Pondering on religion in fantasy

[taelle]

Reading fantasy, I keep wondering again and again about why it is so obviously lacking religion in the characters' worldview. I mean, most fantasy is quasi-medieval, and you'd think belief would be a necessary part of most characters' mindest, and yet most often the church is only viewed by the characters as greedy, political or something... Right

Comments

[kannaophelia]

Heh. Because nothing's quite as one-eyed and sanctimonious as a rabid atheist? ~has little patience with people who get their knickers in a knot over allegory in Narnia but don't see OMGEvilReligion! as preaching~ They don't believe, so their characters sure as hell will not, and they'll make sure everyone knows it. ;)

Dragonlance, well, *everything* is drawn in as broad lines as possible.

[taelle]

Also, of course, good guys *must* have as enlightened a world view as their author...

[kannaophelia]

The only reason you'd ever allow your main characters to have different beliefs is in order to teach them a lesson and have them acnowledge their error, as an inspiration to your readers. Of course.

[taelle]

Ouch. All right, it's difficult - I know that I as a tea-drinker have problems convincingly imagining a character who loves coffee - but still... ouch.

[ollga]

Hn... it's intresting, but currently I'm reading a lot of fantazy which actually deals with religion and religions in charachter's mind. Mercedes Lackey, Dave Dunkan, Maggy Fury (hope I'm spelling right)...

[taelle]

Haven't tried the last two, but I'm not so sure about Lackey... I've been reading her Bards series and there church is greedy and political. WIth Valdemar Companions aren't quite a religion, though Karse *is* an interesting example of dealing with religion, you're right.

[ollga]

Karse, and Tayledras with their Star-Eyed.

And Duncan has a lot of series based on religion - big Game trylogy, for instance.

[taelle]

Yeah. but in Big Game these gods aren't quite gods, not really...

[rcfinch]

George Martin introduces an increasing the amount of religious stuff in his Song of Ice and Fire series. The latest installment is full of it.

[taelle]

I'm afraid I haven't even managed the third book, and the fourth is not yet out here...

[nancylebov]

Bujold's Chalion novels and Pauline Alama's _Eye of Knight_ are religion-heavy fantasies, so much so that there's iirc no non-deity based magic.

Laurel Hamilton's Anita Blake is (was?) a Catholic, at at least in the earlier books, she was concerned about religion.

[taelle]

Yeah, I liked it when Anita was concerned about religion... regretfully, the author chose to develop the character and the series in a different direction.

As for Chalion - I read only the first one, and while I remember the gods, it didn't really give me an impression that the characters *believed* - it was mostly that they saw the gods... like weather, or something.

Hmm. Maybe god or gods' practical and obvious presence in the life of the society (expressed in magic or tgods coming to visit or something) gives to that society something... not quite what we call belief. After all, you don't need to *believe* in weather - it's just there.

[sollersuk]

Guy Gavriel Kay is an exception - to the extent that many of the books have religion as their theme.

It may partly be writers not being comfortable in their own heads about writing about either a religion that corresponds too closely to their own, or one that is too obviously made up.

[taelle]

Hmm, maybe that's why Kay feels he can use religion more freely - after all, he writes (a) things close to our history and (b) in a... historical style.