Railroading Religion is a lively, theoretically rich account of the religious significance of the late nineteenth-century commercialization and expansion of the intercontinental rail system within the U.S. West, especially Mormonism's contested territorial domain. In it, Walker convincingly demonstrates that secularization is a discursively effected process of shaping religion within—not the accomplishment of its removal from—U.S. public life. The book is also a sophisticated exercise in finding “lived religion” in industrial and leisure activity. Historiographically, the narrative fills a large gap in accounts of the continuing colonization of the West and the larger gap in accounting for the role of religion therein. In sum, this is a very smart book with a very interesting, even entertaining story.

The story begins with Protestant entrepreneurs and missionaries who hoped the superior economic clout of railroad magnets and direct cultural encounter with tourists riding the rails would finally eradicate, or “railroad,” their nemesis: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hence the book's title). LDS Church leadership, however, saw in the encounter both political and economic opportunity, as well as potential to convert public sentiment. The Mormons won out, and to them went spoils of the fight: economic boon for the church, itself a railroading entrepreneur; naturalization of its religion through a curated tourist experience; and, finally, after fifty years of trying, the greater independence of statehood. By using a wide variety of voices and sources, Walker is able to show the degree to which railroading of all kinds was informed by religious discourse. Railroad agents with their promotional materials, scrapbook-producing and letter-writing tourists, local tour guides and museums, and even lobbyists and land grants are convincingly marshalled to support the book's claim that the joining of east and west rail lines in Mormon country catalyzed a robust discourse on religion by “ordinary Americans [who] articulated and advanced therein their own theories of religion” (7). The author rightly asserts this was no less than a vernacular exercise in the comparative study of religion and, as such, is due the attention of professional Religious Studies.

Chapters 1 through 3 detail the strategies of late nineteenth-century antagonists toward the LDS Church and its equally strategic response. The first chapter describes Protestant efforts to build, near the junction of the rail lines, “‘a little republic in the midst of a theocracy.’” (37) The establishment of Corinne as a redoubt against all that was wrong about Mormonism provides the starting point for Walker's analysis of secularization, what it is and what it seeks to accomplish. Chapter 2 analyzes the contest in terms of the church's operational power over western lands, typically in federal hands. This is one of the more suggestive portions of the book and, as the author invites, “should change our notions about the nature and meaning of religion in the West” (57). As chapter 3 details, the railroad magnets bypass Corinne because Brigham Young offered them free land and willing laborers, as well as the promise to bear the cost of adding a spur to Salt Lake City. Tempered by its own reform movements, the church was also better positioned religiously to take advantage of the opportunity for economic cooperation. Chapters 4 through 6 trace the effects of railroad tourism and investment and of the church's tactical response to it. While political discourse raged in the press and punitive anti-polygamy bills were enacted, curious tourists streamed into Utah to see for themselves and report their findings. The experience inspired them to compare their religious commitments and assumptions with what they were seeing. As a result, “railroad platforms were platforms of religious definition, of religious theory making and of religion making. Tourism, then, was an industry of religion” (234). Though the Protestants, too, attempted to control the tourists’ experience, visitors and railroad magnates were more effectively drawn to, entertained, and reeducated by carefully curated church portrayals of Mormon material culture. Thus, the cultural mainstreaming of Mormonism began in earnest and paved the way for more formal, even legal forms acceptance of non-Protestant pluralism.

Railroading Religion is a much-needed reappraisal of how the United States has historically accommodated religious diversity and its secularizing effect. Throughout, the author rattles Weber's “iron cage.” The church's bureaucracy is shown to be as, if not more, rationally organized and motivated as its interlocutors, whether governmental, ecclesial, or commercial. Moreover, while it obviously “inhabit[ed] aggressively modern capitalist forms,” it did so “while leveraging through them the myths and motives of non-industrialized, pacific, Israelite-ish community” (238). This is not religion routinized by modernity, but rather religion displaying a “capacity to reproduce itself” (245). As such, secularization is shown to be a process of religious adaptation, not the eradication of religion. “Protestant technologies of the secular,” the author concludes, “consisted and remained always at the level of process more than product, act and reenactment rather than accomplishment” (246). Walker has made a major contribution to secularity studies and American religious history, as well as written an interesting and sometimes amusing tale of unintended consequences. Though probably too theoretical at times for lower division courses, it is an excellent source for upper level, thought-provoking discussions of religious studies methods and theories, as well as of U.S. history.