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

[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.