Book Review - Under the banner of Heaven – John Krakauer



John Krakauer uses the brutal 1984 murder of a young woman and her baby to delve deep into the violent and bizarre roots of the fastest growing religion in the land of the whackos – Mormonism, or as they like to call themselves The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Personally I’ve never been acquainted with or maintained an interest in the specific beliefs or customs of Mormonism. I tend to categorize any weak-minded fool that belongs to an organized religious group under the same umbrella – basically they should be ignored, and left to their own devices. That is until they start ramming their twisted ideas down the throats of others at which time their farcical beliefs should be exposed and ridiculed. Mormonism is disturbing because of the swarms of people who swallow the absurd horseshit served up by its members.

The story of Mormonism goes something like this; in the autumn of 1823 a seventeen year old boy named Joseph Smith was visited by an angel of God who told of him of a sacred text inscribed on golden plates that had been buried 1400 years earlier. 4 years after the revelation Joseph retrieved the plates (written in ancient Egyptian characters) and with help of a pair of magical glasses translated the texts into what is now known as The Book of Mormon. It’s probably worth mentioning during the time between his stunning revelation and the moment of his unearthing of the sacred text that Joseph Smith was found guilty of being ‘a disorderly person and an impostor’. Inspired by the divining talents of a local girl, Joseph took up the occupation of a ‘scryer’ or crystal gazer. That is, he used to charge property owners fees for gazing at a couple of small rocks (called peep stones) and claiming to know the locations of buried treasure. It’s worth quoting directly from Krakauer’s book;

By 1825, his renown was such that an elderly farmer named Josiah Stowell came from Pennsylvania to meet Joseph, and was so impressed by the encounter that he hired the twenty year old to travel with him to Susquehanna Valley to locate, with his peep stones, a hidden lode of silver rumoured to have been mined by the Spaniards centuries earlier..... Although Joseph had applied himself to scrying with vigour, dedication, and the finest tools of his trade, it seems that he had been unable to find Stowell’s silver mine. Nor in fact, during the previous six years he had worked as a money digger, had he ever managed to unearth any other actual treasure. When this had come to light, a disgruntled client had filed a legal claim accusing Joseph of being a fraud.

Despite his reputation, within five years of his conviction ‘The Book of Mormon’ was in print and Joseph had successfully moulded his warped ideas into a formal religion. Incidentally despite 19 witnesses claiming to have seen them, no gold tablets have ever been found. Still the sight of the supposed unearthing of the sacred text draws thousands of gullible fools from all over the U.S on an annual pilgrimage. To say nothing of the credulous morons who subscribe to the religion today, it begs the question, what type of climate existed in the U.S to facilitate the rise of such an absurd phenomenon? Another quote from Krakauers book, this time from Fawn Brodie’s ‘No Man Knows My History’ sheds some light;

The sober preacher trained in the dialects of the seminary was rare west of the Appalachians. One found instead faith healers and circuit-rider evangelists, who stirred their audiences to paroxysms of religious frenzy...... The revivals by their very excesses deadened a normal antipathy toward religious eccentricity. And those Pentecostal years, which coincided with Joseph Smith’s adolescence and early manhood, were the most fertile in America’s history for the sprouting of prophets.

One of the more alarming doctrines proclaimed by Smith was the practice of Polygamy. Smith was a well-known philanderer and this doctrine like most others he pronounced was a simple effort to justify his own actions. The inability of men to keep their dick in their in their pants has plagued them for centuries so by claiming it was God’s commandment Smith made it perfectly acceptable. However even within his own ranks Smith faced opposition to this commandment and after his death in the face of strong community and government pressure the church eventually abandoned the precept. The result has been a splintering off of ‘fundamentalist’ Mormon groups that claim the mainstream church made a grave error in going against Joseph Smith’s original words. Thus there are pockets of practicing polygamists dotted all over the United States where incidences of incest and rape of girls as young as 12 years old is not uncommon and sanctioned by the nut-cases who practice it.

As with every other religion Mormonism’s history is steeped in violence and soaked in blood. The Mormons were frequently terrorized and persecuted, however Joseph Smith’s followers were far from non-violent do-gooders themselves frequently initiating the violence and bloodshed. The Mormons saw themselves as the true children of god and every one else as apostates, claims identical to that of so-called Islamic Fundamentalists today. This simplistic view of good and evil can be found frequently through the sacred teachings admonishing adherents to obey the word of God or be eternally damned. This black and white view of the world sounds eerily similar to the verbiage used by the clown president of the U.S today ‘you’re either with us or against us’ whilst claiming God is on his side, failing to note that the God Islamic fundamentalists invoke is the same one.

Another quote from Krakauers eye-opening book sums up for me the problems with debunking the ridiculous beliefs of religious fanatics;

All religious belief is a function of non-rational faith. And faith, by its very definition, tends to be impervious to intellectual argument or academic criticism. Polls routinely indicate, moreover that nine out 10 Americans believe in God – most of us subscribe to one brand of religion or another. Those who would assail The Book of Mormon should bear in mind that its veracity is no more dubious than the veracity of the Bible or the Qur’an, or the sacred texts of most other religions. The latter texts simply enjoy the considerable advantage of having made their public debut in the shadowy recesses of the ancient past, and are thus much harder to refute.

In an age where the word 'fundmentalist' is most often used by the bloated hypocrites in the land of the ignorant to describe the actions of Middle-Eastern religious groups. Under the Banner of Heaven is a timely reminder that the lying charlatans who spew such diarrhea are up to their necks in their own shit.