"The Gospel of Love" by Colleen McCullough, summary

The Australian writer has created a dystopia about a man-made messianism against the backdrop of a new glaciation gripping North America. This book is a merciless anatomy of state manipulation of human faith, reducing sacred myth to political calculation. Colleen McCullough wrote the novel in 1985, completing the manuscript shortly after the phenomenal success of her family sagas and deciding to explore the limits of civilization’s spiritual resilience in the face of natural extinction.

Holloman Clinic and the Search for a Savior

A January wind swept snowdrifts from the deserted streets of a deserted town in Connecticut. A global cooling had forced governments to sign the Delhi Treaty, which imposed a strict one-child-per-family rule. Joshua Christian, Ph.D., ran a modest private clinic at 1047 Oak Street. He saw patients on the ground floor, which his mother had converted into a blooming winter garden to escape the stifling gloom. The psychologist restored the sufferers’ will to live with simple conversations. That evening, Patty Fain, a townswoman he had cured, brought her friend Marg Kelly, who had been driven mad with envy by her friends after winning the right to have a second child.

The doctor gently convinced the frightened woman to keep the child.

The doctor’s family submitted to the unquestionable will of their beautiful, youthful mother. Brothers James and Andrew helped run the practice along with their wives Miriam and Martha. Sister Mary managed the registry, concealing a deep-seated resentment at the despotic care of her family. At dinner, Joshua delivered an inspired speech about the spiritual paralysis of the era, calling the general despondency "millennial syndrome." He paced among the palm pots, rousing his household with news of the nation’s spiritual emptiness.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a secret government search for a charismatic leader was drawing to a close. Judith Carriol, head of Section 4 at the Department of the Environment, was reviewing the profiles of candidates culled by computers from hundreds of thousands of personnel files. Analyst Moshe Chasen insisted on including the unknown Holloman doctor among the top three contenders, along with Senator David Hillier. She took personal charge of the finalists’ files. She needed a living symbol to inspire the nation.

The Road to Washington and the Birth of a Book

The murder of firewood collector Eddie Marcus rocked sleepy Hartford with a high-profile trial. Dr. Christian attended the court hearings to observe the public’s reaction to the logging ban. In the courtroom, Judith Carriol sat down with the Holloman doctor, engaging in a debate about the psychological adaptation of seasonal migrants to the south. The insightful guest astonished the city official with his reflections on the need of every individual to experience the image of the living God.

The interlocutor persuaded the doctor to go to Washington.

In the capital, Joshua instantly became close with analyst Moshe Chasen. Long conversations in a park by the Potomac strengthened the official’s resolve to use the provincial psychologist for a large-scale government program. Judith convinced the thinker to commit his ideas to paper.

An urgent visit to New York brought Christian together with Eliot MacKenzie, head of Attica Press. The talented literary editor, Lucy Greco, volunteered to record the author’s spoken monologues using a voice printer. Her guest stayed at Holloman for six weeks. The dictated text took the form of a rigorous treatise entitled "The Cursing God: A New Approach to the Neuroses of the Millennium." Officials secretly installed listening devices in the clinic’s rooms under the cover of a false radiation alarm.

Judith Carriol showed the resulting video recordings to President Tibor Rees, who approved the launch of the program, codenamed "Messiah."

On-screen revelation

Tibor Rees invited Joshua to the White House under the pretext of a medical consultation. The president’s hysterical wife, Julia, tried in vain to seduce the unassuming doctor. The guest immediately saw through his hostess’s pretense, categorically refusing to acknowledge her supposed mental illness. However, the doctor diagnosed the president’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Julie, with latent autism instead of hopeless mental retardation.

The men smoked cigars until late at night.

The book’s release was accompanied by a massive information campaign. Popular late-night talk show host Bob Smith ceded his entire broadcast slot to his guest. Joshua spoke directly into the camera with striking expressiveness, detaching himself from the studio bustle. The speaker explained to his bewildered fellow citizens the need to come to terms with the harsh climate and declining birth rate. The psychologist urged them to seek a personal Creator outside of rigid church institutions. Viewers sat in reverent silence.

The morning newspapers came out with huge headlines about the new prophet.

The manipulators began a long lecture tour through cities across the country. Helicopter flights alternated with radio broadcasts and thousands-strong rallies. His mother’s arrival in Mobile brought bad news: the family clinic had closed under pressure from onlookers, and his brothers had been sent overseas to spread the gospel. Joshua felt the collapse of his familiar way of life. In Kansas City, the preacher suddenly refused a government car. The doctor walked through the crowd in the bitter cold.

The Deadly Stride of the Apostle

Winter treks across the northern states became a constant physical ordeal. In Illinois, Christian intended to walk hundreds of kilometers, triggering his mother’s severe panic attack due to memories of her frozen father. The doctor agreed to use a rotary-wing aircraft to save her sanity.

At the Sioux City airport, a strange woman fell to her knees in tears before the thinker. Joshua gently touched the top of her head, a parental gesture of consolation. In the hotel room, Judith threw a wild tantrum at her charge, accusing him of cheap buffoonery and attempting to try on Christ’s crown.

The deafening scolding broke the healer’s inner core.

Unrestrained self-torture was the only response to the official’s accusations. His feet were covered in blackened frostbite sores, the skin on his thighs was worn away to the point of bleeding flesh, and festering boils developed under his armpits. Joshua stubbornly trudged through the snow of Minnesota and Wyoming, hiding his torment under a thick polar suit.

By May, a daring plan for a walking trek from New York to Washington had matured. Construction workers hastily erected a raised plank walkway stretching for hundreds of kilometers on the freeway median. Millions of pilgrims filled the roadsides, showering the lone doctor with spring flower petals. His family barely kept pace. Judith tended to the silent sufferer’s terrible wounds in a first-aid tent, replacing his bloody underwear with silk underclothes. Joshua named his companion Judas. A woman’s kiss sealed the inevitable outcome.

One night near the town of Greenbelt, terrible pain robbed the ascetic of the last vestiges of his sanity. Joshua crawled into the bushes, deliriously praying for the salvation of his humanity.

The Lonely Altar of Pocahontas Island

The exhausted thinker was found at dawn under a damp birch tree. The doctor was hastily loaded into Petty Officer Billy’s helicopter. The order was to transport the patient to the remote island of Pocahontas in Pamlico Sound, where a team of military surgeons had flown.

A propeller blade detached from the aircraft mid-air. The aircraft plunged into the sea, burying the pilot and a security guard on the sandy bottom. Joshua was left alone on the island half an hour before the crash.

The patient awoke among the empty rooms of a stone manor house. A deathly silence reigned all around. In the barn, the unfortunate man found old oak sleepers, a hammer, thick nails, and a coil of tarred rope.

The distraught martyr carved a heavy cross with an axe. The man dragged the log under the stone arch of the gate, securing the top to a forged iron hook.

Christian shed his clothes, fashioned nooses for his neck and wrists, and climbed onto the low stool. His last breath carried away the words about saving humanity through humankind itself. His feet gave way. His body hung suspended above the gray slabs of the courtyard in the drizzling rain.

At midday, arriving military medics lowered the cooled body onto a tarp. President Tibor Rees addressed the capital assembly in the fallen hero’s stead, declaring the covenant of faith, hope, and brotherly love the nation’s highest virtue. The body was secretly interred in Arlington.

Eternal echo on the banks of the Potomac

Judith Carriol took the ministerial seat, ruthlessly replacing the bewildered Harold Magnus. She began planning a new political party in alliance with the widowed president. The local Baptist congregation secretly smuggled the execution instrument from Pocahontas Island, founding a secret brotherhood of worshippers of the new Savior.

Moshe Chasen came to deserted Holloman to visit his orphaned family.

The fallen saint’s brothers were preparing to embark on long-distance preaching missions across Asia and Latin America. His aging mother calmly poured coffee for a guest in the flower-filled living room. The hostess firmly declared to the bewildered analyst that within forty days, the resurrected son would certainly appear to the three remaining faithful women. Sister Mary silently gazed out the window at the gray road, advising the visitor to sip his cooling drink.