Speakeasy with Zachary Steele

Zachary Steele, former owner of Wordsmith, has found religion – or perhaps its opposite — since the economic slump forced him to close the Decatur-based independent bookstore on March 2 of this year. In Steele’s satirical first novel, Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ (Mercury Retrograde Books), the unwilling young CEO of The Christ Corporation contends with Christianity based on the business model, an anti-Christ bent on world domination and a supposedly misunderstood angel named Satan. Steele will be reading Anointed along with fellow satirical novelist Joshua Corin (author of Nuclear Winter Wonderland: A Tale of Nuclear Terror, Kidnapping, Gangsters and Family Values) at the Decatur Library Auditorium on Thu., July 23, at 7:15 p.m.

What’s your religious background, and how did it inspire Anointed?

I grew up mostly in Baptist-Methodist churches through my mid-20s before I dropped out of the church. My mother kind of forced us to go as kids, and then allowed us to make up our minds about it as teenagers. In my 20s I’d gotten deeply involved in church-going, including going to church business meetings. It was a medium-sized church, but it started to remind me of a corporation, a business. Money was something that seemed more important than the actual message. So much of the money went to mission trips and things that look better on the church’s resume than things in the community, like feeding someone across the street. In talking to people, I realized that it wasn’t unique to my church.