Under the Banner of Heaven

Why do people kill—or obey—when they believe God commands it? In Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer argues that extreme faith, when fused with the hunger for revelation and authority, can transform devotion into violence. He traces a continuum stretching from Joseph Smith’s founding revelations through Brigham Young’s theocratic frontier to modern fundamentalist offshoots like the Lafferty brothers, showing how the idea that God speaks directly to chosen individuals remains both the engine and the risk of Mormonism’s revolutionary promise.

You begin with a question: How does a religion born from persecution and revelation evolve into a modern global church—and, simultaneously, spawn fringe sects where revelation justifies murder? Krakauer frames Mormonism not as monolithic but as two intertwined traditions: the institutional Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), which moderates and integrates, and the Mormon Fundamentalists, who preserve early doctrines like plural marriage and prophetic absolutism.

The Revelation Culture

Joseph Smith’s creation story sets the stage. He claimed divine revelations via seer stones, dictated the Book of Mormon, and established that ongoing revelation defines God’s relationship with humanity. This model institutionalized charisma—prophets claim direct authority from God—and trained followers to accept transcendent mandates. That same formula produced dynamic growth and endless schisms: each new prophet courted faith and dissent. (Note: Krakauer compares this to charismatic leaders like Jim Jones or David Koresh, who similarly transformed revelation into hierarchy.)

From Persecution to Theocracy

After Smith’s death, Brigham Young directed a mass exodus west, creating a religious empire in Utah. Polygamy became central—proclaimed in 1852 as divine law. But the practice triggered decades of federal conflict, culminating in anti-bigamy laws and a siege mentality. You see how persecution and secrecy strengthened obedience: communal survival required submission, and religious law supplanted civil law. The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, where Mormon militia slaughtered an emigrant wagon train, epitomizes that tension—fear and obedience forging atrocity.

Fundamentalist Persistence

The 1890 Woodruff Manifesto renouncing plural marriage transformed the LDS Church into an American mainstream institution. But many believers saw it as betrayal. Fundamentalists like John Woolley, Lorin Woolley, and Rulon Jeffs preserved the Principle in secret, later spawning communities like Colorado City and Bountiful. Each operated as theocratic enclaves governed by prophets whose word controlled marriage, property, and even personal movements. These towns fused spirituality and coercion—an arrangement Krakauer likens to authoritarian states hiding under divine sanction.

Modern Devotion and Violence

The Lafferty murders anchor Krakauer’s inquiry into how revelation precipitates violence. Inspired by fringe teachings from Robert Crossfield’s School of the Prophets, Ron and Dan Lafferty came to believe God commanded them to “remove” family members opposing their religious vision. Their crime—Brenda and Erica Lafferty’s deaths in 1984—is both theological and psychological tragedy. Krakauer threads rigorous forensic detail with reflections on faith’s power to override moral restraint, asking how conviction corrodes empathy when believers interpret rebellion against God as righteous duty.

Faith, Freedom, and Responsibility

Legal and scholarly perspectives deepen the story: psychiatrists debate whether Ron’s revelations were delusional or culturally-informed belief, while historians like Juanita Brooks and D. Michael Quinn expose how Mormonism has wrestled with secrecy and moral accountability since its founding. Krakauer concludes that faith’s beauty lies in its capacity for moral vision—but its danger lies in substituting revelation for law. Whether in nineteenth-century Utah or a modern duplex, unchecked prophetic certainty can turn moral obedience into moral catastrophe.

Central insight

When revelation becomes governance, and faith outweighs empathy, violence can seem sacred. Krakauer’s chronicle forces you to confront the paradox that the same spiritual hunger that launched a world religion also fuels its most dangerous splinter movements.

Across its layers—historical, psychological, theological—this book leaves you with a sobering recognition: religious freedom and fanaticism are bound by a thin line, drawn wherever conviction eclipses compassion.

Jon Krakauer begins where Mormonism itself begins—with Joseph Smith’s revelations. Smith’s claim that divine truths are accessible through personal communion with God created a revolutionary template for religious authority. The Book of Mormon, translated from golden plates through “seer stones,” became a monument to this idea: direct revelation as historical fact. You see how Smith’s mystical practices, from treasure-seeking to scriptural translation, grounded an American faith obsessed with divine immediacy.

Revelation as Institution

Smith didn’t merely proclaim revelations—he institutionalized them. He established a church where prophetic guidance governs both theology and everyday decisions, embedding charisma into bureaucracy. Revelation became a tool of governance: laws, marriages, migrations—all could originate from heavenly command. This idea, fertile and dangerous, ensured that after his death, competing prophets would claim the same right to speak for God. (Note: Krakauer frames Joseph’s legacy as paradoxical—creative genius intertwined with perilous absolutism.)

Polygamy and Crisis

Plural marriage embodied revelation’s political implications. While Smith secretly married scores of women, he publicly denied the practice, triggering outrage and schism. The Nauvoo Expositor’s exposure of his polygamy led Smith to destroy its press—an action that spurred his arrest and murder in 1844. Krakauer describes this as the first collision between religious absolutism and civic order: a prophet defending divine secrecy against democratic transparency.

Enduring Consequences

Smith’s theology of continuing revelation produced both dynamism and volatility. Each subsequent leader—Brigham Young, John Taylor, Rulon Jeffs—inherits the right to speak as God’s mouthpiece, producing schisms and abuses alike. By teaching that divine voices trump earthly reason, Smith gave birth to both Mormonism’s resilient creativity and its periodic catastrophes.

Key insight

Belief in open, personal revelation creates a fertile but fractious religious culture—one that can inspire social reform or justify destructive zeal.

Understanding this revelation tradition is essential: it’s the theological DNA that links Joseph Smith’s visions to every later prophet who declares, “Thus saith the Lord.”

After Joseph Smith’s murder, Brigham Young transformed chaos into order. Krakauer narrates Young’s leadership as a mixture of survival and theocracy. The migration from Nauvoo to Utah in 1846–1847 was both a humanitarian escape and a political reformation. Through hardship and revelation, Young welded belief into obedience, laying foundations for a communal system where church and state overlapped.

Polygamy and Governance

Young institutionalized plural marriage publicly in 1852, arguing divine law surpassed federal law. Polygamy became the test of loyalty, setting Mormons against Washington’s authority. Krakauer details federal acts—the Morrill, Edmunds, and Edmunds-Tucker laws—that attempted to dismantle the church’s autonomy. You see how Young’s defiance forged group identity: persecution validated chosenness, and obedience became sacramental.

Mountain Meadows and Moral Catastrophe

This context culminates in the Mountain Meadows Massacre (1857), where local Mormon militia and Paiute allies slaughtered more than a hundred emigrants. The killing, fueled by fear of invasion and prophetic rhetoric, demonstrates how collective paranoia and moral hierarchy transform violence into duty. Krakauer examines John D. Lee’s execution as scapegoating, suggesting institutional avoidance of accountability preserved mythic integrity at human cost.

Historical Shadows

Even decades later, secrecy and narrative control—the Powell expedition controversy, for instance—showed how moral defensiveness persisted. Whether or not Powell’s missing men fell victim to Mormon settlers, Krakauer notes the pattern: local loyalty exceeds truth. History itself becomes revelation-driven protectionism.

Historical insight

Persecution bred moral absolutism; moral absolutism justified secrecy; and secrecy allowed atrocities to remain sanctified for generations.

You come away seeing how the struggle between divine and civil law shaped both Mormon resilience and its most infamous transgressions.

Federal suppression of polygamy didn’t end plural marriage—it drove it underground. Krakauer traces the evolution from Brigham Young’s frontier pluralism to the clandestine marriages after the 1890 Woodruff Manifesto. Fundamentalists read John Taylor’s secret 1886 revelation as divine endorsement to persist. This split crystallized a century-long division between the official LDS Church, which embraced legality, and separatist prophets who saw compromise as apostasy.

The Fundamentalist Lineage

Prophets like John W. Woolley, Lorin Woolley, John Y. Barlow, and LeRoy Johnson claimed priesthood keys outside the LDS hierarchy, forming communities grounded in selective revelation. Later leaders—Rulon Jeffs and Warren Jeffs—extended this claim to absolute social control. Fundamentalists treat Section 132 of Doctrine and Covenants as eternal covenant, sanctifying plural marriage as prerequisite for exaltation.

Power and Violence

Krakauer depicts how prophetic authority morphs into coercion: the LeBaron family’s schisms and Ervil LeBaron’s assassinations expose revelation turned weapon. Similarly, FLDS settlements in Short Creek and Bountiful operate as closed systems—housing, economy, education, and marriage controlled by “the Prophet.” Obedience sustains belief, but also enables sexual abuse, forced marriage, and silenced dissent.

Core insight

When a doctrine designed for salvation becomes a structure for domination, faith mutates from spiritual covenant to totalitarian control.

Through these histories, you see why modern polygamy persists not as moral rebellion but as theological obedience—an echo of revelation that once built, and now isolates, God’s kingdom.

Colorado City (formerly Short Creek) and Bountiful, Canada, illustrate the social structure of fundamentalist faith. Krakauer unpacks how prophets like Rulon Jeffs construct near-total control through property trusts, obedience rituals, and family redistribution. You learn that power here is both spiritual and bureaucratic—the United Effort Plan holds all assets, wives and children can be reassigned, and prosperity comes through sanctioned favor.

Daily Life and Dependence

Residents live under moral surveillance: bans on television, clothing edicts, and restricted contact with outsiders. Even household pets are eliminated when decreed. Dependence deepens when women lose property rights and men enforce priesthood decisions. Welfare funds paradoxically sustain separatist ideology—official marriages qualify families for aid while unofficial plural unions escape scrutiny.

Human Consequences

First-hand accounts like Debbie Palmer’s reveal abuse enabled by prophetic command: teenage marriages, incest, and silence enforced by religious guilt. Krakauer juxtaposes these testimonies with DeLoy Bateman’s story—a teacher turned atheist trapped between belief and exile. His lingering discomfort without temple garments marks how deeply devotion imprints identity.

Human insight

In closed theocratic systems, faith’s promise of order disguises coercion—obedience becomes survival, dissent becomes heresy.

Colorado City thus serves as a living monument to revelation’s social architecture, showing how belief shapes not only hearts but housing, economics, and freedom itself.

The Lafferty case is Krakauer’s modern crucible for faith gone lethal. Ron and Dan Lafferty believed they were executing divine justice, not committing crime. Their belief stemmed from the School of the Prophets founded by Robert Crossfield (Prophet Onias), whose teachings glorified direct revelation and spiritual hierarchy. Under his influence, the brothers embraced “Removal Revelations” naming specific individuals—including Brenda and baby Erica—to be slain.

Radicalization in Motion

Krakauer reconstructs the progression: marital breakdown, financial loss, immersion in scripture, validation by peers—all merging into delusional certainty. The brothers saw themselves as agents of God, armed and obedient. July 24, 1984, became ritual execution rather than homicide. Their subsequent flight and arrest expose the contrast between divine narrative and earthly reality—fugitives haunted by faith yet clinging to righteousness.

Faith in the Courtroom

Trials of Ron and Dan forced courts to confront whether religious delusion equals mental illness. Psychiatrists split: some saw psychosis, others cultural logic. Ultimately, juries judged that fanatic conviction doesn’t exempt responsibility. Ron was sentenced to death; Dan to life imprisonment, proud and unapologetic. Krakauer uses this legal drama to ask: where does belief end and insanity begin? (Note: the Tenth Circuit’s reversal underscores this struggle—the state itself wrestling with doctrinal complexity.)

Moral insight

When legal systems encounter faith-based violence, the challenge isn’t proof but interpretation—recognizing how culture frames madness, and how devotion masks cruelty.

The Lafferty murders thus complete Krakauer’s arc, showing the peril of revelation unmoored from community or conscience—a final echo of Joseph Smith’s legacy turned inward and fatal.

Krakauer closes by widening perspective: faith and violence demand history’s scrutiny. He celebrates scholars like Fawn Brodie, Juanita Brooks, and D. Michael Quinn, who exposed suppressed truths—plural marriage, Mountain Meadows complicity, and institutional censorship. Their courage exemplifies how telling sacred history invites peril. Brooks faced ostracism; Quinn excommunication. Yet their honesty restored moral credibility after decades of secrecy.

Religion in American Context

Mormonism’s transformation from persecuted sect to global enterprise mirrors America itself—ambitious, adaptive, and occasionally fanatical. Krakauer engages thinkers like Harold Bloom and William James to argue that religious genius and fanaticism share origin: the need for meaning and order. LDS mainstreaming into corporate respectability contrasts sharply with fundamentalist sects yearning for purity.

The Final Balance

Krakauer doesn’t dismiss faith; he asks for accountability. Belief can inspire compassion or destroy empathy—depending on whether revelation remains private or becomes coercive. His closing message: empathy and reason must temper devotion, lest history repeat its violences. (Note: the book’s resonance extends beyond Mormonism; it’s a study of any ideology that sanctifies authority.)

Final insight

Spiritual conviction without shared accountability risks transforming revelation into tyranny. Historical honesty, Krakauer suggests, is faith’s best safeguard.

You end understanding that Under the Banner of Heaven is not anti-religion—it’s a plea for humility before truth, and vigilance against the seductive certainty that God’s voice excuses cruelty.