Way Below the Angels, by Craig Harline

One cold afternoon in 1975 in a small rented bedroom in Antwerp, the young Mormon missionary Craig Harline (Elder Harline in Mormon parlance) had a faith crisis—though it is not quite right to call it that. He was frustrated with his mission, dismayed at his failure to convert even a single soul after months of work in Belgium. His hope and even his faith in God were waning. Maybe he was fooling himself; maybe God didn’t care. Maybe there was no God.

To use the phrase “faith crisis” places young Elder Harline into a well-trodden narrative with guides familiar to most students of religion—Augustine, John of the Cross, even Malcolm X. There are the common wayposts—doubt, shattered confidence, surrender, catharsis. All of Christian history led to this moment: Elder Harline kneeling beside his hard bed, gazing toward heaven through his little window and the gray winter sky.

Yet Harline knew none of this, which is what makes this book so touching. He was no Augustine or Paul, no Billy Graham or Joseph Smith, not even, as he worried while in his initial weeks of training, a match for Elder Downing, the hero of his cadre of 19-year-old Mormons preparing to go out into the world and preach their gospel from the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and seven memorized lessons. He experienced the trials of faith as though he was the first and only, and the Harline of today—a historian of early modern Europe at Brigham Young University—is particularly gifted at capturing the universal humanity in what was an average experience as far as Mormon missions go.