Partly NSFW sci-fi book where the US is divided; I read it around 1996 - 2000

Question

The book I am looking for is a sci-fi-ish book. I don't believe that it is a series

From what I can remember of the book the US was split and one side was the former US and the other worshiped some "god." However, I think the "god" ended up being a computer and would use something they called pressor fields to affect the surroundings or push down on people.

The only NSFW piece that I can remember is the 2 main characters being in some kind of ship, in or near space and once things were done there was ejaculate floating around the ship.

This book was in English and I was younger when I read it. It was definitely not age appropriate, according to my mother. I got the book from one of those mail order book clubs where your first few titles are cheap but then you have to buy so many a month after. I believe the book was newish when I read it, I believe it was written for Young Adult or older.

Answer 1

The book was The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman. Thank you to everyone who helped and thanks to cometaryorbit for providing the right book!

The protagonist, Matthew Fuller, is a research assistant for physics professor Jonathan Marsh at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2057, when he builds a calibrator to supply one photon per unit of time. When he presses the reset button, the box unexpectedly disappears for one second. When he presses the button a second time, he finds it disappears for about 10 seconds. The third time, it disappears for a bit less than three minutes. Fuller deduces it is traveling forward in time at intervals approximately 11.8 times the previous interval and he further deduces how to bring other objects, such as himself, along. On the seventh press of the button, Fuller and the box are taken 39 days into the future and unexpectedly land on a busy road. He is arrested on suspicion of murder but is bailed out of jail by an anonymous person he comes to believe is himself from the future. He continues forward, 465 days, then 15 years, when he is greeted by Professor Marsh who tracked Fuller and calculated the theoretical physics behind time travel (and won a Nobel Prize for it).

Unsatisfied, Matt travels to 2252 where he learns that the Second Coming of Jesus has occurred and resulted in the One Year War. Society is now governed by a theocracy led by Jesus and shuns technology. Jesus had anticipated Fuller's appearance at the Massachusetts Institute of Theosophy, where he is appointed to be professor with a female student named Martha assigned to be his assistant. As Fuller tries to scientifically rationalize Jesus's seeming omnipotence, Jesus orders Fuller to destroy the time machine but he instead flees, along with Martha, and lands in the year 4346 outside of California. There they find a society where all of humanity is wealthy and satisfied to a point of apathy. It is here that they encounter an artificial intelligence, named La, that controls Los Angeles. La is curious about her own mortality, and having learned about Matt's time machine from historical records, wishes to join him on a journey to the end of time (heat death of the universe) to discover if she can die....

Answer 2

The Leeshore by Robert Reed (his first novel, from 1987)

From what I can remember of the book the US was split and one side was the former US and the other worshiped some "god." However, I think the "god" ended up being a computer and would use something they called pressor fields to affect the surroundings or push down on people.

From the linked review:

Somewhere in America, around the time that the base was being built on The Leeshore, a group of scientists assembled a mass of i-ply stuhr the size of a large whale, and fed into it all the knowledge then known to the human race. And the stuhr awoke. And it was a god.

The scientists who made the sapient stuhr became its first priests. At its command they built it a bunker, its temple, wherein were placed utterly reliable power sources to keep the new god alive. At its command its priests made recruits, both voluntary and involuntary, for the god showed it how to "wire" human brains to enforce perfect obedience. The god gave its servants strange technologies which it devised. And then the god arose, and reached forth to claim all humanity as its subjects.

North America and Europe fell quickly, for the stuhr god reached through the datanets to seize control of the machines on which depended civilization. But other parts of the world, forewarned, were able to resist barely in time, and formed an alliance, called the "Asiatic Federation," against the "Alteretics," as the followers of the new god came to be known. And war raged on the Earth, between the Alteretics and the Asiatic Federation.

The covers look like this