Lifestyle

The Rise of Neo Religion

By Clementine Goodwin

Thursday, February 30th XX32

The religious community has seen a steep decline in attendance in recent years. While church attendance is still higher in this country than it is in any other region of the world, it has taken a noticeable hit since the arrival of the Visitors, many finding it difficult to reconcile their preexisting beliefs with the new and changing world we now live in. Recent reports out of The Zeus Council, one of the nations premier institutes for religious studies, shows that only 5 in 10 people (50%) identify as religious, dropping from 8 in 10 (80%) in the last half decade. And of the percentage of people who identified as no longer religious, about 6 in 10 (60%) cited the arrival of the Visitors as the reason for their departure.

But with many apostates choosing to walk away from their churches, and many churches closing as a result, some churches have found that the only way to keep their doors open is to adapt.

While many religions, such as the Chritani, remain staunchly against the integration of the Visitors into our societies, seen in the widespread creation of Chritani Against Visitors chapters, some churches have taken a different approach. Churches like His Great Ascension, have worked the arrival of the Visitors into their current understanding of their religious texts. We spoke with Marshall Arellano, head deacon of His Great Ascension.

“The bible tells of the story of creation, and says that god created the earth, the water, the plants, the animals, and the people. But as we well know, there are many more things that exist in the world than that,” says Arellano, “it is not out of the realm of possibility that other things were created, and just weren’t mentioned in the scripture. Perhaps because of relevance, perhaps the text is incomplete, who knows? You know we always say ‘god works in mysterious ways.’”

Arellano says that their willingness to discuss Visitors in an accepting way that still upholds the beliefs of many of his parishioners is what has allowed the doors of His Great Ascension to remain open.

Arellano continues, “the prophets before could never have imagined the type of world we live in today, there are things that, even before the Visitors, would have seemed like wonders to them. The stories and allegories of the past must be brought into the context of today, because we live in a different world entirely, than they did.”

And while churches like His Great Ascension have taken to reinterpreting their existing texts, we have also seen theists having a more extreme reaction– completely discarding their old religious texts in lieu of creating new ones with Visitors as their main focus. As opposed to Chritani Against Visitors’ adamant anti-Visitor views, churches like the Temple of the Divine Visit have instead taken to Visitor worship, declaring our fourth-dimensional habitués their new holy overlords.

“They’re large, unknowable beings, who can see everything at once and can be anywhere in an instant. How could they be anything but gods?” Says Mackenzie Tucker, one of the founding members of the Temple of the Divine Visit. “And more importantly to us, they’re here. We can see them, speak to them, touch them. Which is more than what we can say about the old god that we worshiped.”

Tucker tells us that Divine Visit membership has seen a large uptick as of late, due largely in part to the exodus of ex-evangelicals from their previous institutions, but also for another, more unexpected reason.

“We’ve actually also had many people join the temple as a form of activism.” Tucker says. “You know, the government has been pushing things like Visit-1705, and the people in support of that are, you know, arming themselves against the Visitors and becoming more and more hostile. And it’s legal. It’s all legal because Visitors aren’t citizens. So we’re gaining members, and since religious freedom is protected under the constitution, more and more people are joining the temple as a way to garner protections for our Visitors, to make these attacks against them unconstitutional. We’re all for it here.”

Between growing feelings of alienation from the long standing religious institutions, and the compelling philosophical and political arguments being put forth by the nouveau religious organizations, it seems as though the popularity of these neo-religions will continue to rise in the years to come.