Invented and Parody Religions

Modern religions and religion-like movements deliberately invented, whether as satire, as a fictional franchise's afterlife in genuine practice, or as a serious new construction presented in openly invented terms, distinct from the syncretic and esoteric movements gathered elsewhere in this type that draw on genuinely older source traditions. The Church of the SubGenius, founded in Dallas, Texas in 1979, is organized around the fictional 1950s clip-art salesman J.R. "Bob" Dobbs and was conceived from the start as a parody of religious and self-help movements alike, while Jediism draws its ethical vocabulary, the Force, the Jedi Code and related ideas, from George Lucas's Star Wars film franchise, becoming a self-identified religious or philosophical practice for some adherents even though its own source material is openly fictional.