The emergency room at hospitals are surreal places, and I always wonder how people who work there full time deal with it. One broken bottle of salsa on our tile floor, one misplaced foot, one aborted attempt to remove the sliver of glass with tweezers, one sinking realization that the attempts were just pushing it in further, and I find myself face down on a hospital bed with the doctor rolling up one of the bells on my cute new corduroy pants to keep from getting iodine and blood on them while he pulls out the sliver. Now I’m moving slowly and cautiously all along my left side, because not only does my foot hurt, but so does my entire left arm from the tetanus shot. To add to the surreal nature of my afternoon, after we got home, a short thunderstorm dumped giant, ill-formed hail all over our apartment complex, putting a dent in the top of my truck.
The hurry-up-and-wait nature of the E.R. meant I had a chance to finish Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer. My mother gave me her copy a long time ago, and I figured with the recent raid on a polygamous cult in Texas, I should bone up on the information about Mormon fundamentalism inside this book. I found the book to be a fair book, empathetic towards why people are drawn to Mormonism and fascinated by the religion’s perseverance while pulling no punches in exposing how the history of the church breeds this conservatism that made the fundamentalists inevitable, along with the sexual abuse they dish out to young people of both sexes.
The ostensible purpose of the book is to chronicle the story of the Lafferty brothers, two men who, angry that the wife of their youngest brother was resisting their attempts to transform their entire family into a polygamous fundamentalist Mormon one, decided to murder her and her baby daughter. The daughter’s death was justified because of her gender; daughters of “bitches” grow up to be forbiddingly independent-minded women as well was the theory, a theory that makes more sense if you really understand the Mormon obsession with lineage. In telling this story, though, Krakauer also tells the story of how the LDS church evolved, especially how the doctrine of polygamy was, at various times, fiercely defended and just as fiercely rejected, depending on the need to either separate the Mormons from the mainstream of America, or to embrace it.*
The book was sure to displease the mainstream LDS church, that treats Joseph Smith’s lecherous ways like the crazy uncle in the attic, at times denying or papering over the fact that he was obsessed with promiscuity and especially with collecting virgin wives. It’s because it’s pretty much impossible to paint the whole story of polygamy in a light that successfully obscures why it came to be and why it continued on, even though it was a major reason that the Mormons had violent skirmishes with the American government. You can look at it upside down, backwards, standing on your head, or in a mirror, but the fact of the matter was that it was a direct result of the odious combination of the doctrine of obedience to the prophet/president and a scalding patriarchy. The fact that marrying young teenagers has always been a part of polygamy—and wasn’t just something that evolved under Warren Jeffs’ recent machinations—shows how much it’s been about, from the beginning, dominance over women and a preening show of power to other men. If anything, I think Krakauer does lean too hard on the lechery aspects of it all. It’s not that polygamous cults breed a certain kind of oversexed man, so much as they cultivate an obsession with sex and power that collapses the difference between sex and rape, and turns sex into a tool for men to wield power over women and each other.
The history of the church and the various factions that split off is interesting, as is the case that Krakauer makes for the U.S. government’s crackdown on Mormonism being the reason it’s the fastest-growing religion on the planet today. In sum: If the government hadn’t gone to extreme lengths to prosecute polygamy, the church would have never forsaken it. Why should they, when the church leaders reap so many ego benefits from having harems of wives to show off their power and in service to them? But such an unsustainable system would have limited the church’s growth potential, which is why the mainstream Mormon church has billions of dollars now and dozens of millions of members, but the fundamentalist split-offs can’t hold it together for more than a generation, and are quickly crippled by the negative effects of sexual abuse and widespread incest.
For all the LDS criticism of the book, though, I think that it’s sympathetic to the struggles of Mormons under some pretty vicious religious oppression. Mormons historically have been massive pains in the asses to their neighbors, sure, but it was made all the worse by people’s intolerance of them. In fact, he makes a pretty good case that the early on intolerance of Mormonism was what made their fundamentalism so severe, because both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were justified in their paranoia. A few early on violent, relatively unprovoked attacks on early Mormon settlers preceded the Mormon tendencies to flout American laws and mores. It’s hard not to wonder if a little more up-front tolerance would have made Mormons more amendable to being included in the American mainstream, and therefore not doing things like instigating polygamy, fighting against freedom of speech, or trying to hoodwink Native Americans into killing white settlers that weren’t Mormon.
Anyway, I know I’m like the last person in the country to read this book, but if I’m not, I recommend it highly. Well-written histories are sometimes hard to come by, and this one is great. It’s got the true crime element, but just enough of that to be interesting, but not so much that it gets tedious. And you learn a lot about the FLDS cults, and get a hint about why they’re conflicting with mainstream American (including the mainstream LDS church) more and more lately.
*It’s worth noting that women eat the shit stick when a religion wants to set itself apart from others. It’s so very often about, “What particular tortures can we lay out for women that the other guys won’t embrace?” The Catholic Church upped the ante on anti-contraception dogma to set themselves apart from Protestants, who were beginning to view contraception in a positive light. And the Mormons subjected women (and girls) to the hell of polygamy as a badge of honor to set themselves apart from the “Gentiles”.
35 Responses to “Faith-based violence”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Good lord, Amanda. That’s horrible. Hope you feel better soon.
Religion just sucks for women - end of story. It’s why I stopped trying to find a faith community. Oh, and because I don’t believe in supernatural being.s
Oof. I hope you’re felling better, Amanda.
But inquiring minds want to know - whining or no whining? Fainting or just nausea? And how did you handle it?
And will you still let Marc near a wound with tweezers ever again?
I’ll be fine. I’m just accident-prone, which is embarrassing and since it’s embarrassing, I have to cope by making fun of myself. This happened 9 and 1/2 years since my last tetanus shot, so you know, right in time to give me complete coverage. Then it was a bunch of spider bites up my back after tubing. The nurse laughed at me, because I had been in her office earlier that year covered all over my ass with poison ivy, due to peeing in the wrong bush.
Dude, if you’re injured, how do you not whine? Putting on a stoic act is a form of whining.
Eek, sorry you had to go to the ER! Hope you feel better soon!
I read that book a few years ago and thought it was really terrific–I read it cause I’d just finished Into Thin Air and wanted to see more from the author.
Years ago, I heard some comic say about his home state: “A lot of people commit incest in Alabama, because people from other states won’t fuck ‘em.”
He was joking. But in the FLDS, it’s literally true.
* * *
Hope your foot heals fast.
Hope your foot heals fast, Amanda
* * *
Years ago, I heard some comic (who I’d gladly credit if I could remember his name) say about his home state: “A lot of people commit incest in Alabama, because people from other states won’t fuck ‘em.”
He was joking. But in the FLDS, it’s literally true.
You have my symathy Amanda. I did something similar when my daughter was about four. I waqs weeding the garden when she trundled of up the street on her little bike. I expected her to retun in a couple of minutes. Then there was this terrible scream. I ran up the street barefoot, thinking someone was attacking my little girl and hammered a shard of glass into my foot.
When I got to her she had been scared by a two inch long worm wiggling across the asphalt. I got a tetanus jab because my kid needed rescuing from a two inch worm!.
Anyway, I have followed the Saga of the FLDS on the news. I’m glad it did not turn into another Waco. Stories of how fringe religions are victimised never impress me because I have heard so often how the poor Protestant settlers were hounded out of Britain for wanting freedom of religion. It is not a fabrication but is a massive distortion.
The Church of England’s role as official church of the state was different then, the insitutions of a modern state did not exist. The church parish therefore was the local government. It administered poor relief, looked after orphans and the sick and old, managed education such as it was, was part of the legal system and had a host of other functions including revenue collection.
So those who wanted freedom of religion just wanted the benefits of being English without having to pay English taxes or abide by English laws. Which as far as I can see it what cults like the FLDS are asking for in America now.
you cant expect to live next to people who dont think that virgin bride collecting is batshit & not have trouble. after trying to set up their own nation & killing settlers, theyre lucky they werent completely exterminated. ‘into thin air’ was a better book. altho more people should read this to know about the secret underpants.
hope you feel better.
and hope those reallywerent spider bites, too.
1) because dont they usually say that what you think is a spider bite was actually probably done by another insect like a biting fy. etc? &
2) im arachnaphobic!!
I’m at least one person besides you who hasn’t read the book, and I like Krakauer (I loved Into the Wild…both it and the movie were great…the movie made me cry because I had a family member who when he got married ran off and didn’t stay in touch in a similar fashion to McCandless, even though he’s still alive. Only complaint about the book is that the whole middle of it went off-topic to tell random stories of other adventurers…does this book similarly go off-topic for chapters on end?)
Sorry to hear about the injuries…I don’t become unhealthy much, but I just think about how I’ll feel in a few days.
If the state and religion are identical, then by definition a desire for freedom of religion is a desire to have freedom from the state. I’ll grant you the claim that the narrative of America’s Protestant settlers is often wrong (how could it not be), but I simply don’t buy the notion that they were just tax evaders. Of course they would be tax evaders if their taxes went directly to the church they thought was heretical, even if those ‘taxes’ were used for public service. Your claim seems to turn on the notion that the Pilgrims were tax evaders before they were religious zealots, which doesn’t hold up.
The error I see in the traditional narrative is the idea that the Pilgrims were looking for a general freedom of religion—they wanted the freedom to be their own religious bigots and that required a new state. But state and church are not identical in the world that FLDS operates. Thus FLDS freedom from the state is NOT a freedom of religion issue. However, the analogy works in the sense that FLDS does want the freedom to create a new state for their horrifying purposes. Just look to their total control of local governance and the ability to get a couple states to ignore their rampant law breaking.
Amanda, I hope you didn’t use any socialized medicine in that ER!
Amanda, hope you feel better soon!
Interesting thing about the legacy of obedience and subordination in the Mormon culture - when, in the fifties, the U.S. embarked on the insane program of testing nuclear weapons above ground - which in the end killed about 200,000 people through exposure to the iodine isotope alone, a major factor in the rise of thyroid cancers - one of the hardest hit areas was in Southern Utah. And the Eisenhower administration was counting on the fact that this “low use” population, as they called them, would simply not complain. There’s a beautiful and heartbreaking book of interviews and photographs by Carole Gallagher, America Ground Zero which I think everyone should read at one time or another - for the number of casualties in the cold war has always been overlooked - and one of the constants in the interviews is that it was women in towns like St. Georges who started noticing the kids with leukemia, or their 50 year old non-smoking non-drinking mothers dying of cancer, and began asking questions. And the leadership of the church ostrasized them for doing so. It was a perfect victim population - low use indeed - because they would die like they were told to.
So those who wanted freedom of religion just wanted the benefits of being English without having to pay English taxes or abide by English laws. Which as far as I can see it what cults like the FLDS are asking for in America now.
Ding ding ding. FLDS not only consider it a point of honor to violate American laws, but they constantly and proudly defraud the government while doing it. As this book notes, the FLDS that is being held to account dominates Colorado City, AZ, and they get millions of dollars in welfare alone by filing as “single” mothers when they consider themselves married. If a black single mother gave part of her welfare check to a boyfriend with 10 other women on a string he’s having children with, she’d be used as a Republican scare story forever and ever, but that’s SOP for the fundie Mormons. They also defraud the government by taking taxpayer money for airports, schools, and a police force that all answer illegally to the church before the government that pays for them.
Roger, there’s also a strange tradition of hostility towards health care, especially for women and children. I’m seeing how this plays out in other fundie cultures. The argument against contraception, of course, is that it’s “unnatural”, an argument that comes from men who would never deny themselves, oh, a Pacemaker.
When I moved to SLC in 2002* the FLDS was just emerging on the collective radar. For years, the authorities and the church looked the other way, either because they secretly supported the polygamists, or because they were concerned that the publicity of court proceedings would embarass the church and the state of Utah. Remember that this was leading up to the Winter Olympics.
The first high-profile arrest and trial was a guy named Tom Green, who had about 7 “wives”, and was ultimately convicted on some kind of child-support / welfare fraud grounds. Not long after, the Utah prosecuter finally started looking into the FLDS town (Hildale UT and Colorado City AZ). Among other things there was some kind of scandal involving a local police officer who was also a FLDS member. The prosecuter ultimatly lost his job at the next election (2004 I guess?) because people tought he was wasting money and resources looking into the FLDS. But by that time the investigation had gone far enough that it continued without him.
*The same month Elizabeth Smart went missing! Some time later I met her parents…Mr. Smart gave me the creeps…
1) what would WELL formed hail be??
2) my gadget-freak friend has this tool for getting splinters out: imagine a hybridization of forceps, a hummingbird beak, and a scissors. When you squeeze the scissors handles, a tiny little arm OPENS at the END of the ‘hummingbird beak’. Works ‘WAY better than a tweezers. Everyone should have one. (It’s some kind of medical tool he found being surplussed/trashed. Autoclave safe, all steel.)
Amanda, that’s true about the health care issue. Yet interestingly, women were fighting for their husbands, too, in these truly heartbreaking accounts of how the government lied to these people for thirty years, and simply let them die.
Part of the emotional division of labor in a lot of families is health. The husband entrusts his health to his wife - who gets to play the scold. No steak for you! Especially in the older, patriarchal families. This proved to be excellent thing for the establishment when it came to trying to halt the bomb tests, or to get somebody to confirm what was going on - the cancer clusters that lined up perfectly with the downwind passages. (Incidentally, the country is pretty much in denial about this - anybody born in the fifties or early sixties in almost any community had a fairly good chance of receiving aberrant radiation from fallout carried by the stratosphere - there was a dump, for instance, in Albany New York that happened in 1953 that was violent enough to effect regular medical x rays being taken in Albany hospitals, and that motivated a study of leukemia increases in children in the Troy area that was censored by the usual figures.)
Since the husband’s role in the emotional division of labor is to play the reluctant agent of his own health, how easy to pressure wives who are trying to find out the answers by making it seem emasculating to the husbands! One should always remember the malign synergy between class warfare and patriarchy in this country.
Ouch Amanda….that hurts….and the time in the ER….could it move any slower? Another really interesting book is The Mormon Murders by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. It too is a very good historical tale of how the Mormons came to be and now how they try to contain and hide any documents about their founding.
I believe that if the government had not stepped in, the regular LDS people of today would still be polygamists….it is a real part of who they were.
Not being a fan of religion of any sort, as far as I’m concerned the FLDS bunch is just a group of old pervs who want to fuck 14 year olds. We had two of the Mormon guys on their mission make the mistake of ringing our doorbell yesterday morning….my husband ran them off the stoop by yelling at them that they were just like the FLDS and their reply was that they weren’t like that….yeah, only because they can’t be.
That’s a bit unfair, I think. I agree with the author’s take on the Mormons, that they’re almost a preternaturally upbeat group of people, and of the ones I’ve known, none struck me as drippingly creepy perverts. The creepy factor comes more from the unquestioning acceptance of the peculiarly American notion that there’s a connection between faith and prosperity.
Connection between faith and prosperity?….that’s the message of that mega church in Houston with Joel Osteen….and so many of the mega churches these days….come and give us your money and you’ll get more in return. Sure….while your preacher flies around in his gulfstream and rides in multiple mercedes and you try to get by on your weekly/monthly paycheck less the 10% you give.
I just think religion is basically NOT good for people. But, having said that, I do understand what you mean by the Mormon’s usually being upbeat….the ones I have known are almost Stepford in their outlook.
Still though, the FLDS guys just want to fuck multiple 14 year olds and get away with it.
Connection between faith and prosperity?….that’s the message of that mega church in Houston with Joel Osteen….and so many of the mega churches these days….come and give us your money and you’ll get more in return. Sure….while your preacher flies around in his gulfstream and rides in multiple mercedes and you try to get by on your weekly/monthly paycheck less the 10% you give.
I just think religion is basically NOT good for people. But, having said that, I do understand what you mean by the Mormon’s usually being upbeat….the ones I have known are almost Stepford in their outlook.
Still though, the FLDS guys just want to fuck multiple 14 year olds and get away with it.
Connection between faith and prosperity?…..that’s the message of the mega church today. Sure….give all you can and you’ll be rewarded by god….while your preacher flies around in a gulf stream or rides in multiple mercedes….and the church-goer tries to get by on a weekly/monthly paycheck less the 10% or more he gives. I just think religion is basically bad for most people.
Now, I do understand what you mean by the Mormon’s being upbeat….the ones I’ve known are almost Stepford in their outlook.
Still, my opinion of the FLDS bunch is that they are old pervs who want to fuck multiple 14 year olds and get away with it.
Ian: I’m currently reading Albion’s Seed by David Hackett Fischer, a book recommended by (among other people) Sara Robinson at Orcinus.
Wanting to avoid paying taxes was hardly the only reason religious immigrants fled England. The Quakers were brutally persecuted in great part because they refused to show deference to people of “higher station,” rather greeting everybody as “Friend” regardless of rank or office. Fischer recounts an incident of an English sheriff who while out riding encounters a Quaker, and ends up beating him bloody because the latter would not call the former “my lord” or “sir” or even use the respectful “you” instead of the familiar “thou.”
As for the “borderers” — immigrants from the north of England, Scottish lowlands, and northern Ireland who formed the ethnic base of American “redneck” culture — their anti-governmental bent was formed during long centuries of being warred over by both Scottish and English kings, and being sucked dry by wealthy absentee landlords. As an atheist, I’m not sympathetic to their religious fervor, but it was in part a reaction to the decadence, greed, and irreligion of the Anglican clerics of the day.
Obviously the entire “back country” worldview is no longer constructive in today’s world, but it’s wrong to say that it arose out of a simple, selfish desire not to pay taxes. The folk among whom it first flourished had damn good reasons for believing as they did.
Religion just sucks for women - end of story.
Religion sucks for *all* humans. It exists to glorify god or gods, human needs be damned.
Under the Banner of Heaven is an awesome book!!!
that being said, tile floors are the true villain of the story. I dropped one of my insulin vials on a tile floor once, and watched a fortnight of my life shatter. fuck tile floors. I will never have one in my house.
Eric @ 16, the only thing I can think of is that that’s a mini needle driver (does it look like this?) That kind of makes sense, since those are made to hold small needles for small suture, which are about the size of a splinter. I can’t visualize what you mean by a little arm at the end of the “hummingbird beak” though.
That sounds profound, but I really don’t think it’s true.
Eric @ 16, Caroline @ 26:
I believe he is talking about a Ear Polypus, which you can get from modeling suppliers like this one. Or if not, I’ll wager it’s pretty darn similar.
Last Saturday, I was working on refinishing the last bit (a door frame) on my recently remodeled kitchen. While stripping the old wood with some steel wool, I jammed a splinter in my thumb. I though at first I got it out, but by the evening realized bit was still in there. I’ve had this happen before, after a day or three you can usually pop it out like a zit. However this one was really painful and oozing puss. I had trouble typing on Monday. Monday night I sterilized a razor blade and a couple tweezer to remove it. I had to cut away some skin and squeeze hard to get at the buried splinter. It was a half inch long! I almost pierced my thumb. I think I’m going to have a little divot where the hole was.
I haven’t read the book. In another year or two I should have enough time and energy to get through more than a book every month or so. Damm babbies.
“So those who wanted freedom of religion just wanted the benefits of being English without having to pay English taxes or abide by English laws. Which as far as I can see it what cults like the FLDS are asking for in America now.”
Only four of the original 13 colonies had no official state religion. (PA, DE, NJ & RI). Freedom of religion is something that arose out of the need to forge a common bond among the mostly northern Puritans and mostly southern Anglicans. PA, DE and NJ was a kind of buffer zone that also allowed Catholics and Jews. (MD too, though by 1691 Anglican was the official religion)
Amanda, a good companion to Krakauer’s book (which is outstanding), is Escape, by Carolyn Jessup. Jessup is a former member of the FLDS who escaped it with all eight of her children-and then fought her ex and the cult to win custody of them, the first woman to do so. It’s quite a compelling story, and not just because it’s exciting and suspenseful. Jessup also lays out very clearly the emotional/social terrain that women in that community have to navigate in order to survive. Grim stuff.
I borrowed the book from my neighbor last week and realized at 4:30 in the morning that I needed to put it down because I had an exam at 8 am. A good book to grab the next time you find yourself in the ER:) From one klutz to another (as I speak, I have a big bruise on the inside of my knee, from some random run-in with a hard object, a cut on my foot, and my hands are covered with cuts and scratches from gardening. And that’s entirely normal for me.)
Amanda, I thought I was the only one in the world dumb enough to pee on poison ivy. I did that on a canoe trip once. Ever sat on a canoe seat with poison ivy on your butt?
The worst part was, the other activities at that camp included riding horses, sometimes bareback.
I think the scissor-beaked-tweezer thing might be this:
http://www.ares-server.com/Ares/Ares.asp?MerchantID=RET01229&Action=Catalog&Type=Product&ID=82561
I am deathly afraid of splinters. Whenever I have one no matter how big or small i freak out and insist on seeing a doctor. I am also needle phobic so that might have something to do with it.
Poor Amanda, I hope you are feeling better soon.
As to polygamy. I think what people don’t realise is that polygamy isn’t inherently wrong. If it is male dominated and takes advantage of underage women then it is very very wrong. Especially if the husband is violent. Polyamory and Polyandry (one woman more men) are actually far less heard of and much more worthwhile. The basic rule of polyamory is that everyone involved knows about everyone else and is perfectly ok with it and if anyone wants out they are free to leave whenever they want. Personally I think monogamy is far more damaging than plyamory or polyandry and I have a secret belief that if everyone was bisexual and polyamorous that the world would be a happier place but i wont stop you if you are happy being monogamous.
The LDS men have perverted it and made it into something shameful and disgusting.
If it makes you feel any better I closed the car door on my hand the other day. I was shocked that I didn’t break at least one of the fingers. The worst part was having to open the door to get my poor fingers out.
I loved ‘Under the banner of Heaven’. The world domination thing towards the end has me a little wary of most Mormons now. Each time they come to my door I tend to get myself uninvited to join their church when I reveal to these poor children that King James did not write the Bible and in fact there are much much older versions written in Greek and Aramaic. And that when the book gets updated parts of it get rewritten.
I actually went from Mormans to Amish and read the book ‘Rumspringa’ afterwards. That was pretty enlightening as well. I feel sorry for all people who are captured by their religion and not taught how to think of themselves as individuals or how to think at all for that matter.
Organized religion is yucky. Someone should ban it - all religion must be personal from now on.
I just read this book a few months ago and thought it was fantastic. Blending the history of the LDS church, the emergence of the FLDS movement, and the Lafferty murders made it riveting and impossible to put down.
It also made me think that Mormons are batshit crazy. The history of their Church’s founder is not a mystery hidden by time. It just happened 150 years ago! There are records and accounts proving their messiah was a convicted conman who pretty much just loved 16 year old ass and wanted a never ending stream of it.