My point was rather in that we were in on the "secret" about who Leibowitz was, and the whole religious scene was in fact a sham. Leibowitz was in no sense a god, let alone God. Therefore I maintain that the book took religious people seriously. They are portrayed in a quite positive manner, but the religion they were following was nothing more than a tragic mistake. Was there a God involved? Quite possibly, but not the God they were worshiping.
Where, in the novel, is it indicated they see Leibowitz as a god of any sort? He begins as a "Beatus" and is eventually given status as "Sanctus", a saint, an intercessor between the common parishioners and God, much the same as any other saint in the Canon. As for his biography... no secret is made of this, certainly not in the Church nor, as far as I remember, with the flock either. And, of course, he is hardly the first (and is unlikely to be the last) saint to have a more than slightly tarnished life. (See, for instance, Saint Augustine.)
With this aspect, I think Miller is very much saying that, despite the human errors -- cf. one of the abbots' musings on the variety of previous abbots of the monastery, from superb examples to ninnies -- which inevitably creep into a structure as large as the Church, the truth of the religion itself is so large and so important that these become, at most, minor blemishes, if even that. Even such a faulted and flawed person as Leibowitz serves a divine purpose in the end, and his conversion and (at least) apparent redemption later in life is an example of how even the evil that went before serves to promote the good which follows after.
J.D. points to some significant correspondence to Christian and Jewish mythology which might indicate that God is present, but in an extremely veiled way. I suppose that might be the point, but if it is, it is far to subtle for my liking.
If you're referring to The Wandering Jew as part of Jewish mythology, you'd be seriously off there. This is very much a Christian tradition, and would be anathema to Jews. It was evolved during some of the most anti-Semitic periods in Christian history, hence has fallen rather out of favor today despite its powerful symbolic importance to the stories of refusal and redemption. Nor do I see God's presence in the novel as at all veiled. It really is a case of a rather realistic handling of religion as a working belief system with a basis in divine truth in a fallen world, and therefore it cannot have something as blunt as, e.g., what we have with Adam and Eve hearing God walking in the Garden. In the context of the novel, that
would completely rob the various situations of any value, either dramatically or metaphysically. There would be no heroism, nor any need for faith, were such to be the case. Zerchi's act of faith in the justice of God, and the reason for his allowing the suffering of the child -- the eternal question of the problem of evil -- and the penalties he suffers due to this faith, is very much at one with the numerous tales of the martyrs who suffered for their beliefs in the face of an unbelieving, even if
generally humane, world. Such a realistic "distancing" effect (I'm using the literary, not literal, term here, given that I believe that the presence of God is by no means distant in the novel itself, it is only, at most,
apparently so) is what allows for the poignancy and genuine tragedy, yet at the same time the hope, of the novel (e.g., the scene with Rachel and Zerchi; the mission to the other planets -- the "new heaven and new earth").
Frankly, I think it is one of the best, most moving, and most challenging of religious novels I've read, because it doesn't pull its punches. It doesn't present any easy answers to the troubling questions concerning religion, but nonetheless (in artistic terms at least, if not philosophically) deals with the entire issue with great compassion and seriousness, without being devoid of the leavening of humor.
So no, I don't think the religion presented here is at all a "tragic mistake" -- at least, no more so than I think is the case with all religion in the final analysis. (But even given that view, there is much of beauty and genuine human pathos and compassion which can, and has, emerge(d) from religion.) I would argue that Miller simply paints it as honestly as possible, given the milieu of the novel... which is, after all, based very much on the history of religious movements (good and bad) in our own world.
