0:02 Religion is a big part of the world
0:04 building and storytelling in a lot of
0:07 fictional universes. Think the Fman's
0:09 prophetic religion in Dune, the complex
0:11 pantheon in the Elder Scrolls series, or
0:13 the goddess worship in The Legend of
0:15 Zelda. But in a lot of these stories,
0:16 the religions feel more like set
0:18 dressings than something people actually
0:20 live and breathe. For example, let's
0:21 look at the religions in the Game of
0:24 Thrones series, which has always left me
0:26 wishing for a bit more depth. George RR
0:28 Martin wrote a bunch of competing
0:30 religions into his story. the nameless
0:32 old gods of the north, the fiery lord of
0:34 light from across the sea, and of course
0:36 the faith of the seven, the dominant
0:38 religion in much of Westeros. The faith
0:40 of the seven is presented like a copy
0:42 and paste of the medieval Catholic
0:44 church in Europe. You have a unified
0:46 hierarchical clergy, the high septin
0:48 sitting at the top like the pope, and a
0:49 network of septs across the continent
0:51 like a network of dascese. And that's
0:53 not a coincidence. Martin himself has
0:54 said in interviews that he modeled the
0:56 faith of the seven after the Catholic
0:58 Church. And in both the books and the
1:00 show, this creates a religion that feels
1:02 coherent and grounded, which works for
1:03 the kind of political storytelling that
1:05 Martin wants to tell. But religion in
1:08 the series also feels a little too tidy.
1:10 Each culture basically has one god or
1:12 pantheon neatly mapped onto their
1:14 geographical region. Now, that makes it
1:16 easy for us to follow as viewers and
1:17 readers, but compared to the chaotic
1:19 reality of real world religions, it
1:22 feels thin. Real world religions
1:24 fracture. They absorb bits and pieces
1:25 for their neighbors. Beliefs and
1:27 practices shift from one culture to the
1:29 next. They can shift from one village to
1:31 the next. And the official rules,
1:33 doctrines, and mythologies often have
1:35 little to do with what ordinary people
1:36 actually do with their religion on the
1:38 ground. Just look at the Catholic
1:40 Church, which is a lot more complex in
1:42 reality than its fictional counterpart.
1:44 You not only have variations across
1:45 cultures like the differences between
1:47 Catholicism in Ireland versus the
1:49 Philippines versus Mexico, but you also
1:50 have political disputes like
1:52 conservative and progressive Catholics
1:54 debating climate action or women's
1:56 ordination. There's also folk Catholic
1:57 movements like the devotion to Santa
1:59 Muerte in Mexico, which official
2:00 Catholic authorities have outright
2:02 rejected. And in other cases, Catholic
2:04 symbols and saints have been woven into
2:06 entirely new religions like Haitian
2:08 vodu. And these are just examples that
2:11 exist within one global religion. Now, I
2:13 get it. Most authors and showrunners are
2:14 not trying to perfectly recreate the
2:16 messy reality of religion in the world
2:18 building. They have other priorities.
2:20 You know, move the plot forward, flesh
2:22 out the characters, evoke a certain
2:24 design language. But here's the thing.
2:26 Even in the more elaborate fictional
2:28 religions, the ones with rich histories,
2:31 multiple factions, and detailed rituals,
2:33 these still tend to miss some of the
2:35 core characteristics of real world
2:38 religions. And those missing pieces are
2:40 a gold mine for making a fictional
2:42 universe feel alive, complex, and
2:44 grounded. So, in this video, I want you
2:45 to imagine that you're building a
2:47 religion for your fantasy or sci-fi
2:49 world. And I'm going to give you four
2:51 things that every single real world
2:54 religion does, but most fictional world
2:57 religions miss. Number one, synratism,
2:59 which can mean something like religious
3:01 mixing, assimilation, or hybridity. If
3:03 you want your fictional religion to feel
3:06 real, show how it absorbs and adapts the
3:07 cultures around it. In the past,
3:10 synratism was often imagined as two
3:12 discrete religious systems merging and
3:14 creating something new, almost like two
3:16 plants crossbreeding into a hybrid. But
3:18 more recent scholarship sees it as an
3:20 ongoing process of people negotiating
3:22 with the cultures around them. In late
3:24 Roman Egypt, for example, when
3:25 Christianity first started making its
3:27 way into the region, indigenous
3:29 Egyptians shaped it, reshaped it, and
3:31 made it their own. Egyptian Christian
3:32 villagers might have kept an ancestral
3:34 altar in their home while at the same
3:36 time displaying a cross over their
3:37 doorway. On Sunday they might have
3:39 participated in church liturgy, while on
3:40 Monday they might have visited a local
3:43 oracle for divination and guidance or
3:44 maybe even celebrate a traditional
3:46 festival that used to honor an Egyptian
3:48 god but now honors a Christian saint.
3:50 This amulet here is another example of
3:51 synratism from the ancient
3:53 Mediterranean. It's a bronze disc dating
3:55 from around the 3rd century CE
3:57 discovered in Asia Minor or modernday
3:58 Turkey. Now, this is the best drawing I
4:00 could find, so let me walk you through
4:01 it cuz it looks kind of messy. On one
4:03 side, you can see the Greek moon goddess
4:05 and sun god and a lion trampling a
4:07 demonic figure while attacking the evil
4:09 eye. The Jewish and Christian
4:12 liturggical phrase, "Holy, holy, holy,"
4:14 is squeezed above and between the gods.
4:15 On the other side, you can see a saint
4:18 on a horse spearing the same demon while
4:20 an angel stands before him. A Greek
4:22 inscription is around the edge. Angel
4:25 Arof, flee, O hated one. Solomon pursues
4:28 you. So here we see a mix of Grecoman
4:29 religion and Jewish and Christian
4:31 symbolism. Apparently someone in late
4:33 Roman Anatolia saw this particular blend
4:36 of divine figures, lurggical phrases,
4:38 and protective imagery as an especially
4:39 efficacious way to protect themselves
4:41 from harm. So what religion did this
4:43 person follow? Whoever commissioned or
4:45 wore this amulet? Well, pinning down
4:47 their exact religious affiliation might
4:49 be impossible. And maybe it's beside the
4:50 point. Throughout the history of
4:52 religion, no one has ever received a
4:54 religion fully formed. Scribes,
4:57 artisans, holy men, priests, mothers,
4:59 shepherds, all people are constantly
5:01 tinkering with religious materials,
5:03 picking up new symbols, adapting
5:06 rituals, and mixing traditions in ways
5:07 that make sense in their own homes,
5:10 workshops, and local shrines. You see a
5:12 similar process in Haitian voodoo, which
5:13 I already mentioned. Enslaved Africans
5:15 in the Caribbean brought with them a
5:17 wide range of West and Central African
5:19 religious traditions. Under colonial
5:20 rule in Haiti, they were pressured,
5:22 sometimes violently, to adopt
5:24 Catholicism. But they didn't simply
5:25 abandon their traditional beliefs and
5:27 practices. They adapted them. For
5:29 example, Catholic saints were identified
5:31 with voodoo spirits called law like the
5:33 Virgin Mary being identified with Azil
5:35 donour or St. Patrick being identified
5:37 with Dmbala. Catholic feast days also
5:39 became occasions for voodoo ceremonies.
5:42 These are acts of brickage, a term from
5:44 the anthropologist Claude Levy Strauss,
5:46 meaning the creative reuse and
5:48 recombination of whatever cultural
5:50 materials are at hand. Bricklage is
5:51 basically the French word for
5:53 do-it-yourself. So, synratism can be
5:56 seen as DIY religion, an ongoing,
5:59 unfinished, and sometimes contested
6:00 process in which people make decisions
6:02 about which practices to keep, which
6:05 practices to adopt, and which ones to
6:07 reject, often in dialogue with or in
6:10 defiance of religious authorities. Okay,
6:12 I know that's a lot to throw at you if
6:14 all you wanted was make my fantasy
6:15 religion more realistic. But you don't
6:17 need to replicate an entire religious
6:20 studies PhD seminar to make synretatism
6:21 work in your world building. Start
6:23 small. Give a village a harvest festival
6:25 that began in honor of one god, but is
6:27 now dedicated to another god. Show a
6:29 sacred symbol that means one thing in
6:31 one culture, but has been adopted into a
6:33 completely different culture. Let your
6:35 characters casually borrow or rework a
6:36 prayer from a neighboring city, or carry
6:38 an amulet from an old religion while
6:40 following a new one. Even a few details
6:41 like this can make your fictional
6:44 religion feel lived in, layered, and
6:46 synchretatized. Next, I'd love to see
6:48 more attention paid to ritual or
6:49 ritualization, which I'll define
6:51 shortly. In a lot of fantasy and sci-fi
6:53 series, it's abundantly clear that the
6:55 writers have poured enormous effort into
6:57 creating grand mythologies in their
6:59 fictional religion. The sweeping
7:01 creation stories, the rivalries between
7:03 different gods in the pantheon, or the
7:05 apocalyptic prophecies. Examples would
7:06 include the Wheel of Times detailed
7:08 cosmology of the creator and the dark
7:11 one, or the extremely elaborate god lore
7:13 in the Elder Scrolls games. But here's
7:15 the thing. In real life, most religious
7:16 practitioners are not walking around
7:18 thinking about those myths. Okay? Yes,
7:20 myths and religious stories are very
7:22 important to religion. They explain why
7:24 holidays happen, justify certain
7:25 practices, and are used for moral
7:27 teachings. Just as a quick example,
7:29 almost every part of the Hajj pilgrimage
7:31 to Mecca is tied to a story from Islamic
7:33 tradition. Like how the stoning of the
7:35 devil ritual symbolizes Abraham
7:37 rejecting the temptations of Satan. But
7:40 for most people, lore, mythology, or
7:41 stories fade into the background of
7:44 daily life. They are far less immediate
7:45 than the prayers, offerings, and
7:47 routines that actually structure their
7:49 religious practice. In other words,
7:51 religious practitioners are far more
7:52 concerned with what they do than with
7:54 the finer points of theology or
7:57 mythology. And I get it truly. I love
7:58 mythological lore as much as the next
8:00 nerd. I still get chills from the
8:02 creation myth cutscene in the Ocarine of
8:05 Time in all its original N64 glory. But
8:06 what I'd really love to see is writers
8:08 pouring as much creative energy into
8:10 rituals as they do into sweeping
8:13 creation stories. Spoilers ahead for
8:15 Apple TV's Foundation series, but I was
8:16 legitimately impressed by the portrayal
8:19 of a pilgrimage in season 1, episode 8.
8:20 So, in this episode, the clone emperor
8:23 discards his protective nanotech and
8:25 walks a blazing desert pilgrimage known
8:27 as the spiral, which ends at a cave
8:29 called the mother's womb, where pilgrims
8:30 believe they'll receive a vision. Now, I
8:32 won't spoil too much, but the
8:33 showrunners came up with believable
8:35 rules about how you're allowed to finish
8:36 the pilgrimage. And when the emperor
8:38 finally completes the journey, his
8:40 return sparks a political and religious
8:42 fallout. What I really liked about this
8:44 episode was not only the creativity of
8:45 the ritual, but how the showrunners used
8:47 ritual to shape the characters and the
8:49 politics. It wasn't really a flashy
8:52 spectacle, but it was embodied, raw,
8:54 symbolic, and it drove the plot forward.
8:56 I think part of the reason why we see so
8:58 much focus on sweeping mythological lore
9:00 and fictional worlds comes from how
9:02 western culture has been conditioned to
9:04 think about religion in the first place.
9:06 We are so conditioned to think of
9:07 religion as essentially something
9:09 grounded in sacred texts and the myths
9:12 and doctrines recorded in those texts.
9:14 That assumption runs deep in societies
9:16 shaped by Christianity and especially
9:18 Protestant Christianity where authority
9:20 has long been tied to solos scriptorra.
9:21 When that's your starting point, it's
9:23 easy to treat a religion's text as the
9:25 religion itself and to imagine that if
9:26 you can summarize what is written in
9:28 that text, you've captured the essence
9:30 of that tradition. But in many
9:32 traditions, sacred texts are really not
9:34 all that central. There's more of a
9:36 focus on orthopraxy or correct practices
9:38 rather than orthodoxy or correct
9:40 teachings. So, what can an author do
9:42 with this? The anthropologist Katherine
9:44 Bell argued that it's not really useful
9:45 to think of ritual as a category of
9:47 behavior. After all, that one-term
9:49 ritual can apply to everything from
9:51 state funerals to Buddhist prayer
9:53 wheels, from a Passover seder to a
9:55 baseball player's batting stance. It's
9:57 an impossibly huge category of behavior.
9:59 Instead, she argues it's better to think
10:02 of ritual as a process. The process of
10:04 ritualization. Ritualization is a
10:07 process of transforming ordinary actions
10:09 like walking, eating, or pouring water
10:11 into something special, which can be
10:13 done through repetition, symbolism, or a
10:15 formalized structure. You name it.
10:16 There's a lot of ways to transform an
10:17 ordinary action into something
10:20 extraordinary. It's not the bare act
10:22 itself that makes something a religious
10:23 ritual. It's the way it's framed,
10:25 repeated, or set apart. Like a
10:27 procession is just a bunch of people
10:29 walking together until you walk together
10:31 in a certain order on a certain day with
10:33 certain objects and words. Like the
10:34 processions you see walking through the
10:37 old city of Jerusalem around Easter. In
10:38 real world religions, this process of
10:41 ritualization is everywhere. The
10:43 Eucharist ritualizes eating bread and
10:45 drinking wine. At a Shinto shrine,
10:46 worshippers ritualize handwashing before
10:48 entering a shrine. This separates
10:50 ordinary space from the sacred space of
10:52 the shrine. So, what I'd love to see in
10:54 more fictional universes is more
10:56 ritualization. Not only creativity in
10:58 inventing the rituals, but stories where
11:00 ceremonies, initiations, and seasonal
11:02 festivals are given the same narrative
11:04 weight as a creation myth. Next, your
11:06 world building should pay attention to
11:09 religious materiality, religious stuff.
11:11 Like I said earlier, western frameworks
11:13 are often biased to think of religion
11:14 fundamentally as a set of beliefs,
11:17 stories or moral codes, especially those
11:19 written down in texts. But religion also
11:22 involves physical materials, temples and
11:25 shrines, incense and candles, statues,
11:28 figurines and icons, special clothing,
11:30 holiday foods, prayer beads, and prayer
11:33 wheels. Scholars in recent decades have
11:34 been paying a lot of attention to
11:36 religious materiality. Studying how
11:38 religion is expressed, maintained and
11:40 experienced through physical things. And
11:42 they've been doing this in part because
11:44 people overfocus on texts and beliefs.
11:46 So for example, consider Hindu
11:48 devotional statues of gods. The
11:50 anthropologist Fenita Shinha found that
11:51 in Singapore, shop owners selling
11:54 statues of Hindu gods deliberately avoid
11:55 products marked made in China,
11:57 preferring ones that are made in India.
11:59 For many Singaporean Hindus, India
12:01 remains central in their minds as the
12:03 most legitimate and preferred site for
12:05 all things Hindu. And entrepreneurs in
12:07 Singapore respond to this by sourcing
12:09 devotional items from India. It's just
12:11 good business sense. And from this one
12:13 example, we can learn a ton about a
12:15 diaspora religious community. In
12:16 Singapore, Hindu devotional statues
12:18 carry layers of meaning tied to where
12:20 and how they're made. In other words, a
12:22 single purchase at a shop counter can
12:24 reflect centuries of tradition,
12:26 contemporary identity politics, and the
12:28 economics of religious life at once.
12:29 Even for religious traditions that claim
12:31 to have less focus on materiality,
12:33 there's still a whole lot of material
12:34 culture if you know where to look.
12:36 American evangelicalism, for example,
12:37 isn't usually associated with ornate
12:39 cathedrals, incense, or clerical
12:41 vestments like Catholic or Orthodox
12:43 Christianity. But evangelicalism in the
12:45 1990s definitely had its own material
12:47 culture. illustrated children's books,
12:50 WWJD bracelets, Salty the singing song
12:52 book cassette tapes, and yes, Veggie
12:54 Tales. For worldbuilders, especially
12:56 costume designers, prop makers, and
12:58 visual storytellers, thinking in terms
13:00 of material religion can develop a
13:02 unique and believable design language
13:03 for your setting. If your fictional
13:05 culture has religious beliefs, what
13:07 physical objects embody them? What
13:09 fabrics, jewelry, tools, or
13:11 architectural details carry religious
13:13 significance? When a viewer sees a
13:14 character holding prayer beads or
13:16 spinning a prayer wheel or putting on a
13:18 specific garment, they instantly learn
13:19 something about that world's religion
13:21 without a single line of exposition.
13:23 Another thing I rarely see in fictional
13:25 universes is something that scholars
13:27 call lived religion. This is how
13:29 religion is practiced, experienced, and
13:31 expressed by ordinary people rather than
13:33 official spokespersons. So, for example,
13:36 if I asked you, what do Christians do
13:38 and believe? You might think of the
13:40 official items on the checklist. Go to
13:41 some sort of communal worship or
13:44 lurggical experience on Sundays. Read
13:46 the Bible. Pray to God, usually
13:48 envisioned as a trinity, engage in
13:50 rituals like the Eucharist and baptism,
13:52 and celebrate holidays like Easter and
13:54 Christmas. Of course, there's a lot of
13:55 variation across the different branches
13:56 of Christianity. But these are some of
13:58 the textbook answers, and they're not
14:00 wrong. They're just not the whole story.
14:02 In real life, people's religious worlds
14:04 often don't follow textbook definitions
14:06 because people fold all kinds of
14:08 everyday habits, folk traditions, and
14:10 personal rituals into their religious
14:12 lives. You can see this in the rising
14:14 popularity of manifesting and essential
14:15 oils among American Christians.
14:17 Manifesting is the idea that by focusing
14:19 your thoughts and visualizing a desired
14:21 outcome and maybe even speaking it out
14:23 loud, you can attract it into your life.
14:25 A concept that has roots in new age
14:27 spirituality and the self-help movement.
14:29 Essential oils, on the other hand, are
14:30 concentrated plant extracts that are
14:32 also popular in the New Age movement.
14:34 These are not exactly official Christian
14:36 practices, and some Christian
14:37 authorities have spoken out against
14:39 them. Like this recent article from a
14:40 Christian magazine saying that
14:43 manifesting has infiltrated American
14:45 Christian culture. In the early 2000s,
14:46 bunches of instructional books were
14:48 published aimed at Christian audiences,
14:50 praising the biblical significance of
14:52 essential oils. Many claim that scenting
14:54 one's Bible study with frankincense or
14:56 sandalwood could deepen the experience
14:58 of the text. And manifesting, often
15:00 framed in secular self-help language,
15:02 has been reinterpreted by many
15:03 Christians as aligning your thoughts
15:05 with God's will or praying with
15:07 expectation and speaking blessings into
15:09 being. None of this shows up in a
15:11 catechism or a doctrinal statement, but
15:12 for the Christians doing these
15:13 practices, they consider them as part of
15:15 their Christian life. And these
15:17 practices don't need to be logically
15:18 consistent with official Christian
15:20 teachings. They just need to work. And
15:22 by work, I don't mean stand up to
15:24 theological scrutiny. I mean, does this
15:27 ritual, object, or action make my life
15:29 better? Does it help heal my cousin's
15:31 illness or get me that promotion at
15:33 work? The scholar Robert Orssey gives
15:35 another example. American Catholics at
15:36 St. Lucy's Church in the Bronx would
15:38 sometimes bring home bottles of water
15:39 from a neighborhood shrine built to look
15:42 like the grotto at Lord in France, even
15:43 though they knew perfectly well it was
15:45 just New York City tap water. Meredith
15:47 Magcguire, a leading scholar in the
15:49 field of lived religion, says, "We are
15:51 mistaken in our expectation of cognitive
15:53 consistency between individuals religion
15:56 as institutionally framed and a person's
15:59 actual religion as lived. It may be only
16:01 intellectuals who care about rational
16:03 coherence in religious ways of thinking,
16:06 perceiving, and acting." After nearly 40
16:07 years of talking to people about their
16:09 individual religions, I have the
16:11 impression that only a small and
16:13 unrepresentative proportion struggle to
16:15 achieve tight consistency among their
16:17 wide-ranging beliefs, perceptions,
16:19 experiences, values, practices, and
16:22 actions. I very rarely see examples of
16:24 lived religion in fiction. Now, we hear
16:26 a lot about what official sources say
16:27 about a religion, but I want to see
16:29 authors and showrunners deciding what a
16:31 world's farmers, merchants, and street
16:33 vendors actually do with that religion
16:34 on the ground. You know, the little
16:37 rituals, the personal priorities, the
16:38 things that might make the elites roll
16:40 their eyes, but that everybody does
16:42 anyway. The difference between a flat
16:44 schematic religion and one that feels
16:46 real often comes down to these
16:48 unofficial, improvised, and deeply
16:50 personal ways that people actually do
16:52 their religion in their daily lives. So,
16:54 those are just a few examples of what I
16:56 rarely ever see in religions and
16:58 fictional universes. Again, I'm not
16:59 expecting an author or showrunner to
17:01 replicate a bunch of religious studies,
17:03 theory, and method in their stories.
17:05 That would be boring. As much as I love
17:07 religious studies, theory, and method,
17:08 but these are features of religion that
17:10 I see all over the world and all
17:12 throughout history. And it would be
17:13 really cool to see some worldbuilders
17:15 step up and do something very different
17:17 with their fictional religion. And
17:18 honestly, this kind of critical
17:20 thinking, asking why things look the way
17:21 they do, what's being shown, and what's
17:23 being left out, is not just useful when
17:25 analyzing religion, it's just as
17:27 important when we're looking at the real
17:28 world, especially when it comes to the
17:29 news. That's why I've been using ground
17:31 news. Ground News is the thing that you
17:33 wish you had the time and energy to do
17:34 every time you scrolled through the
17:36 headlines on your social feeds. Having
17:38 the ability to compare coverage across
17:40 the political spectrum, track who's
17:41 reporting what and how they're framing
17:43 the story. But instead of spending your
17:45 whole day doing that, Ground News does
17:47 it for you. Ground News is a website and
17:49 app that aggregates a bunch of different
17:51 outlets covering a particular story,
17:52 then pairs that story with a quick
17:54 visual breakdown of the political bias,
17:56 factuality, and ownership of the sourc's
17:58 reporting. Right now, one of the top
18:00 stories is about the US defense
18:02 secretary, Pete Hgsth, reposting a video
18:04 featuring an evangelical pastor saying
18:05 women should not be allowed to vote.
18:07 Here, Ground News has aggregated
18:09 literally hundreds of outlets covering
18:11 the story. Scroll down here and you can
18:13 see the bias distribution chart. Most of
18:14 the coverage is coming from the center
18:16 with about a third coming from
18:17 left-leaning sources and a small
18:19 minority from right-leaning sources.
18:21 Scroll down again and here's the
18:22 factuality chart. The overwhelming
18:24 majority of these sources have been
18:26 rated as highly factual. And here is the
18:28 ownership chart showing you who owns
18:30 these sources, including wealthy private
18:32 owners, private equity, or media
18:34 conglomerates. Ground News also enables
18:36 you to easily compare headlines. The
18:38 right-wing Washington Times reads,
18:41 "Heath reposts a video on social media
18:42 featuring pastors saying women shouldn't
18:43 be allowed to vote, while the
18:45 left-leaning New Republic infers
18:47 Hegsth's intention. It sure looks like
18:49 Pete Hegsth doesn't think women should
18:51 vote." One of my favorite features is
18:53 their blind spot feed. It highlights
18:55 stories that are heavily covered on one
18:56 side of the political spectrum, but
18:58 ignored on the other side. So, if a
19:00 story is blowing up in right- leaning
19:02 media, but barely mentioned on the left,
19:03 or vice versa, you'll see it right there
19:05 in the feed. It's a quick way to check
19:07 what you're missing, and it can also
19:08 reveal a ton about what each side
19:10 considers to be newsworthy. Now, we
19:11 can't get rid of bias completely, but
19:13 Ground News gives you the tools to see
19:15 the bias, see the gaps, and understand
19:17 why some stories blow up in one media
19:19 bubble and vanish in another. If that
19:20 sounds like something you'd like to use,
19:23 head on over to ground.news/refor
19:25 scan the QR code here on screen to get
19:27 40% off their Vantage plan. Again,
19:29 that's ground.news/refor.
