Fantasy religion and culture

[salamandraga]

So originally I was thinking about adding a few little things to help flesh out my fantasy religion while avoiding cultural appropriation. I've created the mythology and come up with the structure of the faith. My characters pray, blaspheme, and utter minced oaths. I've made holidays, festivals, and folklore. I've got holdouts still clutching to

Comments

[sei_shonanon]

"women are condescended to and certain things are viewed as womanly and thus unimportant"

I think you're going to have to revise this a bit. Clergy are authority figures in their communities, and the authority figures can't be viewed as inferior. What you could do is have these womanly things be regarded as not practical or not applicable in the larger world. Maybe they think women are pure and intellectual and holy and should be sheltered from the world in an ivory tower so they can write their books in peace (i.e. women are respected but condescended to)? Or maybe (drawing from the "cunning folk" roots) they think women are good at tending to small communities (parishes, villages, convents/monasteries, etc.) but have no place in politics at a national or international level (which ties in with your female clergy's origin; the women staying at home to take care of things while the men go out to wage war)?

Also, it occurs to me that a female clergy would have a very practical reason for a rule of celibacy: pre-modern-medicine childbirth kills. Seriously, Mary freaking Wollstonecraft died in childbirth at the age of 38. Imagine what she might have done if she had lived longer! So, your clergy's attitude might be that celibacy is the necessary price they pay to be able to take care of their community/parish, because it significantly lessens the likelihood of them dying and leaving their community unattended.