The Neo-American Church: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

Victory over horseshit.

The Neo-American Church was founded in 1965 by Art Kleps, who took the title Chief Boo Hoo, and taught that psychedelics are sacraments and that enlightenment is the realisation that life is a dream. Its clergy were Boo Hoos, its emblem a three-eyed toad, its official hymns Puff, the Magic Dragon and Row, Row, Row Your Boat. In 1968 a federal judge in Washington read that list aloud in an opinion and held that the church was not a religion at all — the first American court to test a satirical church and find against it, and the precedent every parody faith since has been measured against. Kleps insisted to the end that the satire and the sincerity were the same thing.

Why it is filed this way

Genuinely argued, and the argument was had in court. The Neo-American Church wrote its own satire into its constitution — the motto, the toad, the hymns — and Judge Gesell treated that as proof of insincerity in 1968. Scholars of American religion have since taken it more seriously than the court did, reading it as a real psychedelic religion that chose ridicule as a defence against a state it expected to lose to. It is filed as parody because that is the reading its own documents support; readers who take Kleps at his word that it was sincere are in respectable company.

Kleps died in 1999. The Original Kleptonian Neo-American Church continues to enrol members and publish his writings; the 1960s congregation of Boo Hoos does not survive in anything like its original form.

DeitiesNo god. The church's own formulation is solipsist rather than theist: what is ultimate is the dreaming consciousness, and the sacrament is the instrument for recognising it.

Founded1965 CE · New York State

FounderArthur Kleps

AfterlifeNone taught. Kleps held that death ends a dream, which is not the same as a doctrine of survival.

TextsThe Boo Hoo Bible: The Neo-American Church Catechism and Handbook (1971) · Millbrook: A Narrative of the Early Years of American Psychedelianism (1975) · The Neo-American Ten Commandments

The map

The Neo-American Church’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

Life is a dream, and enlightenment is noticing. Kleps's doctrine is solipsist rather than theist: what is ultimate is the dreaming consciousness, and the world is its content. He held that this is not a metaphor and not consoling. Go deeper — context →

Psychedelics are sacraments, and the state has no standing to forbid them. The church's legal position and its theology were the same sentence, which is why it lost. The sacrament is the instrument by which the dreamer is woken; forbidding it is forbidding the rite. Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

A Art Kleps, the Chief Boo Hoo. A psychologist who joined Timothy Leary's circle at Millbrook, founded the church there in 1965, excommunicated Leary from it, testified before a Senate subcommittee in 1966 and wrote everything the church holds. He maintained to his death in 1999 that the satire and the sincerity were the same act. Domain The founding, the catechism, the excommunication of Timothy LearyStanding Founder and sole doctrinal authority; died 1999 Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

The session. The sacrament taken with a guide who does not take it, in an undisturbed room, for as long as it lasts. The church published a how-to for guides and treated the guiding, rather than the taking, as the clerical function. When once, and then as often as chosenWho a member, with a Boo Hoo guiding Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Sikhism — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Jainism — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Hinduism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Buddhism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Neo-American Church — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Neo-American Church shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

1 cited texts

United States v. Kuch, 288 F. Supp. 439 (D.D.C. 1968), Gesell J. (rendered) where it is cited →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.