We do not see much religious propaganda in Poul Anderson's Technic civilization. The Polesotechnic League approves of Buddhist missionaries to counteract Ikranankan demonism. A Galilean mission on Woden converts Axor to Jerusalem Catholicism. Adzel becomes a Buddhist but by coming to Earth. Other than that, we see Ortho-Christianity on Dennitza and Catholicism on Nuevo Mexico but those religions were taken there by the colonists.
The Christian and other religious ideas on Aeneas nearly spark a jihad but that is Aycharaych's doing. Is there any sort of official religion of the Empire itself? The little that we see suggests that it acknowledges diversity.
2 comments:
Note that in British expansionism, missionaries -- clerics specifically working to convert non-Christian local populations -- tended to be very pro-native.
That is, they wanted to -culturally transform- the natives, but they wanted them protected from dispossession or extermination and lobbied hard for that.
British -settlers- tended to loathe missionaries, primarily for that very reason -- a very different attitude from that towards their -own- clerics. They often regarded them as borderline ethnic traitors.
In Kenya in the 1960's, I met a fair number who tended to the "string them up" attitude towards missionaries, and my readings in colonial history indicate that further back that had been quite common.
Imperial colonial officials were profoundly ambivalent towards missionaries.
Formally, they were usually in favor of Christianization.
Informally they tended to regard missionaries as an ongoing pain in the arse, prone to causing expensive trouble that might make them look bad to their superiors, or get the 'great British public' involved, with (in the officials' opinion) grossly ignorant Members of Parliament sticking their oar in.
So they were sometimes helped (often grudgingly) and often covertly sabotaged.
Missionaries were often unofficially/officially barred from some areas -- usually those with a majority Muslim population. Northern Nigeria, for example.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: That wasn't limited just to the British! Over and over in Prescott's histories of the conquests of Mexico and Peru I've read of how the Catholic priests accompanying the Conquistadors intervened to soften, moderate, etc., the conquest. Other clerics, like Bishop de las Casas, lobbied the Crown and the Papacy for action being taken to check the rapacity of the conquerors, with some success. The colonists and royal officials on the spot felt the same way as the British settlers/administrators you mentioned.
Paul: Interesting point. I recall no mention of the Empire having an official or state religion, so I think it did not. If we can go by the names of the Emperors we know of I would guess most of them were at least formally Christians. But because of that being the faith they had been raised in, not because of it being a requirement for becoming Emperor. Better that way!
Ad astra! Sean
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