Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith

Routledge New Religions

by Carole M. Cusack

Utilizing contemporary scholarship on secularization, individualism, and consumer capitalism, this book explores religious movements founded in the West which are intentionally fictional: Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, the Church of the SubGenius, and Jediism. Their continued appeal and success, principally in America but gaining wider audience through the 1980s and 1990s, is chiefly as a result of underground publishing and the internet. This book deals with immensely popular subject matter: Jediism developed from George Lucas' Star Wars films; the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, founded by 26-year-old student Bobby Henderson in 2005 as a protest against the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools; Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius which retain strong followings and participation rates among college students. The Church of All Worlds' focus on Gaia theology and environmental issues makes it a popular focus of attention. The continued success of these groups of Invented Religions provide a unique opportunity to explore the nature of late/post-modern religious forms, including the use of fiction as part of a bricolage for spirituality, identity-formation, and personal orientation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion, Spirituality

186 pages, ebook

First published September 1, 2010

About the author

Dr. Carole M. Cusack, Ph.D. (Studies in Religion, 1996; M.Ed., Educational Psychology, 2001; B.A., Religious Studies and English Literature, University of Sydney, 1986), is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney.

Reviews

[Fishface · Rating 4 out of 5]

An instructive, often hysterical read about religions everyone agrees were simply made up. Full of interesting biographical information about those who made up religions and why they did it, and where they are now as a result or in spite of those events. The straight-faced philosophical and theological discussions of outfits like the Church of the SubGenius and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are often the funniest part of a given chapter. Well worth a look, on a number of different levels fnord.

[Rossco · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a newcomer to less traditional views of religion, Cusack's book on the nature of invented religions was a great read and provided a great beginner text to some names I recognised and some I didn't.

[georgia]

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