I didn't even realize this bugged me until now.

[velvetpage]

The scene I just posted deals with a major character coming back to the faith of his childhood. (That's the end of the spoilers for this post, I promise.) The religion in question is called S'Allumer. (As the resident consultant for the French language while Ironclaw was in the development stage, I was instrumental in naming it, but the rest of the development of the faith in the Ironclaw world had nothing to do with me.) For those among you who don't speak French, "s'allumer" is a verb meaning, "to light up." The religion venerates light, but in other respects is very Catholic in a medieval sense. Much of the vocabulary and imagery is taken from Catholicism. It's easy to do, because Christianity uses the metaphor of light quite extensively. During our first campaign, while playing Annarisse, I remember taking advantage of a bit of downtime in-game to come up with filks of Christian hymns that I could use in character, changing a few words so they'd fit. I know, heresy. :) But it was fun.

Anyhow.

It occurred to me just now, while answering a comment about the scene I just posted, that I'm fighting a common trope of modern fantasy novels. Pretty much every generic medieval/Renaissance fantasy world has something called the Church. Often there's a suggestion of a Sacrificed God, just to drive home the analogy with the force of a stake through the brain. "Hello! I'm not calling it Catholic, but that's what it is! See, I can prove it! There's a sacrificed God! Mercedes Lackey does this. So do a few of the Dragonlance books, IIRC. Terry Pratchett does it, though admittedly tongue-in-cheek. Even Ursula Vernon's new book does it. And in most of them, the Church of the Sacrificed God is, if not outright evil, then at least a cover for much of the evil that goes on. It seems most of the worshippers and pretty nearly all of the priesthood are insular, domineering, power-hungry, and phobic about some group of "others," and often more than one group of "others."

I can't remember very many instances in any of those books where there were good characters who believed in the faith and got solace, and peace, and joy from it. I remember a couple of spots where the author countered their own "The Church is Teh Evil" with a, "Yanno, they're not ALL bad" plot point, but that's about as good as it tends to get within the sword-and-sorcery genre.

I'm tired of it.

Churches are human institutions. Humans make mistakes. They do stupid, or nasty, or power-grabbing stuff from time to time. Sometimes they do those things pretty consistently. But not everyone within such an institution is doing those things. Some of them are there for good reasons. Some of them are trying to lead pious lives in tune with God. Some of them are trying to help. Some of them are even succeeding in that help. There are people who are unaware of the politics surrounding the institution, who believe it, and experience peace through it, and help others out of allegiance to it.

I have been fighting this particular element of the sword-and-sorcery genre of which Ironclaw is a sub-genre. There are evil priests in the books - it's one of the main plot points in Dream-Carver. But there are also good people striving to do right through their faith and because of it. Redemption comes about in many ways in my writing, and the faith is one of the vessels for redemption.

Comments

[mairesue.livejournal.com]

I just finished reading that little scene and the comments and was really glad and thankful for your comment and now your post. I am glad that the Church isn't the EVIL force in your book. I really appreciated that and I appreciate it even more now that you did it intentionally.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't. It was entirely character-driven, and I made a priest to begin with because I wanted to run a character with magic and a priest has magic in Ironclaw. It was unintentional, at first. It's not, now.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

Lois McMaster Bujold's Chalion series (linked by their setting moreso than by their plots/characters, so they stand alone quite well) features religious characters who aren't evil - esp. the second book, Paladin of Souls, which takes place as the main character goes on a pilgrimage. The dominant religion in the books isn't quite a straightforward Christianity-knock off, but it's definitely the dominant faith of the land, not an 'oppressed pagans = good guys' religion ;)

I also recall, although it's been a while since I've read them, that Guy Gavriel Kay's books, esp. the later ones, tend to be pretty nuanced in their portrayals of religion and religious characters, but then, he's writing so closely to history that it's fairly inevitable - nothing is either all good or all bad ;) And his made-up religions are quite obviously and directly analogous to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

Those are just two that leap to mind - I'm sure there are others.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love Guy Gavriel Kay, not least because the books that catapulted him to fame were set partially in Toronto. :) And you're right, he's much better at that. I love the references, one per book, to Fionavar, and the implication that he's telling the stories that are analogous to our own from other worlds that the Weaver has woven. I have yet to get his latest book, though. *adds to Christmas list*

I suppose it's just that my recent reading has been so clearly anti-Christian, and my book takes a very different point of view than that.

I'll look up Bujold, I've never heard of her.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

I didn't love his latest book, alas. I thought it tried to cover too many 'main' characters who weren't really connected to each other, and as a result I cared less than I should have about any of them. It wasn't awful, but I thought it less good than his previous ones :/

Bujold has written a whole whack of sci-fi that's quite awesome and entertaining (esp. the Vorkosigan series, wonderful stuff), and it's only quite recently that she's started publishing fantasy. Anyway, I can highly recommend any of her stuff (except her two newest books, but only because I haven't read them yet ;) She's great :)

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

"...it's only quite recently that she's started publishing fantasy."

Actually, she has one fantasy book to her credit prior to the Chalion series; it's just that the Vorkosigan books outsold The Spirit Ring so heavily that it's hard to remember that she wrote fantasy at all.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

That author (Guy Gavriel Kay) sounds really interesting.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

He is. Start with the Fionavar Tapestry. You're at U of T, right? You'll recognize some of the places in it. After that, I liked Tigana and the Lions of Al-Rassan best.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

My favourites of his are the two Sarantine books, followed by Tigana, then Lions, then Song for Arbonne. I would put Fionavar right down near the bottom, really - I find it overly Tolkien-ish. Not that there's anything wrong with Tolkien, but Tolkien already did it best ;) Of course, he wrote Fionavar after he'd done so much work with the Tolkien estate, editing the Silmarillion and so forth, so it's understandable that he was heavily influenced by it. I just like him better when he's doing something that's more his own ;)

Oh, and I realized that you might have been talking about Ysabel when you said you didn't have his newest book yet - I'd forgotten it was out already! I was still thinking of Last Light of the Sun as his latest, so apply my earlier review to that instead ;)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I wasn't crazy about Song for Arbonne - i couldn't get into it. I liked all the others, though. The Fionavar Tapestry is iconic, but you're right, it's not his best work. The whole Jennifer storyline drove me entirely up the wall.

I enjoyed Last Light of the Sun when it came out - I should reread it. And yes, it's Ysabel that's new. *updates Amazon wishlist*

[neosis.livejournal.com]

Personally, I thought Tigana was much, much better the the Fionavar Tapestry. Of course, that's because I didn't like Fionavar very much.

[rallymama.livejournal.com]

Don't forget about Kathryn Kurtz's Deryni books, especially the original trilogy. It's been a long, long time since I read them, but IIRC the Church is significant for both good and bad reasons, and at least one of the major characters is a non-evil priest.

The thing is, we're looking back on the medieval Church in hindsight, when it's easier to see the effects of the string-pulling and influence and corruption. What gets lost in the shuffle is the ordinary comfort that people found in their day-to-day faith. I'm glad to hear that you're bringing that aspect to the fore. The book I'm trying to write also deals with everyday faith and religious practice.

Lastly, the Church can be an easy foil for a writer who needs a widespread power structure to be at the heart of a plot point, and doesn't want to spend a lot of effort in devising a new political system! ;)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I never read Kathryn Kurtz. I could never figure out, from the list of titles inside the cover, which books had come first, and I was experienced enough with fantasy to know that starting in the middle was a bad idea, so I missed them entirely.

I think your last point is a large part of what happens. Worldbuilding is difficult enough without having to reinvent the wheel. Creating a fantasy world with institutions that are analogous to historical ones is a good hook for both author and reader to hang their understanding on. Too few of such hooks, and the world is impenetrable to anyone but the author; too many, and it (often) lacks originality. (The best exception to the last is Guy Gavriel Kay, again, some of whose books are so closely analogous that they come within a hair of historical fiction.)

[curtana.livejournal.com]

Not coincidentally, Kurtz is a medieval historian by training. I think it must be hard to know a great deal about historical institutions and then not write them as three-dimensional, nuanced creations.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I think that would appeal to me. The black-and-white, inflict-modern-values-on-historical-settings novels that are most likely to commit this offence are not generally written by historians.

[kesmun.livejournal.com]

Another couple of series that I enjoy more by Kurtz are her Adept books, which are modern/contemporary fantasy that focuses fairly heavily on the Masons, and the Temple and... books. The Temple books are about a couple of Templar knights and have fueled a definite interest in the historical Templar order. It's nuanced to a point, though there are very good and very evil. Guillaume de Nogaret is a total baddie who basically does everything he accuses the Templars of.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I meant to mention Judith Tarr as well, another historian-turned-fantasy-writer. I've only read one book of hers, but it treated the Crusades fairly sensibly. Her setting basically *is* medieval Europe, except there are elves and magic - the church officially considers elves not to have souls, while some more radical factions see them as devils. Her first trilogy, "The Hound and the Falcon," apparently features as its main character an elven monk, and deals with how he reconciles his beliefs with some of the church's teachings. I keep meaning to read it and see how she handles it.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds really interesting!

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

which books had come first

The wikipedia lists some in publication order and in story-chronological order. Take you pick, except there's more books listed in chronological order than in publication order.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deryni_novels

And Katherine Kurtz's own web site http://www.deryni.net/ links to a FAQ which contains Suggested Reading Order of the Deryni Books,
http://www.mindspring.com/~rebldavis/faq.html#order

[nickel.livejournal.com]

There are two reasons why this trend does not bother me. Principally, I recognize that the fantasy genre reflects a time period in which the Catholic church was not just shady, it was as down and dirty as any secular body, that would be from about the 8th to the 16th century. Michaelangelo finished painting the Sistine Chapel only the Pope threatened to wipe out Florence if he did not. (So my art history books tell me.)

The second reason is that the fantasy genre has a higher than average readership and authorship of marginalized religions. Marginalization creates resentment. Creating a psuedo-Catholic religion in their literature to burn in effigy is a healthy way to express these feelings of resentment and oppression. Better than pursuing hate crimes or trolling on message boards.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Oh, I recognize why it happens, and what purpose it serves. I just get tired of the lack of nuanced portrayal of a complex institution, even in the Middle Ages.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Yes; even in the Middle Ages there were renewal efforts in the Church at different times, particularly coming from monasticism.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

But there were a lot of really, really corrupt monks, as well. Actually, towards the end, they pretty much all were.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I think depictions of the Church as evil comes as a consequence of who the writers and readers are and their experiences with religion in the past generation or so. For one, many fantasy readers and writers alike are women and there's been perception that Protestant and Catholic churches have been oppressive to women. Doesn't help that this is all too often true. Also, sci-fi fantasy types tend to be outsiders in all aspects of society, so we tend to have negative perception of society's institutions due to our relations with them. Lastly, in the US, there are a lot of people who have been burned by the particular brand of Southern religiosity that has swept the country from the tail end of the sixties onto the current time. For that reason, religion tends to come across as teh Great Satanlike Thing. All this comes out in modern fantasy writing since every writer is thoroughyl emebbeded in their time whether they like it or not.

Still, it's a cheap shot. It's fantasy. You can build any world you want and Christianity did not have to develop the way it did. Had certain events gone differently, Christianity might be a loose collection cults existing on the fringes, or even morphing into very distinct national religions throughout Europe. Which is what happened in some respects. So, the question for any author is "How did the religion come to be dominant one?" There's more than one way for that to happen.

[jadedissola.livejournal.com]

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Writing can be a catharsis and sometimes you are putting yourself through therapy without even realizing it. Plus, using Christianity as a basis is easy because most people can identify with that concept easily and it requires less explanation than perhaps another religious concept that's foreign.

As for myself, I lean toward building worlds that are polytheistic. My campaign setting for FFRPG that I'm slowly working on is like this. You have your "good" gods, your "bad" gods, and some neutral ones too. They all have followers and some are more powerful than others, but overall, there's not one religion or god that binds everyone together. I think it's because I've always valued my spirituality over belonging to a religious organization. I've never given much thought to this approach or even realized it until reading what you've pointed out here and it's made me wonder if a world without a central religion is believable. Of course, I still intend to try.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

A world without a central religion is very believable because we live in one. North America is a real patchwork of faiths, denominations and cults. Not only that, but South Eastern Europe even today is where several religions intersect. In one small region you might have Russian Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Judaism and Islam all coexisting uneasily in the same place. And then there's India.

The great thing about this situation is that there's a lot material or a writer to mine. Conflict breeds plot and religion breeds the most conflict. For instance, what happens when Muslim woman of Pakistani descent marries the young Hindu boy of Gujarati descent in their home in Uganda as Idi Amin tears the country apart? This is actually the family story of a good friend of mine and it reads like a adventure novel. Change a few names, put some swords in sorcery into the real life narrative and you'd have a pretty good fantasy story. So the old adage "You can't make this stuff up!" proves itself once again.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Forgot to explain something in the above. Many of the cultures in our world have far flung diasporas that have set up distinct communities in other nations. North American Chinatowns are a good examples. In the example I cited above, you'd find culturally Indian communities all through Africa and other places the British used to own. Those communities were established long before the partition of India and Pakistan and often have both Hindu and Muslim members. Both of which might be embedded in a society with another dominant religion. So, in the setting of this real life world, what's the dominant religion from the perspective of the characters? And, what kinds of conflicts crop up in the community when young people do as young people tend to do and fall in love? What happens when a change in the dominant culture sends a wave conflict to engulf the ethnically distinct islands? Like I said this is all the story of real life friend's family, but you could easily appropriate it for use in a fantasy series. We tend to forget how unsettled the rest of the world actually as living as most of on this group do in North America.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I think I'm GOING to appropriate it. *opens Ideas file and begins to type*

And thus is next summer's chef d'oeuvre born. . . :)

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Yeah, no one has yet really tapped the Indian diaspora for literature. Unbelievable! When you talk to people of Indian descent in the N. America and Europe, they often casually throw out these epic tales of industrial nomadic life. One of my Big Ideas^TM is a series of sci-fi novels revolving around emigres of various cultures who live in a sort of extended intellectualy high tech diaspora as they travel from job to another in the global economy. The titles will be Schrodinger's Children, Newton's Prisoners and Hawking's Heirs. Look for these, oh, some time after next spring. They're nothing more than a set of notes and ideas cribbed from chatting with a couple of my globe trotting Indian friends. This all got started when I realized that you needed to calculate the Wave Equation to have any idea of where one of them would be at any given time. One of the two also had a great quote which reveals a lot: "You and me, my brown brother, are the same color. Only every pixel is reversed between the two of us." One of the two is an Indian citizen living abroad in Japan and the US and the other is an Anglo-American guy of Indian descent. They sort of meet geographically in San Francisco. Now, this is real life! Imagine the stories you can spin off all this!

PS, I hope to send off the two things to you tonight. I gotta make some progress on my homework before I can get down to the fun stuff, though.

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

Once, a reviewer dismissed Ironclaw as "yet another medieval fantasy." This blithe comment made me really sit down and re-consider, just what is medieval fantasy?

I have to give Erik Coons, one of our original authors, a lot of credit for inspiring us to look to literature on the Catholic Church, and how it grew in fits and starts whenever it bounced up against another religion. (Darn pagans giving out gifts during Saturnalia? It just so happens Christmas is at the same time! Are your locals doing a late-winter match-making ceremony while smacking virgins with februa [goat-skins]? You could celebrate St. Valentine's Day, which just happens to be in February! etc.).

I especially dislike a "Gygaxena" pantheon, where the gods are super-powerful personifications that can be interacted with directly, or even fought. There's no place for faith when the gods can be asked, directly, for their opinions. There's also no place for faith when "divine magic" can be witnessed first hand. I don't need to put my faith in God when I can see miraculous healing, resurrection, and smiting right before me.

The religions in the Ironclaw world are deliberately left as a matter of belief, and there's dissenting opinion about what is holy and what isn't. Miraculous magic tends to follow what characters personally believe, so faith becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ironclaw's religions are more gnostic -- the greater someone's knowledge, the closer they become to divine.

Our historical medieval era is filled with splinter-cells of religion, with anti-popes, heresies, cults, mysteries, and a few successful challengers such as Protestantism and Islam. We wanted to capture that same essence of religion turning into institutions that cause for great debate.

We also wanted to show the power of the church and how it radically challenged society. Formerly, only nobility could own or lease land -- but indulgences to the Church of S'allumer made it an ever-lasting body not based on inheritance. The notion that land can be owned not by blood, but by some abstract institution, does not sit well with some folks. (The Avoirdupois book references the Crusade against the Marteau.) The enemies of the church thus aren't all evil -- some of them have a legitimate, political agenda.

We even have logical challenges to the church. For example, Vaslov Jakoba is both a necromancer and a paladin, something church-folk would prefer to say is impossible ... which is why Vaslov must die!

Naturally, I enjoyed Dream-Carver's portrayal of the Church of S'allumer as a political entity, not just short-hand for "good people". I could go on and on about religion in fantasy, but I just wanted to chime in on my little corner of that debate. :^)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Since you literally wrote the book on this one, I'm glad you did chime in. :)

In the sequel I'm writing, I'm making use of one of the splinter monastic orders, the Anathasians, and of the probability that other elements in the church would consider them heretical even if that were not the party line, so to speak. And once again, the issue of a certain churchman using his power for nasty stuff rises to the fore.

I like the way the game is set in a pseudo-medieval time. It allows readers/players to use background knowledge of medieval history to colour their understanding. There are a few games that I find too dense in that respect - there's just too much background information to absorb before you can grasp the characters or plot. Ironclaw has a good mix of creative and analogous elements.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

"Churches are human institutions. Humans make mistakes. They do stupid, or nasty, or power-grabbing stuff from time to time. Sometimes they do those things pretty consistently. But not everyone within such an institution is doing those things. Some of them are there for good reasons. Some of them are trying to lead pious lives in tune with God. Some of them are trying to help. Some of them are even succeeding in that help. There are people who are unaware of the politics surrounding the institution, who believe it, and experience peace through it, and help others out of allegiance to it."

This is how I feel about quite a few evangelical Christians, especially those in churches dark_christian would categorize as dominionist. Some "dominionist" churches and groups are very scary, while there are other churches, people, and groups that get suspected of dominionism because of their links but aren't really that bad. But in both the "bad" and "not that bad" categories, there are some good people. I don't believe it's quite as black and white as the people who have been burned the worst by dominionists seem to think, although it's definitely true that there is sometimes scary stuff in places I don't expect to find it.

On a different subject, what is Ironclaw exactly?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It's a roleplaying game, of the old-fashioned tabletop type.

Forgive me - i've got two newish friends from the same friend's journal, and I can't remember which one you are. :) Are you the gamer girl who was considering coming to Hamilton to play? Because if so, Ironclaw is one of the games we come back to fairly often.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Ah, cool. And I take it there are books by various authors, including your Dream-Carver, set in the game world?

I am indeed the gamer girl who was considering coming to Hamilton to play. Are there other liberal Christians in your gaming group? If so, that gives me even more impetus to pay you guys a visit :). I also noticed that you mentioned a few entries back that you may go to FanExpo--I'm hoping to be there for some of it, though I'll probably have to work some that weekend and I'll be leaving for my family cottage on the 26th, so maybe we could meet up.

Also, if it's OK to ask, when and where did you do your undergrad and teacher's college? I checked your birth date on your profile, and it occurred to me that if you did a four-year degree straight out of high school and teacher's college right after, you'd have done your B.Ed. in the same year as my cousin who did hers at Brock's Hamilton campus.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

There's my husband and myself - most of the others are pagan and a few are atheists. :)

She was probably a year ahead of me - I went to France for a year, so I delayed my university entrance by a year. I was there in 1999-2000. But yes, I was at the Hamilton campus of Brock.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Oh, about Ironclaw books - there are two other novels besides Dream-Carver that I'm aware of set in that world, and they're both decent. There are two main game books, Ironclaw and Jadeclaw, where Ironclaw is more European and Jadeclaw more Asian. There are also a bunch of supplements, some of which were written by my husband. normanrafferty wrote Ironclaw, and he's also the publisher of my book.

[neosis.livejournal.com]

Sacrificed god? In Dragonlance?

I seem to remember a plotline about a false prophet of Mishikal leading her church and the Brothers Majere helping a true believer expose the powerhungry leader. But I don't think Mishikal really qualifies as a sacrificed god...

Of course, things change a lot when the 5th age came about, and I haven't read anything post 4th age. So are you talking about 4th age (Chronicles of Dragonlance, etc...) or 5th age (Dragons of Summer Flame, etc).


On another note have you read the Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It's been a while since I read any Dragonlance, so I may have gotten that wrong. It's a rather distant memory.

I've managed to almost entirely miss Elizabeth Moon. What's it about?

Deed of Paksenarrion

[neosis.livejournal.com]

Hmm... It's the story of a girl who leaves home (partially to escape a marriage arranged by her father) by joining a band of mercenaries. Eventually, Paksenarrion discovers that she has been called by the Saints to become a paladin.

I'd lend you the books, but unfortunately, I've never been able to find a copy of just the first book (I read it at the library in high school), so I only have the last two books of the trilogy. Now you can really only find it as an omnibus edition that has all three books in it.

[kesmun.livejournal.com]

I have to agree about this trilogy. Paks ends up being the most perfect example of a true paladin I've ever seen.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

I've actually avoided ever using the words 'god', 'angel', 'hell', 'damned', 'devil', or any closely religion-associated words in The Novel for exactly the reasons that you list. Because it seems like every fantasy novel ever has a psudo-christian faith that is eeeeevil. I didn't want to play that game, and I didn't want my readers to expect me to, so I just left it out.

The nobility worship ancestor spirits who are predictably called 'Ancestors'. Their faith is a crazy blend of religion and history with a very healthy dollop of extremely intricate family trees. The commonborn have miniature Ancestors who they call 'household ghosts', the spirits of departed familymembers who hang around to protect the homestead. The people of New Athens have Guardians, who mostly stay out of people's lives except when they're angry or making their followers insane. There are also no priests. Ancestors have Bards, household ghosts have mediums, and Guardians have Consorts.

That having been said (and I'm sure someone else has already pointed this out, but...) the sacrificial god way, WAY predates Jesus Christ. He's just the latest in an extremely long line of sacrificial kings/sacrificial gods, and you can't even point to the symbolism of the act itself and say that it's him, because he uses the exact same symbolism as most of the ones who came before, right down to being nailed to a tree and mourned by a mother goddess. So while most of these authors are probably talking about christianity, they might also be trying to impress people with how clever they are to have realized a blindingly obvious mythological truth. :P

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know about the mythological basis for the Sacrificed God - anyone who's delved extensively into C.S. Lewis has come across that fact, and Rowling makes ample use of it, too. But in recent fantasy, that's clearly not what is happening.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

I agree completely. I almost prefer the previous generation of fantasy, where everyone was an atheist.

But fantasy is a real quagmire of genre, even more so than other genre fiction. 99% of the novels are basically the same novel, except the characters have different names and (sometimes) different hairstyles.

I highly recommend Katherine Kerr's Deverry series to you. It has a multiple deity system, and while christianity is eventually introduced in a very small way, the missionary is very much viewed as the outsider, and isn't of the 'corrupt catholic paladin' type. Also, it's fairly well written and plotted, and the characters are really cool.