What a great book! Krakauer did a great job researching Moism and all of its off-shoots.

The book gives you a look into how effed-up polygamy is too. Polygamy seems to be all about incest, pedophilia, abuse and control. Pure sickness.

Anyone else out there read it too? What hit you?

PS: What a sick bastard Brigham Young was.

I read it several years ago. Well researched, well written, and impossible to put down. It's one of the reasons I became fascinated by Mormonism and determined to speak out against it whenever I get the chance.

Read it a few years ago...it was the last straw for me. After I put it down I realized I could never go back. I was done.

Thanks for the inspiration. I loved "Into Thin Air" so I'm sure this will be a good read as well. After this, I can get back to my summer beach trash, right?

That book is what inspired me to resign. I'd already left the church but after reading it, I resigned. I was sickened to realize that the convenant I'd made in the temple at marriage was a covenant of plural marriage and I wanted to dissociate myself with that.

Stupid cult.

TG

This fact - that temple marriage is plural marriage - was the topic of a YW lesson I had in 1989. We were told that yes, it was all about plural marriage, & that if we were "first wives" we could reject other marriages that our husbands may want to enter into. I was already a NOM closeted non-believer, & it just made me very uncomfortable, but the other girls in the class thought it was so cool that they would be able to wield that kind of "power" over their future husbands.

I was surprised how well researched it was. I read it right after we left. It does shout out to people how silly moism is.
I read 'Into Thin Air'and "Into the Wild' also. I couldn't put them down either.

If you want to keep in the moment, now go read "Blood of the Prophets." You will be astounded how long your blood will boil.

Also, please note how when "Under the Banner of Heaven" came out, the LDS church commented, "No good Latter-day Saint need read this book." That's some sort of oblique but powerful passive-agressive warning, ain't it.

I read it about a year ago. I found it disturbing but excellent.

What hit me was how Dan Lafferty described how he felt so peaceful and calm when he killed Brenda and the baby (Erika? I forget). How he felt so right in doing God's work. That chilled me to the bone.

It's certainly adds relevance to the 'Religious fundamentalism as mental illness' threads that are currently on the forum. Eg.
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,912020

ironmann Wrote:

> The book gives you a look into how effed-up
> polygamy is too. Polygamy seems to be all about
> incest, pedophilia, abuse and control. Pure
> sickness.
>
> Anyone else out there read it too? What hit you?

Oh, yeah. I'm almost finished with "Church of Lies" and it is sickening how common incest and sexual abuse are in polygamy. The boys are raised to believe they have every right to do what they want and the girls are raised to just take it.

I was still struggling with the "church may not be true, but does teach good things" idea when I read it. I realized that today's sanitized church is nothing like what JS truly meant for the church to be. If I really wanted to be mormon, I needed to become a fundie and that was soooo not going to happen. Then I realized that today's church is just a crock of shit and just teaches what it needs to to collect tithing and maintain control of its members.

I loved how in the epilogue Krakauer mentions how he kept trying to write about the mainstream church and the fundie church kept coming out. All I could think by then was that it was because todays mormon church isn't even the restored church of joseph smith's vision--Krakauer felt like he was failing, but really hit the nail on the head.

I read the book during my last month of attending primary only as the pianist. I had to tell the president when my last day would be. (They were never going to release me.) It was my first bit of "anti-Mormon" literature. The first thing that struck me is that everything was researched. I knew of the book, No Man Knows My History, but I'd never dared read a word. The quotes contained history that was openly taught, at church, in the 1970's. Not anymore. Another thing that struck me is that Krakauer had no motive to trash the church. He was just writing a factual account of what happened and explaining within the context of Mormon history.

or maybe I should say brought them to my awareness.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,67303,67555#msg-67555

I was only forced to participate in the Mormon church for a few years as a teenager and never really believed it. I suppose I thought it was made up, but I don't remember thinking it was a deliberate fraud until I read UTBOH. Big takeaways:

1. LDS and FLDS are the same religion.
2. Joseph Smith was a con man.
3. The church he started is a cult.
4. Parents had heads up asses.

I put "same religion" first because it was the really the most profound of those four realizations. It bothered me that Krakauer kept lumping the polygamous fundamentalists together with the modern Mormons, rather than separating them as I'd been taught. I asked myself why it bothered me when I'd long since rejected the faith and stopped considering myself a member. The answer was I'd been programmed, and some of the programming was still with me.

It's been 10 years, and at the time I was mostly about the similarities between Joseph Smith and the professional work-avoiding POS with legs who had nearly ruined me. I don't remember thinking much about Brigham Young other than he was also a con man.

Right now I'm having a huge thing about Brigham Young, having read Wife No. 19 and realized he was a murderous thieving tyrant AND a professional work-avoiding POS with legs who was only able to trap and terrorize the early saints because of their love of Joseph Smith. Brigham Young was much worse. And his fingerprints are all the fuck over my family as well as the present-day Mormon church.

Ugh! Commence new round of creepy, crappy cult contempt.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/01/2013 06:49PM by munchybotaz.

the official Mormon church response shows how much they hated it:

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/church-response-to-jon-krakauers-under-the-banner-of-heaven

I'm really, really looking forward to the movie. >:-)

munchybotaz:
thanks for the link to the Mormon newsroom reaction to the book. I read all of their reviews and it's incredible how they all just ignore the main issue of Joseph Smith being a dirt bag and "revealing" the great doctrine of Polygamy!

It is so hard to swallow their crap.

It's on my summer reading list. I'm sure I'll love it. I thought that "Into Thin Air" was a stunning work. Krakauer does his homework and is a gifted storyteller.

I "read" most of my books via ipod. Either way, you'll love it. How he ties the murders at the beginning of the book to JS is great. You really get an in depth look at how eff'd up polygamy is. Those dudes are all sick.

Sit on the beach, read and enjoy!

Actually, after I read that book I did a google search to see if he was still in jail or got executed...that search led me here...and I've been addicted/amazed ever since. I'm a nevermo that has met one Mormon n my entire life (that I know of) and have been engrossed reading this board and learning about Mormonism ever since.

I am about 1/5 of the way through the book. I bought it on my NOOK a few days ago. So far, really good.

I read it some while back. I thought it was both well-researched and disturbing in the extreme.

I tried to get my convert TBM parents to read it, but they refused because it wasn't "faith promoting."