Composite Sermon (II)

WHAT WOULD JESUS DO? (286 pp.)--Glenn Clark--Macalester Park ($2.25).

Many a Christian has teased his conscience with the question: What would happen if Christians guided their day-today lives by continually asking themselves, "What would Jesus do?" In Topeka, Kans. in 1896, Congregational Minister Charles Sheldon wrote a novel in which, for a year, various members of the congregation of a Midwest church tried to do just that. Author Sheldon's conclusions: the Christ-conscious turn-of-the-century man would lend a helping hand to the poor, campaign against the consumption of alcohol and tobacco, remain staunchly pacifist at whatever cost. Sheldon's In His Steps was stuffy in style, contrived in plot, and contained some of the most ludicrous dialogue ever written. But it went to the hearts of thousands. Within a few months it had sold more than 100,000 copies, has since become the alltime fiction bestseller (estimates as high as 30 million copies).

"Ever since In His Steps appeared," writes Glenn (How to Find Health Through Prayer) Clark, "I have dreamed of writing a sequel to it." What Would Jesus Do? is Author Clark's dream come true--a dedicated, step-by-step retracing of Author Sheldon's bestseller in terms of the post-World War II U.S. Like its predecessor, it is a composite sermon preached by its cast of characters, many of whom are the children or grandchildren of the characters in In His Steps. Urged by their minister (grandson of Author Sheldon's minister) to emulate Christ, they react to the atomic age much as their grandparents reacted to the times of Grover Cleveland. The local department-store owner builds prayer rooms for his customers and employees and sets up a profit-sharing plan. The newspaper publisher devotes his editorial page to the pacifist point of view. ("The world would have actually been better off if our nation had stayed out of both wars entirely.") The town's aging millionaire attacks greed and monopoly as the roots of all modern evil.

What Would Jesus Do? is more a revelation of nostalgia for a simpler world than an actual coming to grips with the contemporary Christian's problems. But even readers who agree with Author Clark's oversimplified concept of the Christian's duty may find some of his situations too embarrassingly cozy to stomach. Example: the preacher-hero's pep talk to a college assembly. Jesus, he assures, "is in your backfield--the greatest triple threat player the world has ever known . . . He could plunge, pass and punt, that is preach, pray and penetrate to the very heart of God ... Yes, in the final minutes of the game, beaten back to His goalline, this great Champion . . . sent the ball spiralling far into the opponents' territory [and] the stone was rolled away . . ."

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