BOOK REVIEW: Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer

I was so excited to have found this book at my local used book store. I'd previously read Krakauer's "Into the Wild" and it was just such an enthralling and shocking read that it affected me for a good two weeks.

Long story short -  Fundamentalist Mormon brothers commit a double murder 'in the name of God' and still to this day defends his/their revelation and reasoning. Krakauer delves wildly into the beginning and inner workings of Mormonism and the sects that have come from it.

GOSH. Let me just say, this was really something to dive into. On the surface, if someone asked me about what I knew about Mormons, I'd make the usual jokes about polygamy and that "Sister Wives" show, but I honestly knew so little about the religion itself that I wouldn't have known where to start.

Some quick but dense history: As Krakauer explains, Mormonism came to be in 1800's New England, when a man named Joseph Smith claims to have had a revelation by God telling him to find these sacred scripts. These 'golden' pages later translated into what is now The Book of Mormon. The religion has a 'one mighty and strong' prophet who runs the entirety of the church with apostle-like minions, and only he may receive direct 'revelations' from God. These new and continuous revelations get told unto the followers and they are forced by fear of being damned to follow them.

The Fundamentalist Mormons come to be when one prophet in the early 1900's has the 'revelation' that one of Joseph's main prophecies, more commonly known as the plural marriage law, should be denounced and that the Church of Latter Day Saints will no longer participate in such an act. Those who disagreed broke from the main church and formed different sects, fulfilling the 'true' prophecies in which God commanded. These sects were wildly extreme and received revelations of their own, believing they were the 'one mighty and strong'. One such revelation came to a man named Dan Lafferty, of what he called the 'removal revelation,' which was to kill his brother's young wife and 15 month old daughter (as well as two others but they never were murdered) in the name of God. He succeeded in the murders, attempted to flee and was later found and arrested and sentenced to death (although at the time of the book's publishing he was still alive and in a maximum security prison.)

LET ME JUST SAY - this is a lot to take in, and if I've lost you with that summary, I don't blame you. The book was 100 times as precise, detailed and explanatory then that, but oh so interesting.
As stated in my 'currently reading' blip while I was halfway through the book, I am in no way anti-religion or atheist for that matter, I just find religion and the facts/theories/explanations and contradictories of it to be extremely interesting and I am always looking for more.

I think personally I went through about five or six different viewpoints on whether people blindly following religious 'laws' was the culmination of years of, not necessarily brainwashing, but growing up to have weak minds. They spend years being taught only one way of thinking, and aren't exposed to anything else, and therefore have no free thinking of their own. The majority of followers of most religions do usually have their own thoughts and preferences in terms of what they are following. Many people I know personally are so intelligent in both their faith and science/math etc. They make great decisions after not only talking with God but also looking into the common sense and morality of the issue at hand.

This eventually gets touched on near the end of the book, where a large portion of Ron Lafferty's (Dan's older brother, who assisted in the murders) testimony is quoted. The defense tries to lessen his charge to manslaughter rather than first degree murder, on the basis of him being mentally unstable.
But is religious thinking considered a mental illness? -- this was my favorite chapter by far. The argument between mental instability and following religious terms by an unseen God relies on whether the commands they are receiving from God or the religious institution are rational. Technically and factually, NO. From a scientific and medical standpoint, it is not rational thinking to believe that, good OR bad morally, something unseen and unheard is telling you something should happen based on a spiritual feeling. However, the majority of the world belongs to one religion or another, so teetering on the mental illness tightrope means that potentially you could be arguing that the majority of the world has a mental illness. Crazy right? Obviously no one thinks that, but it is easy to peg that condition on someone who commits a murder because "God told them to," just because another person, say a Christian, wouldn't do that. Good versus evil? One religion is better morally than another? But they did it in the name of their God right? SO interesting.

He didn't get the insanity plea and was charged with murder, but without psychologists proving otherwise, I feel like it could be a slippery slope of opinion depending on how a jury is stacked. I would be so conflicted. I mean he killed someone, and God told him to. Instantly I think 'that person is crazy,' but with that way of thinking I would have to say some of my friends and family are also crazy because they also believe and do things for God. See? Slippery slope!

I'm rambling. This stuff is so interesting to me and I could probably talk for hours about the information. I implore you, if these things interest you as well, to get this and read it. It really opened my eyes to an entire community that I knew so little about. I used to not read a ton of nonfiction, and a certain friend of mine really put the pressure on for me to let fiction go a bit and take the plunge, and I'm loving it!

❤ | C