# religious hierarchy



## valiant12 (May 24, 2015)

Please help me with the main religion on my WIP. How would the religious leader communicate with his underlings, and how will they elect a new leader when the old one die. The area where the religion is practised is way bigger than Europe. My solution at the moment is that each kingdom have its own religious head. There is main religious leader who is de jure religious head of the whole continent(although not the whole continent practise the same religion), but de facto the kingdom level religious leaders have almost complete autonomy. Other thing that bothers me at the moment is realistically how many levels are between the kingdoms religious head and the lowly priest(ess),monk,nun.
Also should the kingdom religion leder be allowed to marry


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## psychotick (May 24, 2015)

Hi,

I'm not sure we can really help you. This is your world and world build and the decisions are up to you. What I'd do is take an existing religion, Catholic or Orthodox or what have you, and google their management structure. Each religion is of course going to be different.

You need to realise that the differences in the tenats of the religion will have an impact on the management structure. For example Catholics have a clerical head - the Pope. While the top level for orthodox communities are the bishops who get together in I think senates to determine the course of the religion. Anglicans have a titular head - the Queen - who is protector of the faith but has no role in the church, while the archbishops run the church - a hangover from when the faith liberated itself from Catholicism and more importantly from the watch of the Pope.

Cheers, Greg.


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## X Equestris (May 24, 2015)

As mentioned, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are good places to start.  Here's the page on Catholic hierarchy:

Hierarchy of the Catholic Church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As for whether the head of the religion in each country should marry, that depends on the beliefs of the religion.  I believe the Orthodox church does ordain people who are married.


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## CupofJoe (May 24, 2015)

Please don't look only at Christianity for inspiration.
Buddhism has monks... and Islam has its  scholars,  religions around the world have very different organisations.
I don't know much/anything about Sikhism or Judaism or Janeism, or the myriad of others but there should be some information out there.
A lot of religions are very decentralised in their structure and organisation.


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## valiant12 (May 24, 2015)

> I believe the Orthodox church does ordain people who are married.


hI'm almost certain they don't. It doesn't matter anyway because, I didn't want my religion to be too Christian. I may get some inspiration by Christianity hierarchy, but I don't want my fictional religion to be a parody of Christianity(although when I started this book way back when the book was just a short story the religion was a Christian parody). Some other religions I can use for inspiration?


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## X Equestris (May 24, 2015)

valiant12 said:


> hI'm almost certain they don't. It doesn't matter anyway because, I didn't want my religion to be too Christian. I may get some inspiration by Christianity hierarchy, but I don't want my fictional religion to be a parody of Christianity(although when I started this book way back when the book was just a short story the religion was a Christian parody). Some other religions I can use for inspiration?



In the Latin Church, only celibate men, as a rule, are ordained as priests, while the Eastern Churches, again as a rule, ordain both celibate and married men.

That's from the Catholic hierarchy page on Wikipedia.

As for other religions, most are very decentralized.  Buddhism is probably your best bet, but it's not quite as tightly organized.

Besides, I'm not saying you should use the names, you can just use the organizational levels.


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## Caged Maiden (May 24, 2015)

I wanted my religions to be not too Christian, but be easy for readers to understand without too much explaining.  I tried to create a structure like the Catholic Church, by having a pope figurehead, archbishops under him, bishops under those, and priests and my version of lesser priests at the bottom.

I think if communication is your concern, you could have local elections for certain ranking individuals, while others are conscripted for the community.


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## skip.knox (May 25, 2015)

As psychotick says, it's your world.

You ask about lines of communication. If you are talking pre-industrial, lines of communication are slow and physical, unless you want to introduce crystal balls or other supernatural communication. But it's an important factor. Very broadly speaking, slower communication means less effective central control.

You ask about choosing the leader. Plenty of room for variation here, but *usually* it's by election. Not elections the way we moderns think of it--you can research this on your own--but from monasteries right up to the top of the hierarchy, most religions maintain at least the fiction of consensus. Not from all believers, but from the religious (priests, monks, whatever). The other model is co-optation. Shamanistic religions will do this, with the old shaman grooming a replacement. I don't really know what happens if the old shaman gets killed before he has a chance to choose a student. Maybe the clan chief chooses. Maybe they cast lots.

You ask about levels. Hierarchy is very much a modern obsession. Pre-modern societies were far more organic and much more tolerant of fuzziness about who ranks above whom. So, for example, in medieval Christianity there were in theory just bishops and priests. Monks were laymen, not priests and had their own hierarchy (abbot and monk). In practice there were all sorts of titles including seven orders within the priesthood, not to mention archbishops and metropolitans, deacons, archdeacons and so on. Moreover, which an archbishop technically supervised other bishops, in practice there were bishops that were more important than archbishops -- most notably, the pope himself was merely the Bishop of Rome.

In short, you can create your hierarchy as tight or loose as you please. The real variables are speed and reliability of communication, ability to command resources (armies and money, mainly), and a viable legal underpinning (what is seen as legitimate claims to authority). The more of this your leader has, the more power (as distinct from authority) s/he will have. What's really fun is all this can vary by time, place and individual, so you can create whatever circumstances your story needs and still be believable.


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## valiant12 (May 25, 2015)

> Quote Originally Posted by valiant12 View Post
> hI'm almost certain they don't. It doesn't matter anyway because, I didn't want my religion to be too Christian. I may get some inspiration by Christianity hierarchy, but I don't want my fictional religion to be a parody of Christianity(although when I started this book way back when the book was just a short story the religion was a Christian parody). Some other religions I can use for inspiration?
> In the Latin Church, only celibate men, as a rule, are ordained as priests, while the Eastern Churches, again as a rule, ordain both celibate and married men.


Im saying that in the Eastern Churches they ordained both married and celibate , but being celibate is a job requirement for bishops and being bishop is a requirement to be elected as the head of the church. The heads of the eastern orthodox churches are not married.
The Orthodox Churches and Priestly Celibacy


> The Orthodox Church thus accepts these two forms of service equally and leaves the choice of which it is to be to the individual member, in accordance with his own vocation and particular charisms. For pastoral reasons however, the Church has favoured the institution of celibacy for the order of bishops, and these are chosen exclusively from the celibate priesthood.


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## valiant12 (May 25, 2015)

> You ask about lines of communication. If you are talking pre-industrial, lines of communication are slow and physical, unless you want to introduce crystal balls or other supernatural communication. But it's an important factor. Very broadly speaking, slower communication means less effective central control.


The religious people in my world don't use supernatural stuff. Im pretty sure that when they use pigeons, they use regular pigeons the boring type that exist here on earth, instead of the better type which are breed in a way ordinary people cannot recreate. Most of the priests in my world believe in the stuff they preach.The more pragmatic of religious leaders probably have a secret stash with teleportation items or  long range communication artifacts for dire emergencies.


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## X Equestris (May 25, 2015)

valiant12 said:


> Im saying that in the Eastern Churches they ordained both married and celibate , but being celibate is a job requirement for bishops and being bishop is a requirement to be elected as the head of the church. The heads of the eastern orthodox churches are not married.
> The Orthodox Churches and Priestly Celibacy



And you are in no way bound by anything real.  But the precedent that there are religious traditions where marriage is permissible at certain levels means letting your national level religious leader be married isn't too much of a stretch.


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## Russ (May 25, 2015)

Doesn't the question of whether or not religious leaders marry lie with the tenants of the religion itself?


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## X Equestris (May 25, 2015)

Russ said:


> Doesn't the question of whether or not religious leaders marry lie with the tenants of the religion itself?



It ought to, though a lot of real religious leaders of many religions are celibate, so it ends up being normal that they are in fiction.


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## Russ (May 25, 2015)

X Equestris said:


> It ought to, though a lot of real religious leaders of many religions are celibate, so it ends up being normal that they are in fiction.



I get that for sure, but while the Abrahamic faiths are cool and all, the imagination and our history know very few bounds.

For instance, if the religion valued fertility, or thought having children was a virtue than the preisthood might all have to be married.

In fact even among the Abrahamic faiths having children can be a big deal.  Some subsects suggest that certain things cannot even be studied or positions held until you reach a certain age and have children.

Sometimes I see questions here about building a culture or religion here that seem to be coming at the problem backwards.  If you are building a religion from the ground up you should not impose ideas on it holus bolus from the outside, rather let them evolve from the creation inside out.


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## X Equestris (May 25, 2015)

Russ said:


> I get that for sure, but while the Abrahamic faiths are cool and all, the imagination and our history now very few bounds.
> 
> For instance, if the religion valued fertility, or thought having children was a virtue than the preisthood might all have to be married.
> 
> ...



I completely agree.  A completely fictional religion shouldn't be bound by anything from the real world without an organic reason in the world it is set in.  

As you mentioned, I've thought about having a religion whose priesthood has to be married.  And in the same setting, I have the priesthood of a separate religion who consider themselves spiritually married to their deity, and so are celibate.  But at the same time, there are no gender restrictions on the priesthood of that religion, as there is no reason for such in either the religion itself or the culture it started out in.


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## valiant12 (May 25, 2015)

I don't want my fictional religion to be too Christian, but it have one key similarity with Christianity especially early Christianity- you don't have to be from a certain ethnicity or country or social class to follow the religion. And its very relatable to the common person who works in the fields- you don't need to be littered, gifted with magic, exceptional warrior, rich or exceptionally smart to understand the basis principals and to believe.


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## Miskatonic (May 26, 2015)

You can take a hierarchy and just come up with your own titles. It can function in a similar fashion or you could add new elements to it. Marriage ceremonies don't have to be what we all imagine them as, you can come up with a ritual of some sort that makes things more elaborate or more simplified. 

Are these religions in conflict with each other? Are they monotheistic, polytheistic or something else?


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## Miskatonic (May 26, 2015)

valiant12 said:


> I don't want my fictional religion to be too Christian, but it have one key similarity with Christianity especially early Christianity- you don't have to be from a certain ethnicity or country or social class to follow the religion. And its very relatable to the common person who works in the fields- you don't need to be littered, gifted with magic, exceptional warrior, rich or exceptionally smart to understand the basis principals and to believe.



Do they follow a specific text? Did a prophet of some type found the religion? Is there a particular lore around this person? Any particular symbolism to represent the religion? Are there cardinal sins of some type? Is there an equivalent of heaven or hell? 

You can get pretty detailed when you delve into religious practices, especially in a fantasy setting.


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## valiant12 (May 26, 2015)

> Do they follow a specific text?


They follow several texts.


> Did a prophet of some type found the religion?


A group of prophets.


> Is there a particular lore around this person?


No but I love writing lore about the time period where these people lived. I hope that someday       I will write a novel set in that age.


> Any particular symbolism to represent the religion?


Suns,stars,candles,light sources in general,the color yellow,scales.


> Is there an equivalent of heaven or hell?


Similar places exist in my world and that particular religion describes them pretty accurately.

Also as I mentioned before that religion attracts many people from all walks of life and there is diversity in their worldview, they follow the same god and same basic principals , but that doesn't mean that all priests are single minded on all important stuff.


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## X Equestris (May 26, 2015)

So what are this religion's views on marriage and sexuality?  Is being chaste seen as holy, or is marriage and reproduction more important? That should settle the question of whether or not your national level religious leaders should be allowed to marry.


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