Earth Walker
April 20th, 2001, 12:21 PM
Losing your religion? Well, then, here's a new one,
finely tuned for the times.
by Geoff Olson
A beer-addled buddy fixed me with a bleary eye. "What
you need ish a new reelishun."
"A reelishun?" I said
"Your own reelishun," he replied, with a crooked smile.
"With a bible you wrote."
"Oh. A religion."
We had started by talking of global chaos in general, and this led naturally into the topic of the freelancer's
uncertain circumstances, with its strange loop of poor
cash flow. Over the space of too many pints we examined, and quickly rejected, several possible solutions. Robbing a bank wasn't in character, especially without a poet wife to argue my literary merits should I do time. A grow-op presented too much work and way too much paranoia--even for a non-smoker like me.
This is where my friend's religion idea came in. As far as
concepts go, I thought this one was somewhere between brainstorm and belly-laugh. I knew where he was going with it: the whole tax-free status thing. Perhaps a church with a rec room and lave lounge: Our Mother of Perpetual Foosball. Maybe some entertainment, too: jazz vespers and garage-band evensong.
In the past, religions have certainly emerged out of casual conversations between guys, at least according to the folklore of pop culture. While out fishing together,
L. Ron Hubbard and Frank Herbert purportedly had a bet
on who could come up with a successful religion. Herbert
came up with the classic science-fiction novel Dune.
Hubbard wrote Dianetics--and gave the world Scientology.
Some may object that Hubbard's organization is really a cult. But after all, what's a cult other than a religion without official status? Christianity was a cult in ancient
Rome. And as far as the gold standard of serious theological thinking goes, Scientologists believe disembodied souls fly around in space for a few thousand years before getting physical, while Christian
fundamentalists believe Satan planted fossils in the
earth to test man's faith. You decide which currency is
shakier. Since much of organized religion is funny peculiar, it may be high time for one that's funny ha ha.
Several years ago, a strange phenomenon erupted in an
evangelical church in Ontario. Churchgoers, apparently
possessed by the holy spirit, began to fall like tenpins in
the pews--laughing. The so-called "Toronto Blessing"
compelled patrons of the Vineyard Church to break out
into fits of laughter. According to news reports, the
phenomenon soon spread to other parts of the world,
and holy ho-hos were soon occurring in Capetown,
Bombay and Argentina.
In England an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 churches were
affected. Sounds pretty loony, but I wonder--maybe these people know something the rest of us don't. Maybe existence itself is profoundly funny.
Personally, I suspect that in the beginning was the guffaw. If we all went around in a permanent state of
awareness, satori, or what have you, we'd probably
never stop cracking up. We'd have the Toronto Blessing
24/7, hooting away at our own puffed-up selves, and
our imagined separation from others--and laughing in
the final realization that we're all in this together.
This brings us to the San Francisco-based Neo-American
BooHoo Church. It's not easy to top mainstream organized religion for wackiness, but the BooHoos
certainly tried. Writes Martin A. Lee in Acid Dreams, his
seminal account of '60's psychedelia: "Formed in 1966,
the BooHoos claimed that their use of LSD was sacramental, similar to the peyote rituals practiced by
Indians of the Native American Church, and should
therefore be protected under law." Not surprisingly, the
BooHoos lost their case in court when the judge ruled
that an organization with "Row, Row, Row Your Boat as
its theme song was not serious enough to qualify as a
church."
The BooHoos were led by a graduate student in psychology by the name of Arthur Kleps, described by
Harvard astronaut Timothy Leary as "a mad monk" and
an "ecclesiastical guerrilla." To the chemically altered
Kleps, there was something cosmic about a good belly
laugh. The church catechism was contained in his
BooHoo Bible, which included cartoons, true-or-false tests and other miscellany. For a small monthly fee,
honourary BooHoos received a psychedelic colouring
book as well as a subscription to the religious bulletin
Divine Toad Sweat, which carried the church motto:
"Victory over Horseshit."
Not surprisingly, the hippie-era BooHoos went out not
with a whimper but a bong. A mock faith tied to controlled substances didn't exactly make for a church with legs.
...to be continued...
finely tuned for the times.
by Geoff Olson
A beer-addled buddy fixed me with a bleary eye. "What
you need ish a new reelishun."
"A reelishun?" I said
"Your own reelishun," he replied, with a crooked smile.
"With a bible you wrote."
"Oh. A religion."
We had started by talking of global chaos in general, and this led naturally into the topic of the freelancer's
uncertain circumstances, with its strange loop of poor
cash flow. Over the space of too many pints we examined, and quickly rejected, several possible solutions. Robbing a bank wasn't in character, especially without a poet wife to argue my literary merits should I do time. A grow-op presented too much work and way too much paranoia--even for a non-smoker like me.
This is where my friend's religion idea came in. As far as
concepts go, I thought this one was somewhere between brainstorm and belly-laugh. I knew where he was going with it: the whole tax-free status thing. Perhaps a church with a rec room and lave lounge: Our Mother of Perpetual Foosball. Maybe some entertainment, too: jazz vespers and garage-band evensong.
In the past, religions have certainly emerged out of casual conversations between guys, at least according to the folklore of pop culture. While out fishing together,
L. Ron Hubbard and Frank Herbert purportedly had a bet
on who could come up with a successful religion. Herbert
came up with the classic science-fiction novel Dune.
Hubbard wrote Dianetics--and gave the world Scientology.
Some may object that Hubbard's organization is really a cult. But after all, what's a cult other than a religion without official status? Christianity was a cult in ancient
Rome. And as far as the gold standard of serious theological thinking goes, Scientologists believe disembodied souls fly around in space for a few thousand years before getting physical, while Christian
fundamentalists believe Satan planted fossils in the
earth to test man's faith. You decide which currency is
shakier. Since much of organized religion is funny peculiar, it may be high time for one that's funny ha ha.
Several years ago, a strange phenomenon erupted in an
evangelical church in Ontario. Churchgoers, apparently
possessed by the holy spirit, began to fall like tenpins in
the pews--laughing. The so-called "Toronto Blessing"
compelled patrons of the Vineyard Church to break out
into fits of laughter. According to news reports, the
phenomenon soon spread to other parts of the world,
and holy ho-hos were soon occurring in Capetown,
Bombay and Argentina.
In England an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 churches were
affected. Sounds pretty loony, but I wonder--maybe these people know something the rest of us don't. Maybe existence itself is profoundly funny.
Personally, I suspect that in the beginning was the guffaw. If we all went around in a permanent state of
awareness, satori, or what have you, we'd probably
never stop cracking up. We'd have the Toronto Blessing
24/7, hooting away at our own puffed-up selves, and
our imagined separation from others--and laughing in
the final realization that we're all in this together.
This brings us to the San Francisco-based Neo-American
BooHoo Church. It's not easy to top mainstream organized religion for wackiness, but the BooHoos
certainly tried. Writes Martin A. Lee in Acid Dreams, his
seminal account of '60's psychedelia: "Formed in 1966,
the BooHoos claimed that their use of LSD was sacramental, similar to the peyote rituals practiced by
Indians of the Native American Church, and should
therefore be protected under law." Not surprisingly, the
BooHoos lost their case in court when the judge ruled
that an organization with "Row, Row, Row Your Boat as
its theme song was not serious enough to qualify as a
church."
The BooHoos were led by a graduate student in psychology by the name of Arthur Kleps, described by
Harvard astronaut Timothy Leary as "a mad monk" and
an "ecclesiastical guerrilla." To the chemically altered
Kleps, there was something cosmic about a good belly
laugh. The church catechism was contained in his
BooHoo Bible, which included cartoons, true-or-false tests and other miscellany. For a small monthly fee,
honourary BooHoos received a psychedelic colouring
book as well as a subscription to the religious bulletin
Divine Toad Sweat, which carried the church motto:
"Victory over Horseshit."
Not surprisingly, the hippie-era BooHoos went out not
with a whimper but a bong. A mock faith tied to controlled substances didn't exactly make for a church with legs.
...to be continued...