the thing folks living in Christian dominant cultures gotta realize is that even if you’re not Christian, your basic understanding of religion and spirituality and morality is still being filtered through a Christian lens. your very concept of what religion is and does is filtered through that lens.
This is what I call cultural Christianity, for those who are still confused
“But everyone celebrates christmas.” No. No we don’t.
“Religion is based on complete blind submission and not asking any questions ever”
No. That’s Christianity.
“Religion is totally focused on the afterlife and getting into heaven and avoiding hell”
Nope. Christianity again.
“Religion is about pushing your beliefs on others and trying to get them to convert”
Still Christianity.
Actually that’s even more specific - that’s Calvinism, which predominates in America. America isn’t just culturally Christian,it’s culturally Calvinist, which very specifically focuses on submission, the fear of damnation, and conversion. It’s also not just any old Calvinism, but a very rigidly puritanical variety thanks to our roots.
There are other culturally Christian countries, which are of other denominations and therefore have a slightly different bent. England is culturally Anglican, Germany is culturally Lutheran, Italy and Spain are culturally Catholic, Russia is culturally Orthodox, etc. However, even the cultural Catholicism of Italy is different from, say, the cultural Catholicism of Ireland.
So even here, we need to be careful not to filter other cultures’ Christianities through what is a very Americanized (via @queertilly) Christianity, and vice versa with other countries. Speaking as an American, even our concept of what Christianity is has been Americanised.
^^^ that
Question: what if you’re Jewish in America and don’t see religion through any of the lenses you’ve mentioned? Are there other false beliefs one can get through the dominant culture here?
Oh, definitely. I can’t think of any off the top of my head, though
Picture a wedding. Any wedding even in a fantasy context. Let me guess, you’re picturing a woman in a veil and a white gown, some guy in robes officiating, and it’s probably taking place in a church-like building, right? Christian culture is pervasive like that.
I once gave a lecture about “rituals”, and I asked the people who were attending how a marriage looks like in their culture. An adult woman answered “the bride always wears a white dress”. So I asked her which culture she was talking about. She kept insisting that that was the case in every culture, “even with atheists like me”, and that it wasn’t culturally Christian. Luckily there were several Muslims in the group that told her that that’s often not the case at Muslim weddings.
Other examples of “things we internalize” -I’m going to stick with religious ones:
- What’s today’s date? The Gregorian calendar is fundamentally Christian; it was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII as a reform to the previously-used Julian calendar (itself only in use today in Christian contexts).
- What does someone mean when they say “The Bible”?
- If you have the phrase “Old Testament” in there at all, congrats, that’s cultural Christianity in play. That phrase isn’t one that makes sense to us, given that we don’t believe there is a New Testament -the OT is also, historically, not the Tanach.
- When is New Year’s?
- The classical Jewish response to that would be “which one” -we’ve got four of our own. Other cultural new years take place around the year.
- What does a religious service look like?
- What do people look like when they’re praying on their own?
- If your mental image here is someone kneeling, hands together… Christianity again.
- Do you find the concept of being culturally a member of a religion you don’t, as far as you can tell, practice or believe in, weird?
- Yeah, that’s Christianity again -specifically because of its ubiquity. “Oh, I’m not Christian; I just do big family dinners on Christmas and Easter” is Christian, but somehow requires less explaining to most people than “I’m not religiously Jewish, but I still celebrate the Jewish holidays.”
- Is there fundamentally a good-evil dichotomy? That’s another one that’s not really a classical Jewish approach.
- What does repentance/atonement entail -and what requires it?
There’s a lot of stuff like this. In many cases, it’s about “what is the first mental image that comes to mind.”
- What does the word “religion” mean to you? Is it defined by faith, belief, trust, commonality, culture, tradition, deity, lack of a deity, peoplehood, way of life? Is it defined by biblical literalism, by orthodoxy, by anti-science, by an implicit superiority? Is it all those things in equal measure, or are some more important? What is the opposite of religion? Do you assume that your definition is universal and applicable to others?
- Do your ideas and concepts about religion exist in English, or do they only really exist in another language?
- What is the honorable and good way to bury someone who has died, and to mourn their passing? What is the language of death? What makes a death good or bad? How is the body treated? What are the ritual, sacred, cultural, practical, ethical traditions around death?
- What are the legal particulars that evolved into the marriage ceremony you imagine as the default? How is that marriage celebrated? What IS marriage, and who has authority over it?
- How does someone come into this world? How is their coming celebrated, before and after the actual birth? How is their name chosen? What names are off limits? How many names do they get? When are the names used? What do they mean? How do they honor family?How do they become a part of the community?
- As someone ages, how will they pass through meaningful, institutionalized rites of passage? When are they responsible? When are they an adult?
- What is the relationship between humanity and nature? The relationship between humanity and the earth? What is our position in the natural world? What rights do we have or not have, what duties do we have or not have?
- What is your view about the occult? Your concept of angels, demons, and the devil? What do magic, divination, and astrology look like to you?
- What ubiquitous symbols exist in your culture? What phrases and idioms do you use to convey meaning beyond the explicit? Do you use these without thinking about their origin?
- How is the year celebrated? What seasons are given special honor, and why? What themes are strong enough to provoke holidays and observances? What ARE those holidays and observances? What holidays do you consider “religious,” “secular,” or “national?” How do you observe them? What rights do you feel you have around them - do you have the right not to work on certain days, and why those days? Do you have the right to celebrate them publically, even in a government supposedly separated from religion, and what gives you that right?
- What IS prayer? How does one do it? Does it matter or make a difference? What is it’s intention?
- How much do you know about the culture, beliefs, history, traditions, and oppressions of different religious groups? How much do you know about your own group, or the dominant group in your country?
- Looking at the entire list, do you expect other people to have similar answers as you? Why?
Not originally worldbuilding, but this is a really good guide you can follow when building a religion to avoid making it just feel like a copy of the one you grew up surrounded by!
