A personal god is a deity who can be related to as a person instead of as an "impersonal force", such as the Absolute, "the All", or the "Ground of Being".

In the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam God is described as being a personal creator, speaking in the first person and showing emotion such as anger and pride, and sometimes appearing in anthropomorphic shape. In the Pentateuch, for example, God talks with and instructs his prophets and is conceived as possessing volition, emotions (such as anger, grief and jealousy), intention, and other attributes characteristic of a human person.

Personal relationships with God may be described in the same ways as human relationships, such as a Father, as in Christianity, or a Friend as in Sufism.

Anthropotheism, or the ascribing of human (anthropomorphic) characteristics to a deity, is a related concept. Since an anthropic being is inherently one that can be related to personally, anthropotheism can be seen as the simplest form of "personal god". However, most religions that feature a personal god maintain that this god is not anthropomorphic, and strictly limit the anthropic characteristics ascribed to the deity. In such religions, since God is typically the creator of humans, the characteristics of personality, reason and emotion are considered divine traits that were given to humans, rather than the reverse; other characteristics, such as physical form, are usually not ascribed to God.

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch", was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.