Poking church organisation
May. 20th, 2013 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSo say England was sending a colony on a one way trip to another planet. Say they send some Church of England dude to look after the colony. Would they treat it as a new parish or a new province? It's the difference between being the vicar and being the archbishop.
The colony might start out real small, like a church worth of people, but can a vicar promote himself if there's a country worth later?
... obviously the history of the church says that if the dude in charge wishes to make it so they can decide they're second only to God and just go :-p to... everyone. And marry who they want.
But I was just vaguely wondering what a proper organised Church of England decision would be, if they were thinking they would stay basically in charge. And the decision would be different if the colony was meant to get cut off, and it would all work out different if they went independent. So whatever the decision, it says a lot about how the Church back home views the project.
I've read books about trying to retain tax and mercantile control with a time lag of years between colonies, but how about religious control? You can't exactly turn up at the Synod and vote on things with a light lag between question and answer. Probably things would just fracture and turn into lots of new churches, but it seems unlikely an established church would actually plan on letting that happen. The Anglican Communion is already one answer to the fracturing forces of colonisation, but how much time lag could it handle?
... the have a Primates Meeting. I know what it means in churches, but it's still amusing, that primates are the boss.
I think I'm going to get bored before I come up with any decent answers, but it's still interesting questions.
Religion in space can get lots of interesting. Like, Muslims trying to do the pilgrimage thing, they'd have serious pressure to remain in contact with Earth and stay good at space travel, except it would take years or decades or generations to actually manage it. Or, Buddhists looking for a reincarnation, if that dude was going to go spread the dharma to another planet, they'd send people out on journeys to look for them but it would take so long the traveller might reincarnate while they're out there.
Making handwavey pronouncements about All Religions Ever, like saying they just kind of went away somehow, or having space bishops in charge of space clerics and doing shooting, it's okay for forty minutes at a stretch, but it's not exactly how human history has worked thus far and makes for a very shallow future. Organisation is complicated and mostly tries to not change very much at once, and if it does make a giant change all at once it's still going to try and use concepts familiar to the revolutionaries.
... mostly I've been wondering how to get one character addressed as 'Your Grace', because I like the word, and then there was wiki surfing.
Humans make complex twirly dances out of everything.
The colony might start out real small, like a church worth of people, but can a vicar promote himself if there's a country worth later?
... obviously the history of the church says that if the dude in charge wishes to make it so they can decide they're second only to God and just go :-p to... everyone. And marry who they want.
But I was just vaguely wondering what a proper organised Church of England decision would be, if they were thinking they would stay basically in charge. And the decision would be different if the colony was meant to get cut off, and it would all work out different if they went independent. So whatever the decision, it says a lot about how the Church back home views the project.
I've read books about trying to retain tax and mercantile control with a time lag of years between colonies, but how about religious control? You can't exactly turn up at the Synod and vote on things with a light lag between question and answer. Probably things would just fracture and turn into lots of new churches, but it seems unlikely an established church would actually plan on letting that happen. The Anglican Communion is already one answer to the fracturing forces of colonisation, but how much time lag could it handle?
... the have a Primates Meeting. I know what it means in churches, but it's still amusing, that primates are the boss.
I think I'm going to get bored before I come up with any decent answers, but it's still interesting questions.
Religion in space can get lots of interesting. Like, Muslims trying to do the pilgrimage thing, they'd have serious pressure to remain in contact with Earth and stay good at space travel, except it would take years or decades or generations to actually manage it. Or, Buddhists looking for a reincarnation, if that dude was going to go spread the dharma to another planet, they'd send people out on journeys to look for them but it would take so long the traveller might reincarnate while they're out there.
Making handwavey pronouncements about All Religions Ever, like saying they just kind of went away somehow, or having space bishops in charge of space clerics and doing shooting, it's okay for forty minutes at a stretch, but it's not exactly how human history has worked thus far and makes for a very shallow future. Organisation is complicated and mostly tries to not change very much at once, and if it does make a giant change all at once it's still going to try and use concepts familiar to the revolutionaries.
... mostly I've been wondering how to get one character addressed as 'Your Grace', because I like the word, and then there was wiki surfing.
Humans make complex twirly dances out of everything.
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no subject
Date: 2013-05-20 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-29 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-30 11:33 am (UTC)UK military padres have the option of calling on other religious specialities outside the military. There are civilian Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and Sikh chaplains for the British armed forces, though the commissioned padres are drawn from Christian churches. British Army Website Chaplain's Department 'join us' page says "You must also be an ordained minister recognised by one of the sending churches (Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist/URC/Congregational, Church of Scotland/Presbyterian, Elim or Assemblies of God) and normally have at least 3 years' experience in full-time ministry." The BBC reckon "The U.S. armed forces have 1400 chaplains, all Christian except for about 30 rabbis and 15 imams (2003 figures)."[1] There's numbers on the BBC page for how many soldiers there even are that aren't Christian, and there's not so very many. So padres minister to all faiths, on the understanding that almost all the all are Christian like they are anyway. The role of non-Christian chaplains "is to look after the specific spiritual needs of their own community."
Who is qualified to do what is a big religious argue with a lot of different answers. So some communities wouldn't believe a multifaith/interfaith role was even possible. And it's harder when they're the only possible person, no calling for backup.
I was trying to find out if an ordinary parish vicar can ordain their successor. If they have to level up before they can make more priests then a colony needs one of the boss dudes or their religious needs go unfilled after the first generation.
If there's only one dude serving the whole religious life of a community then that's going to change the nature of religion in that community, compared to the big argues that happen here-now.
Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead actually has the plot turn on having to call in a religious specialist from off-planet, when speed of light limits only apply to physical travel, not messages. So someone on a Catholic planet calls for a non-Catholic to do a funeral/memorial service, knowing they won't get there for years, and then tries to cancel the call but the specialist has already set out. So they live a life and have kids and then the person they called for arrives and it shakes up the whole community. Whatever religious personnel the colony starts with, calling for someone new would be a big change for everyone.
Since taking religious texts is going to be a sight easier than taking religious leaders, there could be converts in later generations, calling for someone they believe qualified, someone with the lineage maybe or who was ordained in a specific denomination.
... which is a long reply to a short comment. I'll go chew the thought somewhere that isn't a comment thread :)
no subject
Date: 2013-06-02 09:57 am (UTC)Is it not possible they could train a dude up in the various faiths you mention?
OR simpler than that "People who want to come and live in space need to accept they are not going to have a local church / bring their own minister with them." Think about the people who moved to America in the beginning. They gathered together and formed states along faith lines / made do with a bible and what they remembered.
Why not let your people deal with the problem rather than trying to fix it all for them nanny state style? There's a whole plot to be had from the problems. If you create a place with no problems, where everyone is equal and no one has any prejudice then you are going to have a very boring book.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-02 10:50 am (UTC)also, this is not planning for a story, this is planning for a space colony. well, the story is likely to happen first, but people who set out to colonise space are going to have put thought into making a place with no problems. so the plan needs to look good.
while you can academically 'train a dude up', most faiths have opinions on how many faiths you can represent, and in monotheistic faiths that is one. you have to be able to swear and have faith that there is no god but x and y is his prophet. you aren't supposed to be able to change hats. in some faiths there's supposed to be an unbroken line of blessings going back to the founder, a lineage, that passes the authority or the enlightenment or whatever they think is important. Without that, some reckon nobody can be blessed. there's a big argument in xtianity which last I checked in the main churches boils down to: even a fake priest doesn't mean his whole congregation is unbaptised, the faith of the recipient makes it real. But the contrary argument is strongly present too. If in space there's an acceptance that one multifaith minister can do all the religions, that's a major paradigm shift. That's closer to chaos magic than currently dominant religions.
The people who moved to America in the beginning probably brought their beliefs with them, and then settled in to being a whole bunch of nations with a variety of beliefs, and then xtians turned up and decided that brining their monotheistic faith to them was a good excuse for killing a whole lot of people. Religious divides in Europe made it seem urgent to grab up colonies to make sure the faith with the most souls won. Priests going off into the great unconverted wilds of the rest of the world was a driving force of colonialism. And not bringing a priest meant a bunch of slightly different versions of the faiths sprung up, including ones that don't believe you need a priest at all, which was a major change in social organisation.
The people organising going to live in space are going to have religious views, and if they're from the UK those views are officially C of E.
hence the original question.
if the C of E leave the new worlds to get on with it, that's like giving up on being the established church. if they treat them like parishes that's treating them as subordinate fragments. if they send a new archbishop that's like saying the new world is an equal from the start.
relationships of faith and power - if letting people make their own faith arrangements, is giving up power.
why would 'nanny state' do that?
(the why would be stories)