Mike's Reviews > Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

If you, like me, went to Catholic school as a child, you may remember the story of how God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Issac. But just as soon as Abraham got little Issac up to the top of the mountain and was standing over him with a dagger, God said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "LMFAO... you were really going to do it, weren't you?"

While I admittedly can't remember exactly how my teachers framed this story, I don't think they wanted us to take it as a warning about walking off to a remote location with your father when he alludes cryptically to a "sacrifice" but strangely neglects to slaughter a goat. Nor should you run like hell, I'm pretty sure my teachers would have said, when you ask "father, why haven't we slaughtered a goat?" and your father just disconsolately stares off into the gathering fog without responding. I'm certain, rather, that the moral as my teachers saw it had to do with the supposed virtues of obedience and unquestioning faith.

This is a strange book for a couple of reasons. One is that the thesis, if there is one, is mostly implicit and never quite stated; I can't really tell if this is because Krakauer is not entirely clear about the point he's trying to make, or because he is squeamish about making it baldly. If you go by the precis, this is a true crime story- the unpleasant tale of the Lafferty brothers, Ron and Dan, two Mormon fundamentalists who come to believe that God has commanded them to kill the woman Ron blames for persuading his wife to divorce him (because he was descending into fundamentalism and sort of losing his mind...or was it the other way around?), as well as her infant child.

The question of insanity takes up a long stretch of the Laffertys' trial. Yes, it sounds a bit loony when you claim that God commanded you to kill, but what if you believe that God told you to play a certain lottery number? What about an athlete or politician, interviewed after a victory, who attributes that victory to God's will? Well, a psychologist testifying for the prosecution suggests (maybe having a little joke at the expense of his own profession) that its the recognizably communal nature of the Laffertys' beliefs- i.e., the fact that while their interpretation of Mormon fundamentalism is certainly idiosyncratic, the essential aspects (that God communicates directly with human beings, for example, with no intermediary required) are in line with those taught by the LDS church- that demonstrates their sanity, whereas insanity would be characterized by a complete break with communal reality.

But it's on this point- on the possible culpability of the LDS church for the Laffertys' murders- that Krakauer isn't quite clear, although the context in which he places them (more on this in a second) makes the implicit suggestion. There is an alternative interpretation, though. It seems that it would be much easier to murder someone you hate if you could convince yourself that God were ordering you to do it. Perhaps neither Ron nor Dan could acknowledge to themselves what they wanted to do, and their upbringing offered them the excuse of deifying (and therefore justifying, to themselves) their impulses. Dan seems to have received the communication from God first, obviating Ron's sense of responsibility for what he wanted to do all along. Later, in prison, when Ron hears the voice of God now commanding him to kill his brother, that also makes psychological sense. Dan, after all, seems to have enabled Ron's capacity for violence and landed Ron in jail for life, and on some level Ron understands this; but better to let God take the responsibly for a desire as repellent as murder.

It seems to me, in any case, that if you are going to blame Mormonism for offering the Laffertys a way of deifying their murderous impulses, you also have to live with the same potential in every red-blooded American who watches football on Sundays and believes a touchdown can be divinely ordained, or that the country itself is uniquely blessed.

It isn't shocking to me that Dan, years later, doesn't express remorse or doubt about his actions. It makes sense that the more adversity you face, and the worse your situation in life (life in prison or the possibility of execution at some future date, in Dan's case), the more incentive you have to believe in the fiction you've created for yourself, in which you'd only served as a divine instrument. Otherwise you'd have to acknowledge that...well...

What about Osama's underlings, the holy warriors who sacrificed their lives for Allah by flying jumbo jets into the World Trade Center? Surely their faith and conviction were every bit as powerful as Dan's. Does he think the sincerity of their belief justified the act? And if not, how can Dan know that what he did isn't every bit as misguided as what bin Laden's followers did on September 11, despite the obvious sincerity of his own faith?

As he pauses to consider this possibility, there comes a moment when a shadow of doubt...and then it's gone. "I have to admit, the terrorists were following their prophet", Dan says. "They were willing to do essentially what I did. I see the parallel. But the difference between those guys and me is, they were following a false prophet, and I'm not."

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The aforementioned context in which Krakauer places the murders, by the way, is the violent history of Mormonism and settlement of Utah. Krakauer tells this history in chapters that alternate with the Lafferty case, and I can understand a Mormon reading this and feeling a little annoyed at the implication that Krakauer never quite states. Is bringing children up 'in' Mormonism any more antithetical to critical thought than bringing them up 'in' any other religion? Krakauer never really convinced me. Yes, Joseph Smith was a charlatan and it sounds like maybe a pedophile, but I assume most Mormons experience Mormonism as a cultural identity, and don't spend a lot of time picking apart the falsities of its origins. Having just read Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, I'm reminded of his suggestion that most mass movements are about cohesion, unity, tribalism. The validity or lack thereof of the movement's beliefs, Hoffer says, are often secondary to the sense of community and purpose. In this sense, it's hard for me to see how Mormonism is different from many other religions and/or mass movements. Furthermore, it's not a surprise to read that a religion that migrated to the American west in the 19th century was forged in violence- schisms, crises of succession, distasteful fundamentalist branches, divine visitations, orgies of bloodletting...frankly, it all sounds par for the course.

Perhaps more than any other state within the contiguous 48, Utah has a claim to being a country within a country. I stayed in Salt Lake City for a few days this summer, and at one point while walking downtown I suddenly looked up at a statue of Brigham Young surrounded by pioneers and felt that I should've had a visa or at least my passport on me; these were another people's idols, I was a foreigner (I was even drinking coffee), and I felt I should've been ready to explain my presence in their land. But then again almost half the population of Salt Lake City, Krakauer tells us, is Gentile (in the Mormon sense of the word), and it is apparently thought of by most serious Mormons the way most Louisianans think of New Orleans- morally compromised. Nearby Utah County, on the other hand, which includes Provo and Brigham Young University (BYU), Gary Gilmore country, is "the most Republican county in the most Republican state in the union." The Republican ethos of state's rights resonates strongly with Utah's origins- opposition to the federal government, almost a de facto kingdom until Washington clamped down- and continue to play a strong role in its modern-day politics, considering that Lyndon Johnson, in 1964, was the last Democratic candidate to win Utah's electoral votes. Near the end of the book, Krakauer quotes a sociologist who claims that by the year 2080, given the Mormons' tendency to proselytize, we can estimate that there will be 265 million of them on the planet. The implication being...well, what exactly? Krakauer then quotes Harold Bloom, who believes that within sixty or so years, governing the United States will become "impossible without Mormon cooperation", and that perhaps polygamy, supposedly abolished in the modern LDS church, will become the law of the land. At this point I worried that Krakauer was about to veer into the territory of my conservative Christian cousins, who spent the Obama administration genuinely worried about the imposition of Sharia law; but to his credit, he allows that "if Bloom's forecast is alarming, it also seems far-fetched."

How far away are we really though, you may find yourself wondering while lying awake at night, from that dystopian future? Bloom's prediction could have come true in 2012, when Mitt Romney ran for president, but I would say we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, assuming human civilization lasts that long. A slightly more pressing matter might be governing the US without Russian cooperation. A Mormon candidate ran for president in 2016 as well, with slightly less attention paid to him; this was Evan McMullin, a graduate of BYU and former CIA officer. McMullin ran as an Independent, and was said in the months leading up to the election to be mounting a serious challenge to Donald Trump in solid red Utah. Mormons, or so I read, apparently did not appreciate Trump's brand of uncouth New York straight-talk, and it was suggested that McMullin could win the state's 6 electoral votes (conceivably crucial) or siphon enough support from Trump to hand the state to Hillary Clinton, or even to Gary Johnson. But of course Trump prevailed, both overall and in Utah, and Bloom's chilling prophecy remains unfulfilled...for now. Considering the rise of emboldened alt-right groups across the country since Nov. 8, however, and the general assault on the rule of law, it's hard for me to work up much hysteria at the thought of emboldened Mormons, who, as far as I can tell, would do nothing more than aggressively pick up our cigarette butts from the ground behind us and argue even more persuasively while proselytizing at our doors.