By Garrick Hoffman

Jon Krakauer earned himself a reputation in the wake of his success with his adventure-themed nonfiction novels Into The Wild and Into Thin Air, both published in the late ‘90s. In 2003, however, he decided to take a different route for his novel Under The Banner of Heaven, a book exploring Mormonism and its fundamentalist spawn.
The story traces the very short Mormon history, from the foundations of Mormonism, through its turbulence in the late 19th century, and all the way to the early 21st century. Juxtaposed to the whole story of the FLDS church (Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints) is the story of the Lafferty brothers, Dan and Ron, who after receiving a revelation from God went on to murder their younger brother Allen’s 24-year old wife and their infant daughter.

To offer a brief history, Mormonism began under the labors of Joseph Smith, the son a zealot mother. He initially practiced in necromancy and scrying in his late teens. Eventually, led by an angel named Moroni, he unearthed gold plates from a hill in Manchester, New York, where he lived. The plates purportedly contained scripture, which he transcribed into English with the help of his young wife Emma, who Joseph essentially forced into marriage, believing doing so was part of a divine prophecy. He achieved this by placing the plates in a hat, submerging his face into it, and tediously transmitting every word to Emma, who served as his scribe. Long story made short, these transcriptions were meticulously organized and eventually published into the renown Book of Mormon. A week after its publication, on April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith officially established the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The rest is history.

Mormons throughout history have condemned its fundamentalist doppelganger. Mormon Fundamentalists embrace absolute adherence to their prophets, the virtue that God’s word vanquishes that of the laws of man – which include federal and state laws as well as the Constitution – and perhaps most importantly, polygamy, which is considered the quintessential divine tenet.

Also at the heart of Mormon Fundamentalism is the principle of procreation. Those who embrace this seek to have as many children as possible. Because of this, many Mormons have children in numbers ranging anywhere from ten to somewhere in the hundreds. You might ask how one financially sustains this many children. However, many of the Mormons, despite harboring fervent reproach for the government, nonetheless receive considerable government assistance for sustaining these lifestyles. They dub this “bleeding the beast.”

This type of fundamentalism, at a relationship level, is also incredibly bizarre and incestuous. Family members marry other family members in the name of polygamy, and many parents feel perfectly content with their 13-year-old daughters marrying men in their fifties or older. Girls have also been raped, abducted, and conditioned to be obedient and docile, their existences entirely resting not on individualism but on slavery to their husbands. Because these girls are indoctrinated at such a young age, rarely do they bat an eye at the reality around them, instead blindly submitting to the demands of their parents and prophets.

Some – if not most or all – Mormons in these communities are resolutely banished from reading any literature except for that of Mormonism. Massacres have been waged, such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which Mormon Fundamentalists orchestrated and participated in the brutish, remorseless slaughter of 150 blameless men, women, and children. The more vindictive Mormons, recognizing ostensible misdeeds committed by Gentiles (or non-believers) as well as anyone who obstructs or opposes God’s purpose, seek “blood atonement” – the spilling of a sinner’s blood to atone for their sins. The Lafferty brothers fall into this category.

As if this isn’t enough, Mormon history consists of intense racism and homosexual bigotry. They essentially believed (and perhaps continue to) that the blacks and homosexuals were utterly vile, inhuman creatures who serve as emissaries for Satan. In the 1970s, impassioned upheaval arose from the fundamentalists when the prophet at the time sought to allow blacks into the Church.

Traveling through the book, one might find themselves disgusted, infuriated, and entertained. Disgusted by the egregious treatment and objectivity of women (especially very young women) and infuriated by what fundamentalist Mormon zeal has perpetuated (and likely continues to). But some humor can be found in a number of things: the preposterousness that is rife in Mormonism, and Krakauer’s undisguised cynicism of both its origins as well as some of its members’ questionable beliefs.
DeLoy Bateman, a former Mormon Fundamentalist who apostatized himself from the Church, is quoted near the end of the book: “I think people within the religion…are much happier, on the whole, than people outside. But some things in life are more important than being happy. Like being free to think for yourself.”