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 American Saviour: A Novel of Divine Politics by Roland Merullo (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, hardcover, 320 pages, $27.95).
In American Saviour Jesus Christ appears to a TV news reporter and announces His intention to run for president of the United States. Jesus has been reborn of a woman, a Navajo this time, and studied in India, Tibet and Nepal. He is cool with premarital sex, down on those who condemn it and spends quite a lot of his campaign in California, which he calls “the area of enlightenment.” He talks of “karmic weight” and other New Age concepts. He is not here to save all humanity but to save the United States of America. At one point He refers to the Jews as “my people then.” Apparently Americans are the chosen people now.
And yet I did not hate this book.
Roland Merullo has written an original, witty and absorbing yarn. The story begins in Massachusetts, when an old and cynical TV producer sends a young and ambitious reporter, Russ Thomas, to investigate the rumour of a miracle in a depressed part of town. A poor child had fallen from a fire escape while his mother and her boyfriend were boozing and/or smoking drugs and been killed. But then, “some weirdo comes walking through the gathering crowd. Street person or something. Guy no one’s ever seen. Maybe Hispanic, maybe not. Longish hair. Tattoo of a flower on his left forearm. The guy reaches down and touches the kid on his shoulder. Walks away. Disappears down the street. Kid goes from being dead to crying. A minute later when the ambulance and police get there the kid is fine as fine can be.” Russ checks out the rumour, and the child’s mother swears it’s true.
It’s an intriguing beginning, and before this miracle is forgotten, there’s another. A little girl, the daughter of wealthy black parents, is suddenly cured of lung disease by a mysterious, kindly visitor who tells her that they have important work to do. And when Russ finally meets Jesus in person, he finds himself — and all others chosen by Jesus to work on the presidential campaign — changing for the better.
One of Merullo’s strengths is to draw engaging portraits of a wide variety of people. He treats Jesus with great reverence and love, and even if readers find the sermons Merullo puts in Jesus’ mouth unusual, there can be no denying that his fictional Jesus has a lot of traits in common with the Jesus we know from the Bible. Merullo also treats the figure of Jesus’ new Navajo mother (and running mate) with great love and respect. Her quiet dignity seems to mirror that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the mother-son relationship between Jesus and Anna Songsparrow is one Catholics will recognize.
Then there are the disciples, including red-haired Dukey McIntyre, deputy chief of security and likeable thug; Patterson Wales, the (unlit) cigar-chomping TV producer turned campaign manager; Russ’s Jewish father who likes Jesus but refuses to acknowledge that He is God; Russ’s Catholic mother, who carts around pictures of the pope; and, wonderfully, Russ’s brother Stab, who has Down’s Syndrome. After Anna Songsparrow, Stab is Jesus’ best friend. When the man first meets Jesus, he falls to his knees and calls Him God. Stab has an unshakeable high Christology. The love of the Thomas family for Stab and the love of Stab for Jesus make up, I think, for any unwitting offensiveness on Merullo’s part.
The book indicts the viciousness of American politics, which Jesus eschews, except to say that He’s got more “woman” inside Him than the other candidates, one of whom is a woman. Merullo veers into caricature in his portrayals of Republican Senator Marjorie Maplewith and Democrat Colonel Dennis Alowich. Did he presume a Clinton-McCain race when he began his book? Notable American pundits are present, including Ann Coulter, George Will and Newt Gingrich, thinly disguised behind sound-alike names.
Merullo also gives vent to his contempt for the “so-called Christians” of big Evangelical churches everywhere non-coastal. In a chilling recreation of Jesus’s sermon at the Festival of Booths, a mob of “politically active, anti-tax, anti-government, anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-people of colour” Christians run Jesus out of their Montana church.
Despite everything that offends me as a Catholic (the premise, the replacement of Mary, the dismissal of ecclesial authority), I enjoyed American Saviour very much. Just as I think it best to consider The Passion of the Christ Mel Gibson’s own personal take on the Sorrowful Mysteries, I think it helpful to keep in mind that the book is about Merullo’s own personal Jesus. His Jesus — a Jesus who doesn’t care about organized religion or sexual sins — is a Jesus I come across often and He certainly isn’t the worst version out there. I recommend the novel to all well-catechized Catholic adults. It will make a great beach read.
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