Roden1 wrote:I'm gonna avoid the question about governability, since my current schedule kind of prevents me from RPing too much so it's not like I have much to contribute. However, I did have some observations regarding Christianity in Tiandi.
I understand that this is a region where East Asia is the centre of the world network and that the distance between its "Europe" and its "NAME" regions is more considerable than in our own world. As a result I was wondering how Christianity might evolve. I don't think that real life's division between Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy makes sense in Tiandi and I'd hope it's not used. Protestantism and Orthodoxy to a larger degree are the result of very specific clerico-political conflicts over issues that were more political than theological in nature. The division between WRE and ERE and later between the Romano-Germanic West and the Byzantium resulted in the development of two parallel politicul culture, one where the primacy of Rome was the norm and one where there were several patriarchs who were all subordinate to the Emperor. This won't happen. And much less with Protestantism, which surged from the humanistic Catholicism of Erasmus and its denounce of the Roman corruption and political intrigues. Nor does it make too much sense, imho, to have several Popes, the conditions for an Avignon papacy may not exist in Tiandi.
So, what I was thinking is that we could have a more 'Islamic', if you will, division of Christianity. Because it doesn't make sense to have just one single interpretation, that is simply not the case for any Abrahamic religion. Why Islamic? Because I was thinking of inspiring the division on the much deeper theological issues over the nature of God and the nature of Christ that domination theological debates from the 4th century until the Muslim invasions of the Levant and North Africa. These divisions, like those between Sunni and Shiites and others, will be much deeper than those that separate our Christianity, since they are based on different criteria on a very, very thorny issue, the very nature of the Messiah.
So I was thinking of a triple division between Chalcedonians (so basically Catholics and Orthodoxy in RL, perhaps with various patriarchs, like one per country?) that believes in the Holy Trinity and the nature of Christ was two, human and divine in one person, conceived by Mary. Then there is Monophysitism, which believes that Christ only had one nature, which was either solely divine (extremist position) or both human and divine (more moderate position) as Christ's human nature was absorbed by its divine one. Lastly we could also have Nestorianism. It argues the opposite, stressing the clear-cut distinction between the human Jesus and the divine Logos/Theotokos, and being generally accused of stressing more the human than the divine nature. And we can always include Arianism I suppose.
In any case, based on their very different Christological positions, the churches could evolve in different paths resulting, over time, in much more differentiated theological positions, as well as a certain degree of animosity amongst them.
In our own world, Chalcedonians dominated in Europe and in what we call nowadays the Maghreb, whereas Monophysites were the majority in pre-Islamic Egypt and parts of the Levant, and Nestorians were important in the so-called Assyrian churches, that is, in the eastern fringes of Byzantium, and had spread (considerably) into Persia as well as Arabia and reaching as far as communities in Central Asia but also in India.
I was wondering how that could work out in Tiandi, that is to say, which areas of Tiandi are/were Christians and how they would be split. I would imagine that Roden, Cosenza as well as Friskland and Banba, based on their geographical location and the association between Italy and Cosenza make more sense as Chalcedonian areas, but I don't know how to divide up the rest, especially since I'm not sure as to which parts of Gungju or other continents are Christian.
Btw, on the question of how to have a more bellicose Christian faith with their own fundamentalists, i saw a few posts back call them Crusaders. It's not a bad name, but personally I prefer the term Soldiers of Christ. Sounds more awesome, and less of a rip off.
Ack, forgot about this! Took a long vacation...
I agree that the real life divisions between Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christianity don't make sense in Tiandi and I would really encourage that people not use them. I really think that religious divisions within Christianity based on the very nature of the Christ would be very interesting. The divisions present in early Christianity are pretty fascinating and I would love to learn more about them.
I also think that we'll have to alter Christianity a bit in order to transplant it from RL to Tiandi. I think Ancient Cosenza could have had something like the Roman Empire, stretching across most of Zalland as well? We could have had minor Semitic groups along Ancient Zalland's eastern coast, sort of like Phoenicians, speaking things like Aramaic or Biblical Hebrew.
Haha, yeah, the crusaders thing is sort of a parody on how jihadists is used in the West (or America, at least), since in the modern day it's often used in a positive context such as "crusader for peace" or "crusading for justice," while "jihad" is often used in Arabic for overcoming a struggle or persevering to be a better person or Muslim but it is only known in the context of waging holy war to those outside the Middle East.
