Saralee Says
This story has everything - suspense, murder, sex, history, and religion, and it takes place right here in America.
Under the Banner of Heaven - A Story of Violent Faith (Anchor) is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. Once I started reading it, I was so horrified and fascinated that I could not put it down and could not stop thinking about it once I finished it.
We all know that there are extremists in every religion. September 11 happened because a few members of the Muslim faith believed that they were following the will of Allah by murdering Americans. Under the Banner of Heaven is about extremists who broke away from the mainstream Mormon Church because of their desire to be polygamous or to have multiple wives.
Krakauer begins this book with the sickening murder of a baby and her mother by the Lafferty brothers. Two brothers kill their other brother's wife and her baby daughter because the wife stood up to them and opposed their position on polygamy. The Lafferty brothers believed they had direct communication with God and it was fine to take very young girls to be their wives - even as young as age 12. It was also OK to kill anyone who opposed their way of thinking.
Brian David Mitchell kidnapped Elizabeth Smart because he believed he is a religious prophet entitled to multiple wives. Krakauer gives numerous examples of men like Mitchell who rape any girl they please, as often as they like, and they are proud of it. These are not legal marriages and the victims are often the young daughters of other women these horrible men unofficially take as their wives.
Have you heard about the oppression of women in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq? Did you know today in the United States that young girls are given willingly by their families to older men to be raped and beaten? It happens over and over with very little prosecution by our country. How do you feel about our country spending our tax dollars to liberate other women around the world instead of prosecuting and locking up people in our own country who are raping and abusing young girls every day?
Larry's Language
In today's America we rarely think of religious disputes resulting in bloodshed, mayhem and murder. Unfortunately, Under the Banner of Heaven removes any doubt that religious disagreements still equal a death sentence for some.
Author Krakauer explores the development of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often called Mormons, and its rival offspring that are various fundamentalist churches that still believe and actively practice plural marriage - at least for the men who are true believers.
In the early 1800s Joseph Smith started the Mormon church and led his followers to a promised land in Missouri and then to Illinois where Smith was murdered by a mob that resented his religious beliefs. His successor, Brigham Young, took them to the promised land of Utah, where Young confirmed and approved Smith's divinely inspired revelation that Mormon men could and should take more than one wife at the same time.
Part of the price of Utah obtaining admission as a state to the United States in the late 19th century was to renounce this all but official belief and practice of plural marriage. But did that really happen? Krakauer writes an appalling factual story of how two brothers in Utah County, Utah in 1984 senselessly and brutally murder their own sister-in-law and her baby because she disagreed with these fundamentalist religious beliefs. Krakauer weaves into this harsh criminal event how the support for plural marriage in Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, Mexico, and Canada continues today.
Worst of all, time after time the plural marriages today involve older men "marrying" their own stepdaughters and other young teenagers after years of physical and mental abuse of the brides-to-be. Why and how could a community condone these practices today? It is much easier when the local church has rules forbidding any contact with outsiders, any television, any reading of books or magazines. In other words, first they isolate the brides-to-be, then they indoctrinate them from an early age, then they physically and emotionally coerce them. This is truly a frightening book.
Join us for our next book club discussion which will feature R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton.
