"WE GO TO HIM WHEN WE ARE SORE BESTEAD"

What's Left After Everest?: 'Under the Banner of Heaven', Jon Krakauer's new book, an account of the 1984 killings of a Utah woman and her infant daughter, has set off a culture war with the Mormon Church. (TIMOTHY EGAN, July 13, 2003, NY Times)

There is a moment in all his books when Mr. Krakauer turns the story on himself and presents an imperfect human--an author as guilty of the hubris, doubt and foolishness that push his nonfiction characters to extremes. So it is in his latest book, "Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith," which Doubleday is bringing out this week, complete with a publicity agent's dream controversy--loud condemnation of the book by his primary target, the Mormon Church.

"I don't know if God even exists, although I confess I find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty," he writes. "In the absence of conviction, I've come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable corollary of life." [...]

In the book, Mr. Krakauer examines Mormon fundamentalists, the tens of thousands of true believers living mostly in Utah who broke away from the original Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The splinter groups are the American Taliban, Mr. Krakauer says, living in desert theocracies where pubescent girls are forced into marriages with old graybeards who rule with an iron fist. These polygamous communities are against the law, but usually tolerated by officials who see a little bit of great-grandpa's pioneering ways in the modern sects.

The biggest of these communities, Hildale/Colorado City, on the Utah-Arizona border, is full of houses the size of a Days Inn motel, stuffed with dozens of wives married to self-styled Mormon fundamentalist patriarchs. The community is in open violation of the law, Mr. Krakauer and others have noted, but faces little legal sanction and also manages to have one of the highest ratios of welfare recipients in the country.

His main focus is on Dan and Ron Lafferty, a pair of Utah brothers who believed they were ordered by God to kill their sister-in-law and her
15-month-old daughter. Brenda Lafferty had her throat slit with a 10-inch boning knife, and her daughter, Erica, was also stabbed. Dan Lafferty is serving a life sentence and his older brother, Ron, is on death row. The brothers said they did it because Brenda opposed their plan to take multiple wives.

Mr. Krakauer draws a connection between the revelations the Lafferty brothers claimed guided them and early Mormon acts of "blood atonement," in which followers targeted victims because of purported divine inspiration. Ron Lafferty, Mr. Krakauer notes, was a Republican city councilman and devout Mormon, who came to believe that his religion had lost touch with its roots, which allowed men to practice polygamy and to receive divine revelation.

Mr. Krakauer faults the modern Mormon Church, perhaps the fastest growing religion in America, with worldwide membership approaching 12 million, for failing to honestly address a past where taking young wives, killing on behalf of God and open disdain for the Constitution are papered over in place of a more Osmond-friendly image. Often overlooked by mainstream historians, the story of how a church founded by radicals who practiced an early form of communism and sanctioned sexual promiscuity through multiple wives has come to be known for white-bread conservatism is a compelling American tale.

The church officially renounced polygamy in 1890, and excommunicates members who openly practice it. But officials in Utah say up to 60,000 people continue to live in polygamous families there.

The book comes just a few weeks too late--polygamy's pretty much got Court sanction now. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 17, 2003 9:53 AM