Religious Diversity

No one needs to be told that India is a land of many religions. Apart from the paths of Indian origin, there are episcopal St Thomas Christians and rabbinical Indian Jews although neither of these traditions has yet figured in Rudyard Kipling's Kim, which I am still reading. Strangers on trains inquire about each other's gods. A Tibetan Buddhist lama stays at an Indian Jain monastery and pays for Kim's European Catholic education whereas a Muslim horse-trader covertly working for British Intelligence pays for the many demonic invocations considered necessary to prepare Kim for his life on the Road. The begging lama has access to funds to be used for religious or charitable purposes though not for personal consumption. As in Europe, poverty for individual monks but wealth for monastic institutions.

Poul Anderson reproduces such religious diversity in his fictional Patrician System:

Diana Crowfeather hides her possessions, and sometimes sleeps, in a "...ruinous temple..." (Flandry's Legacy, p. 196);

the landlord at the Sign of the Golden Cockbeetle is called Hassan (p. 200), possibly a lapsed Muslim;

Tigeries are pagan;

there is a Jerusalem Catholic church on Daedalus;

Olaf Magnusson is a Neosufi who, to our surprise, invokes "'...the God...'" (p. 400) of the Merseians;

the Zacharians have their own creation myth;

Fr. FX Axor, the Wodenite Jerusalem Catholic priest, hopes that records of the Foredwellers will lead to "'...the very revelation of Christ's universality...'" (p. 403);

the announcement of the Magnusson insurrection ends: "'Stand by. The Divine, in whatever form It manifests Itself to you, the Divine is with us.'" (p. 261)

An eclectic proclamation for a multi-faith society.