3 thoughts on “Jon Krakauer

  1. shinichi Post author

    Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

    by Jon Krakauer

    Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In Under the Banner of Heaven, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this “divinely inspired” crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

    Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five “plural wives,” several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents.

    Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism’s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism. The result is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.

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  2. shinichi Post author

    信仰が人を殺すとき – 過激な宗教は何を生み出してきたのか

    by ジョン・クラカワー

    アメリカでは、モルモン教徒は長老派教会の信者より多い。世界では、ユダヤ教徒より多い―「神の命令」に従い弟の妻とその幼い娘を殺した熱心な信徒、ラファティ兄弟。なぜ、熱心な宗教者たちが殺人者となり得たのか?理性と信仰、原理主義と人間の倫理の問題など宗教の深い闇に迫った渾身のノンフィクション。

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  3. shinichi Post author

    (sk)

    信仰が人を殺すとき。

    キリスト教にせよ、オウム真理教にせよ、信じた結果、人を殺すことになってしまった人たち。

    戦争の名のもとに、国家のために、人を殺すことになってしまった人たち。

    宗教を信じた結果、人を殺す。

    国家を信じた結果、人を殺す。

    主義を信じた結果、人を殺す。

    会社を信じた結果、人を殺す。

    カネを信じた結果、人を殺す。

    愛を信じた結果、人を殺す。

    信じることの恐ろしさ、怖さを、なんと説明したらいいのだろう。

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