Talk to Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith like its author wrote you back.
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Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, in detail
Under the Banner of Heaven opens with a specific crime: in 1984, Ron and Dan Lafferty — members of a fundamentalist Mormon splinter group — murdered their sister-in-law Brenda and her infant daughter, acting on a "revelation" they believed came directly from God. Krakauer uses this crime as a lens to examine both the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the broader question of what happens when religious conviction becomes absolute and immune to outside scrutiny.
The book moves between two timelines. One follows the Lafferty brothers from their conversion to fundamentalism through their arrest and trial. The other traces the history of Mormonism from Joseph Smith's founding visions through the practice of polygamy, the church's violent confrontations with the federal government, and the ongoing existence of fundamentalist splinter groups that the mainstream LDS church disavows. Krakauer is a thorough researcher and the historical sections are among the strongest in his work — detailed, largely fair to his sources, willing to let the complexity of Mormon history speak for itself.
The book drew angry responses from the LDS church and from Mormon scholars when it was published. Critics argued that Krakauer conflates mainstream Mormonism with its extremist offshoots, and that presenting the founding events of the church through a lens of skepticism is a form of anti-Mormon bias. Those criticisms have merit. Krakauer's framing consistently returns to questions about Joseph Smith's character and the historicity of his revelations in ways that a comparable treatment of other traditions might not. Readers should hold that limitation in mind while reading.
What the book does well is harder to dismiss: it places the Lafferty murders in a specific theological and sociological context, makes the psychology of fundamentalist violence legible without excusing it, and asks how any society balances religious freedom against the protection of the people — especially women and children — who live inside closed religious communities. Those questions remain live, and the book asks them with Krakauer's characteristic narrative force.
The big ideas
- 1.
Ron and Dan Lafferty committed the 1984 murders of Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter after Ron received what he called a revelation commanding it. The murders are central to the book's argument about the relationship between absolute faith and violence.
- 2.
Fundamentalist Mormon splinter groups practicing polygamy and claiming direct divine revelation have existed since Brigham Young's era. The mainstream LDS church's disavowal of them does not make them theologically incoherent on their own terms.
- 3.
Joseph Smith's founding of Mormonism — the revelations, the golden plates, the polygamy — is treated by Krakauer as historically problematic. Mormon scholars dispute this reading, and the book's reliability is weakest where it relies on the most skeptical sources.
