Response to Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

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Response to Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith



A FAIR Analysis of: Under the Banner of Heaven, a work by author: Jon Krakauer

Response to claims made in Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer


Jump to Subtopic:

  1. REDIRECT Response to Under the Banner of Heaven, Prologue
  2. REDIRECT Response to Under the Banner of Heaven, Chapter 1
  3. REDIRECT Response to Under the Banner of Heaven, Chapter 4
  4. REDIRECT Response to Under the Banner of Heaven, Chapter 5
  5. REDIRECT Response to Under the Banner of Heaven, Chapter 6
  6. REDIRECT Response to Under the Banner of Heaven, Chapter 17
  7. REDIRECT Response to Under the Banner of Heaven, Chapter 18


Reviews of this work

"The Justin Wise Dialogues" by Ron Hellings

Summary: Ron Hellings provides an imagined dialogue which highlights some of the many problems with this anti-Mormon work.



Craig L. Foster, "Doing Violence to Journalistic Integrity"

Craig L. Foster,  The FARMS Review, (2004)
The noted author Paul Fussell once commented, "If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces."1 Perhaps the same could be said about Jon Krakauer. Both he and his works are complex, introspective, and, without doubt, "in your face" and controversial. Krakauer is fascinated by people who are on the edge physically and emotionally, those who push the limits to the extreme. His writing reflects this fascination as he tries to define for his reading audience what it is like to go to extremes. Krakauer has succeeded where many others have failed because he is, without argument, a gifted writer. His text flows seamlessly, creating a literary picture that touches a reader to the very core.


Krakauer has used his writing talents to look at the fringes of the Latter-day Saint community in his book Under the Banner of Heaven, in which he examines the double murders committed in 1984 by the ex-Mormon brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty and explores the fundamentalist communities of Colorado City-Hildale on the Utah-Arizona border and Bountiful in British Columbia.2 His accounts of murder and seduction are mixed with events and teachings in Latter-day Saint history in an attempt to portray these fringe elements as murderous and libidinous offspring of a religion steeped in its own history of violence and quirkiness.

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Paul McNabb, editor's introduction to Richard E. Turley, "Faulty History: A Review of Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith"

Paul McNabb, editor's introduction to Richard E. Turley,  FairMormon Papers
In July 2003, popular author Jon Krakauer released a book arguing that religious faith in general, and the faith of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in particular, often motivates violence in its believers. Since its organization in 1830, The Church of Jesus Christ has been the subject of many lurid and sensational publications, each purporting to reveal the true and sordid fact of the lives of Latter-day Saint leaders and members. Despite the claims of objectivity and historical accuracy, such publications consistently display the same pattern: an agenda-driven effort selectively drawing on rumor and half-truths, clothed in the trappings of historical scholarship.


Unfortunately for those wanting to know more about Latter-day Saint history or the possible relationship between religious belief and violence, Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith suffers from these same fatal flaws.

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  • Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, "Jon Krakauer. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (review)," Brigham Young University Studies 43 no. 4 (2004), 157–160. PDF link
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