Krakauer Takes on the Mormons

[chelle]

Looks like he's started a controversy again...

 

From today's NY Times:

Now, with "Under the Banner of Heaven," Mr. Krakauer has begun his own culture war. If he thought the mini-industry spawned by his Everest book — competing books, death threats and continuing Web battles — was a nuisance, he may one day look back on that experience as a minor dust-up compared with what could follow his book questioning religion.

 

Already, the Mormon Church has questioned his motives and veracity, while pointing to some secular publications — like the Economist magazine — that have criticized him for failing to explain why people are drawn to the church.

 

The gist of the complaints is that, having climbed to the top of the world and written well about it, does an admitted agnostic really think he can take on a popular religion? Or even get it?

 

Mr. Krakauer, whose friends both praise and fault him for his laserlike intensity, certainly takes his swings.

 

A year ago, the nation was appalled at the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, the sunny-faced Utah girl of 14 whose abductor says he was following early Mormon scripture in taking her as one of his brides. But as Mr. Krakauer writes, Joseph Smith, the Mormon Church's founder, also took a 14-year-old girl as one of an estimated 40 wives, explaining to her that God had commanded her to become part of his harem.

 

"My friends in Utah say Elizabeth Smart was more vulnerable to this kind of thing because the culture puts so much emphasis on obeying the word of God," Mr. Krakauer said.

 

In the book, Mr. Krakauer examines Mormon fundamentalists, the tens of thousands of true believers living mostly in Utah who broke away from the original Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The splinter groups are the American Taliban, Mr. Krakauer says, living in desert theocracies where pubescent girls are forced into marriages with old graybeards who rule with an iron fist. These polygamous communities are against the law, but usually tolerated by officials who see a little bit of great-grandpa's pioneering ways in the modern sects.

 

The biggest of these communities, Hildale/Colorado City, on the Utah-Arizona border, is full of houses the size of a Days Inn motel, stuffed with dozens of wives married to self-styled Mormon fundamentalist patriarchs. The community is in open violation of the law, Mr. Krakauer and others have noted, but faces little legal sanction and also manages to have one of the highest ratios of welfare recipients in the country.

 

His main focus is on Dan and Ron Lafferty, a pair of Utah brothers who believed they were ordered by God to kill their sister-in-law and her 15-month-old daughter. Brenda Lafferty had her throat slit with a 10-inch boning knife, and her daughter, Erica, was also stabbed. Dan Lafferty is serving a life sentence and his older brother, Ron, is on death row. The brothers said they did it because Brenda opposed their plan to take multiple wives.

 

Mr. Krakauer draws a connection between the revelations the Lafferty brothers claimed guided them and early Mormon acts of "blood atonement," in which followers targeted victims because of purported divine inspiration. Ron Lafferty, Mr. Krakauer notes, was a Republican city councilman and devout Mormon, who came to believe that his religion had lost touch with its roots, which allowed men to practice polygamy and to receive divine revelation.

 

Mr. Krakauer faults the modern Mormon Church, perhaps the fastest growing religion in America, with worldwide membership approaching 12 million, for failing to honestly address a past where taking young wives, killing on behalf of God and open disdain for the Constitution are papered over in place of a more Osmond-friendly image. Often overlooked by mainstream historians, the story of how a church founded by radicals who practiced an early form of communism and sanctioned sexual promiscuity through multiple wives has come to be known for white-bread conservatism is a compelling American tale.

 

The church officially renounced polygamy in 1890, and excommunicates members who openly practice it. But officials in Utah say up to 60,000 people continue to live in polygamous families there.

 

The church issued a five-page, single-spaced rebuttal of the book two weeks before publication. They found some relatively minor factual errors in the book, which Mr. Krakauer has promised to correct, and they took issue with one of his central points.

 

The book "is a full frontal assault on the veracity of the modern church," Mike Otterson, a church spokesman in Salt Lake City, said in a statement. "His basic thesis appears to be that people who are religious are irrational, and that irrational people do strange things."

 

In tying the crimes of the Lafferty brothers to the roots of the church, Mr. Krakauer has smeared an entire religion, Mr. Otterson said in the statement. "Krakauer unwittingly puts himself in the same camp as those who believe every German is a Nazi, every Japanese a fanatic, and every Arab a terrorist."

 

Doubleday, which is bringing out a 350,000-copy first printing of the book, seems delighted with the controversy. Its publicists promptly faxed the Mormon Church rebuttal to reviewers, and passed on phone numbers of church spokesmen.

 

Church officials say they agonized over responding in such a splashy way to the book, but decided that they had to make their stand, even at the risk of running the book up the best-seller charts.

 

 

[Greg_W]

Krack-eater is an idiot.

[Dru]

I heard Greg Child is gonna do an expose on the Rastas

[vegetablebelay]

Dru said:

I heard Greg Child is gonna do an expose on the Rastas

 

Go gettum Greg! Fukin Rastas.

[erik]

go! johhny go!

 

 

[Dru]

G. Weston deWalt is coming out with a pro-polygamy book to "set the record straight" and notes that contrary to his claims, Krakauer did not single handedly rescue Elizabeth Smart, but was in fact cowering in his tent...

[iain]

those polygamists don't even use supplemental oxygen when they are kidnapping those kids. Irresponsible, at best

[iain]

ah fundamentalist mormonism...treat yer wimmin like you grow your mushrooms...keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em shit

[sobo]

Krakauer did not single handedly rescue Elizabeth Smart, but was in fact cowering in his tent...

 

 

 

I so remember the passage from the book to which this remark refers. Krakauer needs a new brainstem.

[erik]

looks like the "iaxx one liner" machine is startin up again!

 

 

[JayB]

Interesting Chapter in Mormon History....

 

Mountain Meadows Massacre - 1857

 

Great way to break the ice if you are travelling through Utah and want to chat with the locals.

[MtnChicken]

.. wow, i cant believe the day has arrived that Erik would openly oppose polygamy. After all they are a "flock" of sheep.

 

 

[ncascademtns]

sobo said:

Krakauer did not single handedly rescue Elizabeth Smart, but was in fact cowering in his tent...

 

 

 

I refuse to read his book "Into Thin Air".

I met a climber that was on that climb and he he told Krak to leave him out of his book. So there ended up being one less climber stuck at the col. referenced in his book (story).

[sobo]

I read both books (Into Thin Air, The Climb), which I'm sure many people have done, just to get opposing views.

 

While I found Anatoly Boukriev's (sp?) book to be a fine work of mountaineering literature and an good biography of a hardy climber , Krakaurer's was merely an entertaining read of sensationalist quasi-fiction and self-aggrandizement.

[iain]

sobo said:Krakaurer's was merely an entertaining read of sensationalist quasi-fiction and self-aggrandizement.

He should start posting trip reports here, he'd fit right in.

[minx]

iaxx you're in fine form today

[Winter]

Man, yall are harsh on Krak. Let's not forget he's a solid climber and has taken a pretty big risk stepping outside of his comfort zone to expand his literary horizons. Since when do the gone totin conservatives suddenly put faith in what the NYTimes has to say?

[Dru]

you can be a solid climber and still not be a real human being; evidence may be found on this bulletin board.

 

word is Krakauer named the Big Hose route on South Howser after trask's mama

[allthumbs]

Dru said:

word is Krakauer named the Big Hose route on South Howser after trask's mama

I told ya nigga, I ain' gotta mama.

[JoshK]

Krakauer aside, the mormon religion is seriously fucked up, and I mean more fucked up than most religions.

[iain]

check it out I found an animal cracker with a likeness to minx's avatar!

[Dru]

[sobo]

"Mommy, what's my animal cracker doing?"

 

"uhhh, shut up and just eat it, kid."

[Greg_W]

iain said:

sobo said:Krakaurer's was merely an entertaining read of sensationalist quasi-fiction and self-aggrandizement.

He should start posting trip reports here, he'd fit right in.

 

Actually, I think he posts them on scot'tain Hardware's site. Bwahahahaha!!!

[iain]

Greg_W said:

Actually, I think he posts them on scot'tain Hardware's site. Bwahahahaha!!!

 

...we downed the Diamox and prayed for the best. My partners told me to descend but I fought on for the sake of the expedition...hoping to avoid breaking out the Gamow Bag and Niphedipine in a desperate, oxygen-starved struggle for survival....finally, after what seemed like hours of battle, the lunchcounter was reached and we could make an airy camp on Adams, the Mountain of Death.