Summary
Chapter 5 traces the Mormon Church's founding and the history of Joseph Smith. Smith grew up impoverished in Vermont during the Second Great Awakening before moving to Palmyra. His mother, Lucy Smith, enjoyed a personal relationship with God and frequently discussed the messages she received from the divine with her son. Smith was drawn to many forms of spirituality and experimented with crystal gazing, black magic, and money digging. Smith also had many brushes with the law in his youth after making fraudulent claims about his ability to find hidden treasure.
When he was seventeen, Smith claimed the angel Moroni visited him and revealed the location of the Book of Mormon, a secret history of the Americas transcribed in a dead language (Reformed Egyptian) on a series of golden plates. Joseph Smith claimed that his version of Christianity was the only accurate one, and retroactively amended mainstream Christian claims to suit an American audience. For example, Smith believed that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri, and the second coming of Christ would take place on American soil.
Chapter 6 expands on the narrative introduced in the previous chapter through the frame story of the Hill Cumorah Pageant. The pageant is an annual event where LDS performers reenact the alternate history in the Book of Mormon in a high-production stage play. The play tells the complex story of Lehi and his followers, who left Jerusalem for the Americas before the birth of Christ. Riddled with racist overtones, the narrative claims that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were actually descendants of the unrighteous Nephi, cursed by God with dark skin, who have since forgotten their Judaic ancestry. There is no archaeological, DNA, or written evidence to confirm this narrative. Krakauer argues that, though the claims of the Book of Mormon are anachronistic, more popular holy texts, like the Christian Bible or the Qur'an, "made their public debut in the shadowy recesses of the ancient past" and are thus much harder to refute or verify.
Chapter 7 opens with a present-tense description of the Prophet Onias (né Robert Crossfield), a significant player in the Lafferty murders. The chapter then explains the ethnic and religious demographics of Provo, Utah, and Brigham Young University before relating the story of John Hyrum Koyle's Dream Mine. Koyle was a Latter-day Saint who notably predicted the 1929 stock market crash and the end of World War II. Thus established as a prophet, Koyle sought investors to open a mine that he believed held gold hoarded by the Nephites that would provide for the Church during the coming apocalypse. Though no gold has been found at the mine, the site figured prominently in the Prophet Onias and the Lafferty brothers' theology and Utah Mormon culture more broadly.
Chapter 8 profiles the Lafferty family, beginning with Dan and Ron Lafferty's father, Watson Lafferty Sr. Though Dan Lafferty recalls his childhood with nostalgic fondness, Watson was an incredibly violent conspiracy theorist who oscillated between tender affection and cruel hatred for his wife and children.
After a mission trip to Scotland, where he met his first wife Matilda Loomis, Dan discovered a treatise on plural marriage printed by Joseph Smith's publishing company and accredited to Udney Hay Jacob. The pamphlet, entitled The Peace Maker, argues that polygamy is the ideal family structure that "could not possibly produce one crime; neither could it injure any human being." The text also gives instructions on how to subjugate women.
Believing Joseph Smith wrote the pamphlet, Dan instituted its recommendations in his own home. He began beating Matilda and refused to allow her to drive, handle money, or even speak to non-relatives without Dan present. He also pulled his children out of school, refusing to allow them to see friends or receive medical treatment. Some of Dan's more unusual rules included cutting off gas and electricity and ridding the home of all clocks and watches. Dan then decided to take on a second wife and selected his own stepdaughter to become his bride.
The text then transitions into Part II. This section is introduced with an excerpt from "The Magic of the Great Salt Lake," published in 1995 in the Times Literary Supplement, which discusses the essential virtue of obedience in the Mormon faith and the collectivist attitude that allowed the religion to survive persecution.
Chapter 9, entitled "Haun's Mill," traces how surviving persecution became a hallmark of the Mormon cultural identity. The chapter describes the early days of the Church when Smith led his followers to Jackson County, Missouri, where he believed the imminent second coming of Christ would take place. The church clashed with the local population over several issues, namely the abolition of slavery; Mormons were opposed to slavery on moral grounds, while the majority of Missourians at the time claimed Southern, slave-owning heritage. The Mormon church also voted in a bloc, only patronized LDS businesses, and fostered a sense of elitism and exclusivity that angered the local population, who eventually resorted to violence, looting, and burning down Mormon homes. Joseph Smith, initially a pacifist, refused to retaliate. Then, he received a revelation that ordered Mormons to take over Missouri. He also compared himself to the Prophet Mohammed and said he would "establish [his] religion by the sword" and "trample down [his] enemies and make it one gore of blood from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean." Unsurprisingly, the Missourians took this as a declaration of war. Under Smith's leadership, the early Mormons also plundered and burned non-Mormon homes. The conflict reached its climax when eighteen Mormons, including children, were killed at Haun's Hill. To stop the violence, the Mormons handed over their weapons and left the state, bringing with them a bitter grudge against the Gentiles.
Chapter 10 describes the history of Nauvoo, an exclusively Mormon settlement with a population that quickly rivaled Chicago's. In Nauvoo, Joseph Smith's behavior grew steadily more alarming; he declared himself "King, Priest, and Ruler over Israel on Earth," ran for president, and applied for a militia, though he was technically a fugitive from the law. In a fit of rage, Smith prophesied that his rival, Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs, would die a violent death. Smith's loyal follower, Porter Rockwell, allegedly shot Boggs to fulfill the prophecy, though Boggs miraculously survived.
Analysis
Chapters 5-10 explore how the Mormon church not only survived but thrived in the face of persecution and competing religious movements. Krakauer recounts the Hill Cumorah pageant in the present tense and describes the atmosphere using festive terms. This journalistic tone demonstrates that the Mormon Church's fraught history and the content of its sacred texts are still relevant in the modern day and are a point of pride and identity for modern, mainstream Mormons.
He also remarks on the evangelical Christian protestors at the pageant, showing the direct link between the anti-Mormon persecutions of the nineteenth century and anti-Mormon sentiments of today.
The Hill Cumorah Pagent portrays the story of Nephi and Laman, which Krakauer uses as an allegory for the schism in the Mormon church over the issue of polygamy. The way that the original Mormon Church, under Joseph Smith, left Palmyra and later Missouri, guided by the divine hand, is analogous to Lehi's family leaving Jerusalem at God's behest. Lehi's sons, Nephi and Laman, split and established two conflicting nations, both claiming to be the true inheritors of their father's legacy. Likewise, fundamentalists and mainstream Mormons frequently argue that the other belief system is wicked while theirs is an authentic continuation of God's true church.
It is essential to contextualize the theological and political environment from which Mormonism developed. During the Second Great Awakening, American Protestants integrated modern ideas and trends, such as spiritualism and the Social Gospel, into their religious traditions. By incorporating the Americas into the larger Biblical narrative, Smith made his brand of Christianity enticing for those who identified with the United States and its national values. For example, unlike previous ascetic, puritanical forms of Christianity, Smith glorified the pursuit of money and righteous vengeance. Both ostensibly un-Christian values were broadly appealing for a nation on the brink of civil war and an industrial boom. The Book of Mormon's distinctly American flavor contributes to the religion's continued popularity.
Joseph Smith's origin story also appealed to an emerging interest in archaeology, the sciences, and spiritualism. Though the historical claims in the Book of Mormon are unsubstantiated, the appearance of empirical evidence (i.e., the golden plates) was sufficiently convincing to Smith's contemporaries.
Understanding the life and philosophy of Joseph Smith, Mormonism's founding prophet, is key to understanding how the Lafferty brothers arrived at their peculiar brand of theology. Joseph Smith established several foundational principles that continue to shape the modern Mormon church in both the mainstream and fundamentalist sects. First, Smith strongly encouraged his followers to receive personal revelations from God—at least, until their revelations contradicted his authority. Mormons today give ample credence to claims of visions and revelations, which partly explains why the Lafferty brothers did not dismiss Ron's alleged communications with God, and why Dan Lafferty took so strongly to the claims set forth by The Peace Maker. When he found the text, Dan's only critical inquiry into its authenticity was to ask God to reveal the truth; he concluded, based on his prayers, that Joseph Smith was the true author. To a man raised in a tradition based on personal messages from God, this line of analysis was sufficient for Dan to reinvent his entire marriage, religion, and lifestyle around the principles of the pamphlet.
The chapters discuss how much of Mormonism's popularity was attributable to its theology and how much resulted from Joseph Smith's charisma. Though Smith's charm was renowned, his teachings also presented a "gentler alternative to Calvinism," the primary religion of the time.
Joseph Smith established an identity of exceptionalism, whereby Mormons were only beholden to God's laws and not the state's. The most extreme example of this exceptionalist identity is the tradition of "blood atonement;" Smith and his successor Brigham Young claimed that God's people were justified in killing anyone who stood in the way of the construction of God's kingdom. It is clear from this principle, which has many historic examples referenced in the text, that the Lafferty brothers were likely sincere in their conviction that their crimes were justified in the eyes of God.
Of course, most fundamentalists do not go to the extremes the Lafferty brothers did. The text explores the circumstances of their family life that created an environment for extremist, violent ideation to flourish. The brothers grew up in a turbulent, violent household where their father, a narcissist and a conspiracy theorist, continually disempowered them. Watson Lafferty Sr, though not technically a Mormon fundamentalist, held beliefs characteristic of fundamentalism, such as a distrust of conventional medicine and hatred of the government.
The many self-proclaimed prophets described throughout the text, from Rulon Jeffs to the Prophet Onias, continue the tradition of narcissism begun by Joseph Smith, a man who declared himself "King, Priest, and Ruler over Israel on Earth."
