The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster began in 2005 with a satiric open letter written by then-25-year-old Bobby Henderson in response to the Kansas Board of Education’s decision to teach the theory of intelligent design alongside evolution in public schools. Henderson argued that schools ought also to devote class time to teaching the theory that a flying spaghetti monster had created the universe. This, he reasoned, was as probable a version of intelligent design as any other. The letter inspired a biblical flood’s worth of memes and launched a religious group that now claims a global membership. As this so-called Pastafarianism has grown, some branches of the FSM church have started demanding the rights and privileges enjoyed by more established religious organizations. What started as a fake religion is now angling to be an authentic one. [...]
When the Brandenburg court decided on August 2nd, 2017 to deny the FSM church recognition as a religious group, it did so because “the critique of beliefs expressed in it is not a comprehensive system of thought.” For the court, Pastafarianism’s satiric origins, along with the fact that its iconography and rituals are so clearly intended to hold an absurdist mirror to Christianity, render it inauthentic. This is a hard charge to deny. At the same time, the court implicitly devalued the humor and play at the heart of Pastafarianism as valid elements of authentic religion, privileging instead history, solemnity, and intellectual coherence.
Spearheading the church’s quixotic fight with the German judiciary has been Rüdiger Weida (aka Brother Spaghettus) who upon hearing the ruling accused the court of judging the FSM church not by its German branch (or is it tentacle?) alone, which Weida insists is a secular humanist organization merely adorned in cookware and eye patches, but by its American counterpart, which he has described as “relatively ridiculous. It is only about partying and pasta recipes. There is only a marginal social concern there.” Perhaps Brother Spaghettus’s frustration with his colander-clad brethren on the other side of the Atlantic will soon propel him into the role of a Pastafarian Luther. This might even help him when he takes his case next to the European Court of Justice, since nothing is more authentically religious than a good old fashioned schism.
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