#faithists

" ... Over the last two years, in a bid to revitalize dwindling [Faithists] membership, the small group underwent a dramatic makeover, adopting, en masse, a new and uncommon faith. The church’s transformation is a local revival of a nearly forgotten American religion. It’s also a symbolic homecoming for that group’s founder, a Manhattan dentist and would-be prophet who published what he said was a divinely inspired book, titled the Oahspe Bible, to local fascination in 1882.

Produced by a man named John Ballou Newbrough, the book is a dizzying collage of myth and religion. It reads like sci-fi or fantasy at times, featuring a lost continent and what’s said to be the first literary reference to an interstellar spaceship. With a band of followers called Faithists, this New York prophet set off to form religious communes across the country. But his efforts sputtered in failure. While some contemporaneous 19th-century groups, like the Mormons, grew to large religions, the Faithists faded away.