Tidy religion is pure fantasy.

When I think back on my Catholic upbringing, I picture clouds over Lake Erie like bruises. Wet blacktop and palm ash. Ozone and frankincense. You can break away from the Catholic Church, but you can't tear down the Catholic Church inside your head. It flagellates the brain until it cuts in deep. Nowadays, I can't have a thought without dragging it over some Latin phrase or Catholic guilt. Even after leaving the church as a teenager. It sticks around.

Religion is a ragged thing. A bleeding kaleidoscope of myths, scars, and memories. It's no wonder most world-building starts with religion. But I've found fantasy religion to be fiction at its most fictional. Too simple. Too tidy. A unicorn is more grounded than the worship of Pelor, Cthulhu, or any other fantasy pantheon.

When I was a kid, I was terrified of church. It was the statues and decoration. Most Protestant faiths do away with the iconography and symbolism. In theory, it provides a more pure setting for worship, but in my experience, the vacuum never stays empty. When you remove the statues, murals, and candles, you get pinky ring-pastors, football prayers, and conjoined coffee shops with flavored-milk.

You learn a lot about Catholic church's just by looking at its statues.

As a kid, I sat in a pew just inches from a corinthian-style column. Out of its leaves peaked a gasping face with a coin purse tied around its neck—Judas. A bit of flair for whichever miserable 2nd grader had to sit and stare at him. As an adult, I think back on that church fondly. Multiple statues of Jesus bleeding out. A statue of Jesus bloodless in his mother's arms. A parade of reliefs depicting Jesus getting whipped, stoned, nailed, and stabbed. Then there were the saints. A muscular Saint Peter with his nets—glorified in stained glass—disemboweled in a nearby relief. A rosy-cheeked Saint Bartholemew with just his head. And a dozen others in varying states of starving, burning, and flaying, rendered lovingly in marble, sandstone, and bronze. Jesus' dad, Joseph, was there too. Holding up his hammer with a wide-eyed expression like he showed up to the wrong party. I liked him. We had a lot in common.

A bit of flair for whichever miserable 2nd grader had to sit and stare at him.

Real life religion doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It sort of insists it does. That's part of being a believer. To quote Ralph Fiennes in the very excellent, Conclave, "Faith walks hand-in-hand with doubt." It also shimmies, prances, and stomps hand-in-hand with bewilderment. Fantasy religions are especially fictional because they're so orderly. The canon is firm. The cast is set. And believers walk in lockstep. That's not real religion, as far as I can tell. Jesus may have made water into wine, but Christians mastered the miracle of making and unmaking Jesus.

Walk into any Catholic Church and you're greeted with a craggier, scrappier version of the faith made in miniature. Black and white Polaroids of Father Jeff playing golf. (He always beat the flock—and the Lutherans. Don't ask me how.) A murderers' row of nun portraits—each more evil than the last. Pictures of the '96 pancake breakfast team, lionized like the Chicago Bulls. We even had a statue of the Deacon's dog, Scott. The Catholic Jesus deserved. Every one of them were saints in processing. We snuck them in when the pope wasn't looking. And just like the statues in the church, they had their fair share of agonies on display. Dried flowers from funerals, stuffed Walleye trophies from bygone parishioners, and pictures of chain-smoking priests, self-embalming themselves ahead of schedule.

We even had a statue of the Deacon's dog, Scott.
The Catholic Jesus deserved.

Real life religion isn't designed. It's sowed and left to go feral. Even Catholicism, with its hierarchy and centralization, seems to—at best—prune a few branches before canonizing the rest. "No, actually, this pagan folk hero is one of ours." I liked that. I still do. In a country like America, sometimes religion is the only inheritance from the people that brought you here. In my local Irish and Italian church, we spoke English and Baseball—but our religion smuggled in our past through food, stories, and architecture. Most saints and bible stories are just other stories in drag. To this day, I still can't separate creamy pints, 50/50 raffles, and euchre from holiness. Probably because our congregation claimed them regularly.

You might have noticed God hasn't made an appearance in this essay about religion. I'm not convinced God or gods are important to understanding it, at least not on a material level. Gods don't build the world, beliefs and people do.

Religion is found in the followers. It's the holidays, furniture, and food. Its the ivy that grows over history, culture, and place. It's my dad saying, "It's hotter than Hades," because hell is too serious for weather forecasts. If I wanted to design a religion for my games, I'd start by designing the religious.

Paying my Joesky Taxes

Abstract musings are a violation of the Joesky Tax. Here are some zealots.

Rationalist Cals. Bolter-toting space Templar questing for a neon god prophesied to punish anti-AI, nonbelievers. Shun all beneficial technologies as heretical. Pray with obtuse CAPTCHA. Martyr themselves by baptizing toasters.

The Millership. Sun-worshipping sect obsessed with grain. The prophet's prior work as a millworker has snuck weights and measures into everything. Followers feel the incessant need to describe everything with numbers. Do not understand qualitative statements. Grain alcohol abuse is rampant among rogue prophets.

Surfacers. Flight-obsessed goblins who believe the surface is another chamber in a world-sized megadungeon. Quick to convert everyone to "The Great Project," especially birds. Exceptional textile weavers after generations of building balloons. All other religions are either "with the program" or not. Their existence had led to a contrarian religion of kobolds who wail "down is out."

The Order of the Gracious Hosts. Radical anti-individualists. Venerate the stranger. Abhor violence. Exercise non-stop. Their body is a temple. Literally. They believe their god hops from one body to the next, so all bodies must be cared for. "Bad Hosts" abuse their bodies. The worst feign occupancy for power.

Malikinds. A long time ago, a couple of druids mistranslated their own runes and now everyone is obsessed with snakes. Hair is haram. Baldies lord over a strict social caste system. Children with eczema are blessed. Eggs are eaten whole. The market for domesticated quail is booming. Churches resemble long flat rocks.

Good Time Club. Galactic gang of mercs looking for a good time. They're tired of all this "god" nonsense and have pledged to focus only on badass explosions, sweet merch, and sick stunts. Party downers are shoot-to-kill. They've been doing this for 237 Sicklicious Years.

Additional Reading

Collections: Practical Polytheism, Part I: Knowledge

Today we’re going to start looking at one facet of how polytheistic religions function, their practicality. This is going to be a four-part series (II, III, IV) looking at some of the general…

A Collection of Unmitigated PedantryBret Devereaux

Clerical Error -- Religion Etc. Etc.

In almost every D&D game I’ve ever played, I don’t love the religions. I don’t think this is an uncommon sentiment--at least in my own RPG…

Religion Etc. Etc.Josh

Rethinking Religion in RPG Settings

A blog post about how Religion in D&D and other Fantasy RPGs approaches polytheism in the wrong way and how to fix that in order to have more mystery and adventure in your game sessions.

Widdershins Wanderings

If you're like me and you love thinking about religion, culture, and history, I have a rare video game recommendation. You should try out Pentiment by Obsidian.

It's got mystery, history, fonts, and a whole lot of dialogue about god.

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