Koan, the Banner of Heaven is NOT about my church, the Mormon Church--the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It is about the FLDS off-shoot of the Mormon Church, a very wacky fundamentalist group that bbroke away back the early 1900s and moved to Mexico to practice polygamy and marry underage girls, etc.
My church is 15 million in membership. Women use contraception, get advanced degrees (like me), hold public office, own businesses, etc.
The FDLS church is maybe 30,000 members at most. Some say as low as 20,000.
Krackauer's book, Banner of Heaven, gives commentary of the founding of the Mormon Church back in 1830s et al, but doesn't make very clear that the rest of the book is a critique of the FLDS culture--not the mainstream culture of which I am a member.
Krackauer, if you read the book actually, zeroes in on Colorado City where a fairly large number of FLDS are spread out in the desert. We just got back last week from Zion National Park and side trips, etc. and ran into one the groups at a truck stop not far from Colorado City. Wore long dresses and tight buns. Children outnumbering adults about six to one, lol. They were quite obviously a group such as were featured in Krackauer's book.
Except for the similarity in name, however, these FDLS people are no more like us in the 15 million membership group than are some offshoot of the Methodist or Baptist group. |
