Title: Put Him Back ... America!
Author: Godfrey E. McAllister, PhD
Publisher : Godwill Publishers
Availability: Amazon.com
Reviewed by: Billy Hall

IN THE United States (US) an ideological battle rages and seemingly is intensifying. The sensitive subjects concern law and morality, and more specifically issues such as abortion, 'gay rights', and religion in public schools. But, the underlying concern is the belief that the Supreme Court judges have betrayed their constitutional purpose and power to be interpreters of law and not legislators.

On either side of this vexed issue of the rightful role of the Supreme Court are militant activists and scholars, including producers of numerous books and tapes revea-ling their well-researched and cogently presented perspectives.

However, an unusual contributor to this US controversial debate is an 'outsider,' even though he presents his case as if an 'insider'. He is Godfrey E. McAllister. By birth McAllister is a Guyanese, by adoption a Jamaican and now it seems, by published articulation an American, for in this book he uses repeatedly the plural pronouns "us" and "our" as he makes his case concerning rightful roles and "this great Constitution or ours".

Outrageous judgments

McAllister contends that the US Supreme Court judges have made outrageous judgments, some even 'heretical' in their interpretation of the Separation of Church and State. His position is that America is a nation founded on Christianity, based on biblical authority and ethical morality, and second, that the Supreme Court is leading what seems like a 'demo-nic activism' conspiracy to destroy that righteous foundation.

McAllister perceives the US governmental system in what may be defensibly termed a 'theocratic-democratic' concept. Consistent with such thinking, he makes much of Old Testaments examples of national rulers, such as King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and King Sennacherib of Syria.

Right wing stars

Such a position, philosophically and theologically, would place him logically among the fundamentalist religious right in the USA. In this camp may be found several illust-rious political, organisational and media stars: James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tim Lahaye, David Barton, Tom DeLay, Jay Sekulow, Rod Parsley, and the late Jerry Falwell and James Kennedy.

However, in making his case in this book, McAllister's presentation does not measure up to the standard of those fundamentalist right-wing stars. His book has no introduction to indicate summary treatment of the 274 pages that are under 14 chapters. There is no foreword to provide analytic synthesis. And the preface is devoted to defending the enigmatic wording of the book's title, confused by 'busy' cover art with photos of the recent US presidential candidates, both the successful and the failed. In the preface, he discloses that the reference to "Him" in the title is "God".

On the whole, significantly lacking is adequate documentation. For example, he does not list completely and consistently titles, authors, publishers and place of publishing, as well as year of production and pages of reference in all 30 sources in his bibliography. Academic formality is conspi-cuously lacking. Even Scriptures quoted are not always referenced.

Concerning the focus of the book, surprisingly he says at one point, "Proving that America was established as a Christian country built on Christian values is not the major purpose of this book." He then proceeds to speak of "weightier matters" he intends to address, but before doing that says, "let me leave you with a thought" and proceeds to a philosophical discussion, after which he moves to the next chapter 'America, God, and Abortion.'

At one point it seems that the major objective of the work was to defend the proposition that 'America was founded on the Christian religion' and on "Christian values and on the God of the Bible.' Accordingly, he identified two major opposing views: "The absence of certain Christian key words from the Constitution" and, two, the significance of the controversial Treaty of Tripoli. He says these two are the "only serious challenges to the proposition."

Religious references

However, he devotes relatively few words to the absence of certain key religious references in the Constitution, and then, turning to the Treaty of Tripoli, examines the issue then declares it to be of "zero significance" and "negligible worth" when examined within and without its context.

Disturbingly, throughout the book, certain statements create problems for accepting the work seriously, theologically and intellectually. For example, he says that when Jesus spoke the parable of the talents in Matthew's Gospel, "Jesus enshrined His advocacy of the capitalist system, which has also been embraced by the United States of America" (p 133).

Also, McAllister makes statements difficult to accept logically: He said that a certain king "slapped himself on his back" (p 18). Is that physically possible? Some statements, too, seem difficult to accept factually: he spoke of "the nation of Sodom and Gomorrah" (p 187). Did he mean cities? And yet, other statements seem difficult to accept analogically, for he spoke of a "drowning man clutching at a feather" (209). Did he mean 'straw'?

He concludes forcefully, declaring that the Church "has failed to strategies effectively" and so, he issues a call to arms, for he says that the time has come for the Church to "militantly prepare to wage war - against all that is evil in America". But in this edition of his book, without justifying explanation, he did not focus on such preparation strategy.

Successful strategy

However, he did commend highly the successful strategy of Child Evangelism Fellowship, and so, since this book has been identified on an inside page as a 'limited edition', expectations may be justifiably raised that McAllister, "in the sequel to this book", will indeed "identify hundreds of other rays of light". Was he speaking hyperbolically?

In his previous publications, largely motivational and testimonial, McAllister has done well as a writer. He gives hope to believe then, from his known impressive other accomplishments, in various fields, locally and internationally, that he could return to publishing shortly a superior work to impact intellectually and exploit profitably the rich potential of the US publishing market, for the message shouted needs to be heeded - Put God Back ... America.