Don't these people have anything better to do?

So why does anyone ever join a parody religion? Sure we’ve all had a few laughs at their antics, but most of us haven’t rushed out and bought a copy of the Principia Discordia, or covered our cars in FSM stickers. But there are some who actually do. So why?

Well that’s where the term parody religion becomes problematic, because people join different parody religions for different reasons – stands to reason when there are so many of them and they’re all so different. And of course most of what I’m going to say in this post is simple logical deduction. There really isn’t much info out there about the whys and wherefores of parody religions – it’s mostly just pictures of people in silly costumes. But here’s my uninformed opinion anyway. People's reasons for joining parody religions depend entirely on the parody religion they choose to join.

Members of the Church of the Blind Chihuahua for example, are practising and believing Christians, in search of a place where they can meet like-minded Christians and find a new and friendlier way of worshipping Christ.

Pastafarians on the other hand may join the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster for a variety of reasons. Those within the USA may join because they agree with the original point Bobby Henderson was trying to make, about the unconstitutional encroachment of Christian beliefs into state funded education. In this country though they mostly join because they think it’s cool. The teaching of ‘creation science’ has never been a big issue over here – I seem to remember my biology teacher briefly mentioning that some people belief that a deity of some kind created the world and that frankly that created a lot more questions than it answered and that was that.

Ultimately though, I think parody religionists are simply looking for a reasonably polite and socially acceptable way of flicking the Vs to the establishment and societies' norms. They’re too sociable to become hermits and too peace loving and generally sensible to become violent extremists, so they dress up as pirates or give people business cards telling them they’re Pope. And good luck to them.

The theology of silliness

The church of the blind Chihuahua is an interesting subject for this blog because really one could argue that it is not a parody. In fact I’d argue that it’s not a parody. But it is innately silly and therefore I feel worth a mention.

Just reading the introduction you find an inherently likeable church that is using Cyber-religion the way it’s meant to be used – creating a religious community free from racism, sexual prejudice, homophobia, ageism etc. (If you want to keep on liking it don’t read their political section – the liberals among you will be disgusted by the Americaness of it, and the more right wing will be disgusted by its liberalness).

The point of the CotBC, its raison d’etre, is to create a church where people are friendly, free from prejudice and most importantly, not afraid to have a bit of a laugh. Rich Hall said on a recent episode of Stand up for the week that the big difference between Brits and Americans is that Americans have the ability to laugh, but Brits have a sense of humour. What he meant was that Brits have something very important that a great many Americans seem to lack – the ability to laugh about and at thing that we take very seriously, like religion. So you could say the the CotBC is an attempt to make an American church more British.

As I’ve said the CotBC isn’t really a parody. Its members are believing and practising Christians and they are in no way attempting to belittle Christianity. In fact the sermons and bible study parts of the their website are perfectly serious. The only real difference between them and most real world churches is the self proclaimed lack of fear in ‘appearing silly before the Lord’.

The incidentally came from a dog that the founder knew, who was going blind and would bark sideways at things he could only dimly perceive. Likewise, he says, all humans are barking sideways at God, because we cannot truly perceive him.

Religion, Politics and the Great Pumpkin

... are the three things Linus van der Pelt said he'd learnt never to talk about. For those of you who don’t know, Linus is a character from the Peanuts cartoon strip (starring Snoopy) by Charles M. Schultz. Fairly early on in his life, Linus creates his own religion by confusing Halloween and Christmas. He lives his life convinced that if he believes hard enough then the great Pumpkin will appear to him and bring him gifts at Halloween.

I mention this because the subject of this blog is parody religions, and when you type parody religions into wiki, you get a list which includes Linus’ worship of the great pumpkin. Personally I’m not sure it should count as Linus is the only one who ever follows it (though he believes in it with an evangelical fervour) but you can’t argue with Wiki (except that you can, and probably should).

Parody religions are definitely a phenomenon of recent times, and owe their existence largely to the Internet. If a man were to turn up at your house and tell you he worshiped a sentient ball of spaghetti, you’d think he was a loony. But for some reason, if he says it on the Internet, he becomes the founder of one of the fastest growing of the parody religions, Pastafarianism or the Church of the flying Spaghetti monster (more on them in future posts).

But what is Parody religion, I hear you cry? Parody religion as a blanket term covers two distinct phenomenon; those groups which are purely spoofs or parodies of other religions, often trying to highlight the ultimate foolishness of religion, and those groups which are in many way genuine religions, but with a slanted or skewed world view which makes them seem at first to be simply a joke. The prime example of the second type of group is the Church of the Blind Chihuahua, which at first glance seems like a joke, but once you delve deeper, you realise they are making a valid point about the way Christianity is practised. They are not tying to convert people to atheism (which it could be argued groups such as the Pastafarians are doing), they are believers, but their world view is slanted and in most cases humorous.

So why write a blog about them? Yeah those zany Pastafarians are kind of cool with their off-beat humour and their pirate costumes, but aren’t ultimately just being silly? Well in many ways, yes. But they also give rise to some interesting questions, such as why do people do this, haven’t they got better things to do and why don’t they just grow up? I intend to examine these (and many more interesting and serious questions) in the months to come.