Assume a spherical cow of uniform density … Or maybe not. If you have a world built from scratch, and religion is in it, do you have to mess with theology or can you just let things develop over time and add a few pinches of handwavium and “denominational difference” when continuity problems emerge? Theology is messy, and can be complicated, and gives people cooties. If religion never appears, at all, eventually someone might ask why not. The answer to that can be a story in itself, or an irritating aside (Anne McCaffrey vs. Arthur C. Clark).
I tend to do both, if I’m not using known current practices where I have sources on hand, or relatively available. For most authors, theology is not something they want to spend a lot of time on, unless they are writing about church stuff. Me being me, I start with an idea, then go back and fill in the “Why this, why this/these deities, what liturgy (if any), what reward system (if any), what clergy, what beliefs?”
- Why religion? Tradition? Because it is a way to control the masses*? Revealed truth? To stave off bad things? All are possible options and answers, depending on what sort of faith system you are writing, or are ignoring**.
- Polytheism? Monotheism? Ethical polytheism? Animist? Deist (“To whom it may concern, out there”)
- Ritualistic? Does worship have to take place at a specific shrine or consecrated site? Can ordinary believers do everything on their own, wherever they happen to be at the time?
- Are there rewards and punishments in the afterlife? Is the religion strictly here and in the short-term (asking field spirits to protect the crops, for example)?
- Are there trained priests? Are priests in guilds, or families (like the tribe of Levi)? Do the clergy just lead rituals, or do they channel the gods or other spirits (see Voudoun and shamanism for examples)? Can lay people just pray, or make little offerings, without the need for clergy?
- Is there a theology? Does it vary from place to place, or change over time? Is it formal, or has it “just growed?” Books and writings? Purely oral traditions? Yes? How does official theology differ from popular (mis)understanding? Is it important that it does (see the Protestant Reformation and a few other places where what people thought they understood and what the faith actually taught were a leeeeeetle different.)
You might not want to go into that level of detail, and your readers probably won’t care, unless the faith is an important part of the plot. I tend to overdo things, then have to back up and remind myself that I’m not writing an anthropology of religion book.
*I get so tired of this, because it is rarely done well. If you can do it well, then go for it.
**Belief might not be important to the story. But beware of other characters who ask what the MC meant by that comment, or why she only prays at dawn, noon, and sunset.
Mad Genius Club 
33 responses to “Help, There’s Theology In My World Building!”
David Weber does a great “religion to control the masses” in the Safehold series. But that’s the only place I have seen it that wasn’t heavy-handed and anti-religious in execution.
Yes. I wonder if his being a lay minister helped him steer clear of the usual pitfalls. That, and anti-religion (or anti-specific-religion) wasn’t the point of the books.
I tend to go in for Generic Background Monotheism with possible angels and demons. I started out doing it in the vaguely India-adjacent Jaiya books, on the theory that I was going to get into less trouble riffing on my own religion (a minority religion in India, although it’s been there longer than Islam or Sikhism) than I would riffing on other people’s religions. So, there’s some trappings that nod to the practices of the subcontinent, like the tendency of priests to wear saffron, or the depiction of the Immortals as blue skinned, but the dominant religion (which is apparently very old and includes many branches) doesn’t map very closely to Hinduism, Islam, etc. The space opera duology was a bit similar: the humans were the residents of an ancient Egyptian city abducted by space demons and rescued and catechized by space angels, with their concern for the respectful treatment of the dead being the humans most obvious link to their old belief system.
The Hunter Healer King books have a steampunkish, Central European vibe, backed by a vaguely Tolkienian mythos (although he would not approve of either the steampunk bits or the Charlemagne bits), so in that setting, Generic Monotheism includes temples, priests, high priests, Priest-Electors…and dioceses.
At this point I’d be happy to see someone invert it so that you see the downside of “uncontrolled” populace- even just a faint nod to the idea of shared standards not being evil when not in alignment with the POV character. (Aaaah! Morality just got in the way of easy for the MC, bring in the bad cliche!)
Sounds like something I’m attempting with my idea described further down, where the main antagonistic group believes that “Our instincts are the only moral guide we’ll ever need.” And then attempt to live accordingly.
Ooof.
We all know how that works– sure, there’s natural morality, but there’s also how Judeo-Christian morality has objectively superior group survival rates, and it’s freakish among the variety of theologies actually observed.
I keep hoping that actually becoming familiar with other theories of morality will help the “religion is primitive and will die off” folks cut it out, but…as has been traditionally noted, “was found hard and left untried.”
How many varieties of the antagonist group have you got? A form of libertarianism that will let them sort out the more obvious short term failure states might help make them more sympathetic and functional. “Our instincts say that our pack can’t do that and we only care about protecting our pack” or something….
It sounds fascinating!
Well, if you really want a list of the various Feral ‘factions’:
I have the True Ferals, who try to live like animals, down to forgoing clothing, human language, and the use of fire. These people (the Transformed) are physically enhanced enough that they can survive like that. For a time.
The Apex Ascendants/Predator Kings who exalt the instincts of territoriality and dominance hierarchies; many of them end up as gang leaders or local warlords. In their favor they actually make the effort to look after the people in their territory, as long as they stay loyal.
The Instinct Absolutists, for whom ‘instinct is all’. No ethics, no morals, no rules either religious or secular. Just follow your instincts and you’re right with the universe. That said they don’t see any point in mindlessly breaking human laws either. Do it when the law goes against your instincts, not just because you can.
The Free, post-human philosophers, online libertarian and/or anarchist edgelords, mostly young pseudo-intellectuals fond of posting 100-page essays on how ‘The Transformation proved human civilization is hopelessly corrupt, and we’re here to create Utopia.’
The Godforms, who think they’re literally reincarnated Egyptian-style gods and demand they be treated accordingly. Some start cults, and very often end up on the evening news under loud and disturbing headlines.
There are a few other Feral factions, but I’ve gone on more than long enough here.
:glee: It sounds realistic— there’s enough variety that it’s not cardboard feeling, and they’re all things I can see someone who’s suddenly stronger (or thinks they’re stronger) would get into.
Thank you. I also tried to include religion among the ‘Restorationists’, who don’t like what happened to them, despise their new instincts, and want to keep living in human society. They’re the “opposition” to the Ferals.
One of their larger factions is the Faithful, a blanket term for a collection of religious believers ranging from mostly Christian to Jewish to some of the less-intense Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. Their view on the Transformation range from “We are being punished for our sins and must reclaim our humanity” to “We are being tested by God to see if we deserve being human” to the very radical Unfallen, based on the antinomian autotheistic medieval Brethren of the Free Spirit, who argue that “Humanity fell. We are no longer human, so the Fall of Adam does not apply to us. We are not beasts either. Therefor, we are like God.” They aren’t popular with the rest of the Faithful.
Their instincts no doubt say that the socially inept are guilty and the sociopathic innocent.
Depends on the faction. That said most of them seek separation from human civilization and honestly want to try creating a new culture. They’re just trying to figure out how.
For an interesting example of religion gone wild try the book of Judges in the Old Testament. The last verse, Judges 21:25 says, __ In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.__ And it is a really shocking book.
I’ll go back and check it out. I mostly remember it for Samson and Deborah. Thank you.
Boy are you in for some interesting stuff. You will not be disappointed.
In the hopes I don’t touch everyone off, I’ve been playing around with an old anthropomorphic idea of a mass ‘transformation event’ hitting humanity that turns a large portion of the populace into beast-people. For some of the better examples of this idea, go and get a copy of Best in Show by Fred Patten, if you can find one.
One thing I’ve noticed now that I look back at them is, “Where’s religion?” Save in the sense of Evil Christian Persecutors (TM), it never appears. So something I wanted to do with my version was to have real-world religions involved, as something other than generic bad guys. And the ones who are villainous or at least really difficult to get along with I’m basing more on early Gnostic movements or the medieval Brethren of the Free Spirit, a group of antinomian autotheists, who see strangely underused in fiction.
In the 1950s-1970s, there was a trend in science fiction, and to an extent in fantasy, to assume that religion would die off, or was bad. It seems to have been an offshoot of 1) the “opiate of the masses” thinking and 2) “primitive sky god” assumptions (science will replace religion/superstition).
And very often, Religion/Religious People would appear only to be The Bad Guys. 😡
Or it’s like what showed up in the Horseclans books — the desires of the Man of Might are the will of destiny or the like, and everyone he wants to do is good and right because he’s the ubermensch.
I know. I read my share and got tired of it.
A big part of my fondness for Poul Anderson is that he was one of the few major SF authors back then who avoided it.
Oooh, have you checked of TOF’s Doghead articles are useful?
Since it’s a transformation event, you can even quite literally quote City of God…..
Checked it out? I never even heard of it before this. Can you point it out to me? It sounds worth checking out.
Oh, heck, I through this all over I was sure I’d inflicted it on you at some point…
K, here’s one on non-human people, scientific angle, using Catholic theology for the rational Earth basis:
https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2017/11/medieval-sf.html
Oh, that! Yes, you shared it with me before. But my laptop died earlier this year and I lost the address, so thanks for sharing it again.
In my setting I have the idea that some people argue that the recent ‘Global Transformation Event’ wasn’t the first such quantum cascade. That others happened in the past, on a smaller and more localized scale, and thus stories from the ancient and medieval worlds about cynocephali, stayrs, centaurs, and other such beings.
‘Quantum cascade’ – A made-up term, I think, implying that reality had a hiccup fit that changed some natural laws and allowed things to happen that normally shouldn’t have. And if that sounds odd, then you should have read some of the books on wormholes and quantum physics and bleeding edge science theories I did years ago, which make ‘people turn into anthropomorphic animals en masse’ sound downright mundane.
Glad to be of service!
And here is the first one that I ran into, that goes straight into the point of monsters-as-people.
https://m-francis.livejournal.com/84248.html
And here is one from Jimmy Akin, on the moral status of zombies, less because it directly deals with your guys than because it’s related and I think folks might be interested.
https://jimmyakin.com/2005/08/theology_of_the.html
To the shock of absolutely nobody, the answer is “what are you calling zombies.” ^.^
I put my stories in Christian milieux, where the religion has varying degrees of significance in the tale.
Except The Lion And The Library. I started with a religious practice and then realized a religious conflict would help and built up two religions to fit the bill.
Then there’s a lot of issues. Like these.
https://writingandreflections.substack.com/p/religions-in-high-fantasy
https://writingandreflections.substack.com/p/fantasy-religion-follies
https://writingandreflections.substack.com/p/myths-of-religion
“If you have a world built from scratch, and religion is in it, do you have to mess with theology…?”
I would opine only if it’s a fantasy and the Will of the God(s) is part of the workings. Theology is one of those things where you’re bound to irritate a lot of people, so if you want to invoke it it might be part of a magic system. “Do not irritate the Goddess of Desire or she’ll make you fall in love with a pig.” “Tempt not Murphy, the God of Disasters.” Having lots of Gods and Goddesses of this and that can be quite entertaining. ~:D
Cosmology though, that can be a thing. How does the SF/F universe you’re building work, broadly speaking? Steady-state? Expanding? Contracting? One world or many worlds? What separates them? If there are many universes, can you travel between them? How hard is it to do?
For example, I decided the answer to the Fermi (where is everybody?) Paradox was that everyone travels slower than light because it’s sneakier. That’s the premise of Secret Empire, my third book, so no spoilers. Okay one spoiler, there’s something for them all to hide from. And there’s also something for them all to do, which is (IMHO) a requirement for an advanced civilization. Mere population pressure would seem to be insufficient to drive an AI civilization to expand through the galaxy. How much space does an AI take up?
There’s also the nature of Being, capital B to consider. I have robots and alien probe monsters running around, so I had to make up some rules for how that works. What happens when a non-sentient, incognizant machine becomes a person? From non-being to being. What would that look like? And how much weight do I want to load onto that, as a writer? Should I make all the minute details into a big deal, or should I do a bit of handwaving and call it good?
IMHO, handwaving is less work to write and less tiresome to read. ~:D
“Assume a spherical god of uniform density … “
giggle.
Xenophanes actually did.
“Mortals deem that the gods are begotten as they are,
and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form.
Ethiopians say that their gods are snubnosed and black
Thracians that they are pale and red-haired.
But if cattle and horses and lions had hands
or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,
horses like horses and cattle like cattle
also would depict the gods’ shapes and make their bodies
of such a sort as the form they themselves have.
The whole sees, the whole perceives, the whole hears.
But without effort he sets in motion all things by mind and thought.”
The second to last line meant that he held that God could not have organs, and since he could not make the leap to His having no body, he concluded He was a sphere — the perfect shape — and homogenous.