Two things to settle before anything else.
This book is free. In His Steps was published in 1896 and is in the public domain. You can read the full text at no cost from Project Gutenberg. The edition this post originally linked, ISBN 1986271188, is a print-on-demand reprint with no editor, no introduction, and no notes. If you want a physical copy that is fine, but know you are paying for paper, not for scholarship.
It has no discussion questions. The earlier version of this review said the book “includes action steps and discussion questions.” It does not. It is a Victorian novel. That claim was invented and it has been removed.
What the book is
Charles M. Sheldon was a Congregational minister in Topeka, Kansas. He wrote these chapters as stories and read them aloud to his congregation on Sunday evenings, a chapter a week. They were published afterward, a copyright defect let anyone reprint them, and the thing sold in numbers almost no book has matched.
The premise: a pastor named Henry Maxwell is confronted by an unemployed man who dies days later, and asks his congregation to pledge that for one year they will not do anything without first asking what Jesus would do. The novel follows the people who take the pledge. A newspaper editor. A singer. An heiress. A railroad man. Each one finds the pledge costs them something concrete, and the book is about whether they pay it.
That is where the phrase “What would Jesus do?” comes from. The wristbands of the 1990s trace directly back to this book.
Why it still works
The central move is genuinely uncomfortable, which is why it has lasted. Sheldon does not let the pledge stay abstract. It costs the editor his paper’s revenue. It costs the singer a career. He is specific about money and reputation in a way that most devotional writing avoids entirely.
If you have gotten comfortable, the book is a reasonable thing to read.
The honest theological caveat
Sheldon was a leading voice in the Social Gospel movement, and this novel is one of its central texts. That shapes the book in a way worth naming.
The emphasis falls almost entirely on imitating Christ’s example. Sin, the cross, atonement, and the new birth are largely in the background. A reader could finish In His Steps with the impression that Christianity is fundamentally about behaving as Jesus behaved, and that is not the gospel. The power to follow Christ comes after being reconciled to God through his death, not instead of it.
That is not a reason to skip the book. It is a reason to read it as one thing, a hard question about obedience, rather than as a complete account of the faith. Sheldon is asking a good question. He is not answering a different and prior one.
It also reads like 1896. The prose is sentimental by modern standards, the plotting is convenient, and the social world is a century gone.
Who should read it
A man who suspects his faith has quietly become opinions rather than decisions. A men’s group willing to write its own questions, because none come with it. Anyone curious where “What would Jesus do?” actually came from.
Read it free first. Buy a copy only if you want one on the shelf.