Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith

This book demonstrates that the inconsistent and often incoherent jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court is primarily to blame for the unjust manner in which capital punishment is administered in the United States. Author Kenneth Williams looks closely at the Court's decisions on jury selection, ineffective assistance of counsel, the role of race, and claims of innocence, and offers key support for his claim by examining how the Court's decisions have played out in the lower courts.

Utilising contemporary scholarship on secularisation, individualism, and consumer capitalism, this book explores religious movements founded in the West which are intentionally fictional: Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, the Church of the Sub-Genius, and Jediism. Their continued appeal and success, principally in America but gaining wider audience through the 1980s and 1990s, is chiefly as a result of underground publishing and the internet. This book deals with immensely popular subject matter: Jediism developed from George Lucas' Star Wars films; the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, founded by 26-year-old student Bobby Henderson in 2005 as a protest against the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools; Discordianism and the Church of the Sub-Genius which retain strong followings and participation rates among college students. The Church of All Worlds' focus on Gaia theology and environmental issues makes it a popular focus of attention. The continued success of these groups of Invented Religions provide a unique opportunity to explore the nature of late/post-modern religious forms, including the use of fiction as part of a bricolage for spirituality, identity-formation, and personal orientation.