Blind Faith by Ben Elton.

For people already critical of religion, writers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Phillip Adams provide a battery of well-reasoned arguments in support of atheism. However, argument is pointless when people of faith feel no need to defend their beliefs. Paula Kirby says; ...being rational is not enough – we must be reassuring as well. I suggest that we also need to stimulate the imaginations of believers and help them to see the social consequences of religion-based governance. A good story like Blind Faith can subvert the religious conditioning that prevents questioning of dogma, by allowing readers to imagine and identify with the hopes, fears and lives of people inhabiting a world ruled by religious edicts rather than reason.
Ayn Rand wrote several philosophical treatises expounding the virtues of laissez faire capitalism. Her ideas were ignored until she put the same ideas into the novel Atlas Shrugged. This lengthy tale set the imaginations of the world alight, brought Reagan and Thatcher to power, and heralded the end of the all too brief era of governments with a social conscience.
Ben Elton is a satirist. His brilliant exposé of global contamination – Stark, was made into a film set in Australia. Gridlock’s warnings have been ignored so now Brisbane traffic is also gridlocked every rush hour. Dead Famous takes apart Reality TV with devastating humour, and Blind Faith takes us on a nauseating, tragi-comic ride through the chamber of horrors that is the inevitable upshot of all theocracies. If I encountered a wavering Christian who dismissed the dangers of religious interference in law-making, I'd probably suggest they read this rather than the sometimes clinical arguments of Dawkins et al.
The novel is set in London half a century after the ice caps have melted and drowned much of the planet. Religious leaders insist it was society’s denial of God in favour of science that caused God to send such a dreadful punishment. Naturally, because theocrats deny reason, logic and argument, their rule recognises no argument but force. In this post apocalyptic world a moral act is anything that increases the power of the church. Parish ‘confessors’ terrorise their flocks with threats of violence if they deviate from the correct path – a path that demands blind faith in laws that require everyone to expose every sordid detail of their private lives and bodies to everyone else via ubiquitous video links that run day and night; cameras and monitors being literally everywhere – including bedrooms and bathrooms!
All disease prevention is banned because disease is the loving God’s punishment for sin. Thus, thousands of children die of preventable childhood diseases and when the few illegal vaccinators are discovered they are tortured and crucified or burned at the stake for attempting to pervert God’s will. Citizens who desire privacy are suspected of plotting subversion and suffer exposure, ridicule, and worse. The human body – God’s supreme creation – is required to be exposed, not hidden under clothes, and medically enhanced in praise of the loving creator. Religious mania grips the land. All the usual arguments for and against secularism are presented, but in a context that brings them vividly to life.
Elton is a master at extrapolating current situations to absurdity, warning us to mend our ways before it is too late. The truly awful society he describes is a logical extension of the ‘western world’ today. Escalating religious fundamentalism. Fat, self-indulgent citizens who can deny themselves nothing. Surveillance cameras becoming the prime tool of law enforcers. Anyone familiar with the internet knows that Jerry Springer and his ilk have been superseded by a plethora of ‘Blog’ and ‘Facebook’ type sites where ordinary people expose both body and mind in excruciatingly personal detail through text, photographs and live video, receiving support and encouragement and similar responses from millions of anonymous individuals whose main contact with humanity appears to be an internet keyboard and webcam.
Blind Faith is witty, horrifying, and very readable. The victimised ‘hero’ believes humanity will one day again be free of religion. Personally, I doubt that a well established theocracy today could ever be dislodged. It took one and a half thousand years to dismantle the papal and protestant dictatorships in Europe. Today’s ‘intelligent’ electronic surveillance systems would make it impossible to unseat any dictator determined to hang on, so we had better make sure our state remains both secular and democratic.