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Outstanding Essays by a Master of Mormon History
Davis Bitton has long been at the center of the sometimes controversial world of Mormon historical studies. Best known for his work during the 1970s as assistant to Leonard J. Arrington, the Latter-day Saints church historian, Bitton has written many books and essays about Mormonism. This book republishes several of his most significant articles--albeit in a revised form--along with several new essays. As an analysis of Mormon social history it is useful. As a means of understanding a little more about the career of a significant Mormon historian in the latter half of the twentieth century and about the development of a discipline, it is an especially welcome work.

Davis Bitton's forte for much of his career has been social history--not necessarily the "New Social History" with its emphasis on the underclass and its reliance on statistical methods--and this book reflects those interests. Bitton's 1973 essay, "Early Mormon Lifestyles; or, The Saints as Human Beings," demonstrates that most early Mormons spent much of their time concerned about the routine affairs of life in frontier America. In that sense, they were not all that different from most other Americans of their era. This essay, which begins the volume because it deals with the earliest period of Mormon history, is a fitting way in which to start any exploration of LDS society. In the remainder of this interesting work Bitton looks in depth at several themes in the lifestyles and society of Mormonism.

Bitton then presents an original essay on the defense of polygamy made by Utah Mormons in the nineteenth century, arguing that from the perspective of a century later "the ideas reviewed in this essay seem to come from another age, another planet. They are from the 'lost world' of Brigham Young and the other outspoken Mormon defenders" (p. 45). He continues with a piece about young people on the Utah frontier, explaining that they rebelled against their parents and their society just as other youth did in other times and places. An analysis of the poetry of southern Utah's Charles Lowell Walker follows, along with a study of the attraction of spiritualism among Mormons of the mid-nineteenth century and the legacy of dancing in LDS society.

Two biographical articles offer important interpretations of the meaning of Mormonism in the nineteenth century. The first is Bitton's insightful retelling of the story of Brigham Young Jr., the man who might have succeeded his father as president of the Latter-day Saint church but for his foibles. The problem of being the child of a great person has long been recognized. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., had to land with the troops at Normandy on D-Day because his father had led the charge up San Juan Hill, but he was never the war hero that his father had been. Brigham Young Jr., likewise, never lived up either to his father's or the Mormon people's expectations in spite of genuine skills and successes.

The oldest article republished in this book is "The Exclusion of B. H. Roberts from Congress," originally appearing in the "Utah Historical Quarterly" in 1957. Seemingly a straightforward political study of the effort to deprive Roberts of the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives that he won in election because of his Mormonism, it betrays some of the concerns Bitton has since expressed about the Latter-day Saints as a people separate from the rest of American society.

Finally, the showpiece of this volume is the title essay, originally published in 1975. In "The Ritualization of Mormon History" Bitton shows that Mormon memory is constructed through a complex series of reenactments and recitations of the past. In so doing, the church defines itself and its identity in the context of the world about it. The ritualization process simplifies the story of the church into a morality play with strongly drawn "good" and "evil" elements. It celebrates the heroic Saints who persevere persecution, the elements, and larger society while largely vilifying those outside the fold. Bitton notes that this ritualization serves an important purpose in the church but is quick to point out that, "those who probe more deeply are bound to discover that the men and women of the past were not that flat and, more essentially, that the past was not that simple." He adds, "historians have a duty to criticize and correct inaccurate, inadequate, or oversimplified versions of the past Part of their social role is to go over the record more thoroughly than the average person can do, subject each others' scholarship to scrutiny and criticism, and produce works of richness and complexity" (p. 183).

There is much to praise and little to criticize in "The Ritualization of History and Other Essays." Davis Bitton argues his case well and offers a set of essays that hang together as social history remarkably well for works written over such a broad period. There are, however, built-in difficulties with any collection of essays of this type. The most important is the choice of what to include and what to exclude from the volume. As a result, themes and events are unevenly represented. There is, for instance, very little on any aspect of Mormonism in the twentieth century despite some pathbreaking personal essays and historiographical discussions that Bitton has written over the years. In spite of this, this book presents an excellent collection of essays. It will be of interest to those concerned about Mormon history, or the role of religion in society.