THE CYNICAL PROPHET

In Stemmle’s novel, a widower takes a novel approach to his struggles with his Christian faith.

American Don Steiner, who’s almost 80, is visiting Europe for a touristy “pilgrimage” sponsored by his local church, back in Bluffton, South Carolina. The itinerary includes other familiar stops, such as Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Blarney Stone in Cork. At Stonehenge in England, Steiner encounters a mysterious old woman dressed in black (like “an old, Greek widow,”he thinks) who reassures him (“First of all…you do matter!”) and calls him “Donnie”—something that nobody has done since his beloved wife, Deb, died eight years before. Steiner had been an activist in the Catholic Church, and even an advisor to the current pope, but these days, he feels increasingly alienated from the faith. Eventually, Steiner sets out on an unusual course of action: He begins blogging a rewrite of the Bible, recasting familiar passages and parables in the language and sensibility of the modern era. It becomes a viral hit, garnering him comments from happy subscribers as well as death threats from others, and it lands Steiner on MSNBC for a debate with a Bible scholar, the Rev. Scott Marbry. Stemmle very effectively uses Steiner’s crisis of faith as a template for talking about various aspects of Christian faith, and especially Catholicism. The text itself has occasional, distracting typos (“Bible” is not always capitalized, for instance, nor is “Mass”), and a subplot involving a fellow seeker named Roy Lee Houkum and his love life with his wife is largely unrealized. However, Steiner’s core insights about Jesus as “a man of great courage, backbone, and most of all, compassion, who stood his ground and paid prices for it,” will appeal to Christians of all denominations, and the wry humor that Stemmle uses throughout the story is appealing.

A heartfelt and often touching story of one man’s unusual religious calling.