Title: A New Kind of Zeal
Author: Michelle Warren
Date: 2018
Publisher: Michelle Warren / Smashwords
Quote: "Food to the poor, healing to the sick. It sounds like he'll put us all out of a job!"
Jesus lived among us in one place at one time. When He returns, we are assured, His return will be known around the world.
What if, just as a test of what Christianity has done for the world, another man was allowed to represent Christ, fully, in all particulars? Would we treat that man any better than the ancient world did Jesus?
That's the question this work of fiction raises. Its answer is at least a good story. The best of all stories, retold in modern guise. In Warren's literary vision, the Welfare State reacts to Christ exactly as the Roman Empire did. Only a few of the people who knew Joshua Davidson show a little more enlightenment, because they had some Christian teaching, than the historical persons in the New Testament did.
In the trilogy that's grown out of this novel (I have the 2018 edition; there was a 2013 edition) Warren shares a prophetic vision for New Zealand, and for anyone else who has eyes to see it.
It's less poetic, more directly addressed to social issues of our time, than The Singer trilogy, and it's well worth reading even though all Christians will know how the main plot comes out. While the first volume of the trilogy deviates from the Gospel story only in the invention of new characters who hear, and accept or refuse, the message of Joshua Davidson, those characters will shape the following volumes.
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