Nov 21 2008
The First Requirement of Religion
A religion needs people more than it needs a god.
Consider the importance to many of today’s religions of names. Most of them have at least a few big ones: major prophets, people who were said to have entered into covenants with their creators, people who set forth systems of ideas, ones who did things so utterly impressive that those around them felt they had to be divine. But at the base of every religion, whether they are remembered or not, are people, and these people can leave an indelible mark on how the religion works, spreads, and shapes itself.
Just as a religion can’t begin without people, it can’t carry on without them. Religion is belief, first and foremost; when there are none left to believe, the religion is no more. Similarly, the kind of people a religion appeals to will determine how it spreads and where it flourishes. Scholars are likely to disdain a religion that disdains book-learning, but favor one that advocates the spread of knowledge, for instance. The poor may prefer to believe in a god who values people by what they do, but higher classes will likely prefer a god who values people by what they were born into. Therefore, a religion’s spread will be determined by its traits, particularly those that appeal to the kinds of people in a given area.
There might even be adaptation to account for these differences. Varying treatments of the same god could result in different levels of success among different people—you might not be able to convince a farming community to pray to a war god for chances to earn renown in battle, but those same people may fervently pray to the same god to keep his glorious wars somewhere else. Or they might reinterpret the god’s domain so that they can entreat him for things more on their level. “Make our blades sharp, steel our hearts for the fight ahead, let our enemies fall in swarms—bless us your servants as we make war upon the locusts!” So in different regions with different populations, the religion may itself emphasize different aspects, adapting to the people it seeks to serve.
Speaking of carrying on, what about the effects of the prohibitions and exhortations of a religion? Some of these are common sense—for instance, a religion that requires complete celibacy from every worshiper will have a very hard time swelling the ranks in more ways than one. (On the other hand, you’d have the opposite effect with a religion that puts a lot of weight on extremely regular fertility rituals.) And lauding those who fight and die for the faith will, logically enough, result in a lot of fighting and deaths; useful if you need to defend it anyway, but counterproductive in peacetime. But consider other factors. How persistently the faithful are supposed to proselytize, for instance, can have interesting effects: too strong and you scare your potential converts away, too light and nobody figures out you’re recruiting. Or, for that matter, difficulty of being inducted into the faith or getting to learn the “true mysteries”; making it a challenge can make it seem more like a badge of honor and therefore worth it, but too much difficulty might scare off anyone short of the fanatical.
But in all these circumstances, it is people who are making the difference; without them, would there even be a religion to write about?
(More RPG Blog Carnival, of course!)
It’s maybe worth noting that nearly -every- religion in many RPGs is effectively a “Mystery Religion”. Certainly they generally qualify in games where disciples of the Holy have any sort of demonstrable god-given power…
Also, you’ve mentioned a requirement of celibacy… but many real religions can be inconsistent about things like this - you can say “hypocritical” if you want to be nasty, or “forgiving” if nice. Certainly it wouldn’t be that surprising if a particular faith required *complete celibacy*, and female adherents would go on “pilgrimages” at irregular intervals to the Abbey of Forlorn Children, and return nearly a year later with a child they had “adopted”.
In fact, one of the things I’m often surprised by with fantasy religions is the utter lack of petty inconsistency. They’re generally either completely in tune with their own values and goals, or they’re a front for a nest of flesh-eating tentacle creatures and everything we know about them is a lie. What I’d like to see:
I’d like to see a death god punish their disciples for frivolous use of the walking dead. I mean, these people may be *dead*, but they’re not *worthless*. It may be worth calling up Late Uncle Bors to help defend against grave robbers, but it’s another thing entirely to call up the dead and go haring around all over the place with your shufflers in tow, burning down villages and sucking out people’s energy.
I’d like to see a fertility god’s church have a major schism over deliberately non-procreative sex, whether over homosexuality or just, you know, nibbles. This would be particularly troubling if the god chose to stay out of the discussion on the basis that it’s not part of their domain… which I suppose would eventually result in there being a God of Nibbles, which I would also like to see.
I’d like to see a trickster god actually interfere with someone else’s religion, rather than just the goals of that religion’s sattelite society. Screwing with the holy books, sending evil dreams to make them doubt their faith, or just making all of their airy-fairy spells manifest with black lightning and puffs of evil-looking bats.
I’d like to see weird crap, like when you’re a priest of Sloz, but you’re in Shalbon’s territory, and Sloz doesn’t like horning in on Shalbon so you can still use the same spells but they manifest in some kind of Shalbon-venerating manner, perhaps with a martial fanfare if Shalbon is a god of war, or with all damaging effects altered to cause damage with thorny rose vines if Shalbon is a nature god. Praise be to Sloz! and also Shalbon.
I’d like to see the god of Philosophy show up at a battlefield and start lecturing the god of War. I’d like to see the god of Forbidden Pleasures have a policy on which pleasures are actually forbidden and which ones are just called that for marketing purposes. I’d like to see a god of Justice who is something more than a god of War who dresses in white instead of red. And, I’d like to see a god of Prophecy who only makes sense when you’re high on something, because that’s what people always *say* but there’s never actually one like that in a story.
Gods, in nearly every polytheistic pantheon, are self-interested, capricious, flighty and usually violent, and are always busy doing something. In many fantasy stories, by contrast, they are a bunch of do-nothings who sit around heaven making excuses and complaining that no one ever worships them anymore.
@tommi: Please don’t compare contributions in a collaborative environment! Also you may notice that my post completely missed the point…
@ravyn: Ah! I topic drifted. It happens to me sometimes… correct as you see fit.
Also re: Lysha and riddles… Tolkien was wrong, riddles are the bane of the adventurer. Give the players a riddle - any riddle they haven’t heard of, no matter how simple - and they will be crying before they figure it out.
*chuckles* It varies. My group is actually pretty decent with the things; they’re currently trying to dissect one of Lysha’s prophecies (with medium success–when they remember it exists, anyway), and aside from the one time they’ve been able to sorta-kinda-somewhat-maybe communicate. I might do “The Best of Lysha-Riddles” for my Impractical next week, since Thanksgiving is killing my game schedule and I’m rather proud of some of the pieces I’ve come up with. Particularly the one with the two cities.
That’ll be good, I’m much more often on the writing end of riddles than the reading…
The reminder of the division makes me wonder - with the Rolling Fire, although there is an actual priesthood it is largely a defensive religion, as the god itself is extremely harmful to people that aren’t fireproof.
I wonder if the worship of gods of weather, or the ocean, are the same?
Yes, but the god still isn’t being active–and this situation could occur whether either god actually exists or not, which is what I’m trying to get across here.
As you point out, Egyptians had the tendency of combining gods. I imagine the gods would be less than amused by being combined, but they don’t seem to be commenting. By my definition, religion and the gods are still separated; the gods could be up in [insert place where you find gods here] playing Hounds and Jackals with their respective civilizations for all anyone knows, and the religions would just keep going on as they are. Your complications–they’re pretty much what I’m talking about. It’s not the gods who determine who believes in whom; it’s the people, and the gods can interfere or not as necessary. Really, in my opinion it’s more interesting if they don’t.
That could be fun.
One of my all-time favorite play by posts was a very character-driven, all paladin game, where a lot of what differentiated the characters was just the nature of their code and religion. It raised some really interesting questions about belief; I was sad to see it end.