You go to your church, and I'll find my own

Here's a spiritual experience: Body piercing. This previously unknown Stairway to Heaven has become better known recently since a Johnston County student claimed a religious exemption for her nose stud. The school system said no way. Oh yeah, she said. I'm a member of The Church of Body Modification, which believes that sticking holes in your body where there were none is a spiritual experience.

The News & Observer, ever vigilant for important new trends in religious studies, has done an article about an official minister of The Church of Body Modification. Richard Ivey of Raleigh is a minister who practices what he preaches. He has ear jewelry the size of hockey pucks, the N&O noted, and he has tattoos on nearly all of the exposed skin in the newspaper photo, plus a few more pierces in what can only be called "unnatural" places. He says he gets a new tattoo every month or two, so the clerical pay in this denomination must be all right. And, oh yeah, one of the rituals of the church is to be strung up on fish hooks dug into your flesh. Ivey says just hanging around like that gives him peace.

Although I was, frankly, turned off by the Rev's unusual appearance, the article got me to thinking. Ivey got his ordination by applying online, and church doctrine, which confesses no god and has relatively few restrictions, can't be too tough to master. If you can have a Church of Body Modification, what other spiritual frontiers might be out there, just waiting to be explored?

It didn't take me long to think of a few:

• The Wholly Nekkid Fellowship. Nudists get a bad rap, running around butt-naked all the time, but if being naked is a spiritual experience, well more folks might join in. And all that money you would spend on clothes can be given to the church, says church founder Seymour Butz, who wears a clerical collar but nothing else.

• The Church of Video Games. This church meets only in basements, and its hymns consist of the ping-ping-blip of video game sound effects. "Yea, though I run through the Valley of Death, I fear no annihilation, for I can always hit the reset button," is the church's creed. Church members seek to achieve an ecstatic state of rapture by earning more game points than anyone else.

• The Tea Party Communion. This church worships the glossed-over image of a former Alaska governor as its chief goddess. Its sacraments include drinking tea from demitasse cups and screaming at non-believers.

• The Mother Earth Temple of Truth and Revelation. This religion eschews any god or goddess but considers the Earth in its original state, before homo sapiens, to be the personification of perfection. Church members study ways to rid the world of humans and bring back the dinosaurs.

• The Janis Joplin Experience Hosannah Movement. This sect worships the life of Janis Joplin, who died of a drug overdose in 1970. Sacraments include attempting to drink as much booze as Janis did onstage while also popping pills. Church Hymnody consists entirely of Janis Joplin recordings, which can throw true believers into a catatonic state.

• The Oh Joy for O.J. Worship Center. This church contends that O.J. Simpson was the perfect human specimen who had to be sacrificed on the altar of Hollywood so that less-talented celebrities could have their own paparazzi. Believers await the day when O.J. is released from prison and melts his Heisman Trophy into a Golden Calf.

• The Hedonism in Heaven Fellowship. This church contends that mankind was born to have sex as often as possible. Marriage is condemned as an obstacle to more frequent and more varied sexual encounters. The H in H Fellowship is in negotiations with radical Islamists about the 21 virgins awaiting jihadist martyrs. H in H believers are trying to work out the same deal, for all church members.