‘Under The Banner of Heaven’ Adds Nothing To The Conversation On Religious Extremism

Andrew Garfield stars in “Under the Banner of Heaven,” an adaptation by Dustin Lance Black of Jon Krakauer’s true crime bestseller about a murder in a fundamentalist Latter-day Saints community. Photo by FX

(REVIEW) “Under The Banner of Heaven” wants to be both a thrilling true crime drama and a faith-shaking takedown of the religious right. But so far, its treatment of the topic is too shallow and too un-self-aware to challenge anyone who doesn’t already agree with it. The seven-part FX series is an adaptation by Dustin Lance Black of Jon Krakauer’s true crime bestseller about a murder in a “fundamentalist” community of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons.

Lead actor Andrew Garfield is clearly attracted to faith-related Hollywood projects. He’s had lead roles in “Silence,” “Hacksaw Ridge” and “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” — which, considering how few religious-themed projects Hollywood puts out, definitely means he’s seeking them out. 

In particular, Garfield has chosen films in which sincere believers have their faith challenged or deconstructed. “Silence” and “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” both feature Garfield as a true believer, a religious man who slowly has his faith deconstructed by life events. Fittingly, he’s spoken about how attracted he is to the relationship between faith and doubt:

A life of faith is a life of doubt. And I think it is so healthy to doubt. It’s so healthy to doubt oneself. It’s so healthy to doubt about any assumption we make about how to live. What I mean when I say that certainty scares me (is that) certainty starts war. Certainty starts war in behalf of ideology. Certainty (is), “I know and you don’t” — that’s the scariest thing to me and what a human being is capable of doing.

His latest faith-related project, “Under The Banner of Heaven,” also follows this pattern. The FX limited series — two episodes have aired as of April 30 — follows a fictionalized version of the true-life horrific murders of a young Latter-day Saints woman and her baby girl by church fundamentalists, recounted in the 2003 book of the same name by Jon Krakauer, also the author of “Into the Wild.” 

In this dramatized version of events, a devout Latter-day Saints family-man cop (Andrew Garfield) investigates the murder with his cynical atheist colleague and has his faith rocked as his investigation leads him further and further down the rabbit hole of religious fundamentalism and extremism.

This show thus far is a very solid and entertaining — typical prestige television drama. It’s well-acted, well-shot, well paced and decently written, with all the tropes you know and love if you’re a fan of the genre as I am. You have the disgruntled cynical cop, the kindhearted innocent cop who has his idealism shaken, the seemingly ideal town that hides dark secrets, and the grilling of suspects and red herrings and everything you expect — and very little that surprises you. Garfield and co-actor Gil Birmingham have great chemistry as the classic mismatched cops working the case together. 

However, where the show gets weaker is in its larger aspirations. The show clearly wants to be both a gripping crime drama and a powerful takedown of Mormons — not just fundamentalist sects — and the religious right in general. You can tell this by watching the show, but the show’s creators also make it explicit. Dustin Lance Black — writer of the Oscar-winning movie “Milk” — is an ex-Mormon himself who partly wrote the show to describe his own experiences of deconstructing his faith. Black’s interview with the Los Angeles Times highlights this:

“The (Latter-day Saints) church I grew up in encourages members not to dig into the past, to doubt one’s doubts, to put your questions on a shelf,” said Black. Reading the book “Under The Banner of Heaven” was a revelation to him the way it showed the dirty history of Mormonism. “I was sometimes angry that so much about my own faith had been withheld from me, but I was also heartened that I wasn’t insane, that my doubts were legitimate.” And in case any Christians want to see the show as a critique of Mormonism and not about Christianity, Black disabuses them of that notion. “I stand behind the show in terms of how it depicts Mormonism — and not just Mormonism but, frankly, Christianity in America.

The problem with the show’s treatment of its subject matter is that none of it breaks any new ground in its critiques of organized religion. The critiques of the devoutly religious are ones that religious people are extremely familiar with: its adherents’ history of violence, racism and sexism, the silence of God during suffering, etc. Anyone who is still religious past 17 years old has answers to these objections. So the religious won’t be challenged by them. (I’m not Mormon, but I would venture to guess this is true among Mormons too.)

What’s more, the show doesn’t challenge secular viewers by responding to these critiques. So the nonreligious aren’t going to be challenged by the show either. I’m not saying that the nonreligious side shouldn’t win, but it should at least be a compelling fight for the sake of entertainment if nothing else, and so the hero’s journey from faithful to skeptic feels believable.

Perhaps the show will gain nuance and complexity as the story goes on. But I highly doubt it. Black doesn’t seem interested in that based on his interviews, and in my experience, shows in which someone deconstructs their faith give the best arguments for their faith and the most resistance at the beginning. So if this is where it starts, it’s not promising.

What’s left then is a show that’s simply going to give some cheap catharsis to people who already dislike the Latter-day Saints and religious conservatives to feel justified in their moral superiority toward them. Basically, it’s like “God’s Not Dead” for the nonreligious and those disappointed by Christianity.

Perhaps you can argue there’s a place in this world for shows that offer cheap catharsis for the religious-disappointed. I certainly have friends who can relate to that experience and would resonate with the show — although the box office for such movies like “Silence” and “First Reformed” would suggest there aren’t as many people looking for that as you’d think. But the show seems to want you to see it as deeply profound and groundbreaking, and “Under the Banner of Heaven” simply isn’t that at all. 

The lack of self-awareness in the writing almost reaches humorous levels as the show keeps bringing up the church’s racism, sexism, violence and suppression of the truth as if these are unanswerable truth bombs that destroy any legitimacy of the religion, all while its heroes are two cops.

Now, I consider myself decently pro-cop. But you have to appreciate the irony. The show explicitly goes out of its way to frame the story as a battle between government and religion, with the noble government agents on one side and the crazy anti-government religious extremists on the other. But if you think that having a history of violence, racism, sexism and suppression of dissenting voices automatically delegitimize a religion, wait till I tell you about literally every government that has ever existed.

Garfield is right. It’s good to doubt and question your beliefs to make sure that your beliefs are matching reality. But it’s something that’s good for both the religious and nonreligious, the conservative and the liberal, patriarchal and feminist. If you don’t — if you say “doubt is for thee but not for me,” then you don’t believe in doubt. You merely believe in weakening the resolve of your enemies. Worse, you might make shows like “Under The Banner of Heaven.”

If the show had some self-awareness, it could have added to the conversation around the dangers of religious extremism. As it is, it merely adds to the noise.

Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.com, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers.