Sam Guthrie is a Protestant but I don’t recall seeing specific denomination mentioned. Manuel de la Rocha, Roman Catholic. John and James Proudstar, traditional Apache (it actually pisses me off a little that every “injun” ends up being a shaman unless they die first :p).
I’m going to count “a ton of Spanish legends”. In some of them the religion of the protagonists is actually quite important as it is a source of conflict; for example, the “Satan built it” genre (no way that can have been built by humans, someone [usually a woman in extreme need] managed to trick the Devil into building it) and the “Beautiful Rebeca” genre (boy meets girl, boy has crush on girl, boy doesn’t realize girl is Jewish, girl very much realizes boy is a gentile, hijinks ensue but things generally end up straightened without too much damage).
No, it actually IS considered bad theology to attack reason. Reason and Faith are both considered valid sources of knowledge in theology, and in fact theology uses both. That you personally lack the background to understand something does not it nonsense make; give me a treatise on music theory and I would be happy to understand 5% of it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense.
I often suspect as regards Rowling / Potter; that the Wizarding World has a whole load more traits and aspects, which the author refrains from mentioning – just because doing a lot of such, would make a bunch of already long books, many thousands of pages long. My angle on this bit, is that wizards do have their own, non-Christian religion – Harry’s “godfather”(Sirius IIRC) is the wizarding religion’s equivalent of such a personage; but his role in the books is the (also godparently) one of “keeping an eye out for” Harry in secular terms, now that Harry’s parents are gone – calling him his “godfather” is neat “shorthand” for that, without having to get into reams of exposition.
Also, I find that in the books Rowling does a certain amount of “fudging” of things, IMO to avoid potential attack and controversy: e.g. not spelling matters out, about the wizarding religion. Understandable; with the books as they stand, she gets plenty of trouble already from the narrow-minded and unimaginative religious.
It’s a tossup whether I first read “The Star” or “The Nine Billion Names of God” both by Arthur C. Clarke. I first encountered them, probably in the same collection, when I was allowed at the tender age of 12 to read the sci-fi in the adult section of the library. I cannot recall anything specific earlier than that. When I was younger It seems a character’s religion had to be up front and central to the plot before I’d notice it. I’ve read many of the other stories listed in this thread but I was definitely older than 12 when I first encountered them.
Then when I was 14 I picked up Stranger in a Strange Land and nothing was the same after that.
Though something frequently occurring in all kinds of fiction – the more so, in same from an age of more-general religious belief, than this one – is the character who thinks (rather IIRC as Huck re Jim), “Screw it, I’m going to Hell for sure anyway; so I may as well do whatever I like”. Characters brought up in one or another variety of Christianity; but reckoning themselves in one way another, not going to “make the grade” for salvation; including perhaps being thus disqualified by – as with Huck – lacking any genuine interest in religion.
As far as I can recall, it was either Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, where Mannie’s co-husband is a priest in an obscure religion or the Doc Savage novel The Mental Wizard where a minor character is an imprisoned missionary.
Thanks to digs and Nava for sorting me out on the Father Brown statement.
While you’re at it, plz explain the end of The Man Who Was Thursday, which Christopher Morley called one of his favorite novels and which I reread every other year or so, just because it’s THAT GOOD.
When I was a kid I figured Sunday was supposed to be God. Now I think he’s the personification of Nature, ambivalent about Good and Evil. The reunited Days, in their fancy new robes symbolizing Creation Week, appear more as a bizarre nature cult than as any kind of Christians. This was 1908, though, years before Chesterton converted to Catholicism. In those days he was just “Catholic-curious.”
No. Way. I was thoroughly confused, and it’s one of those books I want to re-read, maybe with a Cliff Notes handy (same with the ending of Dirk Gently, too).
But I remember thinking of a couple of books I read after college: “Whoa, so once upon a time, Nihilists and Anarchists and Absurdists were a real force in society.” Once you try to take them seriously and think like they do, you churn out abstruse, impenetrable prose.
Oh, and more short stories: I remember finding a book called Flame Tree Planet “An Anthology of Religious Science Fantasy”. All that stuck with me was the tale of a traveler from Earth who realizes he’d reached an alien star system a thousand years after their Messiah had lived, then at his next stop, the planet he landed on had had a Christ figure five hundred years before, then two hundred and he’s told by a wise man on a remote planet that he missed him by a century… that he’s chasing the Messiah but he’ll die before he catches up to him.
My parents had a whole set of Classics for Children, and I particularly remember Robinson Crusoe as being religious. Years later I checked an adult edition, and yup, it was still overtly religious.
Another book in the series, Treasure Island, also had scenes where characters prayed and one of the pirates carried a Bible.
Me and Christopher Morley think it’s a dam’ good book. Look at the opening scene — the confrontation in the Anarchists’ Lair — the first (breakfast) scene with the entire Council of Days — the chase through the snowstorm after Professor de Worms — the face-to-face with Doctor Bull in his Spartan cell of a lodging — the duel with the Marquis — any tete a tete with President Sunday — the chase through France — the chase thorough London after Sunday, with elephants and balloons.
I say it’s the greatest fantasy-thriller ever written.
I too am a fan of the book but have never been able to nail down to my own satisfaction what it all means, or who or what Sunday is, exactly. “God” and “Nature” both seem about half-right. I do think it’s significant that the book is subtitled “A Nightmare”; it has a sort of dream logic to it.
(Somewhere I still have Martin Gardner’s Annotated Thursday, I hope, but I’m not sure where.)
I just remembered a book I read much earlier than the ones I mentioned above. I’m pretty sure I first read Jonathan Livingston Seagull when I was about 8, definitely no older than 9. I associate a lot of my early memories based on where I was living at the time.
Something by Heinlein, surely. Probably one of the juveniles, but the first one I recall where I distinctly thought “Religion” about a character was Stranger in a Strange Land. Kinda hard to miss it there.
I learned to read because my mom read me a story about King Arthur and his knights so often that I memorized it. Then I picked up the book on my own and started puzzling out the connection between the words on the page, and the words I remembered. And then I found the same words in other books, and I could figure out what the sentences said, and then I was reading on my own.
I remember her explaining who the Archbishop of Canterbury was, who called the gathering where the One True King would pull Excalibur out of the stone. And the knights would swear oaths by putting their hands on the hilt of their swords where it formed a cross. So they were religious.
Also, Robin Hood, with Friar Tuck, but that was later.
