Are we fanatics?
Bookworm at Bookworm Room on Apr 04 2006 at 11:00 am | Filed under: Book Review, Feature Article
I seem to be on a binge of books that make me wonder. Today’s book is Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. This is a book I mentioned before in connection with my reflections on whether a religion can abandon founding tenets and still be considered true to itself.
Krakauer’s book focuses on two breakaway polygamist Mormons who committed violent murder against their sister-in-law and her fifteen month old daughter. In tracking down the events that led to these killings, Krakauer tells, not only the murderers’ story, but also the history of the Mormon church. And that history inevitably embraces those who now claim the banner of the original Mormon faith — something they do primarily by embracing polygamy. What characterizes so many of the fundamentalists he describes is that they started off as ordinary Mormons or non-Mormon Christians; they had various epiphanies that led them (they believed) to seminal truths; and they were convinced that, having learned these revealed truths, everyone who didn’t embrace the truths was wrong or evil.
Jon Krakauer, polygamist Mormons, Mormon church, Christians
