God Franchise

The until-now extremely top secret Story of the most profitable business concept ever created.
[As documented by impartial witnesses & journalists randomly selected from the 13.7 billion years of this planet's existence.]
This Story is fiction.
The God Franchise (TGF) is a mystery wrapped in a cloak of religious satire. The story is based on a multi-year overview of how the various religions have adapted the basic business franchise concept to suit and meet their needs, many of which simply involve getting the sheep in to be fleeced. To do that, in the face of increasing competition from older and more established organizations, right up to recent developments of completely "new" religious bodies created by former fiction writers themselves, all these groups have had to adapt and adopt different marketing schemes. The comparison to existing business franchises, especially in the areas of sales promotion, advertising, and public relations, as practiced successfully and profitably from hamburger sellers to automobile dealers exotic trip and tour promoters, is inevitable. Heavily relying on dialogue and the accurate and basically sympathetic portrayal of various members of the main franchisor family over two millennia, TGF is clearly fiction. Or is it?