![]() ![]() It begins with the arrival of an out of work stranger, who, after a week of unsuccessfully seeking employment among church members, interrupts the Sunday service to ask the startled members what it meant for them to follow Jesus in their daily lives. ![]() The novel is set in the fictional mid-western city of Raymond. Sheldon was an advocate for the Social Gospel, which sought to situate Jesus in his own culture and insisted that his life and teachings should guide the way Christians live their own lives in a very different culture. Sheldon first asked “What would Jesus Do?” in an 1896 novel entitled In His Steps. And even fewer know that the author’s working drafts of that novel can be seen today in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. But few know that it was first asked in a novel. ![]() “WWJD?” A student of mine told me in the early 1990s that in her school the interrogating initials meant “Who Wants Jack Daniels?” Of course, most Americans today know that they mean “What Would Jesus Do?” The question has been ubiquitous in American popular culture for three decades. ![]()
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