Vast show of faiths inspired by spaghetti and Maradona

The Church Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, hoping to win the legal right to celebrate marriages in New Zealand, is not even the most unusual faith in the world.

Pastafarian campaign

To believers of established faiths, a denomination convinced that humans evolved from pirates, while heaven promises a beer volcano, is at best parody and at worst something far more sinister.But after an Australian member last month won the right to wear a spaghetti strainer headdress in a driver’s licence photo, members of the Church Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster now hope to win the legal right to celebrate marriages in New Zealand by next month. The group is the most recent of dozens of unusual faiths adopted and promoted around the world. Their beliefs span telepathic communication with extraterrestrials to worship of British royal consort Prince Philip and Argentinian soccer legend Diego Maradona.

Church Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster

Identifying as Pastafarians, the group evolved in 2005 in protest against teaching evolution and “intelligent design”, or belief in a universal creator, in Kansas schools. Despite an apparently irreverent faith promoting “a lighthearted view of religion”, the church gained followers in Germany and Poland, where a Warsaw court paved the way for official recognition. US physics graduate Bobby Henderson, then 24, inspired the movement in a letter to the Kansas State Board of Education about teaching intelligent design in biology classes. Henderson argued his belief that “a Flying Spaghetti Monster” created the universe and intelligent design were equally valid.

Cosmic People Of Light Powers

Founded in 1997 by Ivo Benda, an information systems engineer with the Czech Skoda car company, two years after cowherd Miloslav Drskova “changed his world” by introducing him to communications with extraterrestrials on the planet Pleiades. Influenced by Czech “spiritual scientist” and ufologist Eduard Meier, Benda believes extraterrestrial civilisations have spaceships orbiting Earth to watch and help the good, who will be transported into another dimension. Claiming 12,000 followers, in 2001 Benda contacted Czech president Vaclav Havel and Slovak president Rudolf Schuster to request a meeting between extraterrestrial civilisations and heads of state.

Church of All Worlds

A revival of ancient polytheistic European and Middle Eastern worship began in Britain before World War II, but blossomed with devotion to nature and psychology from the late 1950s. The Church of All Worlds, founded in 1962 by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart and his wife Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, is one of America’s oldest neo-pagan deities. Partly based on Robert Heinlein’s 1961 science fiction novel, Stranger In A Strange Land, followers recognise Gaea as the Earth Mother Goddess and the Father God, as well as Faerie realms from Greek pantheons.

The Prince Philip Movement

The faith adopted by Kastom people on Vanuatu’s Tanna island in the 1950s was reinforced when Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited in 1974. Yaohnanens believed Philip was an ancient divine being, the son of a mountain spirit who travelled to a distant land where he married a powerful lady, only to eventually return. Philip was sometimes considered a brother to John Frum of another Tanna cargo cult. Philip then sent a portrait to villagers, who responded with a traditional pig-killing club, or nal-nal. In compliance with their request, Philip sent a photograph of himself posing with the club.

Maradonian Church

Maradonians count the years since football legend Maradona’s birth in 1960. Devotees Hernan Amez, Alejandro Veron and Hector Campomar opened their church in 2001 in Rosario, 300km from Buenos Aires, using Maradona’s jersey number 10, or diez in Spanish, and dios, Spanish for God, as a symbol. With 200,000 followers, they celebrate the nativity on Maradona’s birthdate, October 30, and use an Anno Diego calendar, dating from 1960. Easter is celebrated on June 22 to honour Maradona leading Argentina to victory against England in the 1986 FIFA World Cup.

FORCE IS WITH THE JEDIS

WELSH hairdresser Barney Jones, then 26, signed up after learning 390,000 British Star Wars fans declared Jedi as their religion on the 2001 census. As self-appointed Master Jonba Hehol, Jones and his disciple, brother Daniel, 21, organised an internet campaign in 2008 to have Jedi officially recognised as a religion in Britain. Jones claimed that with more Jedi than Scientologists in Britain, they could not be denied recognition. Inspired by George Lucas’s Star Wars films, Jedis believe in The Force, which teaches that good things happen to good people. In the 2001 census about 73,000 Australians identified as Jedi.

Originally published as Vast show of faiths inspired by spaghetti and Maradona