All hail Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption and blessings be upon its anointed Megareverend John Oliver. Yes, indeed, the host of Last Week Tonight on HBO, is now the head of a brand spankin' new religion. According to Brian Pellot of Religion News Service:

“The HBO satirist launched a tax-exempt church Sunday night to criticize the Internal Revenue Service’s hands-off approach to televangelist fraudsters who promise prosperity, at a price. ”

Oliver joins a long list of parody religions, "antibelief systems," and "authentic fakes" like Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Church of the Almighty Dollar, Disciples of the New Dawn, and the Discount House of Worship in registering a scathing satire of established religions in an effort to critique or call into question the proposed abuses, miscues, and false claims of religion.

While new media and communications technologies (such as the internets, Web 2.0, and social media) are conduits for conventional religions and institutions, they are also fertile ground for the growth of fresh, fabricated, and "fake" religions. In a culture replete with parody, satire, snark, and irony are we the least bit surprised? But here's the deal:

“even fakelore or fake religion, although invented, mobilized, and deployed by frauds, can produce real effects in the real world.”

— David Chidester, Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture

Not only do they parallel accepted religions in their rhetoric and form, their medium of communication and other characteristics such as founders and creeds, myths and symbols, rituals and proclamations, but they also force us to call into question our very notions of religious identity and authenticity.

One of the more offensive DOTND parody posts.

Take, for example, the Disciples of the New Dawn. While John Oliver is clear in his purpose and parody, the Disciples of the New Dawn (DOTND) -- what I believe to be a parody internet religion -- is subtle and sly. DOTND, supposedly led by the enigmatic Father Patrick Oliver Embry, uses social media to infuriate the masses with its provocative posts and offputting memes on topics as diverse as condemning C-sections and burning pagans and steampunks alive.

Like The Onion-like parody news articles that make their rounds on social media being purported as real reports, so too DOTND have been attacked for their insolent assertions and offensive opprobrium by people who swear they are real. Multiple Change.org petitions were set-up to get the DOTND Facebook page taken down. And they worked. Five times. DOTND's Facebook page is now in its sixth version, having existed in one form or another since 2013.

While DOTND has not made their forgery public knowledge there is evidence that they are a bona fide "authentic fake." Even so, so powerful has the DOTND parody been, and real its effects, that it now has its own parody page -- Disciples of the New Lawn -- which is regularly attacked for its "offensive beliefs and statements" even though it's a fake of a fake.

Why are parody religions and digital fakes so compelling, and in some cases, so convincing? First, their brand of sharp wit and snark are par for the course and increasingly popular among Millennials and their ilk who thrive on the culture of irony. Second, they are a product of digital media. The Interwebs are more than a platform for cat videos and vague Facebook posts. The fact is that the World Wide Web changes how we interact with the world, connect with others, and learn, sort through, and judge the veracity of information. In the world of Google, YouTube, and Wikipedia, the former Englightenment ideals of authenticity and authority are often called into question or undermined entirely.

In the age of the internet, Tweeters can break news faster than CNN. Websites can hold governments accountable. Fake religions can "raise the problem of religious authenticity even when they are obviously fake, because they present themselves as real religion." (Chidester, 192) In the face of the internet -- for all its good and ill -- the traditional tests of what is real and what is hoax are subverted and the lines between authentic and counterfeit are blurred.

Given the smorgasbord of options available to the individual religious consumer today and the competing claims of the commercialized religious marketplace these "authentic fakes" force us to question the very basis of traditional religious identities and claims in the first place. At the same time, they also re-enchant the world as they think, act, and feel like "real" religions. In this sense they are "hyper-real religions," in the words of Adam Possamai, that often take on more meaning and relevance to individuals because they are more related to the experience of the isolated and independent religious consumer.

“Apparently advancing a universal religious claim, this assertion radically personalizes religious identity, because anyone, wherever he or she might be, whatever he or she might believe, feel, do, or experience, is the author of authentic religion.”

— David Chidester, 211

Parody religions abound on the internet. Here are three: Symbols of parody religions from left to right: the Invisible Pink Unicorn; the Flying Spaghetti Monster; and Russell's teapot. (PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons)

Just as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's parody news became more real and relevant for Millennials than traditional news sources, so too are parody religions like FSM, DOTND, and even perhaps John Oliver's Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption being anointed as more authentic in their religious sensibilities than established religions and spiritual institutions.

Rather than dismissing these "authentic fakes" then, it is important for us to pay attention to why they are so viral and apropos. Why are their sarcastic statements and stances so spellbinding? What critiques are they leveling? How are these censures speaking to the real religious needs of their "followers" and digital disciples? What does it mean for a religion to be "real" and "authentic" in the (post)modern world?

Furthermore, as Chidester concludes, we cannot discount them as "fake religions" with no real-world religious effect, "because they are doing real religious work in a medium of communication in which anything, even religion, seems possible." The only question left is whether we who care about religious identities, literacy, and claims of legitimacy will listen to, and learn from, these "authentic fakes" as well.

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“…anything can be sacralized through the work of religious interpretation, ritualization, and negotiation.”

— David Chidester, Authentic Fakes (120)

At FaithGoesPop.com we like to riff on altars to JJ Watt, the intersection of faith and film, and when comedians get all "religiousy." Yet, the #FaithGoesPop project is deeper than identifying and briefly commenting on surface phenomena. Beyond superficial sightings, #FaithGoesPop is about understanding how religion & culture interact with, challenge, confront, come into conflict with, and change one another.

At another level, #FaithGoesPop is about understanding how religion is at work in the world. Indeed, it is my contention that if we are to understand religion in the world today we must take a look at the interaction, interplay, and intermeshing that goes on between religion and pop culture.

The definition of "religion" is a slippery beast. Trying to grasp the essence of what "religion" is proves difficult and nigh impossible. Just ask the umpteen theoreticians and countless grad students who have toiled over pinning down just what "religion" is all about and how we can define it. Is it about beliefs of embodied ritual? Is it about crossing & dwelling or more material aspects? Is it about an "encounter with the numinous" or some "collective effervescence?"

Whatever your response is to these classic and contemporary prompts that emerge from the greatest minds in religious theory we all feel like we know religion when we see it. We all feel that we can grasp what is religious and secular, public and private, by the way it functions or the tenets it holds to and professes. But do we?

Too often today, our conceptions of what religion is and is not are wrapped up in the official "-isms" of world religion theory or some misguided notion that religion is about official organizations or some form of faith in the supernatural. This has led many to believe, errantly, that religion is on the decline in our world. That our cosmos is becoming demystified and desacralized. But that just isn't the case.

First, because the world's "great" religions are not necessarily declining in adherents, just shifting their geography. Second, because we have to free ourselves from institutional conceptions of "religion" in order to understand the way #religion is at work in our world today. It turns out that we have to free up our conception of "religion" in order to understand its prolific and fluid nature. We have to, in the words of Eric Michael Mazur and Kate McCarthy, look for "god in the details."

Today, religion is on the move via migration and communication. Religion is unbounded from its institutional frameworks and the colonial project of naming and claiming “the great world’s religions.” Religion is being fought over and contended in public spaces and in private domains. It is pouring over traditional boundaries and settling in new places. Religion is popping up in pop culture and settling in strange places. Religion is part of what we call "sacred" as well as what we construct as "secular." Religion is at once obvious and obscure. Religion is mutant and hybrid, multifarious and huge. Religion is everywhere we look and in places we haven't even thought to glance at.

Quickly, I hope you are appreciating just how hard it is to understand how religion is at work in our world today. But that's why #FaithGoesPop exists -- to help us see the ways that religion is at work in pop culture and how the interaction between these two seemingly disparate realms (religion and pop culture) is part of the ever-evolving religious landscape of the world we live in.

Gone are the days of one individual adhering to one faith. While there may be holdouts I argue that most of us in the globalized, modern, and heterogeneous world today are hybrid religious creatures who have put together our own hodge-podge religious and spiritual outlook. Instead of strolling up to the counter of religious options a la the McDonald's menu and choosing the #1 Catholic Club Sandwich or the #2 Big Islam or the #5 Buddhism Burger we now saunter up to a Chipotle-style religious smorgasbord that allows us mix-and-match, pick and choose what we like, when we like, how we like it. It can be large or small. Spicy or savory. On whatever tortilla you'd like. Indeed, there is no more menu to choose from. You're required to "have it your way" and you can trust it. After all, Chipotle's motto is "food with integrity." Although you don't really know the source, you're told the source is trustworthy and that whatever you choose is honest-to-god good for you.

And so, we ask Pastor Google, Sheikh Ibn Yahoo, or Guru Bing our most pressing religious questions and we assemble a plate full of faith-food that shapes our bodies and minds with its mystical miscellany. We don't even look to the traditional sources anymore and we can find our religious or "spiritual" inspiration from television shows and YouTube channels, podcasts and pulpits, the Pope and pop culture. Meanwhile, on our plate of religious perspectives the astrology sauce mixes in with the Hindu helpings and the Kabbalah crunchy rolls and we dig in whenever we need a spoonful of spirituality for the day.

What I hope you're starting to see is that the lines between public and private religion, between what is religious and what is not, between "religion" and "spirituality" or the "sacred" and the "secular" aren't as clear as we once thought they were.

In fact, I argue that the space between -- the borderlands and boundaries we constructed -- are blurring and that the friction, tension, and mixing that is occurring there is where religion is at its most vibrant today, for good and for ill.

Whether religion is co-opting pop culture or pop culture is using religion to its ends; whether pop culture is found in religion or religion in pop culture; or whether religion is transforming into pop culture or pop culture is morphing into religion we are witnessing a shift in the nature of religion that, while not unprecedented, is profound and portentous.

A few weeks ago I shared this with students in a summer "World Religions" course at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, FL. Their instructor Prof. Kerri Blumenthal did a wonderful job of helping these students navigate the world of religions throughout the semester. One of the ways she expanded their views was by inviting in guest speakers with their own perspectives and areas of expertise. When I came into the class I taught them about #FaithGoesPop, covering the content in this blog post. (You can find the Prezi HERE)

The students took to the lecture and grabbed hold of the concept that religion is unbounded and often to be found in the borderlands between the public and private, the explicitly religious and the unapologetically popular. One said that "religion is all around us" and said we need to widen our view of what religion is or where it can be found to not only understand religious culture but to tolerate and respect it. Another student reflected that "religion and pop culture surround us every day" and that the lines are blurred in the 21st-century when technology and social media can so easily mix-in with "something as ancient as religion." All of this is to say, as one student rightly remarked, that "we have to see religion from different perspectives" in order to "analyze the interplay between religion and pop culture."

Hence, www.FaithGoesPop.com. Hence why I need your help to sight #FaithGoesPop. That's why I need all my social media sociologists and entertainment-news ethnographers to be on the lookout. Not only is it fun to find #FaithGoesPop, but as we've seen, it's also about understanding religion in our world today.

*So what do you think? Is religion unbounded? Is it at work in our world in ways we may not immediately recognize as "religious?" Do we need to be on the look out for more #FaithGoesPop? Share your comments, thoughts, and questions below...