2022.06.15 在葫芦的旗帜下

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Under the Banner of Hulu
A buzzy new true-crime series advances an old, insidious idea—that Mormons are a threat to the American project.

By McKay Coppins
Andrew Garfield's character standing beside a car
Michelle Faye / FX
JUNE 15, 2022, 7 AM ET
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About the author: McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Give this to Under the Banner of Heaven, the buzzy true-crime miniseries that recently concluded its run on FX and Hulu: It wastes little time in getting to the point. Minutes into the first episode, Detective Jeb Pyre is interviewing Allen Lafferty in a Utah jail cell. Allen’s wife and daughter have just been brutally murdered by fundamentalist Mormon zealots, and in his grief and anger he unloads on the well-meaning Latter-day Saint detective.

“If you really still believe your God is love, then you don’t know who you are, brother,” he tells Pyre. “This faith, our faith, breeds dangerous men.”

This idea, that Mormonism is at heart an oppressive and violent religion whose mainstream adherents are ever perched on the brink of radicalization, runs through the series—and the show commits to its thesis. Grisly murder scenes are interwoven with flashbacks to early Mormon history. Modern Church leaders are Scooby-Doo villains who monologue about “the communists at the NAACP” and make menacing threats to police detectives. Even the most benign images of Mormon life—a little girl praying; a family reunion—are scored with ethereal synths and ominous woodwinds to make sure that viewers know these, too, are sinister. Under the Banner of Heaven is one of the most openly hostile treatments of a minority religious group to appear in popular American entertainment this century. It is also an unqualified hit.


From the January/February 2021 issue: The most American religion

Based on Jon Krakauer’s 2003 book of the same name, the show follows the fictional Detective Pyre (Andrew Garfield) as he investigates the real-life double murder of Brenda Lafferty (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her 15-month-old daughter. As the investigation uncovers a circle of dangerous fundamentalists who use Mormon scripture to justify their crimes, Pyre is forced to confront the darker chapters in his Church’s history and gradually loses his faith. The show has received rave reviews, with critics hailing it as a “thoughtful” exploration of faith. FX is already preparing an Emmy campaign.

When I first heard last year that this show was being developed, I decided I would ignore it. Like many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I was acutely familiar with Krakauer’s book. I was in high school when it came out, busy waging a delicate campaign to convince my suburban Massachusetts classmates that Mormons could be, if not cool, then at least normal. I laughed along at their polygamy jokes and pretended to think the South Park spoofs of my Church were funny, all in hopes of showing them that modern Mormons weren’t like that. Krakauer’s book, with its stubborn insistence on conflating mainstream Mormons like me with the desert-dwelling polygamists in pioneer clothes who belonged to offshoot sects, did not help my cause. Twenty years later, I was more confident in myself and my religious identity. But I still had little interest in seeing Under the Banner of Heaven adapted for the prestige-murder-show genre.

I had successfully managed to avoid the series and the surrounding discourse for a few weeks when I got a text from my boss at The Atlantic. “Under the Banner of Heaven. Yeesh,” he wrote. “Imagine making a series about any other religion like this.” This was, I realized, as much an assignment as an expression of allyship. So I dutifully began watching.

The show labors to capture the specificity of Utah County in the early 1980s, and gets many of the details right. There are CTR rings, reminding their wearers to “choose the right,” and Family Home Evenings, and a plaque on the wall of a Mormon home that reads families are forever. Garfield, with his natural theater-kid earnestness, is as plausible a Mormon as you are likely to find among A-list actors. But most of the time, watching the show felt like seeing my religious life in a fun-house mirror, each detail—from the sacred to the mundane—twisted and stretched and distorted to appear frightening and strange.

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The characters speak as though their dialogue was written in another language and then run through a creepy-Mormon version of Google Translate. This is especially noticeable with the show’s liberal use of Heavenly Father, a term that Latter-day Saints use to address God in prayer and in other religious contexts. The show’s Mormon characters use it constantly in conversation: “You can’t flip an upside-down cake to save your life, Heavenly Father knows”; “Heavenly Father wants me to have babies and grow Zion”; “Heavenly Father answered my prayer for a Skyhawk”; “Capitalism is part of Heavenly Father’s plan”; “If you extract this down to a juice, it is like drinking Heavenly Father’s love.”

I tried for a while to write down every example of this tic, wondering the whole time how they could have gotten something like this so wrong. But I gave up after a few episodes, once I realized what was going on. To say that I have never met a Mormon in my life who talks like this would be to miss the point. These lines were not intended as shibboleths for Mormon viewers—they are there to serve a stereotype, to exoticize a people and flatten their faith tradition.

In tone and substance, the show’s frequent historical flashbacks reminded me of the anti-Mormon videos distributed by Evangelical ministries that I encountered as a missionary in the Bible Belt. On the show, Mormon leaders gather in dimly lit rooms and say things like, “We must deceive the gentiles.” Joseph Smith is a charlatan and a pervert; Brigham Young is a power-mad tyrant. All of the ugliest real-life chapters of Mormon history are shown, and a handful of additional sins are invented. In one particularly strange fabrication, the show asserts that Young secretly conspired to have Smith murdered so that he could take over the Church—an idea so far-fetched that many historians who watched the show didn’t even know where it came from.

Read: The ignorance of mocking Mormonism

The purpose of all the quasi-history is to draw a direct line from the founding of Mormonism to the murders at the center of the show. The real-life radicalization of the men who killed Brenda Lafferty involved a far-right anti-government group, festering misogyny, family dysfunction, and severe mental illness. (Both men had already been excommunicated from the Church for their extreme views by the time they killed Brenda.) The show pins the blame entirely on their religion. Early Mormon history is replete with stories of divinely sanctioned violence, the argument goes, so any Latter-day Saint who truly buys into the doctrine of “personal revelation”—that is, that God can speak to them through spiritual impressions and promptings—must be uniquely vulnerable to the lure of extremism.

In the final episode, the show takes its thesis one step further. As the police race to find the murderers before they get to their next victim, Pyre’s partner—a non-Mormon detective who has served up to this point as the wise and likable audience avatar—delivers a righteous tirade against the religion that allegedly enabled the killers. “According to your God, who dies next?” he asks Pyre, later adding, “Our job is to get the monsters off her back, the ones you’ve helped feed with all your good Mormon testimony-bearing.”

In the show’s worldview, every rank-and-file Latter-day Saint bears some responsibility for the evil that’s done in the name of their faith. As several historians have noted, there is a long tradition—including in the pages of this magazine—of casting Mormonism as a threat to the American project. In this sense, Under the Banner of Heaven has more in common with 19th-century anti-Mormon propaganda than it does with the sneering silliness of The Book of Mormon musical.

The series was adapted by Dustin Lance Black, a celebrated screenwriter who grew up Mormon before leaving the Church as a young man in part because of the homophobia he encountered. He has spoken in interviews about his painful history with the faith—“I have real issues with the Mormon Church,” he told IndieWire earlier this year—and the show’s depiction of Mormonism is no doubt shaped by those experiences. To expect otherwise would be naive and probably unfair.

But what stood out most to me as I watched the finale was not its aggressively negative portrayal of Mormonism. It was the fact that no one involved in the show felt compelled to check the customary boxes Hollywood creators have been trained to check in this era of inclusiveness and representation. Black did not hire any practicing Mormons to write or consult on the show. Executives at FX did not put out a statement affirming that Mormons are a peaceful people. When Brenda Lafferty’s sister suggested in an interview that the show’s creators had exploited her story, there was no flood of outrage on social media or rush by the network to control the damage.


In fact, the prospect that the show would offend Mormons was played up in the promotional press tour. “If ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ Made Mormons Angry, the FX Series Will ‘Make Them Apoplectic,’” read one headline. “Dustin Lance Black Is Ready for Backlash, ‘Death Threats’ From the Mormon Church Thanks to Under the Banner of Heaven,” read another.

As promised, the show has managed to offend or at least alienate most of the Latter-day Saints who have given it a chance, including the most sophisticated viewers. After attending the premiere in Salt Lake City, Patrick Mason, a historian of Mormonism at Utah State University, tweeted, “It’s a problem for the show that none of the Mormon scholars I was sitting with—all of whom know full well how to apply an open, critical gaze to our own culture and tradition—recognized ourselves or our people in the show.”

The show’s creators don’t seem concerned. At the same premiere, Black responded to criticism of the show from the Church-owned Deseret News by accusing any Mormons who took offense of secretly sympathizing with the murderous extremists at the center of the show. “They need to look into their own heart.”

All of which brings us back to the hypothetical that my editor raised in his text—“imagine making a series about any other religion like this.” It doesn’t require an overactive imagination. Plenty of faith groups, including Catholics, the Amish, and Orthodox Jews, have come in for scornful Hollywood treatment. And in the years after 9/11, a raft of films and TV shows centered Islamic terrorists as one-dimensional bad guys, making little effort to show the wider, richer world of Muslim life. Many of these shows aired at a time when it was common, even in liberal circles, to demand that “good Muslims” condemn the violence of their co-religionists. Hollywood has, thankfully, evolved from these attitudes in recent years. But that enlightenment does not appear to have extended to Mormonism.


Under the Banner of Heaven comes amid a wave of Mormon-themed true-crime streaming content. In 2019, Netflix hit with the docuseries Abducted in Plain Sight (soon to be adapted as a drama series). In 2021, Netflix had Murder Among the Mormons. And last month, a pair of producers announced plans to make Sinner v. Saint, a “riotous” film full of “zany twists” and “outrageous antics” based on the true story of a Mormon missionary who was allegedly kidnapped and raped by a stalker. (The stalker, it appears, will be the film’s protagonist.) If you learn about Mormonism from watching TV, you might think that we spend all of our time kidnapping and murdering or getting kidnapped and murdered.

Last month, Elder David A. Bednar, an apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, appeared at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where he was asked what he thought of shows like Under the Banner of Heaven. He essentially shrugged it off. “We don’t like it, but we don’t spend all of our time responding to it,” he said. “We have a mission to fulfill.”

I was in the room when he said this, and my initial response was relief. Back in 2003, when the book was released, the Church issued a series of uncharacteristically strong statements pushing back on Krakaeur’s thesis and his loose handle on Mormon history. The resulting controversy only helped fuel sales, and two decades later, Banner remains one of the best-selling books on Mormonism of all time. Church leaders have apparently gotten savvier since then, and they seem determined not to give the same oxygen to the TV show. I tweeted that my fellow Mormons on Twitter, many of whom had been wringing their hands over the series, could learn something from Bednar’s “chill” response.


But almost immediately, I doubted myself. Wasn’t I just taking the same path of least resistance—above-the-fray politeness, studious nonconfrontation—that Latter-day Saints always seem to take when faced with stuff like this?

When The Book of Mormon musical became a phenomenon in 2011, the Church took out playful ads in the playbill: “You’ve seen the play. Now read the book.” As I wrote last year, I was initially thrilled by this response—until a theater critic explained to me the real reason Mormons had to be good sports about such things: “Your people have absolutely no cultural cachet.”

One thing the success of Banner makes quite clear is that American Mormons have made virtually no progress on that front in the past decade. If anything, it feels like we might be moving backwards.

McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic.




在葫芦的旗帜下
一部热闹的新真实犯罪系列剧推进了一个古老而阴险的想法--摩门教徒是对美国计划的威胁。

麦凯-科平斯报道
安德鲁-加菲尔德的角色站在一辆汽车旁
Michelle Faye/FX
2022年6月15日，美国东部时间上午7点
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关于作者。麦凯-科普斯是《大西洋》杂志的一名工作人员。

把这个给《天堂的旗帜下》，这部最近在FX和Hulu上结束播放的热门真实犯罪迷你剧。它在进入主题方面没有浪费多少时间。第一集开始几分钟后，侦探杰布-派尔（Jeb Pyre）正在犹他州的一个牢房里采访艾伦-拉弗蒂。艾伦的妻子和女儿刚刚被原教旨主义摩门教徒的狂热分子残忍地杀害，他在悲愤中向这位善意的后期圣徒侦探发泄。

"如果你真的还相信你的上帝是爱，那么你就不知道你是谁，兄弟，"他告诉派尔。"这种信仰，我们的信仰，孕育着危险的人。"

这个想法，即摩门教在本质上是一个压迫和暴力的宗教，其主流信徒永远处于激进化的边缘，贯穿了整个系列--该剧致力于实现其论点。残酷的谋杀场景与早期摩门教历史的倒叙交织在一起。现代教会领袖是史酷比的恶棍，他们独白 "有色人种协进会的共产主义者"，并对警探发出威胁。即使是摩门教生活中最善意的画面--一个小女孩在祈祷；一个家庭团聚--也用空灵的合成器和不祥的木管乐器进行配乐，以确保观众知道这些也是邪恶的。天堂的旗帜下》是本世纪美国流行的娱乐节目中对一个少数民族宗教团体最公开的敌意处理之一。它也是一部不折不扣的大作。


摘自2021年1月/2月的杂志。最具美国特色的宗教

该剧根据乔恩-克拉考尔(Jon Krakauer)2003年的同名著作改编，讲述了虚构的派尔警探（安德鲁-加菲尔德）在调查布伦达-拉弗蒂（黛西-埃德加-琼斯）和她15个月大的女儿的现实生活中发生的双重谋杀案。在调查中发现了一伙危险的原教旨主义者，他们利用摩门教经文为自己的罪行辩护，派尔被迫面对其教会历史中的黑暗篇章，并逐渐失去了他的信仰。该剧获得了好评，评论家们称其为对信仰的 "深思熟虑的 "探索。FX已经在准备艾美奖竞选。

当我去年第一次听说这个节目正在开发时，我决定不理会它。像耶稣基督末世圣徒教会的许多成员一样，我对克拉考尔的书非常熟悉。这本书出版时我还在上高中，忙着发动一场微妙的运动，让我在马萨诸塞州郊区的同学们相信摩门教徒即使不酷，至少也是正常的。我对他们的一夫多妻制笑话嗤之以鼻，并假装认为南方公园对我的教会的恶搞很有趣，所有这些都是希望向他们表明，现代摩门教徒并不是这样。克拉考尔的书顽固地坚持将像我这样的主流摩门教徒与身着拓荒者服装、属于分支教派的沙漠中的一夫多妻制者混为一谈，这对我的事业没有帮助。20年后，我对自己和自己的宗教身份更加自信。但我仍然对看到《天国旗帜下》被改编为著名的谋杀节目类型没有兴趣。

当我收到《大西洋》杂志的老板发来的短信时，我已经成功地避开了这个系列和周围的论述几周了。"《天堂的旗帜》。他写道："哎呀，"。"想象一下，像这样制作一个关于任何其他宗教的系列。" 我意识到，这既是一项任务，也是一种盟友关系的表达。于是我尽职尽责地开始观看。

该剧努力捕捉20世纪80年代初犹他县的特点，并在许多细节上做得很好。有CTR戒指，提醒佩戴者 "选择正确的"，还有家庭聚会，以及摩门教家庭墙上的牌匾，上面写着家庭是永远的。加菲尔德，以他天生的戏剧儿童的认真态度，是你在A级演员中可能找到的最合理的摩门教徒。但是在大多数时候，看这个节目感觉就像在一面有趣的镜子里看到我的宗教生活，每一个细节--从神圣的到平凡的--都被扭曲、拉伸和变形，显得可怕和奇怪。

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剧中人物的说话方式就像他们的对话是用另一种语言写成的，然后通过令人毛骨悚然的摩门教版本的谷歌翻译来运行。这一点在该剧对 "天父 "的自由使用中尤为明显。"天父 "是后世圣徒在祈祷和其他宗教场合中用来称呼上帝的术语。该剧中的摩门教人物在对话中不断使用这个词。"你不能翻转一个颠倒的蛋糕来拯救你的生命，天父知道"；"天父要我生孩子和种植锡安"；"天父回应了我对天鹰飞机的祈祷"；"资本主义是天父计划的一部分"；"如果你把这个提炼成果汁，就像喝天父的爱"。

我有一段时间试图写下这种抽搐的每一个例子，一直在想他们怎么会把这样的事情弄得如此糟糕。但我在几集之后就放弃了，一旦我意识到这是怎么回事。如果说我在生活中从来没有遇到过像这样说话的摩门教徒，那就是没有说到重点。这些台词并不是为摩门教徒观众准备的，它们是为了服务于一种刻板印象，把一个民族异国化，把他们的信仰传统扁平化。

在语气和内容上，节目中频繁的历史倒叙让我想起了我在圣经地带做传教士时遇到的由福音派牧师分发的反摩门教视频。在节目中，摩门教领导人聚集在光线昏暗的房间里，说着这样的话："我们必须欺骗外邦人"。约瑟夫-斯密是个骗子，是个变态；杨百翰是个权力狂暴者。摩门教历史上所有最丑陋的现实篇章都被展示出来，还有一些额外的罪过被编造出来。在一个特别奇怪的捏造中，该剧宣称杨氏秘密密谋谋杀史密斯，以便他能够接管教会--这个想法如此牵强，以至于许多观看该剧的历史学家甚至不知道它来自何处。

阅读。嘲笑摩门教的无知之举

所有这些准历史的目的是为了从摩门教的创立与该剧中心的谋杀案之间直接划清界限。杀害布伦达-拉弗蒂的男子在现实生活中的激进行为涉及一个极右的反政府组织、不断恶化的厌女症、家庭功能紊乱和严重的精神疾病。(两人在杀害布伦达时，已经因为他们的极端观点而被教会开除了。） 该剧将责任完全归咎于他们的宗教。该剧认为，早期的摩门教历史中充满了神圣的暴力故事，所以任何真正相信 "个人启示 "教义的后期圣徒--也就是说，上帝可以通过精神印象和提示与他们交谈--一定会特别容易受到极端主义的引诱。

在最后一集里，该剧将其论点又向前推进了一步。当警察争分夺秒地在凶手找到下一个受害者之前找到他们时，Pyre的搭档--一个非摩门教的侦探，在这一点上一直充当着睿智和可爱的观众化身--对据称使凶手得逞的宗教进行了正义的抨击。"根据你们的上帝，下一个死的是谁？"他问Pyre，后来又说："我们的工作是把那些怪物从她身上赶走，那些你用你所有的摩门教的好证词帮助养活的怪物。"

在该剧的世界观中，每一个普通的后期圣徒都对以其信仰的名义所做的邪恶行为负有一定的责任。正如一些历史学家所指出的，有一个长期的传统--包括在本杂志的页面上--将摩门教作为对美国计划的威胁。在这个意义上，《天堂的旗帜下》与19世纪的反摩门教宣传有更多共同之处，而不是与《摩门经》音乐剧的讥讽愚蠢。

该剧由达斯汀-兰斯-布莱克（Dustin Lance Black）改编，他是一位著名的编剧，在年轻时离开教会，部分原因是他遇到了对同性恋的恐惧。他在采访中谈到了他与信仰的痛苦历史--"我与摩门教有真正的问题，"他今年早些时候告诉IndieWire，该剧对摩门教的描述无疑是由这些经历形成的。如果不这样期望，那就太天真了，可能也不公平。

但是，在我观看决赛时，最引人注目的不是它对摩门教的强烈负面描述。而是参与这部剧的人都不觉得有必要检查好莱坞创作者在这个包容性和代表性的时代被训练出来的习惯性方框。布莱克没有雇用任何实践中的摩门教徒来编写或咨询该剧。FX的高管们没有发表声明，确认摩门教徒是一个和平的民族。当布伦达-拉弗蒂的妹妹在一次采访中表示该剧的创作者利用了她的故事时，社交媒体上没有出现愤怒的浪潮，电视台也没有急于控制损失。


事实上，该剧会冒犯摩门教徒的前景在宣传时被渲染了。"如果《天堂的旗帜下》让摩门教徒感到愤怒，那么FX剧集将'让他们大发雷霆'"，一个标题写道。"达斯汀-兰斯-布莱克（Dustin Lance Black）已经准备好迎接来自摩门教会的反击和'死亡威胁'，感谢《天堂的旗帜下》，"另一个标题说。

正如承诺的那样，该剧已经成功地冒犯了或至少疏远了大多数给它一个机会的后世圣徒，包括最成熟的观众。犹他州立大学的摩门教历史学家帕特里克-梅森（Patrick Mason）在参加了盐湖城的首映式后，在推特上写道："与我坐在一起的摩门教学者--他们都很清楚如何对我们自己的文化和传统采用开放、批判的目光--都没有在剧中承认我们自己或我们的人民，这是该剧的一个问题。"

该剧的创作者似乎并不担心。在同一首映式上，布莱克回应了教会拥有的《德塞里特新闻》对该剧的批评，指责任何冒犯的摩门教徒都是在暗中同情该剧中心的凶残的极端分子。"他们需要审视自己的内心"。

所有这些让我们回到了我的编辑在他的文章中提出的假设--"想象一下像这样制作一个关于其他宗教的系列节目"。这不需要过度的想象力。很多信仰团体，包括天主教徒、阿米什人和东正教犹太人，都曾被好莱坞轻蔑地对待。而在9/11之后的几年里，大量的电影和电视节目将伊斯兰恐怖分子塑造成一维的坏人，几乎没有努力去展示穆斯林生活中更广泛、更丰富的世界。这些节目中有许多是在要求 "好的穆斯林 "谴责他们的同宗教徒的暴力行为的时候播出的，甚至在自由派圈子里也是如此。值得庆幸的是，近年来，好莱坞已经从这些态度中发展出来。但是这种启蒙似乎并没有延伸到摩门教。


天堂的旗帜下》是在一波以摩门教为主题的真实犯罪流媒体内容中出现的。2019年，Netflix推出了聚焦剧《在众目睽睽之下被绑架》（不久将被改编为剧集）。2021年，Netflix推出了《摩门教中的谋杀》。上个月，一对制片人宣布计划拍摄《罪人诉圣人》，这是一部充满 "疯狂转折 "和 "令人发指的滑稽 "的电影，基于一名据称被跟踪者绑架和强奸的摩门教传教士的真实故事。(如果你通过看电视了解摩门教，你可能会认为我们把所有的时间都花在绑架和谋杀上，或者被绑架和谋杀上。

上个月，耶稣基督后期圣徒教会的使徒大卫-贝德纳（David A. Bednar）长老出现在华盛顿特区的国家新闻俱乐部，他被问到对《天堂之旗》这样的节目有何看法。他基本上把它甩掉了。"他说："我们不喜欢它，但我们不会把所有的时间都用来回应它。"我们有一个使命要完成。"

他说这句话时，我就在房间里，我最初的反应是解脱。早在2003年，当这本书发行时，教会发表了一系列非同寻常的强烈声明，反驳克拉凯尔的论文和他对摩门教历史的松散处理。由此产生的争议只会助长销售，二十年后，《班纳》仍然是有史以来关于摩门教的最畅销书籍之一。从那时起，教会领袖显然变得更加精明，他们似乎决心不给这个电视节目提供同样的氧气。我在推特上说，我在推特上的摩门教同胞们，其中许多人一直在为这个系列剧绞尽脑汁，可以从贝德纳的 "冷淡 "反应中学到一些东西。


但是，几乎在第一时间，我就对自己产生了怀疑。我难道不是在走后世圣徒在面对这样的事情时似乎总是走的那条阻力最小的路吗？

当《摩门经》音乐剧在2011年成为一种现象时，教会在剧单上刊登了俏皮的广告。"你已经看过这出戏了。现在读读这本书。" 正如我去年写的那样，我起初对这种反应感到兴奋--直到一位剧评人向我解释摩门教徒在这种事情上必须表现得很好的真正原因。"你们的民族完全没有文化上的优势"。

旗帜》的成功很清楚地表明，在过去十年里，美国摩门教徒在这方面几乎没有取得任何进展。如果有的话，感觉上我们可能在倒退。

麦凯-科普斯是《大西洋》杂志的一名工作人员。