Church of the SubGenius
The Church of the SubGenius is a parody religion that satirizes better-known belief systems. Ivan Stang, who co-founded the Church in the 1970s, serves as its leader and publicist. The group has an intricate mythology involving gods, aliens, and mutants. Its primary deity, generally known as Jehovah 1, is an extraterrestrial who contacted Dobbs in the 1950s.
About Church of the SubGenius in brief
The Church of the SubGenius is a parody religion that satirizes better-known belief systems. Ivan Stang, who co-founded the Church in the 1970s, serves as its leader and publicist. The number of followers is unknown, although the Church’s message has been welcomed by college students and artists in the United States. The group has an intricate mythology involving gods, aliens, and mutants, which observers usually consider satire of other religions. Its primary deity, generally known as Jehovah 1, is an extraterrestrial who contacted Dobbs in the 1950s. The Church teaches that they are part of the Elder Gods, who are committed to human pain, but that Jehovah-1 is “relatively good” in comparison. It has been likened to Ward Cleaver, a 1950s-era salesman or Mark Trailaver, an American dreamer. In its literature, the Church describes a grand conspiracy that seeks to brainwash the world and oppress Dobbs’s followers. It also uses the tactic of culture jamming in an attempt to undermine better- known faiths, such as Discordianism and New Age spirituality. The church’s mythology is intended to subverts the American dream and subverts American culture in a manner that is similar to that of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. It teaches that the quality of ‘Slack’ is of utmost importance, but it is never clearly defined. It holds that a man named J. R. \”Bob\” Dobbs founded the group in 1953, and that he telepathically contacted Drummond in 1972, before meeting him in person the next year.
The organization’s first recorded activity was the publication of a photocopied document, Sub Genius Pamphlet #1, disseminated in Dallas, Texas in 1979. The document announced the impending end of the world, and the possible deaths of its readers. It criticized Christian conceptions of God and New age perceptions of spirituality. In her 2010 study of the Church, religious scholar Carole Cusack of the University of Sydney states that Lovecraft’s work is a model for the Church of the Sub Genius’s approach to scripture, in that aspects of his fiction were treated as real by some within pagan paganism, just as the Church appropriates aspects of popular culture in its spirituality. Church leaders teach that Dobbs has died and been reborn and hold that he has an icon of his face in which he smokes a pipe. They call him a ‘World Avatar’ and consequently stylize his name with quotation marks that mark that his name is ineffable and consequently mark that he is a “prophecy” The Church’s mythology contains references to ancient myth and popular fiction, including Yog-Sothoth, a character from H.B. Lovecraft, and Eris, regarded by the Church as’relatively evil’, are classified as’rebel gods’ Church leaders note that Jehovah 1 is wrathful, a quality expressed by his’stark fist of removal’
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This page is based on the article Church of the SubGenius published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 14, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
