Writing a 'Religious Character'

So one of the major characters in my work happens to be the Token Religious Member (the most religious, but not the only religious one) of his party. He was raised in the equivalent of a monastery happens to be cleric. He is known for being quite The Pollyanna but is disliked by some of the reisidential Deadpan Snarker s. Over the course of the story he's revealed to be quite the Stepford Smiler and a Broken Ace to boot.

• A major part of his development is that it's revealed that he questions his faith and finds that the thought of A. Nearly his entire life being built around something that could literally be completely meaningless and B. He finds the potential existence of The Nothing After Death or Cessation of Existence to be extremely disturbing
• At some points his relationship with religion sounds like a 'opium of the masses' type thing (as in helps with people's suffering)
  • I'm worried about pulling this off without him sounding wangsty or sounding like I'm trying to shit on (organized) religion. Does anyone see any glaring problems with this?

As long as there is no implication that all religious people are like this, it should be ok.

Actually, I think most religious people do struggle with that sort of thing. Even Mother Theresa sometimes doubted the existence of god. I'd say the best thing to do is to show how his faith, for all his doubts, still serves as a source of great strength and inspiration to him, prompting him to do a lot of acts of charity, and giving him a confidence he might not otherwise have.

To borrow a theme from Slacktivist, religion on that level is a deeply intimate, personal experience; rather like sex. As such, any attempt at depicting it runs the risk of being pornographic, farcical, embarrassing, or all of the above.

Tread lightly. Remember that there are things about which telling and not showing is acceptable.

He also ends up in a relationship with a anti-theistic atheist. The narrative makes it clear that his biases against religious people are bad and he learns to be more accepting because of it. The religous character isn't just a Morality Chain however.

Sounds fine to me. Just a couple of thoughts. Though I'm not religious, I went to an all-girls Catholic school that had several nuns.

• If he's been a cleric, then religion has most like brought him some kind of happiness. Peace, focus, motivation, whatever—showing this as well as the grappling will be more well-rounded.
• Not all "differences of opinion" with a religious institution are a cause of great distress. At least one of the nuns at my school was an advocate of gay marriage and was never really bothered by the Church's view being different. Religious institutions have internal debates; they're not uniform entities.
• If your guy is in an relationship with an atheist, exploring their common ground would be interesting.

How to do this depends on several things. Is the god he believes in actually real? Does the religion he believe in teach the truth about said god and the universe in general or not? Do you intend to reveal the answers to those questions in the story or leave it ambiguous? If not, is it a 'Path of Inspiration' type or a 'myth and legends' type? Is the religion based on any real life religion (i.e. Christianity), a fusion of several, or totally made up?

Considering this guy is a cleric, his religion probably does play a huge part in his life and his character, but even if it's a big part of their life they are not going to talk about it every single waking minute of the day. And remember that despite a person's religion they will still have their own unique personality and character flaws. Not everyone will be The Pollyanna. I would personally be interested in seeing a Deadpan Snarker or cynical Knight in Sour Armor religious character.

And another thing, if you are constructing your own world and especially making religion a part of your story, provide some sort of explanation about the origin of corruption, age, and death. I find it kind of weird when writers construct their own universe yet still carry over both mortality and fear of mortality into their story without explaining where it comes from, as if they can't even fathom the concept of an immortal race or think that death is so natural that it needs no explanation.

edited 26th Oct '13 7:09:04 PM by shiro_okami

Actually, he's a pretty idealistic person, but a lot of his Pollyanna act is eventually revealed to be a front he puts on, as he often ends up in situations where he needs to counsel people. Almost like a male and less stoic version of The Woman Wearing The Queenly Mask. And the fact he was raised in a very religious setting and therefore associates religion with security and family influences him a lot.

• Also, in the setting, it's not made explicit whether or not the gods he worships are actually real. The religion itself is constructed, but draws on a variety of sources such as Paganism, Buddhism as well as Christianity.
• And to your last comment, that is actually really helpful and I hadn't thought of that particularly hard. I'll definitely have to keep that in mind while I work on worldbuilding :)