June 2, 2022 Show with Dr. Latayne C. Scott on “Under the Banner of Heaven: An Ex-Mormon’s Analysis of the T.V. Series Based on the True Story of the Murder of a Mormon Mother & Her Baby Girl”

Under the Banner of Heaven and the Mormon Crisis of Faith

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on the second day of June 2022.

Many of you may be familiar, as I am, and may also have become addicted to watching a television series called Under the Banner of Heaven, an FX series that you can view on Hulu starring actor Andrew Garfield.

Under the Banner of Heaven, the original limited series inspired by the true crime bestseller by John Krakauer, follows the events that led to the 1984 murder of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her baby daughter in a suburb in the Salt Lake Valley in Utah.

As Detective Jed Pirie, portrayed by Andrew Garfield, investigates events which transpired within the Lafferty family, he uncovers buried truths about the origins of the Latter-day Saint religion and the violent consequences of unyielding faith.

What Pirie, a devout Mormon, unearths leads him to question his own faith and my guest today to give her analysis of this series as an ex-Mormon who has, by the grace and mercy and love of Jesus Christ, converted to biblical Christianity, Dr. Latane C. Scott, who has been a guest on this program a number of times, and as it appears from feedback I get from my listeners, she has become a favorite amongst my listeners, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Triple Design Radio, Dr. Latane C. Scott.

Always a privilege, Chris, always a privilege.

And let me give you a more formal introduction here. Dr. Latane C. Scott is not only a Mormon convert to Christianity, but she earned her Ph .D. in biblical studies. She's a recipient of Pepperdine University's Distinguished Christian Service Award for Creative Christian Writing.

She's the dean of the College of Professional and Creative Writing at Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and an award-winning veteran of the Christian publishing industry, having written over two dozen books, including her classic, The Mormon Mirage.

And as I mentioned, we are going to be addressing, under the banner of heaven, an ex-Mormon's analysis of the TV series based on the true story of the murder of a Mormon mother and her baby girl. I do want to say that I'm going to try to be as sensitive as possible, and I'm sure Latane is as well, as we explore an examination of this program, because I was contacted by the sister of the woman that was, in reality, in 1984, murdered.

Brenda Wright Lafferty's sister contacted me, initially very upset that Latane and I were doing this program today. She thought that we were going to be acting as experts on her sister. Apparently, she does not like the way the portrayal of the sister appears in the TV series, and so we assured her that that had nothing to do with our discussion today.

It was going to be not only on Mormon theology and how it is very different, 180 degrees different from the Christian religion, true Christianity, true biblical Christianity, but we're also going to be discussing how there is a remarkable resemblance, according to Latane, in the way that the fictitional character in this series, Detective Jeb Pirie, is struggling with a crisis of faith, which, according to Latane, resembles a crisis of faith that she also endured when discovering the falsehoods of the Mormon religion, and prior to becoming a Christian.

So, first of all, Latane, we've already had you on this program to give a fuller, length, in-depth discussion on your conversion story, and people can look that up at www .irontripandsironradio .com in the archives and listen to that, but if you could give us a summary of that again, because I think it will be helpful for people to understand where you're coming from as we discuss this series.

Chris, I guess the most accurate thing I could say is I was the happiest Mormon ever when I was a Mormon. I loved the man who wrote for me until I discovered the writings that I'd been warned against when I was with these writings, and for those who are watching the mini-series, Under the Banner of Heaven, there is a scene in which this young law enforcement officer, Officer Pirate, and he's sitting in his car with the dome light on, because his wife is a very faithful Mormon, but yet he is being confronted with some details about Mormon history of which he was not aware, just as I was not aware.

It was not what I'd been taught as a Mormon. And so he's sitting in his car, and he has this book, and he starts opening this book, and he just starts trembling. And I had the same experience, because I also read that same book.

I left the Mormon church in 1973, and I think this series takes place in that time period, maybe in the early 80s. But what is so remarkable about this, Chris, is when I watched this, it had such a visceral effect on me.

That actor did such a good job of...

He's a remarkable actor.

Oh, he is. But what I found out, Chris, is there are several Facebook groups and discussion groups on Facebook of people discussing this show and their reactions to it. And would you mind if I read some of the reactions that some ex-Mormons had to watching this scene?

Oh, sure. You might want to be careful about reading some of what ex-Mormons said to me on the Internet, some of which has language you might not want to repeat in public.

No, that's okay. Well, I've been talked to that way, too, so that's okay. No, these are just, I have three, I selected three comments by ex-Mormons, and I won't read their names because I don't have their permission, but these are, one woman, Linda, hasn't yet figured out how the idea of just another woman, Elizabeth, said, Kia Sedona, in about 2009.

It was about 3 to 4 p .m., overcast and rainy. I cried for over 90 minutes. It was the start of eight years of anger and heat. Wow. These are just real people responding. A woman named Carrie said,. The entire scene shows, starting from him furtively getting into the car with the red book, I felt it so hard.

I remember all that despair. I certainly am, actually. I see all of you, all you pioneers who have gone through this and moved on. During the scene when he began crying after his wife basically abandoned his feelings on him physically, all I could do was reach out my hand to him and sob alongside.

This is not a universal emotion because, Chris, people that go from, let's say, from being a Presbyterian to being a Methodist, they don't have their entire worldview shaken. They don't have all their emotional underpinnings pulled out from underneath them.

There's really nothing quite like discovering that the God that you believed in and accepted and loved, that the history that you've been taught of these noble people that are supposed to be in your church history, finding out that they weren't noble at all, absolutely devastating.

There go all your role models, you know? And you start looking around at the people you know with new eyes. What do they know? Why didn't they tell me? It's quite an experience.

Well, as far as the—one of the main themes of this TV series is there is a family that is a prominent Mormon family in the area in Utah in which they live, where some of the siblings have begun to investigate the origins of their own religion.

And they realize that there is a stark contrast to the Mormonism that they loved and participated in and lived out and were so seemingly blessed to be a member of this religion. And they began to find out, wait a minute, this is a very different religion, it seems, than that which was founded by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

And they began to question whether or not current Mormons, even back in the 1980s, were apostates, and whether or not a return to the old ways, as it were, would be demanded of them. And this is actually also remarkably similar to a theme of a novel you wrote about a serial killer, is it not, The Latter-Day Cipher?

You know, I just realized that today, Chris, because I've been trying to process the emotions that this series has brought up. And then I thought, this feels familiar because I wrote a novel about a couple in Salt Lake City that are struggling with finding out the same thing that this Officer Tyree found out, the same thing I found out, you know, seven years ago, and finding out that everything they believed in is untrue.

And at the same time, a man in Utah is actually doing the things that early Mormons did, you know, the blood atonement that's such a big theme of Under the Banner of Heaven. That young woman and her child were killed because of the theory in early Mormon doctrine of blood atonement, that you could do some sins so bad that the only way that you could be cleansed of those sins was to have somebody actually spill your blood on the ground.

Well, in my novel, this police chief in my novel is actually not the hero, he's the villain. And he goes about trying to restore early Mormonism by carrying out the doctrines and practices of the early Mormon church.

So it's really very, very parallel. Thank you for pointing that out. The name of my book was Latter Day Cipher. I really, because it's out of print, I have copies, and I would love to autograph a copy to your listeners.

Just get in touch with me at Latane.

Wow. Now, some of the feedback, the very negative feedback I was getting on the Internet, on social media, from former Mormons, it's ironic. There were two different kinds of former Mormons who were attacking what we were doing today before it even occurred.

There were those who think that all religion, including Christianity, is dangerous and violent and moronic and prehistoric. And there were those groups that were attacking me and mocking me. There were also, though, Mormons who left the church who still had a desire to defend it.

It was kind of an interesting phenomenon to experience. But there was defense given, with no evidence, that Mormonism and Christianity are the same with very minor details that may be different, and that the changes in Mormonism from its origins to its present-day state are very explainable and it is not that big of a deal, basically.

These are two things that are obviously spoken of by these folks in ignorance, is it not?

Well, I'd like to address those two issues. The first is that it's just one version. One person in the comments to you, I think, said something, it's my Sky God versus your Sky God. And that's really the way they see it.

The other group of people, that's explainable, or that this is not such a big deal, I actually address that in my Latter-day Scipher novel, now that you mention it. And it is the idea that if you've got a deity, a god, how can something be true of him in 1970 and then not be true of him 30 years later?

In other words, this is a church based on personal revelation from God to human beings to say, how does your doctrine of God change? Now, I understand practices change. You know, it's a church, now everybody does.

That's a practice. There's a big difference between a practice in a church and a theory of God that changes. Because if God is the same yesterday, but how do you change, how can you say about a God, well, we don't believe that anymore about God, if you have direct personal revelation from God?

If the head of the Mormon Church is still the prophet, seer, and revelator, how can you amend who God is? It just doesn't make sense.

Yeah, and there's also, I remember as a very young Christian, I was a cage stage Calvinist, and I couldn't wait to get into confrontations with people who disagreed with what I believed. And I was sitting at home watching television, and a commercial came on for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And at the end it said, if you would like a book of Mormon hand delivered to your home by a Mormon elder, call this number. So I picked it up, I called that number, and could not wait to have an encounter with the Mormon elder.

And two of the Mormons showed up, and we had a discussion. I'm not saying that I used tact that a more seasoned Christian should have used, although I was never nasty to the individuals. But during the conversation, I was bringing up the roots of racism in the Mormon Church, and how blacks could not enter the priesthood and so on until the 1970s.

And the Mormon said, well, who are you to talk? You're a Baptist, and there are Baptists in the Ku Klux Klan. And I said to him, there is an enormous chasm of difference between what some moron who calls himself a Baptist believes and teaches and does, and one of your prophets.

There's an enormous difference between picking on statements and revealing the errors of people who are just average members of a religion and a prophet of that religion. And I said, you cannot compare the two.

Was I not absolutely correct on that issue, that you cannot compare a racist in the Baptist church who's just an ordinary member, or even a pastor for that matter, who claims to be just a man called to the ministry?

He's not a prophet. And Joseph Smith and Brigham Young clearly taught racist ideas that were part of divine revelation. So that's basically what I'm saying, is you can't compare a prophet to an ordinary person in a religion.

That points out, Chris, an important doctrinal difference between Mormons and Christians that most people don't consider. And that is, in the Mormon religion, priesthood leaders, any priesthood, which in the Mormon church is all male, any priest represents God, priesthood, that person, the church, or the individual.

In Christianity, we as a priesthood of believers are brothers and sisters before God. The priest in the Old Testament took the sacrifices of people and represented the congregation to God. They weren't the people that were just the funnel through.

When we talk about priesthood, and we talk about leadership, it's top-down, true human leadership in the Mormon church, where in most Christian churches, there's not the idea that God is speaking only to a human being on earth.

Now, that's an exception. People who call themselves prayers to God, the idea of a few other men, and then it trickles down.

Now, in the series, when Mormons approach their bishops and other members of the hierarchy in the Mormon religion, when they approach them about things that used to be taught by the Mormon prophets that founded the religion, and were practiced, and even some which violated were punishable by death, when they approached their leaders, the leaders in the series, their basic response was, we have a president now, we are to listen to him, and we are not to become, and I'm putting my own words in this, I don't have a verbatim script here, but basically, we're not to bother ourselves with some of these antiquated things because we have a current living prophet in the Mormon church.

Am I getting that somewhere right? And was that something that you had ever heard of going on when you were a Mormon?

Oh, that's the way it was. If you had a question, he could tell you what the will of the Lord was because it was top-down. The authority came from the president of the Mormon church, to the council of the Twelve, to all the other generals, and to your bishop.

So if you had a question, it's kind of like in a job, or in the military, where you go up the chain the way it was, and to be honest with you, Chris, I think I was very much like most of those Mormons in this series, in that anything that was disturbing to me, so conflicted with the happy life that I had, I decided.

And you can see in this series the emphasis on, do you really want to give the church a bad name? Do you really want to bring this stuff that's going to make our community look bad? There's this idea of community, and there's always been the idea in Mormonism that it portrays, of us against them.

You know, all these scenes of Brigham Young, and it's the idea that there's this select group of people that know the truth, but somebody's always going to be persecuting them. So by the time people get to Utah, and there's this culture that has developed of, we have everything we need, we're self-sufficient in terms of, and so anything that rocks that boat, necessarily bad, around us is good.

So I definitely felt that way. I mean, there I was at BYU, just couldn't have been happier. And to hear some of these things, while it was far beyond offensive to me, it was indicated that one of the people I read said that in years of anger.

There's an enormous amount of people who at that point did not feel, I felt betrayed. I didn't feel angry. I mean, who else am I going to blame? I didn't think most of my Mormon immediate leaders knew any more than I did.

Because I was a student, I'd studied, you know, I'd been to religion classes at Brigham Young University. Who do you blame? You don't blame your leaders because you suspect they don't know any more than you do, and you wonder how high up the chain this ignorance goes, until you finally conclude the ones at the top have to know that God isn't really talking to them.

They have to know that, you know, if somebody's confirming this, it's not the God of the universe. And you know when that really hit me, Chris? You know when that came home to me?

When?

When I was at Brigham Young University, I dated a young man named Bruce Porter. By the way, I was at Brigham Young University, but yeah, he's in my yearbook from BYU. But I was dating a young man named Bruce Porter, who went on to become a general authority in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, just below the apostles.

And here was this fine man. I mean, his character was impeccable. As he went up in the structure of the Mormon Church, knowing these things, he had to have known these things. How in the world could this man of such impeccable character and kindness have continued in that?

And I think that's what a lot of ex-Mormons are dealing with. Who do you blame? If you've been suckered by a religion, and that's the way many people feel in the Mormon Church, you feel like you've been suckered.

Because there we are, you know, fat, dumb, and happy, just doing what we're told. And then to find out that there's nothing underneath the mask, you know?

It's empty. Well, we have to go to our first break right now. If anybody would like to ask a question of Dr. Latane C. Scott, a former Mormon who, by the grace and mercy of God, converted to biblical Christianity.

If you have a question on anything regarding Mormonism and Latane's own personal testimony, or more primarily, since it's the main theme of our program, an analysis of Under the Banner of Heaven, the current TV series on Hulu, that is a fictional account inspired by a true murder, 1984 murder, of Brenda Wright Lafferty, and the lead character portrayed by Andrew Garfield's brilliant actor, Detective Jeb Pirie.

If you have any questions about what we are discussing about the series as well, send that email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA.

And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And by the way, I would love for the sister of Brenda Wright Lafferty, if she is listening, I would love for you to submit a question, a comment, any of your thoughts on this.

I was heartbroken to hear about how the series is having a negative effect upon you and your life, so if you care to put your own two cents in, as it were, in our discussion, I would love to hear from you as well, and I will keep your name out of the discussion, if that is your preference.

But if anybody wants to send us an email, it's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

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Blood Atonement, Priesthood Authority, and the Mormon View of God

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program is Dr. Latane C. Scott, a Mormon convert to biblical Christianity and author of over 24 books, including The Mormon Mirage.

We are providing an analysis of the TV series based on the true story of the murder of a Mormon mother and her baby girl under the banner of heaven and if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnzen at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence. We have a listener who we have not heard from in a long time, and I think Latane's presence on the show is what provoked him to contact us again after years of silence.

We have Shane in Birmingham, Alabama, who says, Howdy, Chris. You know I love Latane. Can you ask her to speak to the blood atonement aspect of this discussion? Where does the theory of blood atonement come from?

When was it abolished in the Mormon church, and is it still popular in fundamentalist sects of Mormonism?

Okay, I think there were three questions there. The first one was, where did the doctrine of blood atonement originate?

Yes.

That originated in the early teachings of the Mormon church that there were certain sins which was not sufficient, and they didn't actually say it that way. But the idea was that for murder, adultery, and then I think the third one was, in some cases, marrying someone that any of those who lovingly take your life, you atone for that sin that you had committed.

It's really important to realize that Mormons at that time, from what I know, didn't see it just as a punishment. They saw it as a way of allowing somebody.

How kind of them.

Yeah. The second question, the second part of it was, can you read me the second part of this question, please?

The second part was, when was it abolished in the Mormon church?

It just kind of faded away. Nobody ever stood up, no prophet ever stood up and said, we know now no longer. The fact that it's still part of Mormon thinking was true up until the time that this show took place under the banner of heaven.

Because if you'll remember, the scenes in the temple, remember the man in the front is going through these different hand signals.

And running the finger across the neck like a knife.

Exactly. In the original temple ceremony in the past, you would say that you were willing to have your throat cut and your blood spilled on the ground and your entrails torn out of your abdomen if you gave up the secrets of the temple.

That language went away, but the symbol of it, the splitting of the throat, didn't go away. Until I understand today, I'm not really sure that that actual symbol of splitting the throat is enacted anymore.

Someone who has been in the temple more recently would want to speak to that. It didn't ever go away, and so these people who believe they're returning to pristine or primeval or original Mormonism would naturally believe that because the early leaders of the Mormon church who had direct revelation from God to enact this practice, they believe they're returning to something that was in disobedience.

And the last question by Shane is, I'm trying to find it. I just had it in front of me. And while I'm looking for it, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. I'll give us a first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

Oh, is it still popular in fundamentalist sects of Mormonism? Well, I guess that would mean that there would be a lot of murders going around in our current day among the fundamentalist sects, but do you know about that?

I don't. You know, fundamentalist sects of Mormonism are very much like different denominations in Christianity. They bear resemblance to one another, but the practices within them are quite different in individual sect.

Also bear in mind that some of these polygamous groups, although they may have settled in, many of them settled in Mexico. So there are some of those groups. They believe that this was an eternal doctrine.

Polygamy was an eternal doctrine. And that's a big issue in the show, too. Remember the one man is trying to get his original wife with the two stepdaughters to accept another wife? And then he believes that he can actually sleep with the two daughters to initiate them.

Well, the reason that I don't know if that happened with that family or not, but I do know that Joseph Smith himself married some siblings. So these people, they don't see themselves so much rebelling against the modern Mormon church as they do...

And thank you, by the way, Shane. And by the way, let's tell Shane about the e-book that you are offering to listeners who submit questions.

Oh, I have a really helpful resource, and I really hope your readers will take advantage of this, Chris. I have from my book, Why We Left a Cult, in which I interviewed six people who had left. I have a list of those things that make a group that uses Christianity.

What is it that makes it? I think about 35 different characteristics. And this e-book is free. You just write me at latayne, at latayne .com. That's L-A-T-A-Y-N-E, latayne .com. Just say, I'd like my free e-book.

I'll give you instructions on how to download it. And this, I think, is a very helpful resource, because one of the questions I think would occur to anybody when they're watching this show is, well, these people are in a cult.

Well, what do you mean by cult? Do you mean people get dressed differently than you? What do you mean? Do you mean people that worship differently than you do? I mean, what makes a group a cult? And I hope by this list, not to be dogmatic with the list, but just to give people some things to think about when they're looking at a group and see how many of these characteristics separate them from traditional Christianity.

The big deal is their view of God. If you're going to define your religion, you have to start with who your God is. And in pseudo-Christian cults, their God either has a different history than the God of the Bible.

I mean, it may intersect. He has another history, or he has another future. Or you have a future as a God, which Mormons still believe, even mainstream Mormons believe that they're going to become gods and goddesses after death, like God the Father.

Yes, and it is interesting that during the series, when the polygamist marriage of the fundamentalist Mormon comes up and one of the modern-day Mormons is fluffing it off, saying that's something from the past, and that is prohibited now, the person who was discovering about the Mormon past says, well, what about in heaven, though?

I mean, that when they achieve Godhead, if they're faithful Mormons, they will be involved in polygamous marriages.

Absolutely. The church had to put a stop to people doing prostate weddings to Joseph Smith. You know, they think, oh, well, I can't be married here on earth, but Joseph Smith in eternity can have as many wives as he wants.

And so there was this desire to be married to him in eternity. And so, yes, that's absolutely still a doctrine. You see, the difference between a man and a woman in terms of eternal marriage is that a man, she can pass away, can marry a second or third or fourth wife, and as long as they're married in the temple for time and all eternity, all of them will be his wives in eternity.

A woman, on the other hand, in eternity, and then any marriage that she has after that is only for time.

Oh, interesting. And so don't forget, Shane, send your e-mail, if you'd like that e-book, to latayne at latayne .com. That's L-A-T-A-Y-N-E at L-A-T-A-Y-N-E .com. We have a first-time listener, Kent, and he is from, and I'm sure I'm going to butcher this, Pyeongtaek, South Korea.

He says, the Mormons we know are moral, honest, hardworking. What is so dangerous about their beliefs?

I think that's a big point that's made by this series. Because when you look at these families here, they really are, most of them, just trying to be good citizens, to raise their families, activities, to do all the things that we think are examples of good Christian care.

Why would I say that it's dangerous? Well, Jesus said that life's eternal. And if you don't know who the Father in Heaven is, and if you don't know exactly who Jesus is, if the person labeled Jesus in Mormon theology doesn't have the same history and characteristics as the Jesus of the Bible, you're talking about a different Jesus.