The United Church of Bacon

The United Church of Bacon
Orientation Atheist
Scripture 9 Bacon Commandments
Bacon Prophet John Whiteside
Region Worldwide
Headquarters Las Vegas
Founder John Whiteside
Origin 2010
Las Vegas
Members 12,000+
Tax status None
Other name(s) Baconism
Official website unitedchurchofbacon.org

The United Church of Bacon is an atheist parody church whose main goals are social progress and raising money for other charities, founded in 2010, by atheist John Whiteside and a group of friends.[1][2] The church offers all kinds of traditional religious services including weddings, baptisms and funerals.[3] Its founder chose a strange name for the church, and its belief in Bacon,[4] as a social critique that all churches have strange beliefs, seen from the outside.[5] The church opposes special privileges to religions on the grounds that religious people are somehow superior to inferior people for having strange beliefs.[6] The church promotes separation of church and state, science education and critical thinking, and an end to discrimination against atheists. The official symbol of the organization is a piece of bacon on a pair of praying hands with sun in the background.

Founding

The Church of Bacon was founded during a meeting at Penn Jillette's house in 2010, to fight discrimination against atheists. The official launch was at The Amaz!ng Meeting, in 2012.[7] They believe in practical atheism and ignore the existence of gods and chose a funny bacon name with an argument that bacon is demonstrably real whereas god is imperceptible by the eye.[8] The Church's mission statement is "Hail Bacon, full of grease, the Lard is with thee.”

Tenets

The chief criterion for joining is that members must love the smell of bacon, which can be turkey bacon or vegetarian bacon. Officiants are known as friars.

The main code are the 9 bacon commandments:[9][10]

  1. Be skeptical
  2. Respect boundaries
  3. Normalise atheists
  4. Normalise religion
  5. Have fun
  6. Be good
  7. Be generous
  8. Praise bacon
  9. Protest Bias in the Law

The 9th commandment was originally "Pay Taxes", but was later changed.[11]

Wells Fargo protests

In April 2014, Whiteside went to a Wells Fargo branch in Las Vegas to have a document making Chris Dyer an officiant of the church[6] notarized for his church. Wells Fargo supposedly refused to recognise his signing authority and he left angry. He was later able to get the document notarized at another branch.[12] He has since organized several protests of the branch and started an online petition.[13] Wells Fargo denies the claims.[14]

References

  1. ↑ Jasmine Jaksic (27 April 2015). "Six Modern Religions for Freethinkers". Huffington Post. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  2. ↑ "‘Church of Bacon’ protests bank policies". Review Journal. 17 April 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  3. ↑ David Raven (21 April 2015). "Church of Bacon offers weddings, baptisms and funerals to thousands of meat lovers". The Daily Mirror. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  4. ↑ "The United Church of Bacon Believes that "Bacon is God"". 11 May 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  5. ↑ "There's a church that worships bacon, no kidding". 23 April 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  6. 1 2 Joe Satran. "The United Church Of Bacon Accuses Wells Fargo Of Religious Discrimination". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  7. ↑ Brian Pellot (July 21, 2014). "United Church of Bacon: May the Lard be with you". Washington Post. Religion News Service. Retrieved May 1, 2015.
  8. ↑ "About the United Church of Bacon". Retrieved 25 May 2015.
  9. ↑ "Our Beliefs". United Church of Bacon. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  10. ↑ "The 6 Weirdest Religions that Actually Exist". Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  11. ↑ Dylan Love (April 21, 2015). "The Church of Bacon accuses banking giant Wells Fargo of religious discrimination". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 31 May 2015.
  12. ↑ Henry Brean (April 13, 2015). "Alleged discrimination by bank has Church of Bacon sizzling". Las Vegas Review-Journal. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  13. ↑ "Petition · Apologize and reaffirm their policy of non-discrimination against atheists". Change.org. Retrieved 3 May 2015.
  14. ↑ Mark Calvey (14 May 2015). "Wells Fargo fried by atheists' United Church of Bacon protests". Charlotte Business Journal. Retrieved 17 May 2015.
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