Mormonism bases its legitimacy on the idea of continuing divine revelation. Where Christianity declares revelation ‘closed’ with the death of the Apostles, Mormons accept not only the writings of Joseph Smith to be divinely inspired, but also the possibility of direct revelation to any (male) member of the church. Inspiration is a part of being Mormon. Spiritual insight is a virtue/skill/capacity for all those who are bona fide members of the Mormon priesthood, which includes all Mormon men. This patriarchal egalitarianism appears almost Roman in its presumption that the boundaries of the state end where the household begins. The state has no right to intrude upon family matters, even if these involve questions of statutory rape, child abuse or paedophilia. The paterfamilias is sovereign in his sphere. Brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty insist they were commanded to kill by God. Jon Krakauer‘s investigation into the murder of a mother and her child is a meticulously researched, bone-chilling narrative of polygamy, savage violence and unyielding faith. The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Jon Krakauer’s deeply unsettling new book, Under the Banner of Heaven. Introduction

Chip testified that earlier in the day he had told Ron he didn't think there was a need to kill a baby, and Erica's uncle told him that she was "a child of perdition"—and, Ron also said, once the child didn't have a mother anymore it would be a blessing to take her life, too. Throughout Under the Banner of Heaven, Andrew Garfield’s fictional Detective Jeb Pyre is attempting to understand the motivations behind Brenda and her infant daughter Erica’s gruesome murders. He slowly understands the crimes to be based on rhetoric from the early days of Mormonism, a religion he has devoutly followed for his entire life. As Pyre speaks with the rest of the Lafferty brothers and understands the domestic violence, narcissistic delusions, and strict traditional upbringings of Dan and Ron, the detective realizes that Brenda and Erica were just the beginning of their path to disillusioned glory.Excellent . . . a lucid, judicious, even sympathetic account not just of Mormon Fundamentalism but of the seductive power of fanaticism in general.’ – Daily Telegraph The complexity of the murder grows throughout the novel. Krakauer manages to compile eyewitness accounts, conducts strong research into the murder, and context around the Church of Latter Day Saints to explain the murder. Mormon faith is something quite distinct from that of Pauline Christianity, for example. In the latter, faith refers to intellectual assent to certain unchanging doctrines. In Mormonism, faith means obedience to the authority of the church hierarchy, which may decide to change fundamental doctrines from time to time. In Christianity there is a tradition of opposing ecclesiastical authority with dogmatic tradition. Mormonism opposes doctrine through hierarchical authority. Some of the criticism I got from my book, and I’m sure we’ll get for the series, is that it wasn’t the church’s violent past that caused the Laffertys. It was misogyny and the patriarchy, and all of that’s true. You can’t separate them. This is the church’s culture, which was formed by the violence, informed by the violence. When members of the School of Prophets, Ron claimed he was receiving messages from God about removing certain people from society. He went on to specifically claim the messages were about Brenda - he suggested God was commanding him to perform ritual murders of Brenda and her baby, and two others named Chloe Low and Richard Stowe. Low and Stowe evaded being murdered as the brothers were caught prior to being able to carry them out. On sharing the revelations with the other Church members, they renounced the idea of murder and the brothers quit the church.

Creahan, Danica (April 21, 2022). "How to Watch 'Under the Banner of Heaven' Starring Andrew Garfield". Entertainment Tonight . Retrieved April 30, 2022. BRIAN GRAZER: I thought it would be a compelling, grizzly thriller. [laughs] I thought it would be a forceful, kind-of-like-“In Cold Blood” thriller. It had me thinking of those movies in the ‘50s and ‘60s, just really gritty and kind of dark. I like edgy stuff that has some sort of internal soul. I thought it was a cautionary tale about the dangers of extremism. If we’re able to cinematically animate this, I think it might have a strong effect on people. But when Dianna realized in mid-1982 that four of her fellow Lafferty wives were becoming increasingly unhappy, she encouraged Ron to have a talk with his brothers. "Ron was embarrassed by me," Dan told Krakauer. "He was a devout Saint and he said I was an embarrassment to the Mormon Church. He told me, 'There's no place in this church for extremes!'" What about the beards, though? Are the killers wearing false ones to confound the hated cops, or are they a splinter group of fundamentalist Mormons who want to revert to ye olden bearded days of yore? I’m looking forward to finding out at the end of this six-part series. Lindsay Hansen Park, Bryan Buchanan (June 2, 2022). "E68: UTBOH Fact, Fiction and Episode One". Sunstone Mormon History Podcast (Podcast).

Ron and Dan Lafferty Go Off the Rails

In the third generation, the grandchildren are in the same situation as the children of people belonging to religions thousands of years old - they do not remember a time, nor do their parents when they and their families were not believers and theirs is a history and established pattern of worship and traditions to draw upon. Allen overcame the fundamentalist beliefs of the LDS Church by knowing more about the history of his faith and asks Pyre to do the same by reading a red book. From the evidence collected from Allen’s house, Pyre garners the red book, titled ‘Mormonism: Shadow or Reality?’ written by Jerald and Sandra Tanner. The real book comprises copies of early Latter Day Saints documents along with commentaries by the authors. The Tanners’ book is highly critical of the LDS Church and scrutinizes the history of the Mormon faith, the lives of significant Mormon figures like Joseph Smith, and early beliefs like priesthood ban and polygamy.

IPA Reveals Nominations for the 27th Satellite™ Awards". International Press Academy. December 8, 2022. Archived from the original on December 8, 2022 . Retrieved December 8, 2022. JON KRAKAUER: I was so impressed with Lance, his vision. Right away I was like, “Yeah, I’m in.” I said, “I want to I trust you, Lance. I would certainly give you notes, you can show me scripts, but I don’t really want to be involved in this.” I was paid to be a consultant, but no one really asked for me to consult on the series. I was fine with that because, you know, I knew it might be bad. I knew from “Into the Wild,” which I love… it’s a miracle when a movie turns out OK because there’s so many moving parts and they can go off the rails in a thousand different ways. I understood that and I told myself. “Okay, I’m going to roll the dice with Lance and Imagine because I believe in these people and they seem trustworthy. I believe in their vision.” A multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. This is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior. They set out for Richard Stowe's place next, but missed a turn and, deeming it a sign, instead headed for Nevada.By far the least successful storyline depicts Mormonism’s early days under founder Joseph Smith – himself a polygamist, although the LDS church did not admit this until 2014. Whatever support the Mormon historical record lent to Krakauer’s analysis in the book doesn’t translate here; the 19th century scenes – stark, hokey, mostly sans historical context – resemble budget History Channel re-enactments and do almost nothing to enhance the later stories. They’re jarring and unnecessary distractions to the much more nuanced, taut later timelines, not least because they require awkward narration from the present-day characters – particularly poor Allen, also tasked with explaining Brenda to us. Jim knew it might take awhile for Ron to exhaust his appeals, an inevitably lengthy appeals process being the right of every death row inmate in the U.S., but the father didn't expect it to be "painful or a hardship on us at all." Through ‘Mormonism: Shadow or Reality?’ Pyre understands that his faith is built upon several unacceptable practices and startling historical events. The history of Mormonism, which includes the Mountain Meadows massacre, a mass murder committed by Mormons with the assistance of Southern Paiute Native Americans, astounds Pyre. The detective’s doubts and questions only increase after reading the book and he gets detached from his Mormon faith more than ever. After going through the book, Pyre suffers a breakdown as he perceives that he cannot believe in the LDS Church in the same way he used to. Image Credit: Michelle Faye/FX Hailu, Selome (August 6, 2022). " 'Abbott Elementary' Tops 2022 TCA Awards". Variety. Archived from the original on August 6, 2022 . Retrieved August 6, 2022. Krakauer cites information gleaned from several interviews with Dan Lafferty and former and current members of the Crossfield School of the Prophets, as well as other fundamentalist Mormons. He refers to several histories about the formation of Mormonism to tie the origins of the religion to the modern iterations of both the church and the fundamentalists. [6] Derivation of the title [ edit ]

Robin is actually based on Lafferty brother Mark, and Mark Lafferty is alive and living with his wife Lanna, in Utah. Read More: 14 Book-to-Screen Adaptations to Catch in 2022 Why did Ron and Dan Lafferty kill Brenda Wright Lafferty? BRIAN GRAZER: We tried for about six years to make it work as a movie. You knew it was always going to be challenging material. We never could shape it into that compelling screenplay that you read and say, “This is a movie” because I don’t think it really was, as much as we tried. We did draft after draft, a couple of different read-throughs just to see if we could make ourselves believe. Flashes of great material, great characters, and yet in a way it felt smaller than the book. It couldn’t bring that broader, historic perspective to the story. It was also frustrating because Lance kept coming up with even more detail and insight about the actual events, the crime, the family, and there wasn’t room to really develop the characters. We could do the crime, but we couldn’t really do the characters, and we could do the crime and a sense of the world, but we couldn’t allow you to understand. Ron, like Dan, turned toward fundamentalism while under economic pressure. The bank was about to foreclose on his home -- he would sometimes break into tears over his family's plight -when Dan convinced him that God wanted him to forsake material goals and become a fundamentalist missionary. Dan also drew his four other brothers into the fold, but there was one problem: Brenda, the wife of his brother Allen. As the Lafferty boys started espousing polygamy and other strange things, Brenda urged the other wives to resist. And Ron's wife took Brenda's advice in spades. She divorced Ron and took the children to Florida. So when Ron's divine revelation about Brenda's ''removal'' arrived, he was in a receptive frame of mind.I've seen a lot of death in my career," former American Fork Police Department Chief Terry Fox, who in 1984 was a detective on his city's then-10-man force, reflected to Salt Lake City's KSLTV in 2019. "This one was different in the case, that it was religiously motivated. You can use the word brutal, horrific. And I just don't throw those out lightly because this was a really, really brutal murder. It was different from a lot of crime scenes in a lot of ways." Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Miniseries, Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television