Under the Banner of Heaven

[osprey_archer]

Daylight savings time has begun, or ended, or something. At any rate I had an extra hour lying around and I used it catching up on The Three Musketeers, although I think I am still a little bit behind, alas. The musketeers have just lost all the beautiful horses that they gained.

Slightly less recently, I finished Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. Apparently the Mormon Church did not like this book, and honestly I can see why. I don't think Krakauer actually intended to argue that Mormonism is inherently violent, but the book is replete with examples of Mormons doing horrible things, intercutting between examples from today and examples from the early days of Mormonism.

So you have the Mountain Meadows massacre (when the Mormons murdered a wagon train and tried to blame it entirely on the Paiute Indians they paid to help them) and the murder of Brenda Lafferty and her baby daughter by her fundamentalist brothers-in-law, or Joseph Smith informing young women that God has told him that they will be damned if they don't become his brides and modern-day fundamentalists marrying their fourteen-year-old stepdaughters - and the overall effect is to suggest an evolution from one to the other (with modern-day mainstream Mormonism as a sort of weird off-shoot, I guess).

And there's no counterweight of normal non-horrible Mormons. The general effect is to suggest that Mormonism just is a violent faith, flat out. Or at least that Mormon fundamentalism is, which may be fair, but I guess if that's your basic thesis then I want the whole book to be devoted to exploring the world of Mormon fundamentalism today, instead of intercutting with Mormon history and the murder of Brenda Lafferty (which was clearly influenced by Mormon fundamentalism - but was just as clearly outside of the Mormon fundamentalist mainstream, insofar as that exists).

As it is, it's clear that this is not a complete overview, and I did wonder if the fundamentalist sects Krakauer was writing about were representative. Did the Lafferty brothers end up getting involved with all the most unpleasant Mormon fundamentalist groups? Or do most Mormon fundamentalists think marrying your fourteen-year-old stepdaughter is A-OK?

Comments

[asakiyume]

I wonder what Krakauer thought he was doing. Some people think all organized religions are bullshit and are kind of colorblind to distinctions ... It would be like someone opposed to the medical establishment writing about the horrors that occur when you get in the clutches of Big Medicine, only their examples are drawn from discredited medical practices of the past and the behavior of drug addicts. Like... okay, but....

[osprey_archer]

His main focus is on Mormon fundamentalism, which is disconnected enough from the main church that he may have thought that was enough to make it clear that he wasn't condemning all Mormons? Or maybe he did want to condemn all Mormons, but sneaky-like, who knows.

[isis]

Well, FLDS is really quite different from mainstream LDS, and I think he is really only talking about the former.

There is a documentary "Banking on Heaven" which I recommend, and also a book, not the best written but still fascinating, called Escape by Carolyn Jessop, a memoir of her experiences growing up in and ultimately leaving the FLDS.

(I live not far from the FLDS compound at Hilldale/Colorado City - I mean, not close by, but I've driven through there on multiple occasions - so this all fascinates me. I know quite a few mainstream Mormons, all of whom are fairly o.O at the FLDS.)

[sovay]

I know quite a few mainstream Mormons, all of whom are fairly o.O at the FLDS.

Seconding this.

[ivy]

Several of my exes are ex-Mormons. (Not because of me! But I do seem to have a type, heh.) To a person they are all horrified when mainstream Mormonism is equated with their fundamentalists, so at least within the culture there's a very strong "we are Not Like That". From the outside, though, there are fewer differences than there seem to be from the inside. One of my ex-girlfriends was married on her 18th birthday to a man who was 40, because God wanted that for her. She doesn't share my horror at that. (They'd divorced by the time she and I met -- surprise surprise, he turned out to be abusive and she had to flee with her babies for her life. Gah.) I don't think that's representative of All Mormonism or anything, but it doesn't seem as creepy to them as it does to me.

[osprey_archer]

I wonder if there is a bit of a "geek social hierarchy" thing going on here. Within the community, the difference between the Trekkies and the furries may seem huge, but to outsiders everyone inside is just a geek. Or a Mormon, as the case may be.

[sartorias]

Thirding this.

[osprey_archer]

Netflix doesn't have Banking on Heaven. :( I'll have to see if I can get it through interlibrary loan.

[isis]

Yeah, I saw it at a film festival, so it's a pretty niche movie.

[sovay]

Or do most Mormon fundamentalists think marrying your fourteen-year-old stepdaughter is A-OK?

I have not read Under the Banner of Heaven, so if necessary ignore this comment as irrelevant. When Krakauer talks about "Mormon fundamentalists," does he mean it in the generic sense, as I might refer to Christian fundamentalists in various denominations, or is he referring specifically to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints vs. the original Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? If the latter, the FLDS Church—which the LDS Church does not consider to be Mormon, having excommunicated its founders in the 1920's when they split over the continuing practice of polygyny—does in fact have a high incidence of really fucked-up behaviors exploiting polygynous marriages which are not shared by the LDS Church. They keep turning up in the news for child abuse, for trafficking, for "lost boys." This does not happen with all splinter Mormon groups (about whom I admit I know much less, although I believe there are a couple of socially liberal branches, because people are complicated), but if the Laffertys belonged to a sect that was at all FLDS-adjacent, it does increase the chances of their behavior being seen as acceptable by the immediate community.

[osprey_archer]

I must admit I got a bit confused in the welter of names and groups that the Laffertys were associated with - they went on a sort of fundamentalist Mormon splinter group road trip before the murder, and the impression I got was that these guys all knew of each other and were sort of loosely affiliated but at the same time doing their own thing in their own geographically isolated fundamentalist hamlets. The ones who weren't officially FLDS certainly seemed to be fellow travelers.

The Laffertys were most closely involved with a group that set up a school to teach people how to receive messages from God, which is how the eldest brother received a commandment from God to kill his sister-in-law Brenda Lafferty, whom he blamed for the failure of his own marriage. Other group members knew about it and one of them actually wrote up an affidavit about it to absolve himself of responsibility and then... just stuck it in drawer. Dude! No! That does not absolve you of moral responsibility!

This group was also involved in mining operation called the Dream Mine, which has not actually produced any ore, but is supposed to start churning out gold when the apocalypse is nigh.

[sovay]

This group was also involved in mining operation called the Dream Mine, which has not actually produced any ore, but is supposed to start churning out gold when the apocalypse is nigh.

Unless there's capitalism in the post-apocalypse, that seems extremely unhelpful to me.

[osprey_archer]

They clearly never heard the song about how "a pound of bread will buy a bag of gold" after the Rapture.

Actually, they may never have heard that song. That's from a completely different branch of Christianity. (And anyway it's probably easier to bilk money out of people by getting them to invest in a Dream Mine rather than a survivalist farm.)

[staranise]

my biggest thought coming away from that book is that Mormon feminists have got a hard row to hoe, in terms of reconciling their religion and their feminism.

[osprey_archer]

Absolutely yes. The women's movement and Mormonism were both growing around the same time, and I think there's an extent to which Mormonism reacted to the women's movement as it grew - so there's a lot of antifeminism woven into the foundation in a way that is very explicit and doesn't offer much wiggle room.

[staranise]

My view is partly affected by having read Teresa Nielsen Hayden's essay about her excommunication, but it's old news; I really wonder what Mormon feminists are up to now.

[osprey_archer]

That is a fascinating essay. Wow. There's something comical yet alarming about the way that they tell her they're so pleased to meet her right before her excommunication. Minnesota Nice has nothing on Mormon Nice, I guess.