world-building and ritual
Feb. 11th, 2009 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliSo you're building your religion along with your world, and you know that you need rituals. Part and parcel of religion, really. So you go ahead and give it marriages and funerals and baptism and confession -- and I shuddered.
No, your religion is not going to have baptism and confession. Not unless it's Christianity-with-the-serial-numbers-scrubbed Crystal Dragon Jesus -- and sometimes not even then. If you scrubbed off the theology that explains them, you scrubbed off the rituals, too, and most Crystal Dragon Jesus worlds scrub off that piece of theology.
Yes, you can have initiation rites, even initiation rites for newborns. Yes, you can have rites to deal with sins. But they need to flow as part and parcel of the religion.
No, your religion is not going to have baptism and confession. Not unless it's Christianity-with-the-serial-numbers-scrubbed Crystal Dragon Jesus -- and sometimes not even then. If you scrubbed off the theology that explains them, you scrubbed off the rituals, too, and most Crystal Dragon Jesus worlds scrub off that piece of theology.
Yes, you can have initiation rites, even initiation rites for newborns. Yes, you can have rites to deal with sins. But they need to flow as part and parcel of the religion.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 03:24 pm (UTC)The writer just took what lay before him and assumed it was the law of nature, which leaves no room for the fantastic. It tends to show in other parts, too.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 08:00 pm (UTC)At least I'm not the only one bewildered by it. 0:)