Abstract

J. Gordon Melton has opined that in the 1960s scholars were trying to explain why new religious movements existed, and ‘what was wrong that people were turning to new religions?’. He suggests that in the twenty-first century the mood has changed, and now ‘the emergence of new religions seems to be one sign of a healthy and free society’. This article argues that this ‘normalisation’ of new religions should be extended to those religions that are explicitly based on fictional texts and include popular cultural phenomena and ludic elements. Employing the theory of cognitive narratology, it will be demonstrated that a vocabulary of neologisms and a strong narrative thread are characteristic of both sf and new religions and spiritualities. Beings such as gods and ancestors, angels and demons are made real to humans through story and thus Theory of Mind is also a useful interpretative tool to analyse the relationships humans have with supernatural/supraempirical beings such as those found in religions. It is concluded that fiction-based religions are actually logical, because Theory of Mind leads readers to invest in the worlds created in the books and to attribute to the characters inner lives and motivations so that they are made more real and meaningful. For a certain number of readers, it is logical to elect to derive ethics and other meaningful principlesfor their lives from such narratives, which may take on the status of religion.