culmination to a much larger
story of how fervent religious faith—and specifically, in this case, Mormon
faith—can lead to violent ends. How does religion beget both power and
violence? In turn, how can a pluralistic society that affords freedom to
many religious traditions adjudicate between piety and social pathology?
All of these questions are important and worth asking. The problem is
that Krakauer already has answers to those questions, and his biases get
in the way of exploring the full range of circumstances surrounding the
murders. As a result, ironically, he thereby misses opportunities to probe
more deeply into the complexities of religious faith.
BYU Studies 43, no. 4 (2004) 157

158 ~ BYU Studies
Less than the Lafferty brothers themselves, Mormon fundamentalists

are the primary object of Krakauer's investigation. Traveling to southern
Utah, he interviews inhabitants of the town of Colorado City, a largely
polygamous enclave, exploring their patriarchal and racist politics, their
antipathy toward the U.S. government, and their family practices. He
also visits several disaffected members of these groups who have horrify-
ing stories of abuse to tell. Yet the author slants the picture from the start
through the language he uses to describe them and the implicit associa-
tions he draws. Although they are clearly connected in some instances, he
conflates polygamy with child abuse, welfare fraud, racism, and western
survivalism, as if they were all one and the same thing. Employing words
such as "fire-breathing" (146) and "convoluted" (33) to describe the tem-
peraments and practices of fundamentalist Mormons, Krakauer so exoti-
cizes these inhabitants that it becomes nearly impossible to imagine how
outsiders like the Laffertys might well be drawn to them.
Krakauer also implicates the LDS Church as a primary accessory to
the murders. By crosscutting chapters about the murder with narratives
of early Mormon history and interviews with contemporary Mormons,
he invites the reader to connect the dots that cannot be linked through
the evidence he offers. Moreover, his descriptions of present-day Saints
bear a distinctly condescending tone, from details of the "ersatz fog" at
the Cumorah Pageant in New York State to the RVs driven by pageant
participants (he mentions the "comb-over" sported by one church member
not once, but twice [65-66]). Mormons are "God-besotted" (204) at best,
and Krakauer takes pains to indicate that for all their clean-cut orderli-
ness and everyday American wholesomeness, the LDS approach to life
disguises something darker. "Make no mistake," he insists, "the modern
Mormon Church may now be in the American mainstream, but it usu-
ally hugs the extreme right edge of the flow" (331). The Mormon history
he relates as background to the murders is also a decidedly selective one,
highlighting the most violent episodes as if to suggest the inevitability of
this crime.
There are several major flaws in his logic. First, in linking fundamen-
talist Mormons to the contemporary LDS Church, Krakauer has to down-
play considerable evidence to the contrary. He dismisses out of hand the
persistent claims (on both sides) that the two are only connected through
a history from nearly a century ago and adherence to a common text
(which they read very differently), or the fundamentalist adamancy that
the LDS Church is heretical. He reports this evidence but follows much
of the data with "nevertheless," or "but all the same," (5) as if to dismiss
its relevance to the real truth of the matter. Yet his claims are roughly
Review of Under the Banner of Heaven •—• 159
analogous to arguing that Christians and Jews are really the same because
they both read the Hebrew Scriptures, or that Protestants are in some way
to blame for the sexual scandals in the Roman Catholic Church because
they share a common history (which is considerably bloodier than the
history of the Mormons). Ultimately, all of the associations Krakauer
wants to make are inferential.
Moreover, those associations distract from equally important issues.
By portraying the inevitability of violence within the Mormon tradition,
by juxtaposing a brutal murder to the "peculiar obsession with blood and
vengeance" (277, quoting Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets) he finds in
early Mormon history, Krakauer leaves almost totally unexplored the
larger American tale of religious intolerance and persecution that led to
this violence. Would early Mormons have been similarly driven to vio-
lence without the continuous and systematic harassment they endured
at the hands of the United States government? Indeed, all of the other
features of Mormon faith that he outlines—schismatic tendencies, mys-
tical practices, apocalyptic beliefs, and restorationist leanings—can be
found in full measure in other religious traditions. The major distinction
lies in Mormon persecution at the hands of federal authorities, motivated
by imperial claims on Utah territory—treatment that eventually (although
not initially) led to a deep-seated suspicion of outsiders and a fear of fur-
ther attacks. To see the Mountain Meadows massacre, for example, only as
an episode that "exemplified the fanaticism and concomitant brutality of
[Mormon] culture" (208) is to leave out at least half—and possibly the pre-
cipitating half—of the story. Pointing out this omission does not constitute
apology for any acts of violence by Mormons in the past, but it does force
one to ask whether religion as such is really the primary issue here. As
Krakauer himself briefly mentions (but fails to pursue) at the conclusion
of the book, the "blood atonement" (308) practiced by the U.S. government
in the form of the death penalty may better explain an ideology that sanc-
tions violence than do the actions of nineteenth-century Saints.
What, then, ultimately led to the murder of an innocent woman
and her child? Although Krakauer singles out Mormons for vilification,
members of that church should not feel alone. In his view, the real culprit
is religious faith itself. In the introduction he expresses his conviction
that belief in God is fundamentally irrational and its culminating logic is
violence (xxi). He is fascinated by believers for the same reasons that he
finds mountain climbers or wilderness adventurers intriguing—they are
people who push the envelope. In this case, that is the envelope of rational
behavior. "All religious belief is a function of nonrational faith. And faith,
by its very definition, tends to be impervious to intellectual argument or
160 <~ BYU Studies
academic criticism" (68). For the author, there is an essence of groundless

conviction inherent in religious belief, a "dark side to religious devotion"
that, irrespective of social, political, economic or other factors, leads in
some cases, "predictably," to evil deeds (xxi).
One could surely take issue with this caricature of the anti-intellectual
zealot. But my frustration is that Krakauer's own convictions (his faith in
secularity?) blind him to so many other questions and avenues of explo-
ration. His own faith, a faith in secularity as a tempered antidote to reli-
gious fanaticism (a term that is, for Krakauer, ultimately a redundancy),
obscures a nuanced discussion of the complexities of religious faith and its
relationship to other potential precipitants. This book is well-crafted and
compelling, but it misses the opportunity to investigate the many factors
that undoubtedly motivated the Lafferty brothers. What roles did poverty,
child abuse, family dynamics, drug abuse, or state-sanctioned violence—
all of which were prominent features of their lives—play in shaping their
worldviews? Was religious faith a causal factor or simply an idiom for the
expression of feelings generated by something else? Is it possible that fun-
damentalist Mormons are not guilty of causing this murder but are cul-
pable of tolerating other forms of violence? A singular focus on religious
extremism, and a narrative in which early Mormon history inexorably cul-
minates in murder, has to explain away too many other things. Krakauer
cites Mikal Gilmore, the journalist and younger brother of Gary Gilmore,
who elucidates the violence of his sibling by discussing child abuse, family
history, and many other factors that present a complex portrait of how and
why some people turn to violence. Would that Krakauer could have seen
beyond Mormonism in his own quest for enlightenment.
Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp (who can be reached via [email protected]) is Asso-

ciate Professor of Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. She received a BA from Amherst College, and a PhD from Yale University.
Her expertise is religious history of the American West and African-American
religious history. She is currently the co-director of the History of Christian Prac-
tice Project, a four-year initiative sponsored by the Lilly Endowment, Inc. She has
also served on the editorial boards of Church History and The North Star. In 1999
she gave the Tanner Lecture at the Mormon History Association annual meeting.
She is a member of the United Church of Christ.

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Jon Krakauer.

Under the Banner of Heaven:

Reviewed by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp

O n the face of it, Jon Krakauer's latest piece of investigative journalism

BYU Studies 43, no. 4 (2004) 157

Less than the Lafferty brothers themselves, Mormon fundamentalists

academic criticism" (68). For the author, there is an essence of groundless

Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp (who can be reached via [email protected]) is Asso-

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