The Religion of Frontier
I've decided to post this even though it's not finished, both to get something up and to see if I can get feedback. Also, the concepts that went into this gave me a way to work Icons in that I like a lot, so this is laying the groundwork for that as well. Enjoy!
What Do We Believe?
Frontier is not, and has never been, a religious society. Only one colony charter was for a religious group, and they have since composed a minority of the population of FFC1079; the rest may be religious to themselves, but as a rule they do not bring religion to bear in public.
The religious group was made up of about 400 members of a sect of the henotheistic Sutukarin religion, named after Tanja Sutukaro, who founded the religion nearly a thousand years before FFC1079 was discovered. As henotheists, orthodox Sutukarins believe in a pantheon governing all aspects of existence, but each Sutukarin dedicates herself to the worship of a single god. The sect whose members came to FFC1079, by contrast, were more syncretic in their beliefs, viewing each god of the pantheon as a manifestation of a single divine power, which they called Providence. Called Universalist Sutukarins - or Universalists - by the orthodox religion, the sect came to FFC1079 because their leader, Henry Cedd, felt a calling to the new colony; the stated goals of the group were to use the isolation of a Federal colony to further their understanding of Providence and existence.
One of the significant differences between the orthodox Sutukarins and the Universalists is that while the orthodoxy prefers small, specific shrines, the Universalists use churches that border on being cathedrals as places of worship. This has impacted the civic landscape of FFC1079; in every major city, one or two Universalist churches can be found, and they are relatively common in smaller towns as well. A Universalist church is still a place of personal devotion and meditation; there is no mandated day of attendance, and there are no general services. Each church has twelve shrines lining its walls, one to each of the twelve major "manifestations" of the pantheon, and an altar in the center at the rear, at which the Universalists devote themselves to Providence. This is done as often as the adherent feels it necessary, but the average attendance rate is about once per week. It should be noted that the Universalists do not sacrifice or offer gifts to Providence, although the pantheon still receive small offerings from many Universalists.
A major feature of both orthodox and Universalist Sutukarin is that neither is an evangelical religion. Sutukarins are expected to draw others to the faith not through spreading the word but by setting an example. They are not forbidden to tell others about the god - or Providence - to whom they have devoted their lives; it is simply neither encouraged nor required. The upshot of this is that while Sutukarin has a relatively low growth rate, it also has a relatively high rate of retaining those who convert to the religion - and its footprint in the community, aside from the Universalists' churches, is so small that they rarely run into public criticism.
Universalist Sutukarin is the largest religion on FFC1079, but it still encompasses no more than ten percent of the population. The other 90% are largely agnostic, although smatterings of the other religions known in Federal space can be found on the colony. These religions include Larthwid (a polytheistic religion based on the relationship between self and nature; its practitioners are Larthwids), Setiwa (a monotheistic, salvation-centered religion, whose adherents are Setiyan, sing. Setiye), and Gilgre Benthyd (which is not a religion so much as a belief system focused on self-deprivation and the path to Truth; those who follow it are Gilgrens).
Comments
I'm always skeptical of religion in "future" settings, but it does seem that an active religion would be necessary to capture that "old west" pioneering feel.
So that said, would it not be better to make religion more active, or more influential, in the setting?
I imagine, from the opening commentary, that you plan to tie the discovery of Icons into a change in the practices & fortunes of the churches, yes?
As another thought, you can probably find something that fills the role the Mormons & the various Protestant churches played in the historical Westward Expansion that isn't a "religion" in the contemporary sense. A stand in that comes from some other sort of social organization could be appropriate, if you want to minimize the "metaphysical" aspects of religion, or other connections to the Fantasy side of the genre.
Posted by: Selentic | December 4, 2005 07:19 PM
See, I have the opposite reaction: I'm extremely reluctant to dismiss religion from a science-fiction setting just because it doesn't have a firm basis in Science. This is part of the problem I mentioned earlier; I've been approaching Frontier from a "hard" perspective - This Is What Happened - and so anything "soft" like religion and psionics seems out of place, even though both have been part of the world's concept almost from the beginning.
To be honest, I find it disingenuous when an author tells me "people in this setting don't have religion, because Science is All". Just saying people don't have faith anymore belies a focus on the science to the detriment of the characters; even if there's a reason, even if all of the arguments they give for religion can be answered with rational, truthful objections, even if you provide irrefutable proof, there are people who are going to believe that you're just making it up. (As a real-world example of this, consider the remarkably large number of people who, despite overwhelming evidence, continue to believe that the Apollo moon landings were faked.)
Actually, I may be doing you a disservice, because another objection to including religion has just occurred to me: in a science-fiction setting, it runs the risk of violating Chekhov's Law. ("If a gun is shown on the mantel in Act I, it must have been fired by Act III.") Under that thinking, if I include religion in Frontier, I must be including at least the possibility that its adherents could be right - because, otherwise, what reason is there to include it?
The counter-argument to that, of course, is that I'm building a world and a society, not necessarily a perfectly-efficient story; and that not everything that I mention is going to matter to everybody. By presenting the religions I mentioned above, I make no promises one way or the other, and in fact I'm deliberately remaining agnostic on the subject of any truth to these religions. But the fact remains that they are there, and that they have adherents, and that they do, however subtly, affect society.
I'm actively keeping the Sutukarin influence small, because while this is a Wild West-inspired setting, it's not The Wild West With Lasers; if someone wants to play a wandering Sutukarin minister, they should feel free, but I'm not going to put all of Frontier in church on Sunday just because pretty much everybody in the Old West was a God-fearin' Protestant. (Also, the more powerful the religion is, the more pressure is on me to decide whether or not it's right, and like I said, I'm doing my best to remain agnostic on that issue.)
Posted by: Chris "EDG" Anthony | December 7, 2005 10:55 AM
I guess it just goes to show how much of an unbeliever i am that i never considered the possibility that a religion could be right! (In its metaphysics - naturally its code of ethics could work just fine.)
Posted by: Selentic | December 7, 2005 05:36 PM