Book Reviews 119

David Walker, Railroading Religion. Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2019, 343 pp. ISBN 9781469653204. US$29.95.

The famed British author Charles Dickens was not a fan of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as . , he wrote in 1851, was an “ignorant rustic” who “sees visions, lays claim to inspiration, and pretends to communion with angels.” And most damning, according to Dickens, was that Smith dared to claim his fantasies not in the superstitious era of bygone antiquity, but rather “in the age of railways.” Rail- roads were just then sweeping over both America and Britain, and represented the new modern stage into which humanity had entered. What made Mor- monism so laughable, therefore, was that it sought converts in a period suppos- edly so advanced that everyone should be able to see through the fraudulent sham. Further, later the next decade, when the transcontinental railroad was nearing completion, many observers figured it spelled the end of Mormonism, who could no longer remain isolated and therefore risked the allure of moder- nity.1 Yet according to David Walker’s new book, Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West, early Mormonism was far from a discordant anomaly in the railroad age, but rather its embodiment. More, Mormonism’s relationship with both the broader nation as well as its own reli- gious body, Walker claims, challenges the very concept of modernity itself. Walker demonstrates that despite the prevalent belief in what he calls the “death knell thesis”—that once Utah was connected to the rest of society, enabling the constant flow of both ideas and products between Deseret and American culture, the tyrannical cohesion that held Mormon converts hostage would crumble—the theory crumbled just as quickly as many “boom and bust” experiments on the frontier. The LDS Church’s survival, then, invites histori- ans to contemplate traditional narratives of secular advancement and religious innovation. Because just as contemporaries held false assumptions concerning Mormonism’s future, so too do scholars typically hold misleading hypotheses concerning religion and secularism. Rather than a trenchant, if haphazard, march toward modernity, in which rationality is prioritized over spirituality, Mormonism’s survival and dominance following 1869 demonstrated religios- ity’s persistence and adaptability. The transcontinental railroad’s arrival, far from meaning Mormonism’s demise, actually led to its flourishing.

1 Charles Dickens, “In the Name of the Prophet—Smith!,” The Literary World, August 9, 1851, 102.

Church History and Religious Culture © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/18712428-10001019 120 Book Reviews

In the 1860s, however, people were confident of Mormonism’s termination, which they believed was part of America’s unrequited march to civilization and manifest destiny. Even as some politicians famously argued for the fed- eral government to take a more aggressive stance rooting out the troublesome sect, others urged them to be patient, finish the transcontinental railroad, and wait for nature to take its course. Some corporate-minded individuals were willing to even bet a lot of money on this thesis. A number of “gentiles,” the term Mormons used for those outside their faith, aimed to build an alterna- tive metropolis in Utah, named Corinne, that would serve as the hub for the new railroad, which they hoped would eclipse nearby Salt Lake City. Once the Union Pacific and Central Pacific would meet, sometime in 1869, Utah, as it then existed, was toast. But history unfolded differently. By the time the two railroad lines met in Utah in 1869, recognized the potential of working with the new corporation, and instead of laying down on the newly-laid tracks, he instead decided to work with the railroad business. The central hub, rather than being located in gentile-controlled Corinne, was instead established in Ogden, much closer to the Mormon capital. And soon the Mormons were sub- sidizing further railroad development south to Salt Lake City and north into Idaho. In return, the railroad industry embraced their newfound friends, and often defended the faith in national debates when Mormonism, and Mormon polygamy, was under fire. By the 1890s, Mormon Utah was a popular tourist des- tination, as earnest and imaginative tour guides depicted the region, and its people, as a biblical—and even American–community, rather than an exotic threat. To tell this tale, David Walker draws from a host of different characters and episodes. Besides the “Corinnites” who opposed the faith, Walker also draws from a variety of voices within. One chapter, for instance, focuses on the “God- beites,” a schismatic group who attempted to swing the tourism industry in a way that, on the one hand, challenged Brigham Young’s tyranny, while also, on the other hand, highlighting the growing skeptical crowd that were fighting to modernize the state. Collaborating with the “gentiles” who saw Mormonism as backward, the believed that enough exposure to American civiliza- tion, coupled with enough time, would finally lead to the tyrannical church’s downfall. Elsewhere, Walker detailed how the attempts at “atrocity” tourism in Utah, in which the Corinnites tried to make money by showing visitors the hor- rors of Mormon Utah, were replaced by a Mormon-friendly tourism industry, demonstrating the working relationship between the LDS and railroad bureau- cracies. In each case, Walker highlights how the external, secular assump- tions of Mormonism’s limits proved short-sighted, and how Young and his

Church History and Religious Culture 100 (2020) 61–129