Yesterday I talked about politics and today I talk about religion. Are there any more controversial subjects in existence? I doubt it. Probably because there are no two subjects that people care about quite as passionately. Whether you believe in God or not, it is undeniable that religion is an important part of the human experience. It has been with us since the dawn of civilization and it plays a major part in every culture on the planet. Which leads us to the question, how large a role should religion and spirituality play in fantasy?
I confess that I am often very disappointed by portrayals of religion in fantasy. Too often authors resort to using caricatures of organized churches and representing members of such churches as either ignorant or malicious. There is no depth to it, only the author's personal bias. Why is it that some authors have no trouble exploring the magical realms of the imagination but utterly fail to understand the natural human inclination to seek the divine? I don't know. On the other end of the spectrum there is The Lord of the Rings, which for all its breadth of history and culture fails to explore religion at all. As much as I love Tolkien's work, I wish I could know more about what the peoples of Middle-earth believed and valued. Reading The Silmarillion will tell you about Eru, the creator, and the Valar, his servants, but it will not tell you much about the relationship of the Elves, Men, Dwarves and Hobbits of Middle-earth with them.
As a reader, I long for a work of fantasy that is not afraid to explore religious themes without demonizing religion. This is something I hope to accomplish with my own writing and why I have chosen Ancient Egypt as my inspiration. Most people think of Egyptian religion as a basic pantheistic "god of this, god of that" formula. But, as I've said before, Egyptian philosophy and belief was infinitely more complex and meaningful than that. Egyptian thought was very different than modern thought (for the better in many cases, I think) but it was not primitive or barbaric as modern people like to think. (Modern people love to think that we know better than everyone else who lived a long time ago because we have better technology, but I would venture to suggest that the opposite is actually true for precisely that same reason. Humanity may, on the whole, have more information nowadays but we also, on the whole, think less. Who needs to think when you can Google everything? But I digress.) My goal with my fantasy world and my current WIP is to use Egyptian belief and philosophy (with some Greek philosophy thrown in for good measure) as a foundation for exploring some deeply religious and deeply human themes.
I know that probably scares some people off. After all, many authors tend to becoming obnoxiously overbearing when they get up on their soapboxes and start putting messages in their characters' mouths. (I'm looking at you, Terry Goodkind.) That's certainly not what I want. I don't want to preach. I don't have a message for you. But I do want my characters to struggle with and explore such questions of life the universe and everything that are, inextricably, tied into religion. I want them to have morals and values that are not only based on what they want, but on what they believe is right and good. I want to write much more than a book about a quest. I want to write a book that deals with universal truths. I think you can only do that if you stop to ask, "Is there something outside of myself that is greater than I am?" And the followup question, "If so, what do I do about it?"
How do you feel about religious themes in the books you read? Does it turn you off? Interest you? Do you like exploring religious themes in your own writing?
Are you suggesting that I am not the pinnacle and summit of evolution and social development? I'll have you know I poop on a toilet. That makes me smarter than everyone else who DIDN'T have a toilet. So much smarter, in fact, that I don't have to understand their ideas or even acknowledge that those savages might have had ideas.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a problem with religion in novels, just the preaching. I think messages tend to muck up the works.
ReplyDeleteI had no intention of tackling religion in my novel, but it came up anyway. Once you start talking about a man readying for battle, you have to imagine what would be on his mind, and I assume one of those things would be the afterlife. Since my novel is set in the future, I had to decide what kind of belief systems would be in place -- especially given that the world is set in a time after an apocalyptic event. Something like that would certainly alter how a society views God, and I think it shows in the novel.
Anyway, long-winded answer, but I think it is an important subject in literature.
i commend you for wanting to explore this in your novel. i didn't put any kind of religion in my fantasy novel (just didn't think about it) and now i regret it as i write the sequel. honestly, when things go bad, who's the first person we generally rail at? God (in whatever form we believe in him) and when things go very badly for my characters, they have no one to rail at.
ReplyDeleteI tend to think that religion is necessary in fantasy novels, particularly if there is magic. I mean, that's surely evidence of a higher power, isn't it? Or at least an understanding of nature that is deeper than our own. It always secretly bothered me in Harry Potter that the kids at Hogwarts celebrated Christmas, but there was no mention of how the Christian tradition fitted in with their own history. Or maybe that was just a can of worms that JK Rowling didn't want to open!
ReplyDeleteNo one wants to be preached to.
ReplyDeleteI am a Christian and make no apologies for that. However, I decided to leave the aspect of religion out of my science fiction story. It just wasn't needed and I didn't want to promote an agenda.
Yeah, no preaching.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed Hermann Hesse's Siddartha - about searching.
Amen to the preaching! Whatever the particular agenda of the author, it needs to stay out of the novel. Which is why my kids never cared for the Berenstein Bears when they were little. They got turned off by the too-obvious agendas.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I've written anything that wasn't an exploration of religious tension on some levels (or pure slapstick). That said, I'm far more interested in the politics of religion and the behaviours associated with it than I am in wrestling with the the ineffable - an insoluble matter of faith trod and re-trod to no avail or worse, reduced to chest-beating, is not something I'd be inclined to read or write.
ReplyDeleteWell said. I shy away from modern religion but, as a fantasy writer, gods and goddesses populate my stories, generally creating havoc.
ReplyDeleteReligion is an aspect I need to work on more in my fantasy novels. I didn't even have any form of religions in my epic fantasy idea until recently and I haven't worked it into the world yet. This is what happens when the fantasy writer doesn't world build before writing.
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