Religious fanaticism dissected in Krakauer's latest

What in the world is journalist Jon Krakauer doing writing about Mormons? \nThe answer is simpler than it would initially seem. In "Under the Banner of Heaven," Krakauer attempts to explore the ideas and events that cause people to perpetrate crimes in the name of religion. Though his reporting at times reflects the bias of his agnostic roots, Krakauer is largely successful in his initial foray outside the realm of mountaineering and outdoors literature.\nBanner begins by telling the story of two brothers named Ron and Dan Lafferty, who in 1984 murdered the wife and infant daughter of their youngest brother, Allen. As the slayings became statewide, and later national news, it was eventually discovered that the motivation for the crimes was a religious revelation.\nThe six Lafferty brothers were raised as mainstream members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Their upbringing was strictly conservative and occasionally violent, but otherwise ordinary by Mormon standards. Dan, after completing his requisite missionary work and his training as a chiropractor, became profoundly interested in the polygamous ideas set forth by the church's founder Joseph Smith.\nHis research into the subject soon unearthed an obscure document which heartily endorsed plural marriage and several other radical practices outside the mainstream of American and LDS-sanctioned life. Dan understood the document to be written by Smith, and subsequently accepted it as religious law.\nHe was soon preaching the values of his newfound beliefs to his brothers, all of whom eventually acceded to his arguments. Convinced they had cornered the market on righteousness, the Laffertys claimed to receive numerous mandates from heaven. Among the revelations Ron experienced was an order to kill Allen's wife, Brenda, and her 15-month-old daughter, Erica. Brenda, not coincidentally, was the only Lafferty wife to actively resist the brothers' rapid journey into extreme religious fundamentalism.\nIn an effort to understand why Dan and Ron Lafferty committed murder in the name of God and how they obtained the moral justification for doing so, Krakauer takes the reader on a somewhat disjointed tour through the history of the LDS church, the activities of the Lafferty brothers and the experiences of those who live in radically fundamentalist Mormon communities. \nAs an exposé into the generalized subject of religious zealotry, Banner is somewhat undermined by the limited scope of Krakauer's research. Evidence is confined to the realm of the Mormon faith and then used to support blanket statements about what makes all religious zealots tick.\nIn spite of this fault, Krakauer's case is compelling on a number of fronts. The first of these is his claim that faith and reason are mutually exclusive terms, and that religion sometimes provokes violence because the faithful do not consider reason as a determinant in their behavior choices.\nMore interesting is the depiction of the Laffertys as narcissists. When one has an overly heightened sense of self-importance, Krakauer claims, ambiguity disappears and one can undertake anything. Moreover, the perpetrator can do this with the confident assurance that they are right and justified.\nOddly, this assertion is lent weight by Krakauer's past. One of his most well-known works is "Into Thin Air," the hugely popular account of a tragic Mt. Everest expedition on which Krakauer ascended to the summit of the world's highest peak. By necessity, extremist mountain climbers have a narcissistic streak, a peculiarity which provides Krakauer with more perspective on religious extremism than one might initially think.\nOverall, "Banner" shows periodic instances of bias and has occasional problems with narration, but nonetheless remains a thought-provoking and well-depicted portrayal of religious extremism.\n-- Contact staff writers Joe Troyer at jodtroye@indiana.edu.