Uncovering the Banners of History

I went to yet another book sale last Friday, and came away with successfully having spent seven dollars with 13 new books and two new stuffed animals to show for it. As I was there I noticed a copy of John Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven, which I remember for the stink it caused in 2003 when it was released. The book is a dual chronicle of the murder of a woman in American Fork and the violent early history of the LDS Church, to which I happily belong. I remember the controversy it caused especially well—I was working six hours a day in the Church Archives in Salt Lake City during the summer of 2003, and the book directly addressed the Church Archives and Church Historians, for two of whom I was working. So the book caused a bit of a buzz around the office. I subsequently read several editorials about the book in the Tribune and the Deseret News, and I was intrigued by it, although fairly distraught at the uncritical language that permeated both sides of the newspaper debate. One of the better responses came from Richard Turley, Church Historian extraordinaire, who released a statement a couple weeks before the book came out that refuted some of its principal claims (as well as some of its minor claims). That statement is included in the copy I found at the recent book sale as an appendix, with Krakauer responding. I regret to say, however needless it is to say to those who know me pretty well, I bought the book and read it in three days.

I couldn’t help it. The book contains several things that will catch my attention every time they are placed before me: a good crime yarn, muscular, no-frills writing, a story of which I might know some of the major players and contexts, powerful ideas (however half-baked), and an affront to several long-held beliefs. The story is of a double homicide in American Fork, 1984, committed by two Mormon Fundamentalists against a mainstream Mormon (and member of their own family) and her daughter. Krakauer uses this journalistic story to sell a larger history about the Mormon Church, which has been characterized, he claims, by secrets, vengeance, magic, misogyny, and authoritarianism. He also chronicles, in part, the largest fringes of fundamentalist groups, both in Colorado City, Arizona, and Bountiful, Canada, in order to show how these groups operate and try to give the reader an idea of the terrors committed by those groups. After structuring the book like this, which I imagine would be terribly confusing to someone totally unfamiliar with the history of the Church, he makes some even larger claims about the nature of religious belief and obedience, saying something about the motivation behind Osama Bin Laden, David Koresh, Joseph Smith, Warren Jeffs, and so on. This part felt particularly unpersuasive and, frankly, kind of stupid. The argument that the specifics of religious adherence are all undistinguished and therefore Bin Laden is the same as, say, the Pope is an undergraduate argument, totally unreliant on contexts nor is it characterized by any reflective work on the nature of ideology, ethics, and belief. But this argument is not what I really want to address in this post—I work through these kinds of arguments enough in my classes to not deem them worth putting in print.

Nevertheless, I feel compelled to address the other arguments Krakauer makes about Mormons and their history in general. The only way I really know how to do this is to explain my own response to the book, especially because I feel so close to some of the events described. As an admission: I have had more than one “crisis of faith” in my life, and although I sincerely hope these periods of fevered reflection would abate, I don’t imagine they will anytime soon. I often have difficulty believing most things I’m taught, and it takes a lot out of me to get over that. I have some ideas about our history that I don’t care to share with too many people in my faith in fear that it wouldn’t be swallowed well. I allow for human frailty, and I believe the sways of culture and appetite are evident in even the most sacred histories. As for theology, I often find myself identifying more with the religious documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe than I do with some of the early Mormon documents. That said, I also deeply believe in the truth of the gospel as it is taught through my religion. No need to recount experiences and epiphanies here, but just know that my belief, although occasionally fluctuating, is strong: my fluctuations go from conviction to deep conviction. I also firmly believe in the community of the Church, and I try to participate actively in that community as much as I can. I am a great admirer of religions in general, although not always an admirer of religious people. I am, on the other hand, convinced that organized religion is the best thing that ever happened to the human race, or, more to my point, that the human race is the most beautiful thing that ever happened to organized religion. I happily belong to one of those religions, and I would not hesitate in saying that I believe it is the true religion of God. After all, I spent two years in Mexico saying this kind of thing, and I knew it then too, only in a much different way.

I must also admit I find that these kinds of religious confessions staggering and wonderful: a testimony meeting never ceases to amaze me, for what it’s worth. Contrary to what is often said (and indeed what one of the central characters in Krakauer’s book says), belief is not easy. Belief, I would say, is one of the most difficult activities to participate in, and I find more difficulty in belief than in unbelief, which seems to me complacent and occasionally narcissistic (two attributes of easiness).

Krakauer’s book is, well, difficult for the believer. He aggressively argues that the foundations of Mormonism are cemented in vengeance and authoritarianism, and he uses roughly four different sources to make this claim, two of which are so heavily relied on that he might be accused of collaboration. Nevertheless, he uses a version of events that is, in its own way, true, and therefore disturbing. Not everything he says is based on undisputed fact, and he tends to let his feelings show with a few choice words for certain individuals and events, but a large portion of his history is certainly documented well. There were times that I found myself looking into some of my other books—I consulted mostly Bushman’s biography of Joseph Smith—to verify some of the details, but there was really no glaring error, especially since there are so many records of each event, that a major error is almost impossible. What is possible, though, with the availability of so many records, is the opportunity to use those to confirm an anachronistic, and interpretive, version of the story. Mormons keep records of everything, and our religious history can be scrutinized in the kind of detail unparalleled among any other major religion, and what emerges is an unbelievable multitude of voices and witnesses that speak in their own tongues about a person or event. This is why trying to make a sustained and coherent narrative out of Mormon history is near impossible.

Krakauer does indeed attempt to make a coherent history, yet many of the events he describes are events that are never spoken of at Church, and with good reason. They are strange and disturbing, almost unexplainable, in the contemporary Christian worldview. We do not hear about these stories in Church, but we do hear a lot of other stories in Church, stories that are alternately powerful, faith-promoting, and downright amazing. These are also legitimate stories with legitimate histories, and they form a counter-narrative to Krakauer’s. Which narrative do we trust? They both rely on different evidence, even though they both rely on real evidence (the testimonies of observers and primary documents). I would suggest that both narratives have a place in our history, and both narratives can pierce our soul in equally fantastic manners. For example, one of the responses I had while reading Krakauer’s uflattering portrait of a sacred history was of wonder: I kept asking myself how it was possible for Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, or John Taylor to accomplish what they accomplished; how did the Church survive when it was always, at every moment of its early history, on the brink of obliteration; how did so many stars align, how did so many miracles occur (miracles that Krakauer cannot help but concede at times)?

These questions are never addressed. Nor are the other central questions: If our history and rhetoric is so violent, why are there so few actual examples (undisputed) of that violence? Sure, Brigham Young and Joseph Smith said the occasional bombastic comment about vengeance and blood, but there is so little (to no) evidence that any violence was ever produced, unless it was the common violence inflicted upon these very men from outsiders. Sure, moments of gruesome violence happened in the history among the Saints, but is that surprising? Is it odd or comparably excessive? We tend to forget what the nineteenth century was like, especially in the American West. It was violent, apocalyptic even. After all, should we apply the word “Saint” as a description or a proper name? I would suggest it ought to be used as a proper name, with the occasional and cherished use as an adjective, and I think most members of the Church understand this. Even so, almost all the violence described in the book belongs to fundamentalist groups, yet Krakauer unequivocally blames this fundamentalist violence on the roots in the mainstream Church. This is faulty thinking. It is the way of doctrine and theology that when it is distorted it often leads to disastrous results, but that is not the original doctrine’s fault but rather its distortion. This is like saying that all Evangelical Christians (or at least their doctrine) are murderous because one decides to bomb an abortion clinic in the name of God. This is an egregious simplification of theology and belief (the same simplification that historians have made of Calvinist and Puritan theology, as it happens). Besides, would Dan Lafferty had committed these murders, or something like it, had there been no Mormon religion? With a personal history like his, and his penchant for self-obsession, I would think it were a good possibility. Where does psychology end and religion begin?

Krakauer often admits that contemporary Mormons seem to him exceptionally good people, but he offers no reasons for this. Rather, he only sees pedophilia and murder in fundamentalist communities and wonders how it got like that. His critique, which he makes of Elizabeth Smart, of Mormons is that they are this way as a result of their history of blind obedience and hierarchy. One of his claims is that Elizabeth Smart would have never succumbed to an independent fundamentalist if she hadn’t grown up in a world that treats the older male voice as ultimate voice of authority, a claim that is not only condescending but also unscientific and weirdly speculative. There needs to be some explanation for the good, hard-working, compassionate, open-minded Mormon communities beyond Krakauer’s claim that this is all from an authoritarian residue.

I am not going to discount Krakauer’s project completely, though. His book is very ambitious, well-written (although strangely organized), and meticulously researched, at least on one side of the Church’s complicated history. The book allowed me to think about my own culture in ways that were productive and instructive. For example, one of the good insights of the book is that those formerly mainstream Mormons are often seduced into fundamentalism by extreme right politics that opposes government in all its forms, and they eventually find that Mormonism went astray at the moment that polygamy was abolished under pressure from the federal government, and the Utah war effectively ended. One of the things that these fundamentalist groups all have in common is a trust in misogyny and a distrust of any government. One day you are giving the bird to the IRS and the next you are going home to your most recent 16-year-old wife with the blond wave and the crazy eyes.

I share some of the criticisms that Krakauer has, and I think sometimes it takes an outsider to help us reevaluate our place in the Church and the Church’s place in the world. Let me end with this, though: after reading some of the criticisms and history, and feeling appropriately jarred by them, I decided to have a conversation with Kathryn about it. We took the kids to the park and sat on a bench and talked about stuff in the book and in our culture and in our doctrine. We came to some temporary conclusions, and Kathryn said some things that articulated so succinctly what I had been thinking, as she often does. I don’t mean for this post to be in praise of spouses, but she’s the coolest. I suppose that is a good place to end.