New Religious Movements
Church of the SubGenius
Parody Religion
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Origin 1979
A parody religion founded in Dallas, Texas in 1979 by Ivan Stang (Douglass St Clair Smith) and Philo Drummond (Steve Wilcox), organized around the fictional 1950s clip-art salesman J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, held up as the movement's prophet and the embodiment of "Slack", an ironic ideal of effortless, self-indulgent ease its members claim modern society and organized religion alike conspire to deny them. Its mock scripture, the Book of the SubGenius, mixes conspiracy parody, science-fiction apocalypticism and advertising pastiche, and it has run mail-order ordinations and staged public "Rants" and pamphleteering campaigns for decades. Scholars of new religious movements class it, alongside Discordianism and the Church of All Worlds, among the "invented" or parody religions whose participants debate among themselves how literally their own founding myth is meant to be taken.
Facts
Trajectory
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own accountIn 2009 the church's founder, Ivan Stang, put membership at 40,000, though scholarly treatment of the group notes the true figure was likely far smaller and, given its own parody relationship to its subject, impossible to verify. 2 Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account Basis of the Membership FigureSourced to the subject's own account Origins
Origin Period Place of OriginDallas, Texas, United States 1 FounderIvan Stang (Douglass St Clair Smith) and Philo Drummond (Steve Wilcox) 1 Status
Status TodayIn active religious use 1 Belief
TheologyNon-theistic: no creator god is central 1 Centers on the fictional prophet J.R. "Bob" Dobbs and the ideal of "Slack" rather than on any claimed deity; its own adherents describe it as playing at religion as much as practicing one. In Other Languages (9 names)
- Església dels SubGenis
- Iglesia de los subgenios
- Chiesa del SubGenio
- Kościół SubGeniuszu
- Igreja do Subgênio
- Biserica SubGenius
- Церковь недомудреца
- Церква НедоМудреця
- Giáo hội SubGenius
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