I had previously enjoyed Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, so when I saw Under the Banner of Heaven at the used book store I couldn’t help myself. This is the story of the murders of Brenda Lafferty and her baby, Erica that took place on July 24, 1984. The perpetrators of this murder were her brother in-laws (Ron and Dan Lafferty) and it did not take long for the police to locate them and arrest them. Jon Krakauer details how they came to murder their family, and how Dan Lafferty still shows no remorse for the lives that he took.
Central to this story is the history and story of Mormonism. I want to preface this by saying that Dan and Ron Lafferty were not Mormon. They were a break away sect of fundamentalists. In every religion their can be people who take things to an extreme and buck the values that are held by the mainstream faith. I want to be clear that while the author tells of the history of the Mormon religion and key leaders in it, he does so to show the chain of how this fundamentalist group was developed and how they are able to justify the beliefs that they hold.
Among other principles, the main principle that this fundamentalist group was trying to bring back was that of polygamous marriage. They claimed that as Joseph Smith took a revelation declaring it to be the holy way of live to take multiple wives, and it being something that the central Mormon church was not doing, they were trying to bring it back and live by it. In this, there was also the principles of wives being quiet and submissive to their husbands.
Ron was the oldest of five brothers. Ron’s wife and children eventually left him over the growing extremist views and abuse he was trying to enforce in his home. After this all of the Lafferty boys began to get involved with the School of Prophets that studied the more fundamental beliefs and put a special focus on learning to receive revelations directly from God. Allen, the youngest Lafferty boy, was not participating as actively due to his wife, Brenda’s, refusal to give in to it.
During this time Ron received a revelation that he believed to be from God that they needed to “eliminate” Brenda Lafferty and her baby as well as two others who had helped Ron’s wife when she was leaving him. Ron shared it with the others in the School of Prophets and spoke about it openly in front of multiple people, including Allen, yet no one forewarned the potential victims or do anything other than protest that it was not a true revelation and it should not be acted on. This gave Ron and Dan the chance to follow through with it months after he had received it. Dan was the one who physically carried out the murders and in interviews he speaks of feeling overcome by a force he could not control and a complete calm with his actions because he believed to be following God’s orders.
This book delves deeply on how religion can create a certain atmosphere where things can be taken a different way. Several sections of the book point out that their is a fine line between a revelation and a delusion. “Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it.” (by Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay) This story brought up examples of people who did take their religious beliefs to the extreme. And those that suffer because of it.
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