Under the Banner of Heaven

I initially read Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith when it first came out six or seven years ago. That was before several recent high profile polygamy cases and the HBO series “Big Love”. These recent events prompted me to read it again. I also had a friend tell me that he was interested in hearing what I thought of the book. I couldn’t find my original review so I’ll do my best to cover all those details as well as post some of my impressions from reading it the second time.
Krakauer has a very easy to read style. His books feel like the in depth investigative reports that they are. All of them have a similar approach that works very well. He starts with quick overview of what hit the news. Then he goes backwards as far as he has to on each line to explain why the events unfolded as they did. I’m currently reading Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman. He’s using this same format to tell Pat’s story and it’s working very well.
In Under the Banner of Heaven the news story was the savage 1984 murders of Brenda Lafferty and her daughter, Erica by her two brothers-in-law Dan and Ron Lafferty. The Lafferty brothers were members of a polygamist sect of the LDS church. The details of the murders were very tough to read. But had Krakauer stopped with the events of that year it would have been very incomplete. It was important to explain what lead up to the murders and what caused these murders to believe that they had the right and even the duty to murder innocent family members.
To get those answers Krakauer had to go back to the early 1800s and pull a lot of skeletons out of a lot of closets. This is the primary section that most Mormon readers will be uncomfortable with. The history of Joseph Smith is presented based on the contemporary evidence. Most LDS readers would not be familiar with this since they are likely used to the whitewashed “official” versions of the history of the early church. That being said I did not think that one sentence of the history was mean spirited or could honestly be classified as persecution. But if you’re the type that refuses to accept any imperfections in the people you have chosen to follow you might want to stay clear.
The simple truth is that polygamy would not exist to anywhere near the extent that it does in the United States if it were not for the actions of one man, Joseph Smith. Giving an accurate account of the Lafferty murders without mentioning Joseph Smith would be like writing a book about September 11th, 2001 that did not mention Islam. Like it or not, the LDS Church will be forever linked to these polygamist sects who, incidentally, all believe that it is the Salt Lake church that has gone astray and they are preserving the true teachings of Joseph Smith.
I’ve detailed some of my own opinions on polygamy previously on this blog and explained how it’s a mathematical recipe for child abuse. And here is a link to some of my Great-Grandfather's journals. He grew up in a home that still practiced polygamy long after the 1890 declaration by the church stating that it was a forbidden practice. One of the next books I have on my reading list is Lost Boy. Victoria just finished reading it and from her report it seems to validate my mathematical theory.
In my humble opinion Under the Banner of Heaven should be read by every Latter Day-Saint. The practice of polygamy never should have been officially sanctioned by the church and I believe that Salt Lake should take much more drastic measures to apologize, make amends and distance themselves from this evil practice. Simply saying “Yeah but that’s in the past. We don’t do that anymore.” is seriously inadequate.

The Wordy Shipmates

So if you’re looking for a straightforward history that conforms neatly to the Thanksgiving story as depicted by your local elementary school kindergarten program then you might want to stay away from The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell . It’s a great book, but I’m just gonna warn you up front that it’ll upset your apple cart if you want to think of the Indians as the savages who didn’t deserve this country and you see Columbus and the pilgrims as the ones who brought civility to this land.

More than just a history Vowell frequently compares and contrasts the actions and beliefs of these early settlers to modern politics. She rarely misses an opportunity to tell how modern perceptions are wrong and even throws in quite a few digs at politicians who attempt to distort the pilgrim’s real goals and agendas. This was actually my favorite part of the book.

I found this book very eye opening. Too much of our early history has been romanticized and pretty much turned into a sacred American mythology. This book took away the nonsense and showed a much more believable account of history. Much like as in Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me it was refreshing to see our history displayed warts and all.

I listened to this book on CD. It’s narrated by the author. Sarah Vowell has a very funny voice. She played the voice of Violet Parr in The Incredibles. Many times while listening to this she made me giggle, not just because of the words, but by the funny way that she delivered them. There is also a small cast of male voices that are used to narrate quotes from male sources. Fans of The Daily Show will recognize several of them. They definitely added to the atmosphere of the CD.

One of my Favorite MLK Jr. Quotes

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Polygamy

With all the publicity of the Warren Jeffs trial and with the new season of "Big Love" on TV I've been getting a few questions from friends and coworkers about my opinions and thoughts on polygamy. This has been an awkward subject for me and lately I've been very surprised by the sympathetic reactions I have heard from LDS friends and family members. It is not my intent to offend or hurt anyone. However I feel morally obliged to separate myself in every possible way from what I believe to be an evil practice.
I do not believe that polygamy was ever sanctioned by God. Seeing all the suffering and sorrow that has been caused by this single revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants I simply cannot accept that it came from God. It goes directly against other modern scripture. I have blogged in the past about the "fruits test". Polygamy fails this test time and time again.
Polygamy is a mathematical recipe for child abuse. When I've attempted to explain this to folks in the past it has worked best to give a simple analogy. Suppose you have a high school with a 50/50 mix of boys and girls in each grade. Now it comes time for the senior prom. If each boy can ask one girl to the prom then every senior, boy and girl will be able to attend the prom. Simple enough.
Now let's bring "plural dating" into the picture. Suppose each senior boy could ask two girls to the prom. Soon every senior girl would be asked and then the senior boys would have to start asking junior girls in order to get both of their dates.
Now let's make this analogy even closer to the real doctrine of the early LDS and the current FLDS sects.
What would happen if each of these senior boys was required to have at least three dates to the prom in order to receive their diploma? Well pretty soon every senior, junior and now sophomore girl would have a date to the prom.
Now what if we opened up this prom to the entire high school student body? Where would they go to find all the required dates? If every high school boy was indeed required to have three dates then every girl from senior down to first grade would have a date.
Creepy isn't it.
My analogy holds true when extrapolated out to real polygamist communities. In most societies the age of the wife is slightly lower than the age of the husband. Don't know why this is considering women out live men but it seems to be a good rule of thumb. I don't have any hard facts to back this up but I'd be willing to bet that in polygamist communities the average age of the husband is pretty close to the combined ages of all of his wives. If at first this statistic doesn't seem to work out please don't forget to include the men who have zero wives into you calculations. Once you've married off all the 12 and 13 year olds to older men who already have two other wives who is left for the rest of the men to marry? Nobody. In fact this is becoming a big issue as so called lost boys are being ostracized from their communities for no other reason than they are in competition for the brides.
When it first came out, I read Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. This is probably the best and most thorough book I have ever read about the many polygamist off-shoots of the LDS church. Krakauer details the violence and abuse that permeates these sects. Krakauer is fair in his depictions of current LDS positions but many LDS members felt he did not distance the behavior of the lunatic fringe from the LDS church. I think he did as best as he could under the circumstances. Let's face it; polygamy would not exist in its current form in the United States if it were not for the official actions of the LDS church in the 1800s and early 1900s. Any book on polygamy that did not detail this history would be intellectually dishonest. The book is by no means light reading. It will and should scare you a little. Introspection is a good thing to do but it's never comfortable or easy.
I've read my great-grandfathers histories. He tells of how hard it was to be child in a polygamist marriage. I've had family members long for the Millennium to come so we could "start practicing the gospel the way we're supposed to be.” referring to polygamy. I've even had an unmarried female friend of the family tell me that in the Celestial kingdom she plans on being "sealed" to my father and she was looking forward to being my other mother. I just have such a hard time making this doctrine line up with other much more important doctrines that the only way I can make peace with it is to reject it entirely. It is wrong and it always has been.
The official LDS position is simply that it is not a doctrine of the LDS church and we excommunicate members who engage in it. It would be nice to hear a much more condemning and definite statement against this evil. The current attitude in practice is nothing more than "Yeah, but we don't do that any more. Can we talk about something else?"
Wouldn't it be nice to hear something like this from the pulpit:
"The taking in marriage of more than one wife is immoral and an insult to the institution of the family. In the past the LDS church has sanctioned and performed these marriages as if they were doctrine. This evil practice made it into our doctrine only by the selfish desires of early church leaders who used scripture and supposed revelations to justify their selfish carnal desires. To this we simply and sincerely say that we are profoundly sorry. With his first step of the repentance process we now look to do everything in our power to right the wrongs that we have caused. Nothing can atone for the many decades of sadness inflicted on women and children involved in these marriages. However, we can and will take a more active role in preventing the spread of this counter-doctrinal behavior. We also invite those who have left the church or may be struggling with their testimony because of this issue to please come back to the fold. You were right and we we're wrong. We need your love and strength to help us move forward and heal."


"6 Yea, it grieveth my soul and causeth me to shrink with shame before the presence of my Maker, that I must testify unto you concerning the wickedness of your hearts.
7 And also it grieveth me that I must use so much aboldness of speech concerning you, before your wives and your children, many of whose feelings are exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate before God, which thing is pleasing unto God;" Jacob 2: 6-7

Thy Kingdom Come

When I’m reading a book the author will frequently reference another book. Whether they just refer to the book, take quotes from it, or unapologetically have a section titled “books that I recommend” one way or another they peak my interest in reading another book while I am reading theirs. Sometimes, friends and family members will recommend books that sound similar to others that I have read. Occasionally, my attention is brought to certain book as a direct challenge to my current beliefs. A few time I’ve had books recommended as responses to blog posting of other books that I’ve read. After this new book is brought to my attention my typical response is to log onto my local library website and reserve it. Frequently I also reserve just about everything else by the same author. By the time the book arrives at the library and I get my email that it’s there I have forgotten which of the methods above prompted me to read it in the first place. Such is the case with the book I read yesterday and this morning.
I had a different than normal day at work. I was asked to meet a technician out at a subdivision and be available in case he had any concerns in building one of my jobs. Much if this time just involved me waiting in my truck and answering the occasional question. We also deviated from our normal Friday routine of trucking the kids over to Granny’s to spend the night. All of this allowed for more time to just sit back and relax with a good book.
I’m not sure how I found this book but I’m glad I did. The book is Thy Kingdom Come an Evangelical’s Lament How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America by Randal Balmer.
Balmer is an Evangelical Christian and a contributing Editor of Christianity Today. He has found a very comfortable balance of politics, religion, and science. I agree with most of his opinions about where the compromise should be made if there is a conflict among the three. I have a few differences with him in the area of public education but nothing that would stop us from having a very cordial discussion on the topic. Outside of that most of his opinions mirror my own, although Blamer expresses them far more eloquently than I could hope to do.
If for no other reason this book is worth the read for the detailed history of religion and politics in the new world. The chapter titled Where Have All the Baptists Gone details the formation of the religion by John Williams and follows it right up to the present, pointing out how dissimilar and directly contradictory they two seem.
Other chapters go on to detail the many positons taken by the religious right and how they seem to go against the position that you’d expect from Biblical teachings. Abortion, the environment, divorce homosexuality, capital punishment, torture etc, Balmer explains the Religious Right’s position, and hypocrisy, on all of these issues and more.
The best part of this book is not the specific accusations, but the perspective. Unlike other books Balmer is not an outsider with a grudge against a group that he in no longer affiliated. He is deeply involved in the Evangelical movement and is doing his best to call them to repentance and get them back on a course that he feels is much closer to the true teaching of the gospel. Unlike Strobel’s book Balmer does not attempt to make his points through statistics or through science. His most frequent source used to criticize the movement is the New Testament and the teaching of Jesus Christ. I like his strategy and Blamer uses it as skillfully as I would expect from a Yale Divinity School professor.
As he points out in the first paragraphs of his conclusion, most of those who really need to listen to and respond to this book will likely resort to claims that Balmer is not really a Christian and attempt to “kick him out of the club”, so to speak. This is very unfortunate. Agree or disagree with his conclusions, Blamer teaches us that as a Country we still have a lot of work to do to truly apply the teaching of Christ in our lives.

The Mormons episode 1

Thanks for your comments on yesterday's post. It's refreshing to see that people actually read my blog.

Overall I really enjoyed the documentary last night. There were a few issues that I wish they had put into greater detail and a few that they avoided all together. However, considering the fact that they were creating a four hour documentary and not a miniseries I though they made some good choices as to what to cover and what to leave out.

The introduction used a very familiar quote from Joseph Smith to get the ball rolling. "No man knows my history." Since the biographer, Fawn Brodie used this quote for the title of her controversial biography of Joseph, I was a little afraid that the documentary was going to just be a just reworking of her biography. Although it did hit on many of the same points that she brought to light, it was indeed an original work.

I was impressed with the choice of people that they choose to interview. In particular I enjoyed the Presbyterian ministers’ comments about being unable to completely dismiss Joseph’s story even though it cuts at the core of his personal beliefs. I’m sure that many, inside and outside of the church can relate to this. I know I can. He was a very complex character. I still struggle with many of the issues that surround Joseph’s life. I was a little annoyed at the one lady who talked through her teeth and pronounced Zion like it was two words, "Zy On" But that's just being picky.

I was reading some of the reviews of the program online. A few were upset that they had spent so much time on Mountain Meadows and on polygamy. I don’t share this criticism. Yes, these two issues are very controversial. That is exactly why they should have been in the documentary. I thought they did a good job of covering them both. I wonder how these same folks would have felt about a documentary on Islam that didn’t give due diligence to terrorism and Jihad.

Any report on Mormonism that includes the persecution and the slaughter at Hans Mill would be biased and incomplete without juxtaposing it against Mountain Meadows. It simply would have not been fair to include one without the other. I’d be willing to bet that the same folk who felt that the coverage of Mountain Meadow was too strong would have been equally disappointed if they had swept Hans Mill under the rug. I felt that PBS did a very even handed report on both issues. True they spent longer on Mountain Meadows. I’d just chalk that up to journalistic freedom. No matter what the personal bias of the reporter it seems that the more negative issues always seems to take a higher priority than the positive. For good or for bad our culture seems to enjoy these more salacious details. Hypothetical situation: What would happen if on the same day two young men in the same county made the news, one for saving somebody’s life and one for taking somebody’s life? Which do you think would lead the local news in that area? The first young man would be lucky to get a mention in the last 5 minutes of the broadcast. That’s all that I think happened here too.

As far as polygamy goes, I think that the modern church is simply content to say, “Yeah but we don’t do that anymore.” And change the subject without any further comment. Sorry but we’re not going to get off that easily. The cold hard fact is that without Joseph Smith’s revelation on celestial marriage polygamy would not exist in the United States on any where near the scale that it does today. Call them fundamentalist, excommunicated members, wackos, cults or whatever label you’d like. With only a handful of exceptions, many of them Muslim, all polygamist marriages in the US cite Joseph Smith as their authority to practice plural marriage. Like it or not these step-children of the church will continue to grab the spotlight.

The only comment that actually got me upset was in the previews for tonight’s episode a General authority made the comment that, “It’s wrong to criticize the church even if the criticism is true.” I disagree with this comment 100%. Once any organization, especially a religion, declares itself immune from criticism the check and balances are gone. How can we claim that our obedience is not “blind obedience” if we are not permitted to question and criticize? My wife cautioned me that since it was only a comment in a preview I might be taking it out of context. I look forward to watching tonight to see.

After the program I had about a 20 minute long phone call with a Methodist friend who had also watched it. At the very least I think the program will be a good catalyst for these type of discussions with our friends and family.


Tonight's episode is supposed to be about the modern church and how things are practiced today. I’ll be watching.

The Mormons

In Ward conference yesterday several references were made similar to this one. "You've probably heard a lot of things in the press lately about the church. And you're gonna hear a lot more. some of it will be true and a lot of it will not be." Besides the occasional reference to the church as a result of Mitt Romney's presidential bid I really hadn't heard much. It was later on in Priesthood meeting that I found out the source of the Stake's anguish. As it turns out PBS is airing a 4 hour special focusing on the LDS Church. The program is called simply The Mormons. From what I have seen on pbs.org and from the trailer it looks like a very well done history and documentary on the LDS church.
As I've stated in other posts most of the histories that I've seen or read about the church fall into two main categories. First, the church produced, sanitized versions of history that completely remove all the warts and blemishes of the characters. The end result is a very two-dimensional representation of one side of the history. This is what I think the Stake is hoping the program to turn out to be.
Second, the anti-Mormon propaganda and histories that go out of their way to show nothing but the blemishes of the characters. These too simply create a bunch of two dimensional characters. They just paint them as demons with no redeeming qualities. This is what I think the Stake is afraid the program will turn out like.
Sure there are a few resources that show the truth as being somewhere in between, in the grey area where most real, multi-dimensional stories exist. Here's a review I wrote of one such book. I'm looking forward to watching this program tonight. I'd really like to see the history of the church treated with a scholarly approach yet also show how the church has evolved out of some of its earlier problems and into the source of faith and inspiration for millions around the globe. I'm not afraid of the warts on the church's history. I believe that we have removed most of them and are moving on. And the few that we still have will not go away if we just sweep the under the rug and refuse to admit the problem.
I'll follow up tomorrow and Wednesday and voice my opinions on the program.

In Atlanta the show is airing at 9:00pm to 11:00pm Monday and Tuesday night. If you miss it pbs.org will have it on streaming video after the show airs.