Godless
A disaffected teen creates a new religion in this darkly humorous National Book Award–winning young adult novel about the power of religion for those who believe and those who don’t by Pete Hautman, author of Sweetblood and Mr. Was.
Why mess around with Catholicism when you can have your own customized religion?
Fed up with his parents’ boring old religion, agnostic-going-on-atheist Jason Bock invents a new god: the town’s water tower. He recruits an unlikely group of worshippers: his snail-farming best friend, Shin; cute-as-a-button (whatever that means) Magda Price; and the violent and unpredictable Henry Stagg. As their religion grows, it takes on a life of its own. While Jason struggles to keep the faith pure, Shin obsesses over writing their bible, and the explosive Henry schemes to make the new faith even more exciting…and dangerous.
When the Chutengodians hold their first ceremony high atop the dome of the water tower, things quickly go from merely risky to terrifying and deadly. Jason soon realizes that inventing a religion is a lot easier than controlling it, but control it he must, before his creation destroys both his friends and himself.
Why mess around with Catholicism when you can have your own customized religion?
Fed up with his parents’ boring old religion, agnostic-going-on-atheist Jason Bock invents a new god: the town’s water tower. He recruits an unlikely group of worshippers: his snail-farming best friend, Shin; cute-as-a-button (whatever that means) Magda Price; and the violent and unpredictable Henry Stagg. As their religion grows, it takes on a life of its own. While Jason struggles to keep the faith pure, Shin obsesses over writing their bible, and the explosive Henry schemes to make the new faith even more exciting…and dangerous.
When the Chutengodians hold their first ceremony high atop the dome of the water tower, things quickly go from merely risky to terrifying and deadly. Jason soon realizes that inventing a religion is a lot easier than controlling it, but control it he must, before his creation destroys both his friends and himself.
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Community Reviews
Jason is a fifteen-year old agnostic-leaning-toward-atheist (and, as i like to continually stress, there IS a difference AND agnostics do not go around Wondering/Wandering in the dark about the existence of god they believe that one cannot know!) In Godless by Pete Hautman rather haphazardly and inadvertently (but brilliantly) creates his own religion, when he is punched-out and, in a daze, lying flat on his back, stares up at the silver belly of the town's life giving water tower.
Jason makes his friend Shin the official scribe of their new religion, and eventually they gather a few more unlikely followers to the "Church of the Ten Legged God" or Chutengodianism as the faith comes to be known (once it begins to take on a life of its own). Once it does take on its own life, some of the followers begin to take the church TOO seriously and protestant offshoots even develop. Jason, of course, has no control, although the silly adults, who understand very little of the world or religious ideas themselves (being just following-sheep in their own right), think he is the instigating leader of it all, and want him to halt the whole out-of-control thing.
Much food for thought in this excellent book~If you don't listen to the voices in your head, just Who DO you listen to?
and *whateverism should be MY religion since that is one of my favorite resort-to words.
Jason makes his friend Shin the official scribe of their new religion, and eventually they gather a few more unlikely followers to the "Church of the Ten Legged God" or Chutengodianism as the faith comes to be known (once it begins to take on a life of its own). Once it does take on its own life, some of the followers begin to take the church TOO seriously and protestant offshoots even develop. Jason, of course, has no control, although the silly adults, who understand very little of the world or religious ideas themselves (being just following-sheep in their own right), think he is the instigating leader of it all, and want him to halt the whole out-of-control thing.
Much food for thought in this excellent book~If you don't listen to the voices in your head, just Who DO you listen to?
and *whateverism should be MY religion since that is one of my favorite resort-to words.
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