Did you know that one of the best-selling books in Latter-day Saint history on Amazon

com was not written by a Latter-day Saint or a historian.

It was a controversial book written by atheist John Krakauer in 2003,

titled Under the Banner of Heaven, A Story of Violent Faith, which still tops the Amazon

charts and Kindle releases in the category Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and an adaptation of the book was released as a mini-series in

2022.

One of the major premises of the book is that religion is inherently violent.

To illustrate this premise, Krakauer combines stories from early Latter-day Saint

history with the story of a tragic murder in 1984 committed by two former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Now, Krakauer's work has been repeatedly criticized as a gross caricature of Latter-day

Saint history and of religious people in general.

But considering the widespread reach and influence of his fundamental premise and the

LDS history he chose to support it, we felt like this is a topic that might warrant

further investigation. So today on Church History Matters, Casey and I begin our

multi-episodes exploration of this question. Does faith in general and the faith of the

Latter-day Saints in particular lend itself to acts of aggression and violence?

What does reflecting on our church's history, and specifically the violent episodes of our history

teach us about this important question?

I'm Scott Woodward, a managing director at Scripture Central,

and my co-host is Casey Griffiths also a managing director at

scripture central and today Casey and I dive into our first episode in this series

dealing with peace and violence in Latter-day Saint History. Now let's get into it.

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