Reviewed by Alex Maier

Adams vs. God: The Rematch

By Phillip Adams

Divided chronologically, the first half of the book, The Match, includes Adams’s essays from the 1970s and 1980s while the second, The Rematch, covers 1990 to the present. This division highlights the contentious relationship between religion and politics then and now. In ‘God's Army’, Adams warns of “confusion between military spirit and the Holy Spirit” as the American President speaks of a war against “the empire of evil” and “forces of the anti-Christ”. Familiar-sounding rhetoric, but it's not George W. Bush on the Middle East, it's Ronald Reagan and the “evil” he speaks of is the Soviet Union. Twenty years later, little has changed.

In ‘Let us Pray that God Speaks to Bush’, Adams examines the increasing influence of religious fundamentalism on world politics. Religious fundamentalism is not confined to the streets of Iraq, or to the suicide bombers who blow themselves up in the name of Allah; increasingly fundamentalists are white, Christian, card-carrying Republicans. George W. Bush frequently positions himself as a messenger of God's will and uses this to justify everything from his pro-life stance to the invasion of Iraq by American and Allied soldiers. It is unlikely such overt religiosity would be accepted by the secular majority here in Australia, but it does set a worrying precedent.

Closer to home, Adams is critical of the bipartisan push to alienate Australian Muslims. Terrorism, according to Adams, is more often than not within a religion than between religions. It is inaccurate, then, to portray the situation as a Muslim 'them' hating the Christian 'us'. He urges instead that “we must isolate the crazies, not mainstream Muslims.” Advice our politicians would do well to heed.

Adams mixes fact with fiction to highlight the sins of religion, its leaders and its followers. For example, in ‘Faith Lifts On Almighty Scale’ he critiques America's consumer-driven “mega-churches” by  recounting a visit to the (fictional) Second Baptist Church in Houston: “There's a robotic collection plate that takes Amex, Visa and Mastercard while ...  little cubicles allow sophisticated software to provide an updated form of confession ... It's quick and it's impersonal. And instead of having to chant “Hail Mary’s”, the computer confessional simply deducts a fine from your bank balance.” At times his fictional fantasies are confusing and tedious, especially for a reader without a clear understanding of the Bible and its characters. Most of the time however, Adams’s blending of fact and fiction is clever, engaging, and often funny.

As an avowed atheist whose entire knowledge of religion was based on episodes of The Simpsons I found Adams vs. God entertaining and informative. Adams doesn't seek to push an ideology, although he does make a strong argument against what he perceives as the hypocrisy and intolerance of religion. In a perfect world there would be no religion, argues Adams, but in the meantime he hopes more people of faith will denounce the fears, hatreds and bigotries of religion.

Edited by Nora Arafa

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