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by Jon Krakauer Doubleday, 2003 372 pp.; $26 |
In the acknowledgements of Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer admits that he started out to write a weightier study, History and Belief. He intended to probe the question, "How does a critical mind reconcile scientific and historical truth with religious doctrine?" Fortunately Krakauer veered away from those ambitious plans, and instead wrote an engaging page-turner about a vicious double murder.
As the author of the best-selling Eiger Dreams, Into the Wild, and Into Thin Air, Krakauer owns the journalistic turf of extreme mountaineering. Now he adds extreme religion to his dossier, combining the astonishing stories of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and their followers with an appalling modern coterie of Mormon fundamentalist nut cases. He tells a good story and has produced a very engaging book.
Unfortunately, Krakauer could not quite get rid of that first book. "Faith," he writes in his prologue, "is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion." His enthusiasm for such simplifications never wanes. He appears to believe that because a couple of unemployed excommunicated Mormon misfits came to believe that God told them to murder their sister-in-law and her infant daughter, it follows that everyone who believes that God communicates with human beings is at risk to do the same thing.
There were six Lafferty boys. Raised as strict Mormons—members, that is, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—they were drawn toward an outcast splinter group, the so-called Mormon fundamentalists or FLDS. They wanted to practice polygamy, as they believed God had commanded his people to do. (The LDS church, under heavy federal pressure, gave up polygamy in the late 19th century; the flds, whose numbers are estimated at anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000, regard polygamy as not merely acceptable but obligatory.)
Of all the Lafferty wives, only Brenda had the strength to stand up to her husband's demands. She had been to college and knew Mormon Scripture well enough to argue it. More, she had confidence in her own judgment. When oldest brother Ron began threatening to marry his daughters off as plural wives, Brenda encouraged his wife to divorce him. After the divorce went through, Ron fell into a tailspin, traveling back and forth across the West, smoking marijuana, fantasizing revenge.
The brothers had joined a renegade group called The School of the Prophets, led by a self-styled prophet who called himself Onias. From Onias Ron learned how to hear from God by sitting at a computer keyboard and typing whatever letters came to him.
About a month after Ron received his first message, he recorded this prophecy: Thus Saith the lord unto My servants the Prophets. It is My will and commandment that ye remove the following individuals in order that My work might go forward. For they have truly become obstacles in My path and I will not allow My work to be stopped. First thy brother's wife Brenda and her baby. … When Ron shared the prophecy with others in the School of the Prophets, some were alarmed, but nobody tried to stop him by alerting authorities or warning Brenda.
On July 24, 1984, Dan and Ron Lambert murdered Brenda and her infant daughter Erica. One of the brothers, probably Dan, cut their throats with a boning knife after telling the 15-month-old, "I'm not sure what this is all about, but apparently it is God's will that you leave this world."
Side by side with this blood-curdling tale, Krakauer relates the history of Mormonism. (While much of the story is well-documented, the reader would be wise to keep in mind the origin of Krakauer's project: as a chronicler of Mormon history, he starts with an agenda.) He romps through the discovery of ancient golden tablets in upstate New York, warfare with the Gentiles in Missouri, Joseph Smith's secret revelation and practice of polygamy, his murder in Illinois, and Brigham Young's fearless mass movement to untamed Utah. In Utah, Krakauer pays particular attention to the massacre of a Gentile wagon train at Mountain Meadow.
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