Chicago Tribune: June 19, 1983
The Church of the SubGenius was founded by three young men in Dallas, among them "Rev. Ivan Stang," who one night decided it was time to get rich. So they founded the Church of the SubGenius, dedicated to belief in all conspiracy theories, to the proposition that if people think you are strange, you may be on the right track, and to the quest for "slack," which is something like nirvana, only lazier. They took as their prophet J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, a comic-art all-American dad with close-cropped hair, keen eyes, a warm smile and a briar pipe, and the message went out: "Just send in the money, and 'Bob' will save your soul." Lots of people did, and many contributed more ideas, more comic art, and more ritual, more ludicrous theology and more ludicrous theories -- some so bizarre that the most gullible reader of the National Enquirer would choke on them. Soon a complete bogus religion, claiming thousands of adherents, had emerged. I explaining this because Rev. Stang himself tells me that, alas, a few "church" members have participated with such enthusiasm that now they really do believe. Most readers will appreciate the book as an elaborate sendup of every sort of lunacy from the pseudo-sacred to the blatantly profane.