Get Happy!

“Get Happy!” is both a concise expression of Fosterite optimism and a command that exposes the movement’s methods. The phrase links a popular promise of happiness to organized religious persuasion: it comforts followers, recruits them, and, in Foster’s exchange with Digby, turns frustration into renewed service.

A marketable promise

Jubal regards the New Revelation’s doctrines and practices as old ideas repackaged for contemporary appeal. In his view, Foster and Digby have assembled familiar religious techniques, presented them in new form, and built a successful enterprise around them. The danger, he tells Jill, is not simply that people will embrace happiness, but that the movement’s success might make its message compulsory.

Jubal explains the slogan’s appeal by contrasting fear with happiness. After a century marked by guilt and fear, he observes, Digby offers people reassurance about both this life and the hereafter, repeatedly urging them not to be afraid and to be happy. Jubal admits that he recognizes the effectiveness of this approach because he too understands persuasion as a kind of business. What unsettles him is Digby’s skill: he can make a message Jubal distrusts sound attractive.

From encouragement to discipline

The phrase becomes especially pointed when Digby complains that Mike has brushed him aside. Foster answers that the Martians have their own system and that they cannot simply interfere with Mike while the Martians need him. He then tells Digby that more work lies ahead before another promotion, and directs him either to take time in the Muslim Paradise or to resume his duties. The instruction to straighten his halo and wings leads into the closing order, “Get Happy, junior!”

Digby accepts the rebuke and asks where to begin. In this exchange, happiness is not only a promised spiritual state; it is also a way to discipline a subordinate and return him to work. The slogan’s cheerful tone makes the correction sound encouraging, but its placement gives it an unmistakable institutional purpose.

The Fosterite organization

The novel’s account of Foster’s movement places this language within a carefully layered institution. An outer church welcomes seekers, who may enjoy some benefits for years without advancing. A middle church presents itself as the New Revelation, combining religious belonging with tithes, business ties, and a continual atmosphere of revival and happiness. At its core is an unnamed Inner Church of dedicated leaders and priests, whose members are considered reborn and are the candidates for direct admission to Heaven.

Foster’s success rests on more than a slogan. The narrative describes him as a magnetic leader with a strong instinct for the culture he addressed, and explains that his organization borrowed techniques from several established institutions and from advertising. It also describes how the movement responded to suppression by drawing supporters from elsewhere and how its legal organization made prosecutions difficult to sustain. Against this background, “Get Happy!” sounds at once like a sincere reassurance and an efficient public-facing message for a movement built to expand and endure.

The phrase in the Church of All Worlds

The expression also marks a contrast between Fosterite methods and the developing Church of All Worlds. Patty, an ordained teacher who leads beginner Martian classes and helps train novices, works with Dawn and Jill to show Fosterites that the two faiths need not conflict. Foster’s kiss and its miraculous companion from Mike help make the connection legible to prospective members, while Mike’s public meetings use entertainment and staged selection to identify people ready for more demanding instruction.

In a later account of the church’s response to opposition, Sam describes closing one congregation, relocating, and reopening under a different name. He says that Mike is in no hurry and that each dispersal leaves behind a disciplined core and pilgrims who may rejoin them. The continuing pursuit of happiness thus appears in a different organizational setting: not merely as Foster’s polished sales pitch, but alongside patient teaching, training, and the capacity to regroup. The phrase’s importance lies in that tension between happiness as an invitation and happiness as an instrument of authority.