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Post by j2starshine on Feb 16, 2012 23:17:45 GMT -5
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Post by Kessie on Feb 17, 2012 10:30:10 GMT -5
Ooh, great article! The fundamental questions that religions answer, the supernatural elements, the religious leaders, and associated rituals.
It does make writing Christianity a little clearer, too, because once you've broken it down you can see how it affects the story.
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Post by j2starshine on Mar 11, 2012 15:22:35 GMT -5
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Post by Bainespal on Mar 13, 2012 19:51:00 GMT -5
Thanks for sharing those links. I think the articles are a good starting point in this discussion, and I think this issue is definitely relevant to Christian speculative fiction.
If the fantasy world is going to have a religious system in place, is there going to be a direct parallel to Christianity? I think the answer should probably be no, but there can perhaps be individual religious elements that happen to be similar to our own, if they arise naturally out of the context of the worldbuilding. Specifically, if there is to be a pseudo-Bible, it had better be different from our Bible and be connected with the unique history and culture of the people(s) of the imaginary world.
I think Aslan works in The Chronicles of Narnia precisely because he's a lion. I think the fact that he is a lion and not a man in Narnia actually makes him a better symbol or metaphor of Christ.
Edit: I just realized that I should be less assertive about this. There is definitely at least one good exception -- fantasies that are also alternate histories, or else high fantasy whose history is very closely modeled after real-world history. For instance, Mr. Luke's world seems to try to answer the question, "What if Christianity and the historical church existed in a world full of elves and dwarves and Sachalin?" I think that's a question that fantasy is very fit to answer.
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Post by j2starshine on Mar 13, 2012 21:52:18 GMT -5
Very good points Bainespal. I agree about it rising naturally from the worldbuilding and I agree about the speculative fiction set in our own world and how it uses the religious structures already in place, but due to the nature of speculative fiction I wonder if there will always be exceptions :-)
But I've seen books get ripped apart because the story doesn't agree with their personal religious doctrines like The Shack. As we approach religion in speculative fiction I think we have to read it with grace and suspend our disbelief as well to see how it affects the setting, characters, etc... Of course, The Shack had some...moments of...doctrinal stuff...but we still have to treat it like a piece of fictional work and take away what we take away from it.
So I wonder... Does it matter whether the work is geared toward the general market or the Christian market?
In my writing, I find religion an important aspect of the story, but I've struggled with the balance of direct parallel and creating something entirely different yet my worldview finds it way in there and one can still see resemblance to Christianity. I think the articles were helpful to take a step away from our own religious experiences/practices and try to see it from the outside looking in so that it is an integral part of the story and not just there because we slapped a religious system in place to bring people to God. Not sure I'm there yet, only time will tell what readers get from the stories I've created.
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Post by Kristen on Mar 17, 2012 14:06:36 GMT -5
Bainespal, thanks for editing your comment. I think a lot of spec fic does include direct parallels to Christianity, and it works because readers think "hey, that's like ___" and they relate to it because of that. I know that was my feeling about the savior figure in Karen Hancock's Legends of the Guardian King. Of course, as j2 points out, it depends on the market. Non-Christian readers would probably react differently.
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Post by fluke on Mar 28, 2012 15:51:36 GMT -5
Summa Elvetica also deals with that question and I hope to one day see more in that line.
For my own works, wait until we get to the stories where the Elven and Dwarven branches of Christianity show up--The Elven Way and Dwarven Orthodoxy.
I decided to make the religion so Christian for the same reason that GK Chesterton came back to Christianity from his atheism. Though I started the world book before I had even heard of Mr. Chesterton. While coming out of his atheism, GKC decided to "make a religion." His goal was to show that no human religion was perfect. He explored the big questions in life: purpose, human interaction, and the mysteris of existence. What doctrines would the perfect religion hold, what morals would it teach? As he worked through major issues, he found that his solution matched Christianity every time. He wrote in Orthodoxy "I felt like a man who had sailed out on the ocean and thought he had discovered a new island only to find out that he had discovered England."
GK Chesterton realized that Christianity was not only right for his needs but that it was right for all.
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Post by j2starshine on Mar 29, 2012 14:44:18 GMT -5
That's pretty cool, fluke.
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Post by Bainespal on Mar 30, 2012 19:18:43 GMT -5
I decided to make the religion so Christian for the same reason that GK Chesterton came back to Christianity from his atheism. Though I started the world book before I had even heard of Mr. Chesterton. While coming out of his atheism, GKC decided to "make a religion." His goal was to show that no human religion was perfect. He explored the big questions in life: purpose, human interaction, and the mysteris of existence. What doctrines would the perfect religion hold, what morals would it teach? As he worked through major issues, he found that his solution matched Christianity every time. He wrote in Orthodoxy "I felt like a man who had sailed out on the ocean and thought he had discovered a new island only to find out that he had discovered England." GK Chesterton realized that Christianity was not only right for his needs but that it was right for all. This is deep, and I believe that it is true. How does it affect mythopoeia/worldbuilding? I think this is very dependent on how the secondary world compares to our world. Is it a place where we project our deepest dreams and see good and evil take definite form? In that case, any direct religion might not be appropriate. Is it a place where supernatural things happen all the time (more than in our own world)? If so, religion might not have need of many ceremonies or traditions, because the people have direct access to things that at least appear to be transcendent, reducing the need for symbolic rituals. Or is the secondary world a gritty reality like our own, only different? In that case, maybe religion should appear much as it does to us. By the way, I really long to read Orthodoxy; I'm sure Chesterton has many insights that I need.
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Post by Kristen on Mar 30, 2012 21:02:28 GMT -5
fluke, I didn't know that Chesterton story. Moving Orthodoxy a little higher on my reading list now... I kind of did something like that in a SF short story I wrote years ago, when I was unchurched. I needed a religion as part of the conflict, so I started making a list of all the qualities I wanted this "fictitious" religion to have, and when I looked at the finished list, I realized I had Christianity. Saved me th trouble of inventing scriptures anyway. I think writing that story was probably my first step back toward the church, because I had to study my Bible to find the necessary scriptures.
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Post by tjcliff on Mar 30, 2012 22:32:02 GMT -5
Bain, I only half agree with where you are coming from in terms of the necessity of religion in a fantasy setting. Absolutely, if a setting is gritty and grimey like our world, or at the very least based in realism, then of course organized religion is applicable, and would add a lot of depth to the history.
But even if a setting is as fantastic as possible - either one in which all of the players ARE good/evil with no moral gray areas, or one in which supernatural occurances abound - I think that religion can still be very appropriate.
In that vein it might benefit a writer to study the anthropological side of religion, and apply it to a fantasy setting. Humans love symbolism. I think that its in our nature. Symbolism offers people - and characters - an opportunity to see where/when divine intervention is occuring, and rituals associated with symbols serve as a way to reciprocate that with God, or whatever fictional deity there is in the story.
Let me stop there though, because I know that you all know what symbolism is and how it works. My point in skimming the surface of it was this: Even in the most supernatural setting - with people shooting fireballs from their hands or curing plagues through magic, or whatever - people are still going to be drawn toward a ritual that recognizes that power. Religion is the extension of those rituals, and I think that humans use symbols and rituals to feel closer to their Maker.
Like I said - I don't entirely disagree. I think each setting brings its own level of limitation, but I also think that taking steps to develop a religion with those setting limitations in mind will make for a much more layered and ultimately much more rewarding world.
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Post by j2starshine on Mar 30, 2012 23:03:08 GMT -5
Kristen, that is really cool testimony! the old testament is filled with rituals, etc to help them to remember what God has done in their lives. this is getting deep alas, I must go...I will have to return later and add some thoughts
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Post by Bainespal on Mar 31, 2012 7:53:52 GMT -5
But even if a setting is as fantastic as possible - either one in which all of the players ARE good/evil with no moral gray areas, or one in which supernatural occurances abound - I think that religion can still be very appropriate. In that vein it might benefit a writer to study the anthropological side of religion, and apply it to a fantasy setting. Humans love symbolism. I think that its in our nature. Symbolism offers people - and characters - an opportunity to see where/when divine intervention is occuring, and rituals associated with symbols serve as a way to reciprocate that with God, or whatever fictional deity there is in the story. Let me stop there though, because I know that you all know what symbolism is and how it works. My point in skimming the surface of it was this: Even in the most supernatural setting - with people shooting fireballs from their hands or curing plagues through magic, or whatever - people are still going to be drawn toward a ritual that recognizes that power. Religion is the extension of those rituals, and I think that humans use symbols and rituals to feel closer to their Maker. You must be right about that, because symbols hold more emotional power for me than any other story element. One important function of symbols is that they bridge the outward details of the worldbuilding with the deeper mythopoeia, which includes the religious background of the world. What are some examples of strong symbols in secondary worlds? The first one that comes to my mind is Tolkien's White Tree, which has tremendous meaning to the people of Middle Earth. Another one of my favorite fantasies is The Wheel of Time, and that series is full of internal symbols. Some of them, like the heron that marks Blademasters' sword blades, are only interesting aspects of the worldbuilding. Others, like the symbol of the Wheel, the Dragon, and the Great Serpent go deeper, connecting the people of that world with Eternity and with the Creator. In The Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan himself is a symbol to the people of Narnia, because he represents victory and the end oppression to them. Aslan is a different kind of symbol, though, since he's not just a motif inscribed on various things, and because he has a slightly different meaning to the Pevensie children (or takes on more depth to them), because they have had personal experience relating to him. So, how do these symbols relate to the presence or absence of religion itself in the outward setting? Both Middle Earth and Narnia are deeply spiritual worlds, and yet, we don't see any system of churches/temples or sacred texts in those lands. Can we assume that the external practice of religion does indeed exist in those worlds but was simply never relevant enough to be mentioned in the plot of the books? Here, I'm making a distinction between ultimate religion (which I think is always present even if it's not deeply developed) and the practice of rituals.
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Post by tjcliff on Mar 31, 2012 10:02:26 GMT -5
That is actually a great point that I hadn't thought on. From what I remember of Tolkien, I don't readily recall any temples or churches or anything of that sort that would indicate an organized form of worship, but the world is indeed very spiritual. I would point out the fact that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings border on the realm of breaking the fourth wall. Essentially, the novel The Hobbit that we hold in our hands as we read it is the same as There and Back Again: A Hobbit's Tale. With that in mind, those stories *COULD* serve as a religious text - a gospel, if you will. By extension - we could consider the Silmarillion the Middle Earth version of the Old Testament! I've always said that no matter how much audiences applaud his worldbuilding, Tolkien will always be underrated. There are layers upon layers at work in Middle Earth - and it's so complex! He's a tough nut to crack, that Tolkien!
One of the difficulties of including a religion or symbols in a written piece comes from audience perspective and association. To one reader, the White Tree of Gondor could be the last bastion of hope, still standing after centuries of hanging by a thread - much like the Gondorian people. To a Christian audience, I imagine that it carries with it its own connotations - perhaps the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, or maybe even the crucifix itself. So it acts as a wonderful symbol for both the reader and the characters themselves - while operating in a fantasy setting where the division of good v evil is pretty clear. (The trouble with Tolkien, though, is his obvious love of Nordic traditions like elves and dwarves. In this sense, the White Tree lends itself more to Yggdrasil.)
I'm trying to think of characters that serve as symbols to characters within that world, in the same way that you pointed out Aslan from Narnia. I don't think Tolkien's symbols work THAT directly. I see Tolkien's symbols as images - nature, mills and "factories" that churn out armor for war. In Aslan, I think he's less of a "symbol" than he is a figurehead or martyr. But maybe I'm just splitting hairs, because whether it's a symbol or an icon/martyr, ideally the same message is being delivered.
As far as the distinction between religious faith and religious practice, I think it's fair to say that there isn't a wholly formed religion in Middle Earth. I don't think there is or ever was a church, with clergy members or anything like that. I would argue, though, that in THAT world, religion was centered on nature, and the characters that showed respect and reverence to it (Tom Bombadil and the Elven race) kind of *were* practicing.
I'm going to cut this short, even though Bombadil reminded me of another point that goes along with what I was saying before. (That character drove me crazy because of all the singing - admittedly I skipped over a lot of it - but in retrospect those songs lend themselves pretty strongly to hymnals. Ok, now I'm really done!)
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Post by Kessie on Mar 31, 2012 10:20:16 GMT -5
The only religion I can remember actually having an impact on the story (because I'm so widely read in fantasy, ha ha) is in Dragonlance. There's a whole pantheon of gods and goddesses, all with their own worshipers and temples and shrines and whathaveyou. The gods intervene in people's lives, and that's where the types of magic come from (a la Dungeons and Dragons). The religion is tied closely to the individual gods.
Oh, also Diana Wynne Jones does religions pretty well. In The Dark Lord of Derkholm, one simply does not mess with the gods, and there's a god for every fantasy race (even a dragon god).
I'm having trouble thinking of good religions in fantasy, honestly. Usually it's evil cults with dark priests and human sacrifice. I think those guys make great villains. :-)
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