Classic fiction

In His Steps

by Charles Monroe Sheldon

96 pages · First published 1897

The residents of the fictional town of Raymond are challenged when Reverend Henry Maxwell asks Christians to spend a year making no major decision without first asking, “What would Jesus do?” The pledge changes careers, finances, relationships, politics, and social priorities as characters discover that imitation of Christ can carry material costs. Rather than following one protagonist, the novel traces the experiment through a community. Charles Sheldon’s 1896 Christian social-gospel novel popularized a question that later became the WWJD movement and uses fiction to argue that faith should visibly reshape public as well as private life.