What would fantasy be without religion? Probably much the same as us, when we don\u2019t have religion: aimless, drifting, and lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Religion is more than just a useful aspect of worldbuilding. It\u2019s something that lies at the very core of what makes us human\u2014and thus, it\u2019s something that any story needs to at least touch on if it is to be meaningful or important. Most likely, it won\u2019t be meaningful at all unless the religious aspect is incorporated deeply within its bones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what is religion? For our purposes, religion is how we, as humans, relate to the powers that are higher than ourselves. It\u2019s not about painting a cross on your cover, or a star of David, or a crescent, or an omh, or whatever else. It\u2019s about how we act in regards to the cosmic and the transcendent. It\u2019s about how we understand how to orient ourselves in this vast and terrifying universe, and find our own place within it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I grew up in a time when religion was one of those taboo subjects that you never brought up in polite society. Politics, religion, and sex were all taboo like that. Granted, those taboos were already beginning to fray by the time I was old enough to hold an uninformed opinion on any of that, but even in the 90s, the post-war liberal consensus still held.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What was the post-war liberal consensus? It was the set of rules and norms that we all (or those of us in polite society, at least) agreed to live by, after the tumultuous catastrophe of the World Wars. From 1914 to 1945, more than a hundred Europeans died from political causes\u2014and that was just in Europe. For thirty long years, the whole world was drowned in blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The wars ended with the invention of the world\u2019s most devastating superweapon, which for the first time in the history of this planet gave us the power to literally annihilate our own species. So at the end of all that, our grandparents felt a very strong need to keep those weapons from ever being used again. Hence, they developed the post-war liberal consensus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The greatest value of the post-war liberal consensus was tolerance\u2014but they didn\u2019t think of that as a value in itself. The idea was that instead of elevating the values of any one group over another, they would create a world where everyone tolerated each other. Everyone could keep their own culture and religion, along with their own unique (and often contradictory) cultural and religious values, so long as they didn\u2019t try to impose those values on anyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trouble with that, of course, is that tolerance itself is a value. Which means that in order to maintain the post-war consensus, they had to be intolerant<\/em> toward any culture or religion that threatened it. Which meant that they had to push their globalism and multiculturalism on everyone, superseding all of their own cultural and religious values. This gave rise to the global urban monoculture, which ultimately gave us the clown world we now live in. Which is currently falling apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Religion should not be off-limits, especially for good storytelling. At the same time, that doesn\u2019t mean that stories should bash you over the head and try to convert you to whatever church the author happens to belong to. Indeed, some of the most religious stories aren\u2019t about any particular church or creed at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n An example of this is Epic: The Musical. Beyond the old Greek mythology that runs through the story, the religious view is that the universe is utterly unpredictable, the gods (or higher powers) are arbitrary and capricious, and that the ends (getting home to Penelope) always justify the means. Indeed, any means that aren\u2019t<\/em> justified by the ends are immoral and wrong. Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves. How do we sleep? Next to our wives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those aren\u2019t the religious views that I subscribe to, but those are deeply religious views. How? Because they show us how we stand in relation to powers that are higher than ourselves. In the 19th century, it became fashionable to throw out religion, and reverence man himself as the highest power in the universe. Where did that get us? It gave us the 31 years that killed 100 million Europeans and drowned the whole world in blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n G.K. Chesterton said: \u201cWhen men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.\u201d Now, more than ever, the world needs religion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, one of the nice things about writing fiction is that you can explore all sorts of religious ideas that may or may not have a direct counterpart in our world. Indeed, that\u2019s part of what makes fantasy so rich. Tolkien created a whole race (the elves) that is bound by magic and immortality to this earth, contrasting with us humans, who are \u201cstrangers in a strange land.\u201d In fact, Tolkien\u2019s entire oeuvre is rich with religious elements, not just in the worldbuilding and the mythology, but in the Christian symbology\u2014and he does it so subtly and so deeply that it draws you into his world, rather than kicking you out. It\u2019s all in service to the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a reason why the best stories in the world are in the Bible (and most of those are in the Book of Genesis). Which is one of the reasons why I\u2019m drawing on the life of King David for the fantasy epic that I\u2019m currently writing (The Soulbound King). But I\u2019m also drawing on symbology and mythology as well, to make sure the religious elements aren\u2019t just skin-deep. There is so much fascinating tree-related symbolism within the Jewish\/Christian tradition. So much rich and wonderful stuff to draw on for creating a fantasy world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t be afraid to play with religion in your own fantasy stories. After all, on the deepest level, creativity itself is something of a religious act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n