I was just watching "American Primeval", when it occurred to me (again) that the US was a place where oddball religions could prosper. Two recent successful examples of very weird ones being Mormons and Scientology (although the latter is a bit less successful lately).
Why is it that weird things catch on so readily in the US?
Of course, the "founders" were people that were kicked out of everywhere else because they were trying to convert them to their extremist religious views (and yet US people are fond of trying to find family ties to them... "hey, my great, great, great grand father was a religious lunatic! But yours wasn't")
So now, Mormons (Jews totally rowed to the US, for some reason, and then Jesus came there, and there were horses, and cities, and there's absolutely no archaeological trace, probably because god) have an astounding foothold despite their creed (I'm saying this because I have read the book of Mormon).
Then there's Scientology, and I don't even know where to begin with that one, given how fucked up it is... If you don't know about it, start with Wikipedia.
Also (probably not finally, there's certainly more) there's the innumerable bizarre Christianity stuff in the US. It's such a mess. I don't even think that most of the evangelical groups are technically Christians.
So apparently,, in the US, anything goes. The holy Flying Spaghetti Monster, blessed be it's meat balls, showed us that. But then what?
The problem with the typical US "let anyone do whatever" is that vulnerable get fleeced at best.
It reminds me of the story about that guy who trained his donkey to go with less food, and just as he was getting it to go with no food at all,the stupid animal died.