The Messiah of Morris Avenue
A Novel
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In The Messiah of Morris Avenue, Tony Hendra—the acclaimed satirist and New York Times bestselling author of Father Joe—poses the question: would we recognize the messiah if he appeared today? And delivers, in the words of Frank McCourt, “just what the country needs now—a good dose of merriment in the face of crawthumping righteousness.”
In the not so distant future, the tide of righteousness—in the form of executions, barking evangelists, tank-like SUVs, and a movie industry run entirely by the Christian right—has swept the nation. Aside from the non-white, the non-Christian, and the non-wealthy, all are believers.
Among the skeptics is a washed-up journalist named Johnny Greco, who hears of a media-shy young man known as “Jay” roaming through ghettos, healing the sick, and tossing off miracles. Soft-spoken and shabbily dressed, Jay is an unlikely savior for this anxious and intolerant America.
But as he makes his rounds, gathers followers, and makes furious enemies among the righteous powers that be, Johnny finds it harder and harder to doubt him.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the near future of this alternately cynical and rapturous fable, America is a theocracy where the Christian Right, empowered by laws against blasphemy and witchcraft, controls everything from Congress to "Holywood" and foments Armageddon. Christ chooses this time to return in the guise of Jos , the Bronx-bred son of a Guatemalan immigrant with a discipleship of drifters and crack whores. Charismatic, open about his divinity and obliging with miracles, Jos wins over even Johnny Grecco, the jaundiced reporter who writes his gospel. Journalist Hendra, author of the best-selling Catholic- mentorship memoir Father Joe and former editor in chief of Spy, makes Jos the savior of liberal Christianity. Jos 's theology is vaguely feminist (it includes "God the Mother"), vaguely Gnostic and just plain vague ("Blessed are the doubters..."), but he's militantly for love and tolerance and against war and creationism. Hendra writes a heart-wrenching Passion story, but the novel's broad satire of both the Christian Right and of spineless liberal appeasers clashes with the reverence accorded Jos and his New Agey platitudes (his evasion of the problem of evil is particularly mealy-mouthed). This messiah is an awfully nice deity, but he doesn't give our formidable world its due.
