Now there's an idea. L. Ron Hubbard did pretty well with it.
There's a saying out there that "if you take religion away from the people, they won't believe in nothing, they'll believe in anything".
Popular culture has been, deliberately I think, pushing Christianity aside for decades now. The "God is Dead" cover of Time magazine comes to mind.
And now the people will believe anything. Like impending Environmental holocaust, for example.
Data (1) (1)
The head of the Galactic Confederation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet -- 178 billion on average) by mass implanting.
He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H Bomb on the principal volcanoes (Incident 2) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic Area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged."
His name was Xenu. He used renegades. Various misleading data by means of circuits etc. was placed in the implants.
When through with his crime Loyal Officers (to the people) captured him after 6 years of battle and put him in an electronic mountain trap where he still is. "They" are gone.
The place (Confed.) has since been a desert.-- Scientology's OT III