John Hatch is an editor for Signature Books. He is currently writing “What Do You Mean, Murder?” Clue and the Making of a Cult Classic to be published in 2023.

Banner of Heaven is frequently criticized—not unfairly, it must be said—by historians of Mormonism for its inaccurate history and its willingness to engage in guilt-by-association. Author Jon Krakauer’s thesis seems that if extremists like the Lafferty brothers are murdering people, we ought to be suspicious of John and Jane Mormon, whose roots can be traced back to the same violent origins. The line between mainstream and fundamentalist, Krakauer not-so-subtly suggests, is mighty thin. While these criticisms of the book’s questionable history and shaky thesis are valid, I believe they are also used to mask a defensiveness that many Mormons feel about Under the Banner of Heaven. It is difficult not to detect a more visceral reaction to the book than just, “This gets our history wrong.” Inaccuracies aside, most Latter-day Saints dislike it because they don’t recognize themselves in it. They feel like it is not an authentic portrayal of their lived experience in the LDS faith, and no one wants to be told “this is who you are,” when it sure doesn’t feel like that is who I am. Some of this is because the book is, in fact, not authentic to the Mormon experience with its clumsy attempt to link violent extremists with the average LDS churchgoer. But some of this feeling that the book is not accurate is because Latter-day Saints are notoriously bad at understanding how they come across to outsiders. Many people think Mormons are weird and Mormons neither understand that nor particularly like it.

This lack of understanding was especially apparent when Mitt Romney ran for president. As profile after profile emerged on the church, on its members, and on Mitt Romney, many Latter-day Saints were genuinely baffled to learn that people saw them as different since they see themselves as normal—as American as mom, apple pie, and folding laundry while watching true crime on Netflix. This bafflement applied especially to Utah Mormons, who tend to be more insulated. And, in fact, Mormons not only see themselves as normal, they go to rather extreme lengths to show the world that they are normal and, in doing so, only manage to highlight their differences further. Case in point: Using services like CleanFlix or VidAngel so you can still watch R-rated movies doesn’t make you part of the in-crowd who likes movies, it makes you someone who is so worried about swear words that you need to have them edited out. There is no way people won’t think that’s weird! And now there’s a new miniseries inspired by the book.

As a former Latter-day Saint, I think I understand at least part of the story that screenwriter Dustin Lance Black is trying to tell. For us, the line linking the extreme and the mainstream burns brighter than it might for most active, believing church members. I don’t mean to imply that I think the average Mormon is about to haul off and murder their sister-in-law, and I don’t believe that Black thinks that either. Certainly, there’s no evidence that Mormons are somehow more physically violent than other people. I also reject the idea that religious groups are somehow more prone to violence than other communities. The last five years have shown us that politics can be a fertile breeding ground for hatred and extremism. But for those of us who grew up in the faith who no longer believe, there remains something a bit unsettling in the way we sometimes saw, and still see, faith manifest itself.

I watched family members with serious medical conditions eschew professional care for priesthood blessings. I saw my neighbors stand up in fast and testimony meeting and claim visions. I listened to a friend tell me that Jesus visited his dad. I know a woman who was so pressured to marry a return missionary that she broke up with a loving boyfriend and entered an unhappy marriage. I watched girls with more than one pair of earrings get mercilessly bullied because the prophet had recently said women should only have one piercing. Rarely a Sunday went by that I didn’t learn that drinking coffee and alcohol—two beverages my grandparents enjoyed—was a pretty severe sin that guaranteed I couldn’t see grandma and grandpa in the next life. My friend’s dad quit his good-paying job because he thought it was what God wanted him to do. I was taught some mighty odd stuff about evolution and science in church and I got scolded for asking about dinosaurs. I was 100% told that Black people were not as righteous in the war in heaven and that they were denied priesthood and temple blessings thanks to the curse of Cain. I was told that the scriptures are literal, that Abraham really did nearly sacrifice his son as a test from God, and that the Flood of Noah wiped the earth clean of sinners. I was even chewed out for being spotted at the grocery store with a 2-liter bottle of Coke (the drink, not the powder). None of this is like being held at gunpoint, but it’s not much of a warm, encompassing faith community. It is instead—I keep coming back to this word—unsettling. If my bishop believes (and one of mine did) that the Second Coming was absolutely going to happen by the year 2000, then how does that influence his choices? It gives one pause.

It’s hard to talk about this stuff without sounding reductive or as if I’m mocking people of faith. That is by no means my intention. But Latter-day Saints who are unhappy with Krakauer’s book demand (as well they should) to have their experience in the faith taken seriously. But this was my experience within the faith. The examples I’ve given are not hypothetical or made up to sound as odd as possible. In fact, I think my experience in Holladay, Utah, in the 1980s was probably pretty typical.

I want to be really clear here: I don’t think most Mormons go around talking about their visions of Jesus. I don’t think (and I certainly hope) that most LDS parents aren’t disowning their gay children, though I know it does sometimes still happen. (And, of course, violence goes beyond killing someone; kicking your gay teenage child out of the house is absolutely an act of violence.) It is impossible to quantify the number of people who wield their faith in unhealthy or unsettling ways. But the number isn’t zero. It’s not nothing. Most of us who grew up LDS in Utah in the 1980s, when Dan and Ron Lafferty murdered Brenda Lafferty and her baby, saw and heard enough to know that a lot of people believed things far beyond a simple faith in God and Jesus Christ. I think that’s the story Dustin Lance Black is trying to tell: there’s a lot going on inside the LDS community, and while murder is pretty far-fetched, it’s certainly not always a church that makes people feel safe or welcome. This Sunday, a gay kid will go with her family to church and squirm in her chair, unsure of who she can trust. Right now, there are people who do not feel welcome at church because they watched their fellow congregants eschew masks and vaccines

As dismissive as the church often wants to be to those who have left, we have a unique perspective as people who were once part of the faith but now see things from a different angle. And I’m here to tell you, the farther away from Mormonism you get, the weirder it is. And that’s not a criticism! Be weird! (Be nice too, though, especially to the most vulnerable.) I’ll go even farther and say that I often find the efforts by the institutional church to stamp out LDS uniqueness in this terrible Faustian bargain for acceptance is dumb. Embrace the differences! It’s what makes the church interesting. But then don’t act surprised when people are like, “Those guys are weird.” Own it.