Update, 26/3/23: Talk now available online here, courtesy of Central London Humanists.

Is Pastafarianism a parody or a religion? What is a ‘religion’ anyway? Can an internet movement originally intended as a joke be used to challenge the status quo of religious privilege in law and society around the world? And what happens when followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster start taking their ‘faith’ seriously?

We have returned to these questions several times in the pages of the Freethinker. Editor Emma Park has also written on similar themes for the New Humanist and podcasted about them for the National Secular society.

On 16 March, Emma will be giving a talk organised by the Central London Humanists to explore these issues further.

Meeting details

Registration: Register on Meetup here.

Date: Thursday 16 March 2023

Time: 6.30pm – 8.30pm, followed by drinks at a nearby bar

Venue: Old Diorama Arts Centre, Regent’s Place, 201 Drummond St, London, NW1 3FE

Cost: £3.00

All profits to the National Literacy Trust.

More about the talk

Emma will look at the origins of the Pastafarian movement, the evolution and distinguishing characteristics of its ‘churches’ around the world, and some of the legal cases to reach the European Court of Human Rights and courts in the US, Australia and Canada.

She will also consider the ways in which the symbols of the movement – colander, pasta crown, pirate hat – have been used in protest in a variety of contexts and in countries from Russia to Austria, from Canada to Australia.

Bibliography of Pastafarianism

What is ‘religion’? Strasbourg and the Pastafarians again, by Frank Cranmer

Religious Privilege 2 : 0 Pastafarians, by Niko Alm

Flying spaghetti monsters, by Emma Park (New Humanist)

The secular religion of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by Mienke de Wilde and Paul Cliteur

Judging the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by Derk Venema and Niko Alm

Pastafarianism and the meaning of religion, National Secular Society podcast with Derk Venema, Tony Meacham, and Tanya Watkins, Captain of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Australia

Pastafarian Month at the Freethinker

Enjoy this article? Subscribe to our free fortnightly newsletter for the latest updates on freethought.

The post Pastafarianism: Parody or religion? Freethinker talk, now available online appeared first on The Freethinker.

The vexed question of ‘what constitutes a religion?’ has come up from time to time in the domestic courts, most recently in R (Hodkin & Anor) v Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages [2013] UKSC 77 about the status of Scientology. Though there is no bar on someone setting up and practising his or her own ‘religion’ and no obligation to register it with officialdom, the issue is important in practical terms because registering a trust as a charity gives it several financial advantages, while the practice of religion itself is a human right protected by Article 9 of the European Convention.

In 1999, the Charity Commission of England and Wales (the regulator that approves or rejects applications to register new charities) had refused to register the Church of Scientology as a charity on the grounds that its core practices did not constitute ‘worship’ and that even if it were otherwise established for ‘the advancement of religion’, its activities were not of sufficient public benefit – and, in consequence, the Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages refused to register the Church’s chapel in London as an approved venue for solemnising religious marriages. Louisa Hodkin and her fiancé wanted to marry in the chapel and took their challenge to that refusal all the way to the Supreme Court.

In the leading judgment, Lord Toulson described ‘religion’ as

‘a spiritual or non-secular belief system, held by a group of adherents, which claims to explain mankind’s place in the universe and relationship with the infinite, and to teach its adherents how they are to live their lives … Such a belief system may or may not involve belief in a supreme being’.

On that basis, the Supreme Court held that the Church of Scientology satisfied the test and that its London chapel was indeed a place of meeting for religious worship within the meaning of the Places of Worship Registration Act 1855 – and ordered the Registrar General to register it. So far as I am aware, however, despite the ruling in Hodkin and a ruling in January 2023 that parts of its buildings in London were exempt from business rates because they were used in connexion with public religious worship, the Church of Scientology has still not been registered as a charity in England and Wales – though perhaps it has not bothered to reapply.

But that was by no means the end of the story. In 2016, the Charity Commission refused to register The Temple of the Jedi Order as a charitable incorporated organisation with purposes including ‘to advance the religion of Jediism, for the public benefit worldwide, in accordance with the Jedi Doctrine’. The Commission took the view that ‘religion’ in charity law was characterised by

‘belief in one or more gods or spiritual or non-secular principles or things, and a relationship between the adherents of the religion and the gods, principles or things which is expressed by worship, reverence and adoration, veneration intercession or by some other religious rite or service’ and ‘must be capable of providing moral and ethical value or edification to the public and characterised by a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance’

 – and it decided that Jediism failed those tests. It did suggest that there was scope for Jediism and the Jedi Doctrine to be advanced and followed as a secular belief system, but noted that, in Hodkin, Lord Toulson had excluded secular belief systems from his description of ‘religion’.

Fast forward to the 2020s, and the latest round of the ‘what is a religion’ saga has just been played out in Strasbourg, where the European Court of Human Rights has returned to the matter in two judgments: Alm v Austria [2022] ECHR Application no. 20921/21 and Sager and Others v Austria [2022] ECHR Application no. 61827/19.

The basis for the Court’s decisions in Alm and Sager was its earlier ruling in De Wilde v The Netherlands [2021] ECHR No 9476/19. Mienke De Wilde, a Pastafarian, had applied for a new driving licence and a new identity card with a picture of her wearing a colander on her head. When the domestic authorities refused her request, she took the matter to Strasbourg – where the ECtHR was equally unsympathetic, concluding that Pastafarianism was not a ‘religion’ or ‘belief’ within the meaning of Article 9 and that Article 9 could not apply to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or its followers. Therefore, said the Court, on the facts her complaint was incompatible with the provisions of the Convention.

In Alm, the applicant was refused permission to wear a ‘pasta crown’ on the photograph for his identity card and passport. The ECtHR noted that, although the concept of ‘religion or belief’ in the sense of being protected by Article 9 of the Convention (freedom of thought, conscience and religion) had to be interpreted broadly, that did not mean that all opinions or convictions were to be regarded as religious or philosophical positions. Further, the Court had previously concluded in De Wilde that Pastafarianism was not to be regarded as a ‘religion or belief’ within the meaning of Article 9. So in the present case, the Court saw no reason to hold otherwise and the complaint was therefore incompatible with the provisions of the Convention within the meaning of Article 35(3).

The Court took a similar line in Sager in relation to the complaint under Article 9. As to the additional complaint under Article 11 (freedom of association), it rejected the applicants’ claim that they had been prevented from freely associating as a confessional religious community and enjoying the benefits of that status because – unjustifiably – Austria only granted it to ‘religious’ communities and not to non-religious ideologies. The Court reiterated that Article 11 did not give associations a right to any specific legal status and that the applicants had, in fact, successfully established a (non-religious) association under Austrian law in 2015. The Court had confirmed in De Wilde that where a state had created a privileged status for religious communities, it had to apply the criteria for acceptance in a non-discriminatory manner and give religious groups a fair opportunity to apply for that status. But because Pastafarianism did not constitute a ‘religion’ within the meaning of the Court’s case‑law, Article 11 of the Convention did not apply in its case. It followed that the complaint was manifestly ill‑founded, and the Court rejected it.

Derk Venema and Niko Alm have previously criticised the approach of the ECtHR on several grounds. The criticism that chimes most insistently with me is the concept of ‘invented religions’: that a religion that has been ‘made up’ by its adherents cannot be serious or worthy of respect. Pastafarianism and Jediism are the extreme cases: the first began as a spoof in reaction to the rise of the Intelligent Design movement, while the second came to public attention in 2001 when almost 400,000 people recorded their religion as ‘Jedi’ on the UK Census. But lots of religions that are now fully accepted were ‘invented’ at some point.

The Church of Scientology began life as recently as the 1950s, while the Latter-day Saints were first organised by their prophet, Joseph Smith, in 1830: before that, they simply did not exist. The Quakers emerged in the mid-17th century and were routinely persecuted and imprisoned by the authorities, most commonly on charges of blasphemy and the non-payment of tithes. Even in the case of Christianity itself in the wider, non-denominational sense, it was not clear until the middle of the first century, when the Council of Jerusalem, as described in Acts 15, considered the matter in some detail, that it was going to be a distinct religion it itself rather than a reformist movement within Judaism. Or again: there was no Islam before Muhammad, no Buddhism before the Buddha.

So is ‘madeupness’ a valid or useful criterion for evaluating the validity of a religion or life-stance? I would suggest not: at the very least, courts – and not only the ECtHR – should reject a new or unfamiliar religion only after considerable and anxious forethought. Probably the test case is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: it was undoubtedly invented by (or, as Mormons would put it, revealed to) Joseph Smith, but surely no-one nowadays would dispute its cogency, seriousness and cohesion – whatever view they might take of the truth or otherwise of its doctrines. And in any case, as Mienke de Wilde and Paul Cliteur point out:

‘What is it called when you really, really, really believe in secularism? Can you hold these views and morals so dearly that they become sacred to you? … what if someone’s secular worldview is so firmly held that he believes he needs to adopt a fitting religion to practise, preach and teach that secular worldview in the best possible way? Should he not have the right to practise his worldview freely if – with this religion of practising secularity – he does no harm to others?’

Indeed: how could he or she not have that right?

 Whether or not Pastafarianism should be protected as a ‘religion or belief’ under Article 9 remains arguable, but I would suggest that, at the very least, domestic authorities should be very, very careful how they apply the test of ‘cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance’. One person’s ‘cogent and serious’ belief may be another person’s fairy-tale. And at least one common law jurisdiction, New Zealand, has two officially registered Pastafarian marriage celebrants, one in Wellington and the other in Auckland.

But perhaps the last word should rest with Niko Alm himself, who suggests in his latest comment on his case that the approach of the Austrian Department of Religious Affairs to the issue has been totally irrational:

‘The simpler, cheaper and more elegant decision would have been to simply accept what is worthy and right: to allow the pasta crown in the identity card. The only person who would have made a fool of himself would have been me.’

Further reading on Pastafarianism and its challenge to established religion:

Religious Privilege 2 : 0 Pastafarians, by Niko Alm

Flying spaghetti monsters, by Emma Park (for the New Humanist)

The secular religion of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by Paul Cliteur and Mienke de Wilde

Judging the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by Derk Venema and Niko Alm

Pastafarian Month at the Freethinker

Enjoy this article? Subscribe to our free fortnightly newsletter for the latest updates on freethought.

The post What is ‘religion’? Strasbourg and the Pastafarians again appeared first on The Freethinker.

Below, we present a brief update by Niko Alm on two cases brought by followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster against Austria in the European Court of Human Rights, which handed down its decision on both yesterday. Almost inevitably, the Pastafarians lost. What is interesting is why they lost, and what this says about the state of religious privilege in Europe today. –Ed.

On 15 December 2022 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) published its decisions on two applications brought by Pastafarians in Austria.

Case 1. Sager v Austria (2022)

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Austria (CFSMA) wanted to acquire the legal personality of a ‘confessional community’. This was denied by the Austrian authorities and courts, despite the fulfilment of all substantial and formal requirements – respectively, the existence of cult and rite, and a minimum of 300 members.

Austria’s Federal Administrative Court had to be very creative in its reasoning in order to comply with the informal request made of it by the Department of Religious Affairs (Kultusamt) to deny the CFSMA recognition. The core argument was that although the applicant fulfilled all the legal requirements, its members were not sufficiently religiously active to form a community. This requirement is not stipulated in the law but was simply made up by the judge.

The proceedings lasted almost four years and went through all judicial levels up to the Austrian Constitutional Court, which marked the end of the appeal process in 2019.

Case 2. Alm v Austria (2022)

This was my own case. I applied for a new passport and identity card, each with a photo showing me with a pasta crown, which with its wire-like appendages symbolised my ordeal through all the official channels. The authorities refused my application with this photo despite my meeting all the (other) requirements. Headgear may be worn on photos for religious reasons. I claimed religious reasons, but the arbitrariness of magistrates and judges was stronger than truth and justice.

The decisions of the ECtHR

In its rejection of the two applications, the ECHR mainly relied on the ruling in De Wilde v The Netherlands, which was pursued by Dutch Pastafarians. Mienke de Wilde applied for a driving licence using a photo in which she wore a colander on her head. She went through all judicial levels up to the ECtHR, which rejected her application, holding that Pastafarianism is not ‘serious’ enough to be a religion.

Arguably, the Court was wrong in this case: religion is primarily constituted by the self-declaration of its adherents and should not have to be measured against the criteria of a court. In any event, de Wilde’s case ought not to have contributed anything to the matter of the Austrian applications, because the evaluation of the Dutch interpretation of Pastafarianism should have been irrelevant to the Austrian one. The Court should have taken into account the specific characteristics of Pastafarianism and its adherents in Austria.

Moreover, although the Court referred to the arguments of the Austrian courts and the Austrian Department of Religious Affairs, it quite obviously did not consider any of the applicants’ arguments.

In a statement published on its website (in German), the CFSMA, of which I am a member and Master of Celery, expressed itself ‘disappointed’ with the Court’s decision. ‘It saddens me that the ECtHR does not take Pastafarianism seriously and questions our faith,’ said Supreme Maccherone Philip Sager.

Reportedly, the Almost Supreme Maccherona, Nadja Entner, was also shocked. ‘In my opinion,’ she said, ‘the judgement of the ECtHR is unjust, almost discriminatory. Our religious community and the concerns of our Church members are not taken seriously. Young, innovative world religions like Pastafarianism have no chance at all of being recognised, even though all the state-defined criteria are met. Despite everything, we will continue to fight for religious freedom and for equal treatment and equal rights for religious communities.’

The CFSMA is not planning to give up, but to ‘start the legal process again’. ‘In the past eight years, during which we have fought for our fundamental rights, we have been able to learn and improve a lot. I am hopeful that we will soon reach a positive result with the Department of Religious Affairs,’ said Sager.

I also wrote a statement for the website, as follows:

For me, the renewed rejection of the Pastafarians in court does not come as a surprise. In all procedural steps, both in the (attempted) recognition of the CFSMA as a ‘confessional community’ and now also with regard to ID documents with pasta crowns, the authorities and courts have shown themselves to be uncomprehending and uncooperative.

I cannot understand, tolerate or accept this rejection from a democratic point of view. Obviously, the wearing of headgear for religious reasons, i.e. in the broadest sense ideological or conscientious reasons, is allowed in Austria in passport photos. If Pastafarians – or non-Pastafarians – simply make use of this freedom for whatever reason, then no harm is done to anyone, neither to individuals, nor to organisations, society, taxpayers or the state. There is no cost to exercising this freedom. 

Why so much energy has been sunk in incomprehensible, absurd and illogical arguments,
up to and including outright lies, from the Department of Religious Affairs to magistrates, administrative and supreme courts and now the ECtHR, is beyond me. The simpler, cheaper and more elegant decision would have been to simply accept what is worthy and right: to allow the pasta crown in the identity card. The only person who would have made a fool of himself would have been me. Now the Constitutional Court and the ECtHR have ridiculed themselves. But why?

Ultimately, these procedures are an expression of the undemocratic entrenchment of organised religion in our laws, which wants to secure its privileges, right down to its headgear, with the help of secular jurisdiction.

Enjoy this article? Subscribe to our free fortnightly newsletter for the latest updates on freethought.

The post Religious Privilege 2 : 0 Pastafarians appeared first on The Freethinker.

What is it called when you really, really, really believe in secularism?

Can you hold these views and morals so dearly that they become sacred to you? Can you believe that humour, irony, and play are the most appropriate, ‘God-given’ tools to teach your views? Can you believe in coincidental design, which is the most intelligent design, if you also believe in science and the importance of play, experiments, and a trial-and-error approach to learning and becoming?

And if you firmly believe in such a system, might you also devoutly believe in the use of metaphorical thinking to guide the manner in which you practise this belief and give concrete meaning to your thoughts? What if you believed this moral system of secularism so firmly that you would make serious sacrifices for it, engage in legal warfare, and consider it to have all the features of religion, even though it had all the features of secularism too? What if one branch of this hybrid belief system was called ‘The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’? Can you have a serious secular religion, and would it deserve the same protection as every other religion, by calling it a religion? In other words: can we call a hybrid religion, ‘religion’?

Pastafarianism belongs to ‘New, Unknown, Weird and/or Small (‘NUWS’) religions, a term proposed by the Dutch scholar Derk Venema. Its founder is Bobby Henderson, a science student from Portland, Oregon. Pastafarians revere an all-powerful, invisible, flying monster made of spaghetti and meatballs. Their holy book is the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Is this a religion? According to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the answer to this question is ‘no’. That appears from their recent verdict in De Wilde vs. The Netherlands (2021).

According to the European Court, Pastafarianism is a secular creed – not serious, not religious. But what if someone’s secular worldview is so firmly held that he believes he needs to adopt a fitting religion to practise, preach and teach that secular worldview in the best possible way? Should he not have the right to practise his worldview freely if – with this religion of practising secularity – he does no harm to others? Does everybody have the same right to have a recognised faith in order to practise what they preach, or is that a privilege reserved for people who believe in something in the most literal or classical sense?

What about ‘cultural Christians’, who only use their religion as a cultural tradition to bond with family and friends on holidays, weddings, and funerals? Or what about Muslims, who often state they do not literally believe everything their holy texts are saying? Should we deny them their rights as well, or should we be glad when people do not take fundamental religious texts literally and read them in a more metaphorical way?

These are a lot of questions, but there is also is a lot to think about.

Back to the European Court of Human Rights, but now to a different case. In 1993, in the Kokkinakis case, the Court made an important ruling. The case dealt with whether a Jehovah’s Witness would not be unduly frustrated in his right to practise his religion by a Greek ban on proselytising. The Court ruled that this would be the case. But more interesting for the topic of this essay is something that the Court said about the reach of Article 9 in the European Convention of Human Rights – the article which protects the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. Here is what the Court said in Kokkinakis:

‘As enshrined in Article 9 (art. 9), freedom of thought, conscience and religion is one of the foundations of a “democratic society” within the meaning of the Convention. It is, in its religious dimension, one of the most vital elements that go to make up the identity of believers and their conception of life, but it is also a precious asset for atheists, agnostics, sceptics, and the unconcerned. The pluralism indissociable from a democratic society, which has been dearly won over the centuries, depends on it.’

In turn, Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights states as follows:

‘1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

2. Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.’

This combination of jurisprudence and law terminated any speculation about the extent of religious freedom under the ECHR. The statement in Art. 9 that one can change one’s religion or belief – the so-called apostasy clause (Cliteur 2021), is, as part of the freedom of religion, ‘also a precious asset for atheists, agnostics, sceptics and the unconcerned.’ Since Kokkinakis, we know that the apostasy clause is applicable to those who want to change from one religion to another religion, but also to those who want to change from a religion to non-religion, that is, to atheism, agnosticism, scepticism or simply ‘indifference’. The freedom of religion, or the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, also protects the rejection of all faiths and thus the right to freely practise that rejection, or lack of belief, in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.

The Kokkinakis case was an enormously important step in what might be called  ‘the emancipation of fundamental unbelief’. For European citizens whose governments had joined the ECHR, it was clear from 1993 onwards that their philosophical position had found explicit protection under Article 9. In other words, their view was protected not only as an ‘opinion’ under the right to freedom of expression (art. 10 ECHR), but also under the apparently more dignified right of ‘freedom of conscience, thought, and religion’.

From 1993 onwards, the right to be an atheist in practice and preaching was clearly affirmed. Article 9 protects the interests and rights of believers who want to stay within the traditional religious mould, but also the interests and rights of those who want to break free from it.

The consequences are significant and relevant to a broad spectrum of social institutions. Take the case of education. ‘Atheists, agnostics, sceptics, and the unconcerned’ also have a conscience. They have their ‘thought’. And their conscience and their thought have the same protection under the Convention as the classical religious conscience, or classical religious thought.

What does this mean? If atheists have the same rights, they too should be able to manifest their belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance, in any way they think is necessary. If an atheist or agnostic believes he needs to adopt a religion to be able to practise, teach and manifest his beliefs, he should not be restrained from exercising his rights. After all, ‘the freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs can only be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.’ Or can it?

As we have argued, the right to freely change religion counts for believers who might want to change to a different religion (for example, from Christianity to Islam), and for those who want to make changes within the central elements of their belief system, for instance by questioning the trinity within Catholicism. The consequence of this freedom is often ignored. One of the consequences, in our view, is that Article 9, especially in combination with the apostasy clause and its interpretation in Kokkinakis, can help us to develop more liberal interpretations of religious positions. In a time of increasing fundamentalism, this is no mean feat. And not only that: it can help us to ‘liberalise’ the notion of religion itself.

Unfortunately, in De Wilde vs the Netherlands, the ECtHR failed to consider the liberating effect of the apostasy clause and Kokkinakis, as far as the idea of ‘religion’ itself is concerned. Let us explain what we mean.

The Court has repeatedly emphasised that ‘religion’ must meet specific requirements to find protection under Article 9. And it has also indicated what these requirements are. However, no exhaustive definition of religion has been given by the Court. The conditions set by the Court for something to count as a ‘religion’ are therefore necessary conditions, but not sufficient conditions. What are these conditions? Let the Court speak for itself. In Eweida v. UK (2013, para 81) it states:

‘The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion denotes views that attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance.’

Thus Article 9 does not protect just any arbitrary position that the complainants see as religious, but only views characterised by:

1.        Cogency

2.        Seriousness

3.        Cohesion, and

4.        Importance.

We might call these the ‘coherence requirements’. ‘Seriousness’ proved to be a fatal stumbling block for recognising the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a ‘religion’. The CFSM uses irony and humour – and according to the legal institutions in the Low Countries and the European Court in Strasbourg, this was incompatible with ‘seriousness’. We deplore this. We also think it is a missed chance to have the combination of the apostasy clause and the Kokkinakis case further developed. The Court could have said: why should religion always be gloomy? Why exclude humour and joy from the concept of religion? Why is parody incompatible with religion? But perhaps this is something for further consideration.

What we consider a promising perspective for the future is the development of the concept of ‘secular religion’, and ultimately its legal recognition. Religions go through changes. But the idea of religion is also undergoing change. In more or less closed cultures (cultures not open to pluralism, diversity, open-mindedness), people use a concept of religion that is wholly grafted onto their own religion, the religion of their own country, or their own culture. For the ancient Greeks, for example, it must not have been easy to imagine a concept of religion that was not polytheistic. For the Jews, on the other hand, it was difficult to conceive of a religion that was not monotheistic.

Today, a judge who must interpret the concept of religion will not hesitate to include both the monotheistic and polytheistic conceptions of religion. Even atheistic religions, such as certain forms of Buddhism, find recognition in law. Is it not evident that the resistance that now manifests itself against ‘humorous religion’ will be broken one day? We think so.

The time will come when a religion that values parody, humour, light-heartedness, and merriment will also find recognition as a genuine religious option. Perhaps this could be called a ‘secular religion’. A religion that takes ‘seriously’ values which are traditionally associated with secularism and modernity. That will also be the moment when all discrimination against alternative religions, such as the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is finally abandoned.

Enjoy this article? Subscribe to our free fortnightly newsletter for the latest updates on freethought.

The post The secular religion of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster appeared first on The Freethinker.

Although every Western country has the freedom of religion enshrined in its constitution or other human rights law, it seems that still only adherents to traditional, established religions actually fully enjoy that right. To address this inequality, one can organise protest marches, send tweets and write articles. If this sparks any reaction at all from government officials, it will probably be in the form of a reassurance to the protesters that they have misunderstood the situation and that all religions are truly treated equally.

But there is a different approach that forces authorities to reveal their actual position: filing an application that in some way involves religion, for example requesting official recognition for a new church or invoking a religious exception. This is what Pastafari(ans) have done in several European countries over the last ten years or so. In most cases, the authorities refuse to treat Pastafarianism, aka the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (‘FSM’), on a par with other religions.

After a brief overview of this young religion and the tradition of which it is part, we will consider a series of court cases in the Netherlands and Austria resulting from applications that were rejected. From these, we will draw a tentative conclusion as to why the state authorities might want to decide that some beliefs count as ‘real’ religions, but others do not.

‘Invented religions’

In Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (2010), Carole Cusack described several recent spiritual movements of the Western world that are different from traditional churches and are often called ‘invented religions’. Examples of these are the Church of All Worlds (1962), Discordianism (1963), the Church of the Sub-Genius (1970s), Jediism (2000), Matrixism (2004), and the FSM Church or Pastafarianism (2005). Instead of ‘invented’, which is not a distinguishing characteristic, it might be better to call them New, Unknown, Weird and/or Small (‘NUWS’) religions – a term proposed by Derk Venema. Yet even when these religions seem, especially to members of traditional churches, satirical, dishonest or motivated by rebelliousness instead of reverence, such properties still do not set them apart from older, larger and better known religions. Surely Jesus was a religious rebel? Doesn’t Mormonism come across as a satire on Christianity?

Moreover, although there are many competing functionalist and essentialist definitions of religion, caught in an eternal power struggle, a generally agreed definition of religion does not exist. Cusack has argued that it is impossible to distinguish the religiousness of adherents to new and weird religions from the religiosity of people who identify as, for example, Christians or Muslims. Because of this vagueness, and the separation of church and state, Western governments usually adopt a very broad concept of religion. We shall see, however, that governments and courts are not so open-minded when it comes to concrete applications by adherents of a non-traditional religion like Pastafarianism.

Pastafarianism

In 2005, the Kansas Board of Education decided to oblige schools to teach intelligent design theory alongside evolution theory in biology classes. Bobby Henderson, a science student from Portland, Oregon, was baffled by this decision and sent them a letter. He explained his indignation about omitting one very important version of intelligent design, including an all-powerful, invisible, flying monster made of spaghetti and meatballs. Subsequently, inspired by this noodly deity, he wrote the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and later the Loose Canon appeared.

Through the internet, the FSM became very popular, and Pastafarians founded churches in his name all over the world. The Gospel tells that in Pastafari heaven there are stripper factories and beer volcanos, and in hell the beer is lukewarm and the strippers have sexually transmittable diseases. It is strongly advised to wear pirate regalia at certain occasions, and to dine with pasta and beer on Fridays, the holy day. Many Pastafari consider it obligatory to wear a colander on their heads, especially on festive occasions, although a German branch views this as blasphemy.

The eight I’d-really-rather-you-didn’ts, received by pirate Mosey from the FSM himself on top of Mount Salsa, contain the most important Pastafarian ethical standards. Overlapping with many other religious ethics, they promote an attitude of friendliness, toleration, charity, non-violence, critical thinking, modesty, joy, humour, and wise budgeting, as the sixth I’d-really-rather-you-didn’t advises:

‘6. I’d Really Rather You Didn’t Build Multimillion-Dollar Churches/Temples/Mosques/Shrines To My Noodly Goodness When The Money Could Be Better Spent (Take Your Pick):

1. Ending Poverty

2. Curing Diseases

3. Living In Peace, Loving With Passion, And Lowering The Cost Of Cable.’

The Netherlands

In the Netherlands, four different types of applications have been filed, one of them ultimately reaching the European Court of Human Rights. The first one was an application by the Dutch FSM Church for the legal personality of ‘religious association’ (kerkgenootschap), which is exempt from several duties – e.g. concerning financial administration – that all other legal persons (associations, foundations etc.) do have, according to the Dutch Civil Code. This application was initially turned down, but approved upon appeal in 2016. It was the first and only successful application in this important year for Dutch Pastafarianism. Later in the same year, the church applied for registration as a Public Benefit Organisation, but was turned down.

Also in 2016, the same applicant, Dutch FSM church founder Dirk-Jan Dijkstra, filed a third application: this time, he requested a driver’s licence with a photo in which he wore a colander. To his disappointment, the mayor denied it, so he took it to court. The courts’ decisions in this and similar cases revolve around the exception to the rule that forbids headwear in ID photos:

‘Deviating from section 2 [banning headwear], a photo [with headwear] can be accepted if the applicant has shown that there are religious or world view [levensbeschouwelijke] reasons against not covering the head.’

Consequently, to get his ID photo with colander approved, the applicant would have to convince the court of two things: 1) Pastafarianism is a religion or world view, and 2) the Pastafarian applicant has bona fide religious reasons that require him to wear the colander in the photograph. In this case, Dijkstra cited a holy text to substantiate his claim that the colander is indeed religious headwear for Pastafari:

‘But as T.V. hadn’t been invented yet, Penelope put the Holy Colander on her head and grabbed a handy pair of salad tongs.’

(Loose Canon, Book of Penelope, Ch. 2, verse 7)

Additionally, the official FSM website recommends it: ‘Why not wear a colander in your ID photos?’

Sadly, the appeal was denied on the grounds that the applicant did not always wear the colander, and used to take it off when speaking with clients as a legal advisor. The legal status of the FSM Church as a religious association was not deemed relevant. Interestingly, the court did not decide that Pastafarianism is not a religion or world view, only that the applicant’s reasons were not exclusively religious.

(In fact, before the court cases started, a few ID applications with colander photos slipped through the bureaucratic net. This means that there are still some Dutch Pastafari who do sport a colander in their ID photos – until they expire, of course.)

The fourth Dutch Pastafari case also involved a denied driver’s licence application. This time, the courts denied it on different grounds: that Pastafarianism does not meet the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECHR) requirements for recognition as a religion or faith. According to the ECHR, a purported religion only counts as real when it ‘attains a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance’. After losing the case as well as the appeal to the highest Dutch administrative court, the Pastafarian Mienke de Wilde and her legal counsel (Derk Venema) took the case to the ECHR. This court declared the application inadmissible, but this was no summary ruling: in 18 pages, the court explains Pastafarianism, illuminates the Dutch case, translates the Dutch ruling, and justifies its decision that no human rights have been violated by it. Although formally the case was not decided on its merits, in reality it was.

In section 52, the court concurs with the Dutch highest administrative court that Pastafarianism suffers from a ‘lack of the required seriousness and cohesion’. The Dutch court based its conclusion on the following argument:

‘In particular, the required seriousness and cohesion are lacking. The…parodying scriptures are distinctive features in this connection. The lack of cohesion is illustrated, for example, by the relationship set out in Henderson’s letter between the decline in the number of pirates since 1800 and global warming.’

Interpretative restraint?

In their assessment of the realness of Pastafarianism as a religion, it is highly questionable whether both courts remained within the bounds of the required interpretative restraint regarding matters of religion. It is interesting that the judge who conducted the interrogation at the Dutch high administrative court also wrote an authoritative commentary on the Dutch constitution emphasising the importance of this restraint. What’s more, seriousness or satire are often in the eye of the beholder. Might Jesus not have been regarded a parodist by first century Jews? Are all the stories in the Bible and the Quran ‘coherent’? This is at least a matter of interpretation – religious interpretation, which is not the province of the law or the state.

Considering some of the religious or world view movements that have been recognised by the ECHR, it is even more incredible that Pastafarianism was rejected: Scientology, pacifism, atheism, Druidism, Divine Light Zentrum, and the Osho Movement are all judged bona fide. So even an aggressive, authoritarian, commercial and allegedly exploitative organisation like Scientology is a legally approved church, but the FSM Church is not.

The German Pastafari Bruder Spaghettus, who already possessed a driver’s licence with pirate headgear, applied for an ID card with the same photograph. It was rejected on the same grounds used by the other courts, and Bruder Spaghettus settled for a (non-regulated) religious beard tie. The reasoning of all these courts is especially worrying because it reeks of arbitrariness. When is a ‘certain level’ of seriousness reached? Does it imply that real religions can only be deadly serious? Is humorous evangelisation forbidden? But as Carole Cusack has shown, applying humour or having a joking founder does not disqualify the followers of a faith from being considered real believers. Moreover, as the philosopher Nick Martin has argued, the courts tacitly and subjectively take seriousness as a sign of integrity. The fallacious implication is that absence of seriousness entails a lack of integrity.

Because of its non-specificity, the ECHR’s criterion of ‘seriousness’ runs the risk of being used more widely to disqualify what Venema has called NUWS religions: the religious content is judged not credible and thus there is no real religion. But that is why it is called ‘faith’: it is a leap of faith to put your trust in something incredible. State authorities seem to treat NUWS religions as ‘nuisance’ religions. These cases reveal not only these courts’ common tendency to judge the authenticity of a religion by comparing it, consciously or not, to traditional religions, but also the zealousness with which they are inclined to disqualify the FSM church. As if keen to prove the latter point, the Dutch Ministry for the Interior sent a letter to all municipalities urging them to reject any ID application with a colander photo.

The Struggle for Pastafarianism in Austria

If you want to wear any type of headgear in your driver’s licence photo in Austria, as in the Netherlands, it is allowed only for medical or religious reasons. Other than that there is a no-hats policy.

As an atheist, Niko Alm, co-author of this article, thought this unfair and devised a plan to circumvent that rule. At the same time, he was also, and still is, a Pastafari. There is no contradiction here: you do not have to believe in anything specific, you can be agnostic or even atheist and still count yourself a member of a religious organisation – whether in Austria or anywhere else. So he donned a pasta strainer as his own personal religious headgear and applied for his licence in 2009. It required some persistence and a trip to the public health officer, who wanted to check whether he was sane enough to drive a car, but in the end Alm succeeded in procuring the first official document with Pastafarian appendages. The news went viral in 2011 and many fellow ‘believers’ worldwide followed suit. It would remain the only victory against Austrian bureaucracy for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Austria (CFSMA) until today. And many battles have been fought.

Becoming official

In 2014 the newly founded Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Austria filed an application with the Department of Religious Affairs to be registered as an officially recognised ‘confessional community’ (Religiöse Bekenntnisgemeinschaft). This is the first step to become an ‘officially recognised church or religious community’ (gesetzlich anerkannte Kirche oder Religionsgesellschaft) in this two-tier system of religious organisations.

In Austria, there are 16 religions falling in the ‘officially recognised’ category including the major Christian denominations, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and 11 confessional communities including Hinduism, the Unification Church (formerly Moon sect), and Bahá’í.

To be granted the status of confessional community, the organisation has to prove that it is a religious community in theory and practice by submitting its statute in writing and a list of at least 300 members with permanent residency in the country. The status of a confessional community does not come with a lot of benefits. It more or less serves as the anteroom to take the next step that requires membership of at least 0.2% of the population (approximately 18.000 people) and a minimum qualifying period of five years. But it is worth the wait. The status of ‘officially recognised church or religious community’ yields a plethora of privileges: religious education in schools; state-funded religious teachers, university professors and faculties; direct subsidies; tax exemptions; a blasphemy law; military chaplains, imams and rabbis; various seats in committees and national public broadcasting; and many more. The Republic of Austria is fostering a cooperative model of state and religion; it is safe to call the ‘officially recognised churches and religious’ communitieswhat they to all intents and purposes are: state religions.

The Austrian Pastafari naturally wanted to belong to this elite club of organised world views and also to benefit from the abovementioned privileges. But they were turned down. First by the Department of Religious Affairs and later – after the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster had taken Austria to court – by the state legal system. Finally, after five years of going through all official channels, the CFSMA was turned down by the Constitutional Court on the grounds that its members did not form a real community. In essence, the judge held that the CFSMA is not a confessional community yet, so it cannot actually have members, and instead needs to prove that at least 300 people participate in its rites. That argument is not only partially circular, it is also an elaborate divergence from the law that requires no such thing. It should not matter whether the rites are executed in large numbers at one place or whether the total number of members is made up of individuals worshipping in private.

All the other criteria were fulfilled. In the court’s sealed copy of the judgment it was clearly stated that Pastafarianism is a religion and in its character as such is indistinguishable from other established and recognised state religions. A small victory at least.

European Court of Human Rights, again

Undeterred, the Austrian Pastafari filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in November 2019. So far, this application has remained unanswered:

‘The refusal to recognise the legal personality of the religious denomination of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster violates in any case the fundamental right of the complainants to freedom of belief and conscience (Art. 9 ECHR). Art. 9 ECHR protects the right to profess or not to profess a religious community or ideology alone and privately [a point apparently missed by the Austrian courts], or in community with others, publicly or in circles of like-minded people, especially in religious services or otherwise by words or deeds. Freedom of religion includes the right to try to convince others, e.g. by teaching (ECtHR 6.11.2008 – 58911/00). This also forms the core of the scope of protection of Art 9 ECHR. These rights are violated by the refusal to grant legal personality. The establishment and existence of independent religious communities would also be indispensable for pluralism in a democratic society.’

Soon after, another appeal had to be filed at the ECHR when the Austrian legal system terminated Alm’s hopes of procuring a passport and national ID card with Pastafarian headgear. This time around, he decided to wear a modest pasta crown instead of a colander, but the authorities firmly stood their ground in denying his rights, by referring to their earlier judgment that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was not an officially recognised confessional community – and thus not a state religion. After Alm had spent several years enjoying religious freedom as far as his driver’s licence was concerned, the bureaucracy seemed to have changed its mind, and decided that religious freedom was not a right but a privilege granted only to those deemed appropriate.

‘Church’: a trademark

The Austrian Pastafarians have dragged the Republic and its institutions to court several times. Most recently, in May 2022, the CFSMA suffered another blow when it was refused the right to call itself a ‘church’, because this term was reserved for officially recognised Christian denominations. This time round, the judges followed an argument that the Department of Religious Affairs had used previously to deny the CFSMA official status: apparently, by calling their Church a ‘church’, the CFSMA may be rendering itself liable to being confused with Christian churches. This is interesting, given that Jesus Christ himself is the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster – until anybody can prove otherwise. This makes Pastafarianism essentially a Christian denomination too.

The judge refused to see the paradox here, but he at least conceded that the Church of Scientology ought not to call itself a church either, even though it is registered as such in Austria. This time around, the Pastafarians chose not to appeal. Instead, they are going to change their name to ‘Kitchen of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’ instead. It seems more appropriate anyway, and in German the words are near-homophones: Kirche and Küche.

Self-defence

Well into the 21^st century, democracies that are founded on constitutional values of equality have been expunging various forms of differentialism, whether based on gender, ethnicity or class, from their laws. Yet individual world views and organised religions are still being used to enforce legal discrimination. Freedom of religion, once part of the essence of liberty, has been transformed into a tool to secure special rights and immunise religious world views against open societies. Instead of its original function of protecting small religious communities against the state and established churches, freedom of religion is now used to protect state and established religions against small ones and their critical stance.

Pastafarianism strives to abolish these remnants of differentialism, not only in liberal democracies like Austria, Germany and the Netherlands but in political systems worldwide. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is seeping into societies globally from the US and the UK to Russia, Australia, Israel, and, rather furtively, also into countries shaped by Islam. It serves as a mirror, sometimes as a Trojan horse, a role model and a weapon of democratic self-defence.

Editor’s note: some of the legal cases in which the authors were involved were the subject of I, Pastafari (2019), a documentary directed by Michael Arthur which the Freethinker can heartily recommend. We are grateful to the latter for permission to reproduce two images from the film above.

The post Judging the Flying Spaghetti Monster appeared first on The Freethinker.

July is Pastafarian Month at the Freethinker. This picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by radical cartoonist Polyp (Paul Fitzgerald), was inspired by the depictions of Jesus on this website: www.jesus-withyoualways.com

Now who would you rather have looking over your shoulder?

The post Pastafarian Month at the Freethinker appeared first on The Freethinker.