Embracing the Unthinkable: The Paradox of Sacrifice in “His Only Son”

In an age that claims to value “own voices” media, it is sad that Under the Banner of Heaven is probably going to be the biggest story that the public sees about members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this year or this decade. While the tale it tells is based on an actual occurrence and about some actual problems within the broader movement of people hearkening back to Joseph Smith, one thing that can’t be said for either the book or the show was that they were written by a member of our community. The producer may have “grown up” as a Latter-day Saint, but he left the faith before he was an adult. If you’ve never had the experience of holding a calling, making temple covenants, or negotiating the relationships that make up a ward (Latter-day Saint congregation), are you really the best person to interpret our community? So I’m stepping in to offer my perspective. I am not a historian or theologian. So, though I try to be informed about the difficult parts of our religion’s past, I can only give you the perspective of what an average member would know or believe about these situations. I undoubtedly will get some of the nuances wrong. This will not be the best place if you’re looking for information about the historical accuracy of the show. (Consider checking FAIR’s guide or Book of Mormon Central.) However, I am an active participant in the larger Latter-day Saint literary community. I’ve written essays about my own life as a woman in the Church and fictional stories about others. I studied Latter-day Saint literature in college and continue reading contemporary Latter-day Saint literature. I am on the board of the Association for Mormon Letters, an organization that promotes literature written by, for, or about those who tie back to the prophet Joseph (including members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but not exclusive to our denomination). So you might say I have some experience with portrayals of the Latter-day Saints and separate fundamentalist communities. The purpose of this series of recaps is two-fold. First, I want to summarize the series for ordinary Latter-day Saints who don’t intend to watch it so they won’t be surprised around the metaphorical watercooler this week. Second, I will catalog the series as it compares to Latter-day Saint literature more broadly. As a writer, reader, and advocate of Latter-day Saint literature, this is my home turf. I am interested to see where the show gets things right and wrong. Granted, my experience isn’t the experience of every member; like any community, Latter-day Saints are not a monolith. But I will compare the show to my personal knowledge of our community and talk about what sticks out. Without further ado, here are my impressions of the first two episodes of Under the Banner of Heaven. Episode 1, “When God Was Love”  Summary—The episode opens with Detective Pyre being called away from his family’s Pioneer Day celebrations to visit a crime scene. At an ordinary suburban house, he finds a scene of chaos with a mother (Brenda Lafferty) and her 15-month-old daughter (Erica) murdered in a gruesome way. (Luckily, we are only shown large quantities of blood on the floor and walls; the show shies away from showing the bodies, though we will get hints through dialogue about the exact method of killing.) Soon the husband (Allen Lafferty) is taken into custody, his clothes soaked in his wife’s blood. The killer claims that his wife was murdered by men with beards like “Mormon prophets” and continually ties his wife’s murder back to early church history stories, particularly Joseph and Emma marrying against her father’s will. We then get a flashback to a young Brenda. She is an energetic and ambitious young woman who transfers to BYU after being tired of “holding girl’s hair back while they puked” at her party school in Idaho. Allen introduces Brenda to his family at a large family dinner. His brothers seem both strangely attracted to her and judgmental of her for her ambition and less strict faith (caffeinated soda is mentioned). The Lafferty family band together to clear a neighbor’s land to prevent it from being seized by the federal government to build a highway. In the present, Detective Pyre’s partner Bill visits Allen’s brother Robin’s home and finds the house abandoned and papers burning. They arrest Robin after a chase through a motel. This episode depicts the First Vision. It shows Joseph going to the woods to pray and a light shining down on him. The script draws parallels between Joseph’s prayer and Robin’s prayer in the woods before he is caught by the police, which doesn’t really make much sense except that they are both kneeling in a natural setting. We also get a scene of Joseph and Emma discussing whether to marry against her father’s wishes. The show tries to make a big deal of them choosing between “God’s will” and her father’s authority, implying that the problem is that they can justify almost anything as God’s will. I found this assertion pretty strange, given that Joseph and Emma were hardly the first couple to marry against a parent’s wishes. It seems a thin justification on which to hang a condemnation of trusting God. Shibboleths—It’s apparent that the showrunners have made an effort to try to include jargon of Latter-day Saints in the dialogue. Sometimes this works: the Pyre family prayer scene feels exactly like the ones that take place in my family. Others make it apparent that the writers are not members of the community. While we do refer to God as Heavenly Father, particularly in prayer, we don’t use this term exclusively like the characters in the show. I regularly hear members refer to him as “God” or “the Lord,” and a brief search of the church’s 1980’s general conference talks shows that this isn’t a new innovation. While there is