{"id":1542,"date":"2004-08-05T15:37:38","date_gmt":"2004-08-05T19:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1542"},"modified":"2015-05-14T15:27:42","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T19:27:42","slug":"under-the-banner-of-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1542","title":{"rendered":"<i>Under the Banner of Heaven<\/i>, by Jon Krakauer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ac&#038;ref=tf_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=thesheivari-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=1400032806&#038;asins=1400032806&#038;linkId=UMJEKWWOU4CJJRGG&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nI am tearing my way through Jon Krakauer&#8217;s <i>Under the Banner of Heaven<\/i>.  For those of you who might not know, this book began as an investigation of the murder of Brenda Lafferty by her brothers-in-law Ron and Dan Lafferty in 1984. She was murdered for not being sufficiently submissive to her husband, for not being a good enough Mormon, she was also murdered because she resisted the demands of her husband and the demands of the rest of the Lafferty family to submit to polygamy and a fundamentalist interpretation of <i>The Book of Mormon<\/i>. <i>Under the Banner of Heaven<\/i> began as an investigation of the murder, but then morphed into a history of Mormonism in general.  Hugely controversial book, obviously.<\/p>\n<p>It fluctuates back and forth between the story of the Lafferty brothers&#8217; descent into fundamentalism, and story of the beginning of the Mormon Church.  The Lafferty brothers were born and raised as Mormons, but in the early 1980s got wrapped up in the fundamental strain of the Mormon Church (after meeting a man who called himself a &#8220;prophet&#8221; &#8211; along the lines of the wack-job who abducted Elizabeth Smart) and the Lafferty boys became convinced that killing their sister-in-law was what God wanted them to do.  Dan and Ron remain unremorseful, in prison.  They are still convinced that they live in God&#8217;s light; after all, they did what He asked.  Oh, and not only did they kill Brenda Lafferty, but they also killed her infant daughter, stabbing her while she lay in her crib.<\/p>\n<p>My thought, as I read this, is, overwhelmingly (and perhaps, way too simply):  <em>Jesus.  I am so  GLAD I wasn&#8217;t raised in that atmosphere. <\/em> I am so GLAD that I didn&#8217;t grow up in a small village where everyone is also a Mormon, and the village is run by an elder, who marries me off when I&#8217;m 12 to a pockmarked 60 year old man who also happens to be my stepfather.  I am glad I wasn&#8217;t raised to be submissive and obedient.  I was raised to use my brain, my critical faculties &#8230; to judge for myself, to be able to make choices &#8230; to be able to say No to things I didn&#8217;t want, to stand up for myself.<\/p>\n<p>The modern Mormon church wants to distance itself from the fundamentalist sects breaking off left and right, and yet it is obvious (from this book) that they&#8217;ve got a real dilemma on their hands.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s one moment in the book which, in particular, grips me &#8211; and this goes back to my fascination with cults, and brainwashing, and group-think.<\/p>\n<p>Ron Lafferty was the oldest of the 6 Lafferty brothers (I think there are 6 of them).  They were all raised to be good Mormons.  Nothing too extreme, very mainstream, in a Mormon kind of way.<\/p>\n<p>Ron was married to a woman named Dianne, also a Mormon (of course) and for 15 years they had what everyone describes as a wonderful and happy marriage.  Ron was mild-mannered, he treated her well, she treated him well &#8230; all was fine.  Meanwhile, the rest of the Lafferty boys started down the slippery slope into fundamentalism, and they all became completely convinced that THEY were the true holders of the true Mormon creed, and that the Mormon Church signed a deal with Satan when it gave up polygamy.  They were all ex-communicated from the church.<\/p>\n<p>Ron remained distant from all of this firebrand stuff.<\/p>\n<p>All of the Lafferty wives became increasingly disturbed at the transformation of their husbands.  Their husbands started talking to them about polygamy, about how they wanted to take on more wives &#8230; Their current wives went a bit rip-shit, in a submissive Mormon way.<\/p>\n<p>Dianne (wife of Ron) became the leader of the wives and said to her husband, &#8220;Go talk some sense into your brothers.  Please.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So Ron went to meet with his 5 brothers, and began to tell them to cut out this polygamous talk, and to stop talking in this fundamentalist literalist way &#8230; His brothers spent a couple of hours talking to him about their ideas, and apparently Ron returned home to his wife Dianne a completely changed man.<\/p>\n<p>He had had some kind of conversion experience.  He had seen the light.  He realized that he had completely strayed from the path of true Mormonism, the entire Mormon Church had strayed &#8230; Polygamy needed to be brought back, and harshly &#8230; The Church needed to be purified.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone who knew him said that this dramatic personality change happened in the course of just one evening.<\/p>\n<p>According to all of them:  Ron Lafferty was one way on one day (mild, happy with his wife, reasonable), and the next day he was another way (a fundamentalist firebrand).<\/p>\n<p><i>And less than a year later<\/i>, he stabbed his sister-in-law and her infant daughter to death.<\/p>\n<p>HOW does something like this happen?<\/p>\n<p>Is our hold on our &#8220;selves&#8221;, whatever that means, so tenuous?  What I&#8217;m really asking is this &#8211; and it&#8217;s something I&#8217;ve thought about often &#8211; (what with my continuous re-reading of <i>Helter Skelter<\/i>, etc.):  What makes me different from Ron Lafferty?  Or &#8211; is there no difference?  Are we all equally susceptible to these kinds of personality changes?  Have I just not been tested?  Or &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I mean, look at what happened to Patty Hearst.  That story has always deeply impressed me, made me think about things &#8211; like SELF &#8211; and what is the self &#8211; I don&#8217;t see all that much difference between Hearst and myself.  But again, I don&#8217;t really know the answers to these questions.<\/p>\n<p>Are any of us exempt from that kind of suggestion?  Why does this question trouble me so much?<\/p>\n<p>Is there something in Ron Lafferty that was MORE vulnerable?<\/p>\n<p>Classic cult literature talks about people being susceptible to this kind of change-over during times of stress: divorce, going to college, moving &#8230; It is when you are perhaps a bit beaten down by the circumstances of life, that a cult can come right in and say, &#8220;If you follow us &#8230; you will never have to feel this way again&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I feel like you literally could not pay me enough money in the whole fucking planet to go and live on a commune under David Koresh.  Or Jim Jones.  Or to submit whole-heartedly to ANY organization, which made such demands. I like individuality too much, I like freedom too much &#8230; I like Eminem too much.  I like watching movies and immersing myself in pop culture too much.  I like platform shoes and leather jackets.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s something deeper going on, though, in my distaste for all of that.  I find it deeply frightening.  The thought that our brains are so fragile.  So porous.  They can be imprinted upon.<\/p>\n<p>That there might not be such a thing as an essential self.  All is mutable, changeable.<\/p>\n<p>But &#8211; what the hell happened to Ron Lafferty that night?  Dianne, his wife, later testified at the trial, that she did not recognize her own husband when he came home.  He had gone somewhere else, in his psyche &#8211; and she would never get him back.  Because fundamentalism is, of course, so rigid, so unyielding.<\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ac&#038;ref=tf_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=thesheivari-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=1400032806&#038;asins=1400032806&#038;linkId=UMJEKWWOU4CJJRGG&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am tearing my way through Jon Krakauer&#8217;s Under the Banner of Heaven. For those of you who might not know, this book began as an investigation of the murder of Brenda Lafferty by her brothers-in-law Ron and Dan Lafferty &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1542\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1542"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101798,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions\/101798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}