ABSTRACT
The academic eld encompassed in Fiction, Invention and Hyper-reality: From popular culture to religion is that of contested contemporary religions that are based on ctional texts (lms, novels, manga and so on) or include ctional texts in their canon of scriptures or inspirational phenomena. Scholarly investigation of these religions formally commenced in the early 2000s, but is still a small (though rapidly expanding) subeld. In their studies, scholars include both self-identied religious groups and non-self-identied, non-institutionalised religious and spiritual practices that are pursued by unorganised movements or by individuals under the rubrics ‘ctional’, ‘invented’ or ‘hyper-real’ religions. Various methodological lenses have been applied to the study of such phenomena, the most common being sociological and psychological approaches to questions arising about the claims to legitimacy of these religious groups and practices, such as how can they be distinguished from mock or parody religions (Chidester 2005) or from fandoms and fan communities; that is, groups of enthusiasts for certain lm and music stars, and cult or popular lm, television and literary phenomena (Jindra 1994). Issues which follow on from such preliminary denitional questions include further questions concerning the motives of the movements’ originators (if there are known founders) in creating religions based on obviously human-generated stories or characters, when there are many other religions from which to choose (Lewis 2003). This question is particularly important as traditional religions claim to be authentically transcendent, ancient and true. Many of the religions included in this volume sidestep or repudiate the usual legitimating claims that underpin the reputation of most existing religious groups. Within Religious Studies the closest subeld to that of ‘ctional’, ‘invented’ or ‘hyper-real’ religions is the study of new religious movements (NRMs). Research into NRMs is multi-disciplinary and encompasses perspectives from sociology of religion, history of religion, cultural history, behavioural psychology, sociology, theology, ethics, art and aesthetics, and a range of other disciplines including biology, health, law and environmental studies.
