is there a place for heavenly mother in mormon theology?

S U N S T O N E
IT IS A pity if Under the Banner of Heaven:
A Story of Violent Faith is your introduction
to author Jon Krakauer. Not because
his latest book isn’t worthwhile, but because
it means you haven’t had the pleasure of
reading his other outstanding books, most
notably Into the Wild and Into Thin Air. 1 Into
the Wild is the intriguing story of Chris
McCandless, a young college graduate who
donated his $25,000 in savings to charity,
torched his car, and then hitchhiked around
the West before making a fatal attempt to live
off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. Into
Thin Air is Krakauer’s gripping personal account
of the 1996 tragedy on Mount Everest
that claimed the lives of five of his climbing
companions. Krakauer is a superb writer,
with a gift for telling compelling stories that
tend to stay with you long after you finish
one of his books.
His latest is no exception. As the title suggests,
in Under the Banner of Heaven Krakauer
makes an ambitious leap from the wilderness
to religion, using the 1984 Lafferty murders
BOOK REVIEW
A STORY OF VIOLENT
DEFENSIVENESS
UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN:
ASTORY OF VIOLENT FAITH
by Jon Krakauer
Doubleday, 2003
372 pages, $26.00
Reviewed by Greg Matis
Even before Jon Krakauer’s book,
Under the Banner of Heaven, was
released, Church leaders took the offensive,
denouncing the book as historically inaccurate
and anti-religion. Are the criticisms justified?
in Utah County as a springboard for examining
the nature of religious fanaticism—in
this case, Mormon fanaticism. Although he
makes it clear that he’s talking about religion
in general, Mormonism is his case study. As
part of a detailed examination of Ron and
Dan Lafferty’s murder of their sister-in-law
Brenda Lafferty and her fifteen-month-old
daughter, Erica, Krakauer takes a critical look
at unflattering aspects of Mormon history,
particularly violence and polygamy. He also
looks beyond the Lafferty brothers to other
extremists and offshoots, including members
of various Mormon Fundamentalist polygamous
communities and Brian David
Mitchell, the man charged with kidnapping
Elizabeth Smart.
In the prologue, Krakauer states that the
book’s purpose is “to cast some light on
[Dan] Lafferty and his ilk” (xxiii). Krakauer
deftly achieves that goal. Under the Banner of
Heaven opens the shades on a very dark cast
of characters, effectively telling a series of
chilling stories that need to be told. In the
GREG MATIS lives with his wife, Kellie, and their three children, Emily, Grace, and
Sam, in Draper, Utah.
same breath, Krakauer adds that this
“daunting exercise” is useful “for what might
be learned about the nature of faith” (xxiii).
Here he falls short of the mark, never pursuing
the interesting questions about the nature
of faith that arise along the way.
INTO HOT WATER
KRAKAUER might have kept to his
prior title formula—catchy threeword
prepositional phrases beginning
with “Into”—and named this book Into
Hot Water. 2 As would be expected of the latest
effort from any best-selling author, Under the
Banner of Heaven was reviewed widely, with
mixed results. But the harshest blows were
delivered by a most unusual literary critic, the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In
a news release issued several weeks before the
book’s publication, the Church took dead aim
at both the book and Krakauer, with two separate
“responses” from Mike Otterson, the
Church’s Director of Media Relations, and
Richard Turley, managing director of the
Family and Church History Department. A
third response followed later from Robert
Millet, who holds BYU’s Richard L. Evans
Chair in Religious Understanding. 3
Otterson’s short piece presents his personal
(very negative) reaction to the book;
Turley’s and Millet’s responses focus on more
substantive historical and doctrinal issues.
Collectively, these writers accuse Krakauer of
bias, unfair generalizations, gross exaggerations,
and bad history. Otterson calls
Krakauer a “storyteller who cuts corners to
make the story sound good.” Millet labels the
book “not only a slap in the face of modern
Latter-day Saints, but also a misrepresentation
of religion in general.” And Turley warns
that, “[a]though the book may appeal to
gullible persons who rise to such bait like
trout to a fly hook, serious readers who want
to understand Latter-day Saints and their history
need not waste their time on it.”
Predictably, the early free publicity had a
decidedly different effect than intended: the
book ended up on the national bestseller lists
and was a particularly hot commodity in
Utah last summer. I was among the many
who immediately bought a copy—largely on
the strength of Krakauer’s earlier work. To be
sure, Under the Banner of Heaven has its flaws,
including various factual inaccuracies, many
of which easily could have been corrected by
any knowledgeable Latter-day Saint had
Krakauer bothered to ask one to review the
manuscript. 4 Nevertheless, I find the
Church’s criticism unduly harsh and overly
defensive. Much of it just doesn’t stick.
JULY 2004 PAGE 45