Writing religious characters

[The Big Peat]

In contrast, a character type I don't see often is someone who passionately believes their religion but has strong empathy, so they don't look down on those who disagree. This would make something of a weeping prophet type, desperately warning people at great cost to him/herself out of genuine concern, even love, for others. It seems there is great tragic possibility in such a character...

Most of the Christians in Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files are this if I read you right, as are any number of Source Priests in David Gemmell's books. A more humourous look at this would be Mightily Oats in Pratchett's Carpe Jugulum.

 

[Joshua Jones]

Most of the Christians in Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files are this if I read you right, as are any number of Source Priests in David Gemmell's books. A more humourous look at this would be Mightily Oats in Pratchett's Carpe Jugulum.

Interesting; I haven't read any of these yet, as my reading typically revolves around beta reading and SF, so maybe I will need to branch out a bit... Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[The Big Peat]

Interesting; I haven't read any of these yet, as my reading typically revolves around beta reading and SF, so maybe I will need to branch out a bit... Thanks for the suggestions!

I'd offer you some Sci-Fi suggestions, but its not really my cup of tea.

You might also enjoy Pratchett's Small Gods. Its a satire on religion, but one that is faceted enough that a lot of different people have seen exactly what they want to see in it (appropriately enough I suppose). A lot of different takes on what belief is and why it matters.

Mercedes Lackey's Mage Storm trilogy also has some very benevolent priests. I think its maybe more common in Fantasy than Sci-Fi.

 

[sknox]

Good topic. I'll add a suggestion as to why religion does not form more a part of stories, in any genre. We are a secular society. Most people grow up with very little knowledge of Christianity (I'm less sure about Islam or Judaism, and even less sure about Hindu, Buddhism, etc). The people, concepts, and rhetoric of Christianity are much less in evidence, people are rarely exposed. And, as others have pointed out, much of what happens when religion does enter the conversation is condemnatory, satirical, or simply dismissive. That's not a criticism; it's the observation of a medieval historian. It's harder to write about something when one's vocabulary is so thin.

That said, I'll also put forward this suggestion: there's more to religion than Christianity. Both SF and F writers fall down sharply here. When they "invent" a religion, it's nearly always either pseudo-Christian or explicitly Christian. Or it's some flavor of tribal animism. Can't we be more inventive? The opportunities are there--we deal with alien species, or fantasy races, where we are free to layer in a religion with any number of intriguing characteristics.

All too often, though, a religion gets created that is nothing more than a bad stereotype of what the author thinks the medieval Roman Catholic Church was like. Or, if satire, it's so the author can dress up priests in silly clothes and make them say silly things. Or appalling things. There's a place for that, but surely that's not the only place.

I agree with Jones on this. There's an opportunity here that most writers are missing.

 

[sknox]

So, money -> mouth

The elves of Altearth don't have an organized religion. My elves are pretty disorganized in general--no centralized government, not a lot of unity even at the local level. Individualism is highly prized among elves, and they find organized religion somewhere between incomprehensible and repellent. They will respect it among others, but can't help but regard it as a kind of failing.

They do, however, hold that there are spirits in the world. In fact, much like animist religions, they see everything as having a spirit, though these spirits are more like a philosophical essence, or what the Romans call a genius. They believe the only way to truly understand a thing is to understand its spirit. Many elves go on a form of spirit quest, to gain such understanding. It's no good trying to read books. Every individual, because they themselves are spirits, must confront other spirits for themselves. I suppose one might just as readily call this a philosophy as a religion, but elves take it very, very seriously.

Altearth dwarves practice what the foolish call ancestor worship, but dwarves do not worship ancestors. They revere them. The distinction is important. Reverence is offered at the level of the family, the clan, and the canton (a dwarf political unit that is also cultural and religious). Aligning clan and canton with the ancestors is how one gains and maintains peace and prosperity. Most of this is intensely private. Practices vary across the cantons, so it's difficult to make generalizations. There are outward symbols--totems, statues, votaries--but in all cases these things attain position only through the magic used during the crafting. There is no priesthood, but there is a strong oral tradition. Those who are knowledgeable in that tradition are respected.

OK, those are two. I don't have a lot of depth in either because I try not to design beforehand but rather let details emerge as I write specific stories. I have yet to address religious practices of ogres, sprites, or gnomes. I know my orcs are monotheists that worship the sun. They have a priesthood, who are the only ones allowed to practice magic (done entirely through prayer). But that's as far as I've got with them. No orcs have appeared in Altearth tales yet.

 

[Lafayette]

Except Cathbad's.

And mine.

 

[Dan Jones]

I'd like personally to see more exploration of the religious/spiritual mindset in SFF, because I like the ambiguity, but to be successful, I think that would have to come from writers who are sympathetic to both sides, and people tend to be one way or the other.

I agree wholeheartedly with this, and it's something that's sorely lacking in all literature IMO, not just SFF. SFF probably suffers more than most genres in this respect though, perhaps because most SFF writers and readers (in my observations) tend towards the athiestic end of the spectrum and a certain level of disdain for religions. I always reasoned that this was because most SF fans, at least, believed in "science" and a pragmatic view of the universe, leaving no room for the esoteric elements, as you describe. That science and religion are fundamentally incompatible.

Which is a shame, because it carries an assumption that these ancient practices and texts have nothing to teach, which to me just seems plain daft. My familiarity with religious/sacred texts stretches only as far as the Bible and some elements of the Koran (particularly the eschatological divinations, which are every bit as wazzo as the Christian ones), but it strikes me that the psychological truth and depth and profundity of the early Old Testament stories is staggering, and worth paying attention to.

As I've gotten older I've re-evaluated my relationship with religion. I did go through a phase of being seduced by the trendy zeal of some celebrity athiests, but I soon realised that reducing "believers" to a lumpen bunch of morons who believed in a "sky-fairy" was unsophisticated at best, and arrogant or even unhinged posturing at worst, making them little better than the zany preacher who stood outside Ealing Broadway tube station yelling passages from Deuteronomy. Now for me, the very question of "believing in God" is a very complex and multi-faceted question. And I simply think that most people nowadays want to do complex and multi-faceted. They want to pick a side and then have a Twitter war.

Some folks around here know that in my day job I work for the UK Space Agency on a programme developing space robotics and intelligent systems for orbital missions and planetary exploration. It's not Luddite stuff. And I've found that doing this sort of engineering-focused work doesn't come at the expense of sympathy or understanding of religions; just the opposite in fact. The human endeavour to discover new things, but to temper that discovery with the respect for our collective and individual histories, is a fundamental aspect of the ancient religions, going all the way back to Genesis.

Back to SFF, then. SF in particular is often about exploration of boundaries (though Fantasy also is frequently about exploration of strange lands), be it technical, geographical or inter-species, and asks questions about our role in it. These are questions posed by the very earliest of religious texts (ie leaving the garden of Eden).

The one book that has married science and religion most successfully, and attempted to rectify the growing modern disparity between the two, and explore their complex relationship was Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent, which blew me away, and I'd recommend to everyone. It's not strictly speaking SFF, but it does tend towards the speculative, and particularly the phenomenological gaps at the edge of our knowledge, which we fill with scientific endeavour and religious reason.

For my part, I've wanted to explore the potential conflicts and reconciliations between science and religion in my a novel which I've parked for now, as it requires more intense research and immersion than I'm able to give it right now. In my WIP the characters frequently meet in a ruined, hollowed-out church, which is symbolic in a Miltonesque way (ie the abandonment of the divine in favour of one's own intellectual self-worship, which is posited in Paradise Lost as Lucifer, the most fantastic of the angels but falls, as he is intellect decoupled from God), and it does explore themes of creation and freedom, which are both intrinstic to many religious lines of thought, but taking on this big stuff is difficult, and scary.

TL: DR - Science snd religion often seen as adversarial, or opposing forces, but there are deeper psychological truths that apply to both, and therein lies the possibility of exploring reconciliation.

 

[HareBrain]

And I simply think that most people nowadays want to do complex and multi-faceted. They want to pick a side and then have a Twitter war.

I think most readers would understand that this is a typo, but to clarify, I assume you actually meant "few people"?

 

[Joshua Jones]

I agree wholeheartedly with this, and it's something that's sorely lacking in all literature IMO, not just SFF. SFF probably suffers more than most genres in this respect though, perhaps because most SFF writers and readers (in my observations) tend towards the athiestic end of the spectrum and a certain level of disdain for religions. I always reasoned that this was because most SF fans, at least, believed in "science" and a pragmatic view of the universe, leaving no room for the esoteric elements, as you describe. That science and religion are fundamentally incompatible.

Which is a shame, because it carries an assumption that these ancient practices and texts have nothing to teach, which to me just seems plain daft. My familiarity with religious/sacred texts stretches only as far as the Bible and some elements of the Koran (particularly the eschatological divinations, which are every bit as wazzo as the Christian ones), but it strikes me that the psychological truth and depth and profundity of the early Old Testament stories is staggering, and worth paying attention to.

As I've gotten older I've re-evaluated my relationship with religion. I did go through a phase of being seduced by the trendy zeal of some celebrity athiests, but I soon realised that reducing "believers" to a lumpen bunch of morons who believed in a "sky-fairy" was unsophisticated at best, and arrogant or even unhinged posturing at worst, making them little better than the zany preacher who stood outside Ealing Broadway tube station yelling passages from Deuteronomy. Now for me, the very question of "believing in God" is a very complex and multi-faceted question. And I simply think that most people nowadays want to do complex and multi-faceted. They want to pick a side and then have a Twitter war.

Some folks around here know that in my day job I work for the UK Space Agency on a programme developing space robotics and intelligent systems for orbital missions and planetary exploration. It's not Luddite stuff. And I've found that doing this sort of engineering-focused work doesn't come at the expense of sympathy or understanding of religions; just the opposite in fact. The human endeavour to discover new things, but to temper that discovery with the respect for our collective and individual histories, is a fundamental aspect of the ancient religions, going all the way back to Genesis.

Back to SFF, then. SF in particular is often about exploration of boundaries (though Fantasy also is frequently about exploration of strange lands), be it technical, geographical or inter-species, and asks questions about our role in it. These are questions posed by the very earliest of religious texts (ie leaving the garden of Eden).

The one book that has married science and religion most successfully, and attempted to rectify the growing modern disparity between the two, and explore their complex relationship was Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent, which blew me away, and I'd recommend to everyone. It's not strictly speaking SFF, but it does tend towards the speculative, and particularly the phenomenological gaps at the edge of our knowledge, which we fill with scientific endeavour and religious reason.

For my part, I've wanted to explore the potential conflicts and reconciliations between science and religion in my a novel which I've parked for now, as it requires more intense research and immersion than I'm able to give it right now. In my WIP the characters frequently meet in a ruined, hollowed-out church, which is symbolic in a Miltonesque way (ie the abandonment of the divine in favour of one's own intellectual self-worship, which is posited in Paradise Lost as Lucifer, the most fantastic of the angels but falls, as he is intellect decoupled from God), and it does explore themes of creation and freedom, which are both intrinstic to many religious lines of thought, but taking on this big stuff is difficult, and scary.

TL: DR - Science snd religion often seen as adversarial, or opposing forces, but there are deeper psychological truths that apply to both, and therein lies the possibility of exploring reconciliation.

Wow, great post! I wholeheartedly agree with you at just about every point, especially about the celebrity athiests being not much different than the one who close their eyes and shout their religious points over the arguments of others. Both seem to operate under the assumption that there is something morally or intellectually wrong with those who disagree, and cannot fathom how an intelligent person could come to a different conclusion. This is what I was trying to get at with the empathy part; if we can can honestly say we understand how someone we disagree with could come to their position on the matter, we can have intelligent and peaceful conversations about contentious subjects with a range of people. Cultivating this seems, in my mind, to be the antidote to the social media wars we so often have.

I also noticed a bit of an agnostic/athiest bent toward SF readers and authors. I can't help but wonder, though, if this is as a result of something intrinsic in SF (or intrinsic to the perceived gulf between science and religion) or a result of the frequent stereotypes of religious people found in SF drawing in those antagonistic of religion while pushing away more religiously oriented people. Do you have any thoughts on this?

BTW, thank you for the work you do! The research you are part of makes the writing I do possible.

 

[Dan Jones]

I think most readers would understand that this is a typo, but to clarify, I assume you actually meant "few people"?

Yes quite right , and there'd another typo in there, I missed out a "not" somewhere. But when the few possess the loudest voices then they can be perceived as being the many, or "most."

 

[HareBrain]

there'd another typo in there

And yet another! Do you just flail at the keyboard with your fists?

 

[Cathbad]

Do you just flail at the keyboard with your fists?

That's not the right way??

 

[Joshua Jones]

That's not the right way??

Only for twitter, my friend. Elbows for Facebook, and typically open hand slaps for this forum. Or unedited voice to text. That works too...

 

[sknox]

I don't think it's so much that SF authors tend toward atheism as it is we live in a profoundly secular society. People do not receive an education in religion, and we've lost most of our religious vocabulary. I'm not talking tenets of faith; still less am I talking about a mere belief in a deity, which is what most discussion about religions are reduced to these days. I'm talking about the wide-ranging knowledge of Bible stories, the familiarity with saints (and heroic martyrs, for the Protestants), the local legends about miracles that happened in the next village over or in grandma's day. There was breadth and depth to religious experience that is simply absent in modern society.

So, the writer comes to a story without the vocabulary in the first place. The ideas, the burning controversies, the passion of religion are more than foreign, they're non-existent. In the second place, the same is true for most of the readers, so that even were such a story written, it would not resonate.

The result is, even where religion is employed, it gets reduced to a caricature, usually as some manifestation of the Evil Empire, or else of barbaric superstition.

To put it another way, it's not that writers are hostile to religion. They're simply tone-deaf and ignorant. There are exceptions, of course, but they're few. I leave aside the whole genre of Christian fantasy, which is sui generis.

 

[Toby Frost]

I've been writing fantasy set in a world based on our own Renaissance, in which almost every human character sincerely believes in one or other church of the same god (it's essentially Europe). That means that the good characters have to be honest believers, even if they are wrestling with their faith. Such people are much harder to write than charlatans or fanatics.

I suppose there are a range of approaches to religion, from the bishop who sees himself as a conduit for righteous judgment, to the merchant who regards God as a friend and business partner, to the street-thief who invokes the saints almost like loa in Voodoo.

However, I also think that one of the strongest human emotions is "taking pleasure in the righteous persecution of heretics". It's so prevalent that I'm surprised we don't have a single word for it ("Sadism" or "cruelty" aren't quite right, because they don't capture the feeling of righteousness in the persecutor). It involves signing up to a religion or cause, holding that that cause is utterly correct, and persecuting anyone who thinks differently, safe in the knowledge that whatever pain you cause, it's not only enjoyable to inflict but completely justified. You can see this in modern politics - I don't think I need give examples.

I suppose this is a long-winded way of saying "fanatics are bad", but I think there is that conflict within religion, between the desire to do good (that meaningless phrase "a religion of peace" comes to mind) and the temptation to indulge in the pleasure of righteous cruelty.

 

[sknox]

"It involves signing up to a religion or cause, holding that that cause is utterly correct, and persecuting anyone who thinks differently, safe in the knowledge that whatever pain you cause, it's not only enjoyable to inflict but completely justified. "

I think it's called patriotism. <wink>

Edited to add: Nation has to a large extent taken up the roles formerly served by Church.

 

[Toby Frost]

That's certainly what serious nationalism is. That said, almost any "ism" can work like that provided you've got the mindset (or lack of mind). It's the combination of viciousness and absolutism that's key.

 

[Eli Grey]

DISCLAIMER - this thread is not intended to be a discussion of specific religious systems and their comparitive value, or of religion as a whole. Let's agree to make this thread easy for the mods by staying focused on characters.

I decided to watch Altered Carbon a few weeks ago, and while I enjoyed the cyberpunk setting and storyline, I found the depiction of religious people to be somewhat... lacking. That got me thinking about how religious people are depicted in SF as a whole, and it seems that most religious persons are the Luddite sort, which reject (insert plot relevant technology here) for reasons typically not expanded upon beyond saying it is against nature/sin (the Neo-C are of this sort, even though there is no category in the Catholic Church for the sort of sin they consider resleeving).

My question is, with so much emphasis on diversity in present times, why does there seem to be no interest in the diversity which exists among religious persons, within the same religion or in different ones? Or, am I just missing what is out there?

Culture dictates what gets put into a script or what gets put into the final draft of a novel. I feel strongly that the call for diversity is misleading in Hollywood and in other professions. Especially when it comes to religion and spiritual beliefs. Religion, the way I see it, suggests restriction, conviction, and sacrifices. No one wants to be restricted or be made to feel a certain way about their lifestyle. And no one ever really wants to make any kind of sacrifice. And a progressive culture would want audiences, especially younger generations, to view religion as a hinderance and understandably so. Characters who show the slightest bit of spirituality or decorum in films and tv shows always come off as zany and moronic to me. It's not necessarily because they would be in real life, but because it serves a greater purpose that such an individual does come off as zany or moronic. The writers are smart and they get paid to condition us to think and behave a certain way towards any institution of faith or practice.

 

[Toby Frost]

This is the point at which I have to disagree. I am, for the record, somewhere in the political centre (a “red Tory”, as the charming people on the far left like to say), and some internet “wokeness” just seems to me to be hot air. However, while there is a slight bias in the (British) media towards that kind of agenda (partly, I think because the media is urban-centred, as if the country is largely desert outside London and Birmingham), I don’t think it is the sort of large-scale social programming that some allege. It isn’t anti-religion as such, since a lot of minorities are very religious (including Christians) and I very much doubt the cultural powers that be would want to criticize them at all (the “it’s their culture” argument). In that way, I think there is a bias towards religion, or at least towards its trappings.

However, there is a religious mentality that is pretty alien to modern thinking, but I think that many, perhaps most, churchgoers don’t have it; and not having it is not confined to the “progressives” or the political left (I'd add stereotypical businessmen or civil servants, for instance). The best SFF depiction I can think of is the character of Camaris in Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, not because he subscribes to a set of political views, but because all his major decisions seem to require him to ask “What would God think of this?”. I think characters who are religiously observant are fairly frequent, but characters who are sincerely guided by religious principle are quite rare, and characters who are genuinely guided and not maniacs are very rare.

Mods, please feel free to delete the above if overly political.

 

[The Big Peat]

Culture dictates what gets put into a script or what gets put into the final draft of a novel. I feel strongly that the call for diversity is misleading in Hollywood and in other professions. Especially when it comes to religion and spiritual beliefs. Religion, the way I see it, suggests restriction, conviction, and sacrifices. No one wants to be restricted or be made to feel a certain way about their lifestyle. And no one ever really wants to make any kind of sacrifice. And a progressive culture would want audiences, especially younger generations, to view religion as a hinderance and understandably so. Characters who show the slightest bit of spirituality or decorum in films and tv shows always come off as zany and moronic to me. It's not necessarily because they would be in real life, but because it serves a greater purpose that such an individual does come off as zany or moronic. The writers are smart and they get paid to condition us to think and behave a certain way towards any institution of faith or practice.

I'll grant that restrictions are rarely sexy, but sacrifice is still honoured and respected. Maybe people don't want to do it themselves, but there's a lot of things that people don't want to do themselves but like to be entertained by fictional depictions of.

As such (and for other reasons), I think there's an interest in religious devotion in fiction even among the non-religious. And I think that when talking about fiction, the mainstream is wide enough and broad enough that there are plenty of writers who aren't getting paid to condition us negatively in matters of faith and practice.