If you were going to write fantasy fiction (which is what I am up to in most free waking and non-working hours) about some parallel world, what religions might you imagine?
Would any of them resemble Christianity as we have known it?
If not, what sources would you draw on?
If so, how might this faith be enacted (by which I mean first of all an Incarnation or parallel "Christ event"), how understood, how proclaimed, how lived in community? What would you tweak and make different? Remember you have full authorial license and it's fiction, for heaven's sake.
I realize these are unfair questions. I have been doing this and, because I wish to retain copyright on my stories, I cannot really reveal my answers except on the most cursory level.
The tales I write grow out of stories I told in the early 1970s. I have not abandoned those roots but have developed, altered, deepened, and enriched them. One of the most delightful imaginative exercises was teasing out a "pagan" mythology, the belief system of the world into which my young Christian hero from this world finds himself taken, without his consent. Like many folks I have known, he practices two faiths, accepting the imagery of the new world while still saying his rosary and, later on, baptizing his children. As in many indigenous traditions (or Hinduism) the many "deities" or holy ones are all understood as manifestation of the one Ultimate Reality, so the faith is not really polytheist. The various "gods" function more like friendly saints to whom one might turn for help or guidance, some heavenly assistance in the area that is their specialty. A folk religion with strong ethical elements, sufficiently vivid that I find myself thinking in its imagery.
But then there is a Christ event in that world and the missionaries come. When they meet the protagonist of my first two books they find someone already Christian! I have not gotten to that encounter as I am working on the background for all this, the family trees and interrelations of my principal characters and their children (and grandchildren) and the whole spread of Christianity (missionary history) in that region.
Since it is a fantasy world, I could play with the context of their Christ, and I get to do outrageous things like making the Church egalitarian from the get-go. My chief Apostle to the region where my tales take place is a woman and she is elected the first archbishop. No one gives it a second's thought. And why should they?
Sin and evil are not denied but the faith of that world is far less atonement-centered than the late medieval theology that has plagued us lo these many centuries. Mysticism is more central, and the path of self-giving love is prominent. But then, the choice between power and domination or love and community is a constant theme of all the stories. It seems I never get away from the abiding question: who is Lord, Jesus or Caesar? Our answer obviously determines how we live.
So.
If you were to imagine a new faith, or an old faith that you could embrace with joy, what might it look like?
What would be your John 3:16?
Your Lord's (or Lady's) Prayer?
What would be (or already are) the virtues of your favorite saint?
Have fun!
--the BB
