under the banner of heaven

First off, thanks to Joel, Lelly, and Airplaynejayne for their recommendations for not-too-hot-to-produce taste treats. I will try them all. I think you're on to something with your recipe, Miss Jayne. Perhaps you should start your own cooking show.

Last night I wimped out again, and John and I ended up at Los Panchos, a nearby Mexican restaurant I had yet to try out. (This Los Panchos is on King's Canyon, not to be confused with the Los Panchos on Fulton Mall, downtown). Apart from the really sweet server who was desperate to refill our drinks, what most impressed me was the amount and variety of food you get there. For example, I ordered the combo no. 1, which features a shredded beef taco, an enchilada, and a chile relleno. Normally these sorts of entrees are served with the usual rice and beans, as was this dish. But on top of rice and beans, Los Panchos provides you a scoop each of chile verde and chile colorado! This is my kind of combo plate! I'll be back for more of the same at Los Panchos--located in the FoodMaxx shopping center on King's Canyon Rd., just east of Chestnut--let me tell you!

Saturday night entailed a lovely barebecue in Cindy Loo Who's pleasant, green backyard. We had to leave early, however, to catch Much Ado about Nothing, the first show in the first season of Fresno's summer Shakespeare festival in Woodward Park. I read Lecram's review of the performance, and I pretty much concur: snaps for getting this thing going, so onward and upward, people.

But what's really been absorbing my every free moment for the past few days is Jon Krakauer's book, Under the Banner of Heaven. This is the creepiest, page-turningest, and most affecting book I've read in a long time. The book tells the story of the Lafferty brothers of Provo, Utah, who murdered their sister-in-law and neice in 1984 to fulfill a "removal" revelation that the elder Lafferty had received some few months earlier. Krakauer goes on to suggest that the Laffertys--who had been swayed by arcane and Fundamentalist Mormon (i.e., polygamous) doctrines--are products of a culture whose history is steeped in violence and revenge, antagonism toward the laws of the U.S., and a narcissistic tendency toward seeing oneself as the Lord's chosen, "the one and the mighty." That culture would be Mormonism more generally.

I was raised Mormon, and my ancestors include members of the early LDS church who crossed the plains and settled Utah in the mid-ninteenth century. Some were polygamists: one ancestor, Dominicus Carter, a man who helped to establish the city of Provo, had eight wives and fifty-one children. Shortly after serving a mission in and around Santiago, Chile, I left the church for two reasons. Firstly, I was coming to grips with the fact that I am gay, and the LDS church doesn't provide much consolation for its lesbian and gay members. In fact, it wasn't long before I came out at Brigham Young University that lesbian and gay students were given electroshock and other forms of aversion therapy to eradicate their homosexual thoughts and desires. Secondly, I was simply tired of trying to reconcile so much of what I felt was inconsistent and wrong-headed about Mormon doctrine. I had decided that there were more important uses of my intellectual energies than endlessly worrying whether playing with face cards or drinking Coca-Cola were sinful activities.

My split with the church was initially painful--I was somewhat of a relgious zealot throughout my childhood and teens--but I eventually moved past the pain and the anger and into a more balanced relationship to Mormonism. It's what I'm from, but not what I am.

Krakauer's book roiled those placid waters of self-acceptance by making me think about myself, my family, and the Mormon communities I grew up in, in light of what I was learning about these Lafferty brothers and their ilk. On the one hand, the church is very clear about fundamentalist Mormonism: it's wrong, and you can be excommunicated for believing in or setting yourself up as an alternative prophet, for practicing polygamy, or even for delving too deeply into the murky historical and theological waters that make up much of Mormonism's fascinating history. Faithful Mormon historians have been excommunicated for merely publishing information that the Church leaders find in any way threatening or faith-shaking. Still, Krakauer makes a persuasive case that the history and doctrines shared both mainstream Mormonism and Fundamentalist Mormonism are the sorts of ideas and beliefs that make the Lafferty brothers--along with the child-loving polygamists on the Arizona Strip; and Elizabeth Smart's abductors; and those who currently believe in setting up a city of God at the base of the much prophesied about Dream Mine in Salem, Utah--had recourse to when deciding to kill Brenda and Erica Lafferty in the summer of 1984.

The LDS church's strict policy of secrecy and selectiveness when it comes to Mormon history goes some way to explain the motivations and activities of such "fringe" types. Now, some of the historical details that Krakauer includes in his book have long been disputed. But much of what I learned in the book was completely new to me. My version of LDS church history has largely been the sanctioned version, and I'm fascinated--and disturbed--to learn that the account of Joseph Smith finding and translating the Book of Mormon that I learned while going to sunday school and BYU is woefully incomplete and skewed. Turning page after page of Under the Banner of Heaven, I kept telling myself, "I had no idea just how weird this religion is!" But that weirdness isn't necessarily frightening or repugnant. It's fascinating. If Mormons were simply allowed to learn about and assess their fascinating past, would disgruntled members like the Lafferty brothers find the need to establish their own much more fundamentalist and frightening versions of God's one and only true church?

Clearly, the book has given me a lot to think about. Most importantly, I feel the need to reassess what it means to have been Mormon or to have come from a Mormon background. And strangely, while I read the book, I found myself almost nostalgic for Mormonism, drawn to the weird religion and culture I so resolutely abanoned fifteen years ago. Not that I'm dying to go to church again (although a web search helped me learn that I live in the Fresno First Ward.) The places, people, and yet, even some of the events, that Krakauer describes are so familiar to me. I know this stuff, and, for better or for worse, I emerged from it.

And a final word on fundamentalism more generally: I don't get it. Riffing off what Krakauer confesses to at the end of Heaven, I may not know from whence I came or what will happen to me after death. I don't understand why bad things happen to good people, and I can't imagine what purpose, if any, our lives on this earth have. But I'm still having a pretty good time here. I can deal with the uncertainty. And the uncertainty is not only bearable, it's good. It sure beats absolute assurance and all the arrogance that comes with it.