Latter Days: A Guided Tour Through Six Billion Years Of Mormonism By Coke Newell St. Martin's Press, 2000. Hardback. ISBN: 0-312-24108-9 Suggested retail price: $24.95 259 (US)
Reviewed by: Jeff Needle

Back in the late '60's, as a young convert to Christianity, I was anxious to engage as many of the practitioners of this religion as possible. Doctrine seemed less important than personality. All Christian churches pretty much looked alike to me.

One of the great superstars of the era was Rev. Bob Harrington, a flamboyant preacher known to us as the Chaplain of Bourbon Street. He walked the streets of New Orleans, easily identified by his trademark red tie and socks, and brought strippers and pimps to repentance (between drinks, of course).

Harrington finally landed a gig at Carnegie Hall in New York City, where I grew up. I sat in the great Hall and watched the great man. He was, indeed, a rare character.

Part of the Harrington lore was his appearance on the Tonight Show (back in the Carson days). When they returned from a commercial break, Harrington was fuming. The sponsor was Coca Cola, back in the days when their slogan was "Coke Adds Life." Harrington blasted them -- "Coke kills! How can they say it adds life?"

The Coca Cola Company was not amused. They sued Harrington. So he laid down a challenge -- "Let's bring a corpse, in a coffin, into a courtroom. You bring as many six packs of Coke as you can carry, we'll pry the lid open, and pour the liquid on the corpse. As soon as it comes to life, I'll apologize." Coca Cola dropped the suit.

This episode came to mind as I read Latter Days. I thought to myself, "Well, what do you know -- Coke really *does* add life! Harrington was wrong!" At the very least, Coke adds life to an already lively and interesting story -- the story of Mormonism.

Coke Newell's Latter Days is a lively and wonderfully-written account, not just of the institutional Mormon Church, but of the entirety of the metaphysics of Mormonism (thus the title "A Guided Tour Through Six Billion Years of Mormonism" -- a nod to the concept of the pre-existence). Covering mainly the period from Joseph Smith's birth to Utah's attainment of statehood, Newell brings the story alive with both historical and anecdotal accounts.

We get a feel for this fine book, and its interesting author, early on:

I may well be the only man on the planet who ever came to Mormonism by way of Jack Kerouac and the Tao Te Ching but the logic of such a maneuver is well accepted by Latter-day Saints. (Okay, not by all of them.) (24)

From there, Newell presents, with no apology, the Mormon cosmology that sets Mormonism apart from the rest of Christianity. (We must wait until the last chapters of the book to learn more about his strange road to Mormonism.)

No attempt is made to harmonize Latter-day Saint theology with larger evangelical thought, and this, I believe, is right. Mormonism either stands or falls on its own, finding its foundations in continuing revelation, sometimes independent of known written sources.

As a work of apologetics, Latter Days succeeds, not because it presents any new arguments, but because it lays out the rules of engagement plainly and convincingly. Consider the following extended citation from the chapter "Christ in America":

     The Book of Mormon has placed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its prophets and members, into the critic's sights and the antagonist's rhetoric as much as any other matter, both in 1830 and today. And twenty, fifty, or two hundred years will not see that change. Then, as now, the primary attack is directed against the Book of Mormon and against Joseph Smith upon, ultimately, one and the same basic matter: the claim of new scripture, new revelations from God, and new prophets.
     And from one perspective, the attack is a robust one: nobody has ever proved the Book of Mormon to be historically and geographically accurate, nor has anyone ever proved that Joseph Smith actually saw God and Jesus Christ. At first counterthrust, one could say the critics likewise have no proof to the contrary, merely an empirical void.

     But this misses the point entirely. To the well-grounded Latter-day Saint, such arguments (advanced by either side) are captious and irrelevant. This is religion, not accounting. It functions at a plane far above, beyond, and divergent from historiography and radiometric dating, and it is "proved" in other ways. In the Latter-day Saint view, it will *all* be proved someday by those very methods, but such means used for that end will remain even then substandard and irrelevant.
     These are matters of faith, and the only appropriate proving grounds are personal and internal; one man, one woman at a time; between each and the God he or she seeks to know. (48)

Newell spares nothing in describing the trials and tribulations of the early Saints. His brief, but harrowing, account of the Haun's Mill Massacre raises the hair on your neck. One leaves the reading of this book with a real sense of the sacrifices of these pioneers.

One of the most charming aspects of Latter Days is the way in which Newell presents a high concept, in the following instance the idea of "Church callings," and then brings us back to earth with a thud. This cite describes Brigham Young's reluctant acceptance of his orders to proselyte in England:

A clarification: Brigham did not go voluntarily; neither did he choose the date nor the destination. But he went willingly, and there is a clear distinction in Latter-day Saint theology. One is called to duty by those in authority over him or her. One can refuse, make excuses, or flat out say no. The underlying theology is that the Lord directs his church through revelation to leaders, one at a time, each for his or her purview and that the Lord's wisdom exceeds ours. Anyone who has served in capacities of church leadership can attest that this is the case. And sometimes you just can't get anyone else to take the job. (99-100)

Indeed, one of the great successes of Latter Days is the humanizing, if I may say it this way, of a story that is an intensely human tale of divine leading. These were real people, in real trouble, with real convictions and, indeed, real flaws.

The chapter "The Biggest Heaven and the Littlest Hell" brings us closer to Newell's motivation in accepting Mormonism as "true." He takes us briefly, but compellingly, through his early notions that something was not quite right in his Christian environment. The idea of an endless torment in hell just didn't seem correct to him. Mormonism's after-life concepts were, to him, exactly what he envisioned of a gracious God.

This is a very good book. St. Martin's Press is to be commended for bringing this book to the market. And Mr. Newell is to be congratulated for doing such a fine job.

Sorry, Rev. Harrington, Coke really has added life. If you're still around, give Newell's book a read. Who knows -- you may even trade in your red tie and socks for Temple garments and a Scripture Quad!

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Jeff Needle
jeff.needle@general.com

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Reviewed: 12 August 2000

Copyright © 2000 Jeff Needle <jeff.needle@general.com>