Reading Group Guide
The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group's discussion of Jon Krakauer's deeply unsettling new book,
Under the Banner of Heaven.
1. In his prologue, Jon Krakauer writes that the aim of his book is to "cast some light on Lafferty and his ilk," which he concedes is a daunting but useful task for what it may tell us "about the roots of brutality, perhaps, but even more for what might be learned about the nature of faith" [p. XXIII]. What does the book reveal about fanatics such as Ron and Dan Lafferty? What does it reveal about brutality and faith and the connections between them?
2. Why does Krakauer move back and forth between Mormon history and contemporary events? What are the connections between the beliefs and practices of Joseph Smith and his followers in the nineteenth century and the behavior of people like Dan and Ron Lafferty, Brian David Mitchell, and others in the twentieth?
3. Prosecutor David Leavitt argued that "People in the state of Utah simply do not understand, and have not understood for fifty years, the devastating effect that the practice of polygamy has on young girls in our society" [p. 24]. How does polygamy affect young girls? Is it, as Leavitt claims, pedophilia plain and simple?
4. Joseph Smith claimed that the doctrine of polygamy was divinely inspired. What earthly reasons might also explain Smith's attraction to having plural wives?
5. When Krakauer asks Dan Lafferty if he has considered the parallels between himself and Osama bin Laden, Dan asserts that bin Laden is a "child of the Devil" and that the hijackers were "followinga false prophet," whereas he is following a true prophet [p. 321]. No doubt, bin Laden would say much the same of Lafferty. How are Dan Lafferty and Osama bin Laden alike? In what ways are all religious fundamentalists alike?
6. Krakauer asks: "if Ron Lafferty were deemed mentally ill because he obeyed the voice of God, isn't everyone who believes in God and seeks guidance through prayer mentally ill as well?" [p. 297] Given the nature of, and motive for, the murders of Brenda Lafferty and her child, should Ron Lafferty be considered mentally ill? If so, should all others who "talk to God" or receive revelations--a central tenant of Mormonism--also be considered mentally ill? What would the legal ramifications be of such a shift in thought?
7. Krakauer begins part III with a quote from Bertrand Russell, who asserts that "every single bit of progress
in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world" [p. 191]. Is this a fair and accurate statement? What historical examples support it? What improvements in humane feeling and social justice has the Mormon church opposed?
8. How are mainstream and fundamentalist Mormons likely to react to Krakauer's book?
9. Much of Under the Banner of Heaven explores the tensions between freedom of religion and governmental authority. How should these tensions be resolved? How can the state allow religious freedom to those who place obedience to God's will above obedience to secular laws?
10. Joseph Smith called himself "a second Mohammed," and Krakauer quotes George Arbaugh who suggests that Mormonism's "aggressive theocratic claims, political aspirations, and use of force, make it akin to Islam" [p. 102]. What other similarities exist between the Mormon and Islamic faiths?
11. How should Joseph Smith be understood: as a delusional narcissist, a con man, or "an authentic religious genius" [p. 55], as Harold Bloom claims?
12. Krakauer suggests that much of John Wesley Powell's book, The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons, particularly his account of his dealings with the Shivwit Indians, should be regarded with a "healthy dose of skepticism," and that it embellishes and omits important facts [p. 245]. Is Krakauer himself a trustworthy guide to the events he describes in Under the Banner of Heaven? Are his writing and his judgments fair and reasonable? What makes them so?
13. What patterns emerge from looking at Mormon history? What do events like the Mountain Meadow massacre and the violence between Mormons and gentiles in Missouri and Illinois suggest about the nature of Mormonism? Have Mormons been more often the perpetrators or the victims of violence?
14. At the very end of the book, former Mormon fundamentalist DeLoy Bateman says that while the Mormon fundamentalists who live within Colorado City may be happier than those who live outside it, he believes that "some things in life are more important than being happy. Like being free to think for yourself" [p. 334]. Why does Krakauer end the book this way? In what ways are Mormons not free to think for themselves? Is such freedom more important than happiness?
Read an Excerpt
ONE
THE CITY OF THE SAINTS
For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the
Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the
nations that are upon the earth.
Deuteronomy 14:2
And it shall come to pass that I, the Lord God, will send one
mighty and strong, holding the scepter of power in his hand, clothed with light
for a covering, whose mouth shall utter words, eternal words; while his bowels
shall be a fountain of truth, to set in order the house of God.
The Doctrine and Covenants, Section 85
revealed to Joseph Smith on November 27, 1832
Balanced atop the highest spire of the Salt Lake Temple,
gleaming in the Utah sun, a statue of the angel Moroni stands watch over
downtown Salt Lake City with his golden trumpet raised. This massive granite
edifice is the spiritual and temporal nexus of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints (LDS), which presents itself as the world’s only true
religion. Temple Square is to Mormons what the Vatican is to Catholics, or the
Kaaba in Mecca is to Muslims. 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 door to the temple, the 325 voices of the Mormon
Tabernacle Choir swell to fill the tabernacle’s vast interior with the robust,
haunting chords of “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the ensemble’s trademark song:
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord . . .”
To much of the world, this choir and its impeccably rendered
harmonies are emblematic of the Mormons as a people: chaste, optimistic,
outgoing, dutiful. When Dan Lafferty quotes Mormon scripture to justify murder,
the juxtaposition is so incongruous as to seem surreal.
The affairs of Mormondom are directed by a cadre of elderly
white males in dark suits who carry out their holy duties from a
twenty-six-story office tower beside Temple Square.* To a man, the LDS
leadership adamantly insists that Lafferty should under no circumstances be
considered a Mormon. The faith that moved Lafferty to slay his niece and
sister-in-law is a brand of religion known as Mormon Fundamentalism; LDS Church
authorities bristle visibly when Mormons and Mormon Fundamentalists are even
mentioned in the same breath. As Gordon B. Hinckley, the
then-eighty-eight-year-old LDS president and prophet, emphasized during a 1998
television interview on Larry King Live, “They have no connection with us
whatever. They don’t belong to the church. There are actually no Mormon
Fundamentalists.”
Nevertheless, Mormons and those who call themselves Mormon
Fundamentalists (or FLDS) believe in the same holy texts and the same sacred
history. Both believe that Joseph Smith, who founded Mormonism in 1830, played a
vital role in God’s plan for mankind; both LDS and FLDS consider him to be a
prophet comparable in stature to Moses and Isaiah. Mormons and Mormon
Fundamentalists are each convinced that God regards them, and them alone, as his
favored children: “a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.” But if both
proudly refer to themselves as the Lord’s chosen, they diverge on one especially
inflammatory point of religious doctrine: 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.
There are more than thirty thousand FLDS polygamists living
in Canada, Mexico, and throughout the American West. Some experts estimate there
may be as many as one hundred thousand. Even this larger number amounts to less
than 1 percent of the membership in the LDS Church worldwide, but all the same,
leaders of the mainstream church are extremely discomfited by these legions of
polygamous brethren. Mormon authorities treat the fundamentalists as they would
a crazy uncle—they try to keep the “polygs” hidden in the attic, safely out of
sight, but the fundamentalists always seem to be sneaking out to appear in
public at inopportune moments to create unsavory scenes, embarrassing the entire
LDS clan.
The LDS Church happens to be exceedingly prickly about its
short, uncommonly rich history—and no aspect of that history makes the church
more defensive than “plural marriage.” The LDS leadership has worked very hard
to persuade both the modern church membership and the American public that
polygamy was a quaint, long-abandoned idiosyncrasy practiced by a mere handful
of nineteenth-century Mormons. 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 she marry him or face eternal damnation.
Polygamy was, in fact, one of the most sacred credos of
Joseph’s church—a tenet important enough to be canonized for the ages as Section
132 of The Doctrine and Covenants, one of Mormonism’s primary scriptural texts.*
The revered prophet described plural marriage as part of “the most holy and
important doctrine ever revealed to man on earth” and taught that a man needed
at least three wives to attain the “fullness of exaltation” in the afterlife. He
warned that God had explicitly commanded that “all those who have this law
revealed unto them must obey the same . . . and if ye abide not that covenant,
then are ye damned; for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to
enter into my glory.”
Joseph was murdered in Illinois by a mob of Mormon haters in
1844. Brigham Young assumed leadership of the church and led the Saints to the
barren wilds of the Great Basin, where in short order they established a
remarkable empire and unabashedly embraced the covenant of “spiritual wifery.”
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.† In
1856, recognizing the strength of the anti-polygamy vote, Republican candidate
John C. Frémont ran for president on a platform that pledged to “prohibit in the
territories those twin relics of barbarism—Polygamy and Slavery.” Frémont lost
the election, but a year later the man who did win, 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. An escalating sequence of judicial and
legislative challenges to polygamy ensued, culminating in the Edmunds-Tucker Act
of 1887, which disincorporated the LDS Church and forfeited to the federal
government all church property worth more than $50,000. 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.
Although LDS leaders were initially loath to abandon plural
marriage, eventually they adopted a more pragmatic approach to American
politics, emphatically rejected the practice, and actually began urging
government agencies to prosecute polygamists. It was this single change in
ecclesiastical policy, more than anything else, that transformed the LDS Church
into its astonishingly successful present-day iteration. Having jettisoned
polygamy, Mormons gradually ceased to be regarded as a crackpot sect. The LDS
Church acquired the trappings of a conventional faith so successfully that it is
now widely considered to be the quintessential American religion.
Mormon Fundamentalists, however, believe that acceptance into
the American mainstream came at way too high a price. They contend that the
Mormon leaders made an unforgivable compromise by capitulating to the U.S.
government on polygamy over a century ago. They insist that the church sold them
out—that the LDS leadership abandoned one of the religion’s most crucial
theological tenets for the sake of political expediency. These present-day
polygamists therefore consider themselves to be the keepers of the flame—the
only true and righteous Mormons. In forsaking Section 132—the sacred principle
of plural marriage—the LDS Church has gone badly astray, they warn.
Fundamentalist prophets bellow from their pulpits that the modern church has
become “the wickedest whore of all the earth.”
Mormon
Fundamentalists probably cite Section 132 of The Doctrine and Covenants more
than any other piece of LDS scripture. Their second-most-popular citation is
likely Section 85, in which it was revealed to Joseph that “I, the Lord God,
will send one mighty and strong . . . to set in order the house of God.” Many
fundamentalists are convinced that the one mighty and strong is already here on
earth among them, “holding the scepter of power in his hand,” and that very soon
now he will lead the Mormon Church back onto the right path and restore Joseph’s
“most holy and important doctrine.”
loading...