Church of the New Revelation

The Church of the New Revelation is the Fosterite movement, a large and politically influential religious organization whose public carnival of salvation conceals a disciplined inner hierarchy. Founded by Reverend Foster and led in the novel’s present by Supreme Bishop Digby, it turns promises of happiness, forgiveness, and ascension into a system of worship, business, and collective power. Its importance to the plot lies in the dangerous resemblance between its promised, scheduled departure for Heaven and the Martian practice of voluntary discorporation: Jubal fears that the church could draw Mike into its orbit, acquire his wealth, and claim his death as a religious miracle.

Origins and Structure

Foster’s movement arose in a culture described as divided between puritanical public laws and a more permissive private life. The narrative presents Foster as an instinctive reader of that contradiction. After early setbacks, he fashioned an organization that could expand beyond the limits faced by a small sect, drawing on the forms of freemasonry, Catholicism, the Communist Party, advertising, and earlier scriptures. He presented the resulting doctrine as a return to primitive Christianity, while its practices and organization were assembled from many sources.

The church is layered. Its outermost level admits seekers, who may participate in some benefits for years without becoming fully committed members. The middle church consists of the saved: members who pay tithes, take part in the organization’s economic network, and are assured that their sins are forgiven so long as they support the church, deal honestly with fellow Fosterites, condemn sinners, and remain happy. Beneath these public-facing levels is an Inner Church, not openly named as such, made up of the priesthood, lay leaders, record-keepers, and policy-makers. Its reborn members are treated as beyond sin and secure in their place in Heaven; they alone are eligible for direct admission there.

This graded structure joins religious belonging to organizational discipline. The saved members provide a ready force for direct action when the movement encounters opposition, while the inner circle keeps authority and policy concentrated. Fosterites have answered attempted suppression by converging on a hostile community from elsewhere, overwhelming its capacity to manage the movement and its crowds. Religious membership therefore operates not only as belief or private devotion but as a network capable of coordinated public pressure.

Worship, Happiness, and Ascension

The church’s public services are designed as continuous spectacle. Its followers are promised happiness and salvation in an atmosphere closer to a revival or carnival than to restrained worship. When Jubal listens to a broadcast, the Shepherd moves from ordinary notices to announcing that Arthur and Dorothy Renwick have been approved to go to Heaven at dawn on Thursday. The announcement is treated as a public celebration: a midnight Bon Voyage party is scheduled, followed by funeral services after dawn and breakfast for those heading to work.

The broadcast also shows the institution managing the details of its ceremonies as communal events. The Shepherd recalls a past Bon Voyage at which a member broke a rule, reports that the member confessed and paid penance, and urges the congregation not to repeat the lapse. Celebration, discipline, and the scheduled death are folded into a single program. Jubal sees the resemblance between this promise of a chosen time and place for departure and the Martian practice of discorporation. He suspects that the Fosterite rite may amount to murder, although the narrative makes clear that this suspicion has not been proved and that officials have rarely been willing to investigate such deaths. Foster himself was the first to die at a self-prophesied instant; afterward, scheduled ascension became a mark of special grace.

The movement’s promises attract adherents through a mixture of doctrine and tangible signs of belonging. Patricia Paiwonski describes her conversion as an inward change expressed as happiness, and presents Foster as the figure sent to restore Jesus’s teaching after its corruption during the Dark Ages. Her account distinguishes the exuberant meetings of ordinary saved members from the more restricted gatherings of the Inner Church. Access to the latter is not established by a visible mark alone: visiting members can be identified through fingerprints checked against the church’s master file of the eternally saved. The narrative thus sets the church’s language of spontaneous happiness alongside systems of verification, rank, and controlled entry.

Money, Law, and Political Influence

The church’s religious activity is inseparable from its economic and political reach. When Senator Boone takes visitors through the church’s large building, he points out that tourists must pass through a hallway lined with slot machines to reach the bar and quick lunch at the far end; even a visitor seeking a drink of water is routed past the games. The arrangement makes the organization’s commercial logic visible in the architecture of its worship site.

Jubal explains why such institutions are difficult for the government to regulate. Under the legal arrangements he describes, churches pay no taxes, need not publish records, and are effectively shielded from search, inspection, or control. Attempts to distinguish legally between genuine religions and cults risk establishing a state religion, while the existing constitutional and Federation framework treats churches equally. A large bloc of voters further strengthens that protection. In Jubal’s view, if Mike were converted to Fosterism, made a will in the church’s favor, and then underwent a scheduled ascension, the organization could benefit from both his property and its claim to spiritual authority.

Fosterite power is also reflected in its effect on public institutions. News services carry Digby’s announcements as straight news because Fosterites have previously wrecked newspaper offices. The movement can therefore shape coverage not only through religious claims but through the credible threat of organized retaliation. Its public authority rests on a combination of electoral influence, commercial reach, legal immunity, and forceful mobilization.

Leadership and Public Claims

Foster’s authority begins in his personal claim to revelation and continues through the organization he builds. The narrative describes him as a gifted judge of what would appeal to his audience, and his church’s effectiveness lies in converting that understanding into durable levels of membership, recurring rituals, economic connections, and an inner leadership. Digby inherits the office and its public voice, announcing heavenly decisions and directing the congregation’s expectations.

The succession itself is presented as both miracle and institutional procedure. After a secret conclave, the bishops announce that Digby has been translated bodily to Heaven and promoted to Archangel, second only to Foster. The news waits on heavenly confirmation of a replacement Supreme Bishop: Huey Short, a compromise candidate accepted by the Boone faction after repeated lots. A proclamation of supernatural elevation is thus followed by the practical settlement of a leadership vacancy and factional disagreement. The church’s charisma is preserved through an administrative structure capable of naming successors.

The organization’s own claims are sharply contested. Jubal, though an agnostic who evaluates religions as equals, dislikes the Fosterites’ assertion of direct knowledge from Heaven, their intolerance, and their conspicuous revival-and-sales-convention style. He calls their doctrines old material repackaged for modern appeal and fears that a successful movement could become compulsory. His criticism distinguishes the possibility of religious experience from the church’s claim to exclusive authority and the social power it exerts over those outside it.

Conflict, Adaptation, and Significance

The danger of the church becomes immediate when Jubal warns Mike before a visit that the Fosterites want his money and the prestige of having the Man from Mars join them. His concern is not simply that Mike might adopt another faith. The combination of religious immunity, the church’s interest in wealth, and its doctrine of scheduled departure could make conversion materially consequential and place Mike’s estate within the reach of an institution with few obligations to disclose its affairs.

The church’s influence also becomes a point of dispute in relation to other religious communities. Digby denounces Alice Douglas as the Harlot of Babylon and forbids Fosterites to accept a commission as donor or host mother. Alice nevertheless publicly praises the woman involved, turning a personal judgment into a public contrast between the bishop’s prohibition and her own expression of admiration. Elsewhere, Jill and Dawn, both High Priestesses in the Church of All Worlds, teach Martian to beginners and novitiates and explain how their participation in that church can coexist with their Fosterite identities. The novel therefore depicts religious affiliation not only as a contest for exclusive allegiance but as a question that members and leaders negotiate differently.

That contrast becomes explicit in the Church of All Worlds’ use of Fosterite familiarity. Mike’s apparent skills as a magician draw an audience, but he frames the limited demonstrations as only an introduction: anyone who wants to learn more must enter a Circle. Jill and Dawn, meanwhile, present their overlapping religious roles as compatible rather than mutually exclusive. The comparison highlights a recurring tension in the novel between charismatic claims and organized practice. Both movements build communities, transmit teachings, and establish forms of initiation; the New Revelation, however, is associated here with compulsory certainty, commercial reach, and coercive public power, while the newer church’s teachers work to show that the two commitments need not conflict.

The Church of the New Revelation is consequently more than a rival faith or a satirical background institution. Its structure explains how a promise of happiness can support a hierarchy, how an announcement of heavenly authority can carry political weight, and how religious immunity can turn private conversion into a public and financial crisis. Its most unsettling claim is not simply that death can be called ascension, but that an organization with the means to shape belief, law, and public attention can make that claim difficult to challenge.