Mormon Experience

this historical account of how the latter-day saints became an organized religion is easy to read because it is written in a progressive, non-lofty manner. i am a college educated woman, but didn't want't to be burdened with a college textbook type read. this book reads more like a story and thats what i was looking for.

This book is scholarly and well documented, and Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton are to be praised for giving a fair hearing to Fawn Brodie's "No Man Knows My History." Speaking of the Book of Mormon (p. 15), they write: "Fawn Brodie, Joseph Smith's eminent but unsympathetic biographer, has advanced the second principal countertheory of the book's orgins." They then go on to fully present Brodie's view of Joseph Smith. Continuing, Arrington and Bitton present the Mormon view: "Mormons insist that Smith's limited education made it impossible for him to produce such a long and complicated book by himself. The issues in the book are seen by defenders as universal, and likey to have aroused interest in ancient times as well as in modern America." Such objective and unemotional scholarship is refreshing and stands in marked contrast to that of BYU Professor Hugh Nibley, who, for example, illogically invisioned Joseph Smith being both a translator and illiterate (!) (see "Lehi in the Desert," p. 32). In speaking of the disappearing gold plates, Nibley said illogically that they would be "very disruptive" today and that the present paper edition of the Book of Mormon is "more miraculous than any gold plates would be" (see, "An Approach to the Book of Mormon, p. 18). See my one-star reviews of Nibley's books--"Lehi in the Desert," "Since Cumorah," and "An Approach to the Book of Mormon." Lehi in the Desert, the World of the Jaredites, There Were Jaredites (Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol 5) Since Cumorah: The Book of Mormon in the modern world An Approach to the Book of Mormon (Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol 6) Mormon scholars Arrington and Bitton, as well as Richard Bushman, have taken a higher and more logical road than Hugh Nibley, the former big-gun of Mormon scholarship. In short, Arrington and Bitton deserve the praise of the Utah Historical Quarterly, "An excellent book...it should be read by Mormons and non-Mormons alike." The Saturday Review called it, "A remarkably intelligent and open-minded official history." As a non-Mormon, I admire Arrington and Bitton's book, "The Mormon Experience," for its reasoned approach to Mormon history.

As someone who has read many, many books on the topic of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I can honestly say that this text is one of the best books on Mormon history I have so far come across. I believe that the late Arrington and Bitton do an excellent job in providing a fair and balanced overview of the Latter-day Saint religion since 1820, as well as refuting some common anti-Mormon claims, showing that, contra the late Wesley Walters, author of "Inventing Mormonism" and other screeds, religious revivals *did* occur in 1819-1820, consistent with the chronology offered by the Prophet Joseph Smith in the History of the Church and the versions of the First Vision he gave throughout his lifetime. Recommended reading for any serious student of "Mormonism."

I eagerly awaited publication of this general history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when it first appeared in 1979, and was not disappointed. I recently reread "The Mormon Experience" because I realized that 25 years had now passed since it first appeared and I wanted to see how well it has faired over the years. Let me report that it has indeed stood the test of time very well. Taking a roughly chronological approach, with individual topical chapters, authors Arrington and Bitton, both lifelong members of the Latter-day Saint Church, produced a masterpiece. Their task was straightforward, but most difficult, to produce a readable one-volume history of the church that was honest, legitimate, and responsive to the needs of both believing churchmembers and nonmembers. This book appeared during a time of encouragement and inescapable excitement about Mormon history. Leonard J. Arrington, then LDS Church Historian, was modernizing the LDS archives and sponsoring varied and far-reaching research of which this book was a notable contribution. There was a fleeting esprit de corps within the community of scholars working in the field, and much of significance resulted from far-reaching historical efforts. Indeed, Davis Bitton, one of Arrington's associates in the LDS Historical Department and co-author of this book, designated the decade between 1972 and 1982 a golden age, "a brief period of excitement and optimism--that someone has likened to Camelot" (Davis Bitton, "Ten Years in Camelot: A Personal Memoir," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 16 (Autumn 1983): 9-20, quote from p. 9). We did not realize it at the time, but "The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints" was very nearly the last official attempt to record the history of the Mormon Church in an honest and unblemished manner. In 1981 Mormon Apostle Boyd K. Packer threw down a gauntlet to historians of the Church that they should exclusively show "the hand of the Lord in every hour and every moment of the Church from its beginning till now" (Boyd K. Packer, "'The Mantle is Far, Far Greater than the Intellect'," Brigham Young University Studies 21 Summer 1981): 261-78, quote from p. 262). With such a perspective, church-mandated interpretations of the Mormon past are not easily overcome. Soon Arrington was quietly replaced as official LDS Church Historian and he and most of his associates in the Church Historical Department were transferred to Brigham Young University. What Arrington and Bitton produced here was exceptional. In 16 chapters divided into three parts-"The Early Church," "The Kingdom in the West," and "The Modern Church"-they range broadly over the history of the movement from its origins by Joseph Smith to its growing pains after World War II as it became a world religion. They based their work on the explosion of historical research that took place in the 1960s and 1970s, offering reinterpretations of early Mormonism, the middle period of

Balanced, objective, fair, well-written, interesting, informed. What more could you want? This is something of a minor classic, in my opinion.