Tuesday, July 20, 2004
I read Under the Banner of Heaven about 6 mos ago. Thought that it was as fair a treatment of the LDS church and its various unfortunate sects as I've seen. I wasn't very familiar with the history of the LDS church, though I was raised in a very Mormon town (half of the families were Mormon; the rest of us, it seemed, were Catholic. We all had big families). Many of my friends growing up were LDS. Everyone went off to Brigham Young U and the guys went off to their missions not so soon after. JK starts off by saying he grew up in a town that must not have been too unlike my hometown...
But the more you get to know about the history of the Mormon church, the more you struggle with it. At least, I did, and it seemed that JK did too. But he's a great storyteller as always.
I confess that I intended to research some of the history, but never got around to it.
I gave the book to a good friend who happens to be very devout Mormon who attended BYU and spends much of her spare time in and around Salt Lake and Provo visiting friends even though she lives in Seattle and is not as conservative in her thinking as one might expect a nice Mormon girl to be. I don't know that she's finished reading it yet. I'll have to see what her thoughts are.
But the more you get to know about the history of the Mormon church, the more you struggle with it. At least, I did, and it seemed that JK did too. But he's a great storyteller as always.
I confess that I intended to research some of the history, but never got around to it.
I gave the book to a good friend who happens to be very devout Mormon who attended BYU and spends much of her spare time in and around Salt Lake and Provo visiting friends even though she lives in Seattle and is not as conservative in her thinking as one might expect a nice Mormon girl to be. I don't know that she's finished reading it yet. I'll have to see what her thoughts are.
