"Under the Banner of Heaven"

Jon Krakauer

America is a nation at war with religious zealots that want to harm us. But America has their own terrorists, born and raised into one of the fastest growing religions in the world. "Under the Banner of Heaven" is Jon Krakauer's newest book that examines religious fanaticism at its most violent ÷ within our borders.

On July 24, 1984, two brothers murdered their sister-in-law and infant niece. The reasoning: they received instructions to do so in a revelation from God. Krakauer turns a single tragedy into an international epidemic. He investigates the brothers' Mormon fundamentalist motivations and in doing so, recounts the birth of the Mormon religion itself.

Ron and Dan Lafferty were excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints after becoming more and more radical in their beliefs. Specifically, they had adopted an old doctrine and covenant of polygamy from the original Mormon prophet from the mid 1800s, Joseph Smith. Polygamy is the practice of plural marriage, where men are encouraged to marry as many wives as possible (Smith had around 49 wives himself).

Although no longer tolerated by the LDS church, there are an overwhelming number of Mormon polygamists today. More than 10,000 reside in Colorado City, Ariz. alone.

Much of Krakauer's research investigates the atrocities of plural marriage. During a raid of a polygamist sect in the 1950s, Arizona's governor stated, "Here is a community unalterably dedicated to the wicked theory that every maturing girl-child should be forced into the bondage of multiple wifehood for the sole purpose of producing more children to be reared to become more chattels of this totally lawless enterprise."

When Tom Green, a polygamist living in Provo, Utah, went on every talk show with his 10 wives and 32 children, a lawyer pressed charges against him for the devastating effect of polygamy. "Polygamy is abusive to children, is abusive to women, is abusive to society."

Krakauer talks with female victims of polygamy whom offer their personal accounts for the book. At one point, Krakauer writes, "Tracing a mazelike series of lines with her index finger, Debbie attempts to demystify an incredibly complicated schematic diagram that at first glance appears to map out the intricacies of some massive engineering project ÷ a nuclear power plant, perhaps. Upon closer examination, the diagram turns out to be her family tree."

Although most people would not refute that this is a horrendous practice, the point that the author makes deals with the disparaging acts extremist faiths yield.

"There is a dark side to religious devotion that is too often ignored or denied. As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane ÷ as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout ÷ there may be no more potent force than religion," he writes.

This dark side could include blowing up buildings and airplanes, going to war, and in the case of American polygamists, marrying off your fourteen-year-old virgin daughter to your 54-year-old brother, or kidnapping and raping Elizabeth Smart, or killing people in your family because if one person can speak for God and claims to know God's will, cannot another?

Within Krakauer's investigations, readers feel like they are uncovering the American History X of religious faith. The reader, then, becomes unsure of how to react to what was never before acknowledged in the land of the free and not sure of what guilt we are to own up to, for the author does not offer us a didactic conclusion nor a scapegoat.

As a piece of non-fiction, this book becomes one of the most important documents of a current crisis over a practice that's been around since the beginning of time. "Under the Banner of Heaven" should come in a shrink-wrapped package as an owner's manual with any religious text. Religion is a powerful piece of machinery and even though men are behind the wheel, at times it appears to have a life of its own that is capable of inexorable destruction. ÷ Lisa Schumaier