Religion in fantasy fiction
Filed under Blog Tours, Trends & Tropes on May 21, 2008
Tagged: Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy blog tour, fantasy fiction, MindFlights, religion
Today is the last day of the May 2008 Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy blog tour, featuring the Mindflights webzine. The editors’ vision for Mindflights is to provide quality science fiction and fantasy stories that respect “traditional values and Christian principles.” However, their submission guidelines reveal they aren’t interested in “works that appear to function mainly as a Sunday School lesson or modified sermon.”
Religion in fantasy fiction can be a difficult subject for any writer. It’s too easy to become preachy, whether you’re for or against. However, avoiding religion eliminates a wide range of themes and motivations that add wonderful complexity and depth to a fantasy world and the characters that inhabit it.
One of the things that appealed to me about writing Maiden of Pain was the chance to explore the faith of a person who had grown up within a community of similar beliefs and the challenges to that faith once the person stepped into the wider world. I identified with that struggle as a Christian, but it’s a universal one for any individual who holds strongly to a particular belief system. Focusing on such universal themes can help a writer avoid the appearance of preaching.
Of course, it helped that Ythnel, the protagonist of Maiden of Pain, belonged to a fictitious religion that bore little resemblance to any real world religions. I think this is important for fantasy fiction writers that want to use religion. You’ve spent a lot of time and energy building a unique world, don’t skimp on the creativity by copying a modern or historical religion and just changing some names. Come up with some basic theological principles, doctrine and rituals.
There are some exceptions. If you’re writing satire or allegory, you want to include elements that the reader can easily identify as belonging to the religious counterpart in the real world.
It’s too bad that more fantasy fiction authors don’t include religion in their stories beyond the tired tropes of corrupt leadership or narrow-minded zealots (or proselytizing missionaries in the CBA). It’s a testament to the secular bias of our culture. Religion and spirituality have been integral parts of our world’s history, it doesn’t make sense to not include them in the worlds we create that use cultures based on those from our past.
Have you read any good fantasy fiction stories that use religion and faith to good effect? I’d love to read your recommendations. And be sure to check out the other stops on the CSFF blog tour if you haven’t already:
- Brandon Barr
- Justin Boyer
- Jackie Castle
- CSFF Blog Tour
- Gene Curtis
- D. G. D. Davidson
- Jeff Draper
- April Erwin
- Karina Fabian
- Beth Goddard
- Andrea Graham
- Todd Michael Greene
- Katie Hart
- Michael Heald
- Christopher Hopper
- Joleen Howell
- Jason Joyner
- Kait
- Carol Keen
- Mike Lynch
- Terri Main
- Margaret
- Rebecca LuElla Miller
- Pamela Morrisson
- John W. Otte
- John Ottinger
- Rachelle
- Steve Rice
- Ashley Rutherford
- Mirtika or Mir’s Here
- Rachelle Sperling
- Stuart Stockton
- Steve Trower
- Speculative Faith
- Robert Treskillard
- Linda Wichman
- Laura Williams
- Timothy Wise
May 21st, 2008 at 6:51 am
A good subject. I’m not sure I agree that in a fantasy world you should necessarily try and make your fictional religions quite different from real world religions. Whether real or invented, the faiths of the real world represent the way humans think, or what they need, or how they’ve evolved (spiritually, physically, whatever). If you try to make it too different, then you’re probably changing your fantasy’s world race, too.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:59 am
Hm. That’s an interesting point, Jeff. Esp. the reverse engineering. That’d make a great writing assignment: Here’s a faith, now tell me about the people who created it.
//H
H’s last blog post was Big Willy Style
May 21st, 2008 at 10:49 am
Well, we are talking about a fantasy world. They’re supposed to be different than our world, filled with races human and non-, and who’s to say the humans there have the same spiritual needs as we do. That said, there needs to be some commonality for the reader to identify with. Therefore, it’s inevitable that religions will share trappings. Good thoughts, Jeff.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:11 am
Great post, Kameron. I don’t know if I’ve read a lot of stories that have unique religious trappings. Karen Hancock’s Guardian-King series comes to mind, but I know some readers thought her religions were too closely married to forms of Christianity.
It may be one of those impossible to please everyone issues. If they are identifiable, then some will cry “thin allegory,” but if they are vastly different, others will cry “not Christian.”
Did Lord of the Rings include religion? How about Narnia?
Becky
Rebecca LuElla Miller’s last blog post was CSFF Tour-Mindflights, 3
May 21st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Lord of the Rings did not, though Tolkien hinted at Middle-Earth spirituality in Silmarilion. I don’t remember any sort of organized religion in Narnia, but there was obvious allegory to Christianity sprinkled throughout the series.
July 1st, 2009 at 2:53 pm
[...] I touched a little upon this subject in my post on religion in fantasy fiction. Religion is one of those pillar institutions in any culture, and your world will be that much [...]