Invented Religions (original) (raw)
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Special Editors' Introduction: Making it (All?) Up: 'Invented Religions' and the Study of Religion
Culture and Religion, Vol. 14, No. 4, 2013, pp. 1-9.
The editors of the special issue ‘Invented Religions: Creating New Religions through Fiction, Parody and Play’ outline the aims of the collection and place it in the context of debates on ‘invented religions’ and the 'invention of tradition'. We introduce key concepts employed by contributors, place the category of ‘invented religion’ in a wider constructivist context, contrast it with the seminal notion of 'invention of tradition', and note some of its specific features which reward analysis as a separate category. We argue that the category of ‘invented religions’ is descriptively interesting and theoretically useful, and we suggest that developing the latter aspect in particular can encourage this new area of enquiry away from an exotic niche and into the mainstream of explanatory theorising in the academic study of religion/s.
In Special Issue of Culture and Religion (2013) on Invented Religions edited by Steven J. Sutcliffe and Carole M. Cusack, Vol. 14, No. 4, December 2013, pp. 363-377.
What may be termed ‘invented religions’, self-consciously fictive movements that emerge from alternative subcultures in the West from the 1950s to the present, includes Discordianism, the Church of all Worlds, the Church of the SubGenius, Jediism, and Matrixism. This study employs the model of origin and development of religion from Robert N. Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution (2011), focusing particularly on the centrality of play, to establish three central propositions. The first of these is that play, narrative and experiences of an order other than the quotidian are central to the emergence and maintenance of religion. The second is that different types of social organization and political organizations will foster different types of religion. Bellah argues that these are related to the four modes of human developmental psychology, characterized as unitive, enactive, symbolic and conceptual. Third, it is argued that invented religions are important because they make transparent the process of the origin and formation of religions out of play and narrative. Therefore, invented religions are the culturally appropriate forms of the human impulse to religion in the twenty-first century West.
Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2023, pp. 404-406.
This fascinating study examines what are termed ‘invented’ religions, a provocative description which immediately brings to mind the assumption that some religions are not invented but rather, ‘true’. The book proposes that humans are meaning- making creatures that find certain types of narrative powerful, particularly those wherein unseen agents effect causality in the world. It aims to demonstrate that this human penchant for story can be expressed through religion which is now more secular and simply another form of consumption manifesting through personal selection and construction; and that the futuristic imagination exemplified in sci- ence fiction forms a large part of the inspiration of the invented religions that are the topics of this study.
William Arfman (Tilburg University), in Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2016, pp. 306-307. This review is favourable and mentions my chapter.
Invention in ‘New New’ Religions
In James R. Lewis and Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen (eds), The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 237-247.
This chapter discusses the concept of invention and applies it to the study of New Religious Movements (NRMs). Invention plays a part in all religions and is linked to other conceptual lenses including syncretism and legitimation. Yet invention is more readily detected in contemporary phenomena (so-called “invented,” “hyper-real,” or “fiction-based” religions), which either eschew, or significantly modify, the appeals to authority, antiquity, and divine revelation that traditionally accompany the establishment of a new faith. The religions referred to in this chapter (including Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, and Jediism) are distinctively “new new” religions, appearing from the mid-twentieth century, and gaining momentum in the deregulated spiritual market of the twenty-first century West. Overt religious invention has mainstreamed in the Western society, as popular culture, individualism and consumerism combine to facilitate the cultivation of personal spiritualities, and the investment of ephemeral entertainments with ultimate significance and meaning.
The Church of All Worlds: From Invented Religion to a Religion of Invention
2019
Author(s): Lanahan-Kalish, Damian | Advisor(s): Blankholm, Joseph | Abstract: The Church of All Worlds is a Neo-Pagan religious group that took its inspiration from a work of fiction. The founders of this church looked at the religion that Robert Heinlein created in his science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land and decided to make it a reality. This puts them squarely in the company of what Carole Cusack has termed “invented religions.” These are religions that seek validity in works that are accepted as fiction. The Church of All Worlds, now over fifty years old, has grown beyond its science fiction roots, adopting practices and beliefs that have made them an influential part of the modern Pagan movement. Though fiction no longer plays as strong a role in their practice, they have remained dedicated to an ethic of invention. Through ethnographic research with Church members in Northern California, this paper explores how this ethic of invention manifests in official Church h...
David Robertson (University of Edinburgh) in Religion, Vol. 44, Issue 3, 2014, pp. 516-519.