What's a vicar doing writing a novel about superstition, magic and witchcraft?

It's something that is happening in everyone's life at the moment. Just scratch the surface and you will find superstition, magic and witchcraft – look at your newspapers with their horoscopes, astrologers and tarot card readers.

Society is going back, spiritually speaking, to a more atavistic way of living, and getting involved with esoteric things. I'm not encouraging it, I'd like to think I am raising young people's awareness of it. I'm not convinced a lot of it is very healthy, but we are dealing with a society that is very interested in it.

You have said you think modern children's books are not scary enough.

Voldermort is a wimp! Lord Asriel wouldn't get out of first grade. But when it comes to wicked then even Snoop Dog better sit up and check Obadiah Demurral out – he is a mean dude and a villain with attitude.

I wanted to make my villains scary, frightening, horrible and realistic – something that would really frighten the crap of out the kids!

If you read the Bible, especially the Old Testament in Hebrew or Greek, you will find it is quite a scary book, with very dark themes, but, like Shadowmancer, the Bible also has themes of light, hope, goodness, purity and resurrection. Always there is this great overcoming, there is redemption, light, hope, peace and, ultimately, there is the victory of good over evil.

Children like to be frightened and need to learn to deal with fear. Fear also brings an excitement which then brings them on to learn and read and keep turning the pages. That's all that I wanted to do, write a book where kids turned the pages. Shadowmancer is aimed at older children. Yes it is frightening, but it's also a feel-good story.

The book has won popularity from people of many faith traditions.

I get emails from Muslims who are convinced it is a Muslim book, from Jews who are convinced it is a book about Judaism, and from pagans who are convinced it is a book about paganism. I think the story resonates at a deep level, but my character Raphah is never named as Jesus, so to Jews he could be the coming Yeshua, to Christians he could be Jesus, to Muslims he could be the Prophet and to pagans he is in some ways an avenging angel.

Shadowmancer is not a Christian book, it is a book about good and evil.

I was ordained after youthful experiments with punk rock, druidism, the occult and transcendental meditation. I read the Qu'ran before reading the Bible and I am just as happy to talk about the Talmud. My writing is informed as much by Judaism and Islam as by the Christian tradition. It is the account of an eternal truth.

I wanted to appeal to as many different people as possible, to different faith groups and people of no faith. It's a story which deals with issues of life, death, faith and hope in a "non-Goddy" way... and then people can draw their own conclusions.

Where does Jesus fit into our culture today? For many people he seems to be more attractive than the Church.

You have to strip back what the Bible says about Jesus from what the Church says about Jesus. We have two completely different figures.

For example, in my own church we have this stained glass window of a white, Anglo-saxon, six-foot tall, blonde, blue eyed, Protestant Jesus. But actually, Jesus was probably five foot nine or ten, dark skinned, and would have fitted nicely as a refugee getting off a boat and arriving in this country. And he would have faced the same religious intolerance and persecution that many of these people are facing today.

We have to get our heads around who Jesus really was. He was the black guy from the north of the country who didn't fit in. He was the outcast who came with these radical ideas. It was revolutionary what he had to say and if the Church could get to grips with it, it would be a completely different institution.

We have paganised Jesus, we have taken the Christian Jesus and made him into the pagan Thor, like we have taken the goddess Diana and converted her into the Blessed Virgin.

With Roman influence, Jesus became very much like Caesar, which made Christianity the legitimate religion for empire – they couldn't have coped with Jesus the illegitimate black Jew being the key to eternal life. We have taken the established pagan religions of Rome and converted them into the liturgy and ritual of church. We are wolves in sheep's clothing.

We can have Jesus representing our particular ethnic or religious group, but let's not forget what he was really saying. We have to get back to who Jesus, the disciples and Paul really were and what they were really saying.

Who was Jesus?

Jesus was the Son of God. He was a radical theologian of the time who came to liberate women, the poor, everyone who had been oppressed. A man, fully human and divine, his miracle and power and wonder transformed the lives of those he came into contact with. He is a mindblowing God. We don't do him justice, we underplay him all the time.

Can Jesus survive the Church?

He has survived it for 2,000 years. He works much more outside the church than within the church. I see Jesus on the street with youth workers and helping kids with AIDS, amongst prostitutes, hookers, in the police force and in schools. Of course he can survive the Church, I think he is better off without the Church.

Can Jesus speak to the middle classes?

The sad thing about the middle classes is that they have the shutters up. People who feel they can help themselves, that they are sole providers for the planet and their family – they don't need Jesus. Jesus to them is just a swear word.

Where there is ultimate need, you see ultimate miracles, yet in the West, so decadent and immoral, we are a spiritually barren country. The middle classes have turned their back on Jesus.

Was Jesus religious?

Was he hell! Definitely not. Anyone who tells the archbishop of the day that he is a whitewashed toilet full of dead bodies... that is about as unreligious as you get. Jesus was a guy who laughed, joked, fooled around, enjoyed life... what a wonderful man to follow.

Where can people find Jesus today?

Anywhere. For me it was outside of a supermarket, on a busy street, with a hippy guy saying, "You need to know Jesus."

And I said, "How the hell can I do that, he has been dead for 2,000 years."

He said, "Just pray: Lord Jesus come into my life, forgive me for what I have done wrong, and be with me right now."

And at the age of 21, outside a supermarket, I prayed that prayer and over the weeks and months the real Jesus revealed himself to me.