Christianity and pseudo-Christianity in otherwise fantasy worlds

[Steerpike]

Let's remain focused on the subject matter at hand, not on the individual forum members.

My experience coincides with what @Mythopoet stated, above. Mainstream fiction seems to me much more likely to cast Christianity in a negative, rather than positive, light. I'm not religious, so I don't have a personal reaction to it, but I've certainly noticed it.

 

[Incanus]

Hey... Whoa. I thought I saw a hippogriff just fly past my window. Na, couldn't have been--

 

[Reaver]

And Tolkien himself disapproved of the idea that a race is completely evil, as it conflicted with his Catholic upbringing. So to me, that's pretty good basis for the idea of non-evil orcs and the idea that evil is learned, not innate.

Excellent point friend Ireth! As it just so happens, I have a first hand account that proves that orcs are just average joes, trying to make an honest buck:

ORC

'"I see here on your resume that your previous employer was an 'evil wizard'. Is there a reason why you didn't put his name?"

"Yes!" the orc growled, leaping out of his comfy chair. He reached for his sword but suddenly remembered that he'd checked it at the security desk. A sheepish grin covered his scarred, grayish-black face and he sat back down. "It's embarrassing to even be associated with him. Because of the way he died and everything."

The interviewer nodded. "Oh... I know who you're referring to. Yeah, I wouldn't put his name on a resume either. Unfortunate how close he came to ruling alongside the other one with the similar sounding name."

"Stupid halfling!" the orc roared, leaping to his feet yet again and pounding his spade-clawed hands on the interviewers desk. "Wish it would've died! If I'd been there I'da caught it and ate it."

"I know, right?" the interviewer agreed. "And what's with those giant eagles?"

"Bloody deus ex machinas!" the orc grumbled. "That's all they are. Complete bullshit."

"Well, truth be told," the interviewer started, "I'm sorta glad that the halfling did what he did. Business soared after S-er... you know who was destroyed."

The orc sat down in a huff. "I suppose you have a point. Gave me a chance to heal up and go to business school."

The interviewer looked at another piece of paper. "Oh yes, that's right. You're a disabled veteran." She smiled. "Thank you for your service."

"I am an orc!" the orc roared, leaping to his feet and thumping on his barrel chest. "I live to serve!"

"Very good!" the interviewer said, rising to her feet and extending her hand. "You're hired."

 

[X Equestris]

Actually, I'm curious about this reaction. Because I have NEVER, ever, ever come across a book where everyone in a Christian-esque religion is amazing and wonderful. I almost always find, in books that deal with historical Christianity or any Christian-esque religion that the majority of the members of the religion are nasty, petty, depraved people and there might be a few odd ones out that are actually good, but only because they don't really follow the tenets of the religion. So basically, it comes down to "all Christians are bad, the only good ones aren't really Christians at all". Seriously, almost every single time. And, as a Christian, it pisses me off.

So, I'm curious about what kinds of books you've read where Christians are all painted as wonderful? Aside from Christian Fiction, obviously. Can you give me the name of a generally well regarded fantasy novel that makes the monotheists all perfect? I can't think of anything even remotely like that myself.

This is much the same as my experience. Too often the members of a pseudo-Christianity are all painted with one brush, and the only good ones are at the lower levels and/or don't really follow it.

That's part of why I like the Andrastian Chantry from Dragon Age. It and its followers are given a fairly nuanced portrayal, with some sympathetic, heroic characters and some downright vile ones.

 

[Devor]

I haven't read all the posts here. I'm sorry if I'm missing something or repeating someone.

I have trouble believing any real religions were ever as, I guess I would call it "monotone" as the ones in the fantasy stories we read. So I find myself frowning on most portrayals of religion that I see in fantasy books - good, bad, Christian, pagan, whatever. If you think of a real world religion as being somewhat monotone, you probably don't understand it very well.

In my opinion, doing religion well is a "higher level" technique that most people should just kind of skimp by. The risks are high that you'll pull people out of the story with over done messages, misportrayals, or stereotypes. Too often they just lack the depth and character that real world religions do.

That said, there is a religion in one of my stories that I worked pretty hard on getting down right. I wanted to develop the six gods as characters who have shaped the world, giving each of them depth, while also tying each of them to the unique magics featured in the story. Since the gods are openly real in this setting, but limited to their own form of magic by a vow they made with each other, what develops in the culture are different ideologies for viewing whether the gods are good or bad, or behaving the way they should, as well as different "serving traditions" which focus on developing the magics the gods create to do good for society.

For instance - to keep it simple - a master of the judging tradition would spend his or her life learning how to use the rules of karma (dragon god), personality typing (tortoise god), and so on to decide whether a person is guilty of a crime, or should be trained as a scholar, or given a loan for a business. They might also criticize one of the gods for being too harsh with slobs or too generous to criminals with the chi that such people are given or the lives they'll be reborn into, and they'll argue about it with others of their tradition. Different regions might have really crappy or corrupt judging houses, some might have really good ones, and some might only have judging masters they've paid to come in from outside. And the judging tradition is just one of ten serving traditions that have similar roles shaping their society into something unique and deep.

But when you put it all together, with the six gods and the subtle magics and the ten traditions and the individual ideologies, I actually have plenty of material to talk about real world religions if I wanted to, I would say, in ways that are more deep and nuanced than you typically see.

It all goes back to that word: Monotone. I've known Catholics who have said they yell at God or Jews who complain that the Messiah is late - and would still describe their faith as strong. If you really want to create and understand a religion that feels real, start by picturing a feast and a dance, and try to understand how the religious doctrines help people to celebrate and society to function a little more strongly because it does so a little more cohesively.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

The problem with "monotone" religions has the same root as monotone anything else that's complicated in a fantasy world. I see this problem with governments. How often do we see people in a society going about willy-nilly defying the rule of law? All the time. What are the consequences for such defiance? Nothing. They never get sued, go to court, or suffer any of the consequences. At worst they go to jail and escape, at best they're thanked for their defiance. It's annoying, but it is what it is. This monotone comes from the fact that not one single person is or can be an expert on everything. By understanding this we will overcome world builder's disease and instead of building a world we'll actually write the book.

In any event, those are my thoughts on that.

 

[Devor]

This monotone comes from the fact that not one single person is or can be an expert on everything. By understanding this we will overcome world builder's disease and instead of building a world we'll actually write the book.

In business school, one of the things that comes up a lot is to "control your competitive advantage, go ahead and outsource everything else." I mentioned a story of mine where the religion is a central facet of what's going on so I put a lot into it. In most cases, it isn't, and people shouldn't spend too much time on it.

The longer I've been here, the more I've started to get put off by the debate around "worldbuilder's disease" because I think it misses the point. To me, it's more like: If religion is not a central concept of your story, what are the "quick guidelines" of doing it right? If religion is a big piece of my story, what are the more involved things that I can do with it?

I kind of answered the second question with my previous example. But the answer to the first question, I've come to feel, is to just skip through the details and focus on the characters' attitudes towards it. With religion in particular, I think you run the risk of stereotyping, bringing in your own preconceived, underdeveloped notions, and breaking immersion by recalling real-world elements. It's something that's a big part of people cultural identity and deserves, for that reason, to be treated with a little more thought when it's included.

Take ASOIAF. My favorite portrayal of the religion there was the one brief moment where Tyrion prayed to the stranger ahead of the capital being attacked. That one moment made me like GRRM's whole portrayal because it felt real. But then came the sparrows and the thing with Cersei and the religion became a faction / player in the game, and while I was reading it, it honestly made me consider giving up on the series. It felt tried and tired and simple and monotonous. The more he developed the religion itself, beyond the main characters' attitudes towards it, the more put off I was by reading it.

At the same time, with Arya Stark the religion of the faceless man is a central concept of her story, and you can see that play out very strongly in the level of depth it's given.

 

[Mythopoet]

I would hope that you could relax about this topic. I think he was trying hard to be respectful.

We are all programmed differently to be sensitive to our core beliefs.

Being born an atheist is not a choice, but it doesn't mean that we do not love those of faith, as obviously we do.

I believe that we are all born good, and that self reliance is the only gold standard worth spit.

I think writers in general are over sensitive to their core beliefs and that we all suffer from mild forms of mental illness.

Please give him a break and chill out.

We are all writers, and therefore must stick together.

I just want to clarify that I wasn't trying to get on the poster's case. I was really just honestly curious about what sorts of books he found that treat Christianity as amazing and perfect. I'm certainly not upset or anything. (My comment about books making me pissed off was just to mirror his comment about books making him pissed off, to show the other side of the coin.) I still would love to know the names of some books or authors that treat Christianity that way, because really I've never come across that before outside of Christian Fiction, which is a whole other can of worms.


On the subject of monotone religious depictions... I can't help thinking that it is at least partly because a lot of atheists seem to be incapable of viewing religion as more than a fraud, even in a fictional setting. And many atheists tend to paint religious people all with the same brush in real life too, so they do the same thing in fiction. I think it's easier for Christians to understand what it's like to disbelieve in God because we all have times of doubt. Many atheists don't seem to be able to understand what it's like to believe in God, and can't even imagine it. So they tend to include religions, because there's always been religion whether they like it or not, but can't make it believable because they can't really fathom it.

 

[Russ]

Firstly, I'd like to say I'm an athiest, and I'm really not a fan of the ideologies presented by monotheisms, so when I read a carbon-copy of Christianity in a book, it pisses me off, especially when everyone in that religion is amazing and wonderful - look at history. Religion is anything but.

However, Christianity is a monotheism (one god). It shares a good 95% of its roots, beliefs and ideas - oppression of women, hatred/ need to "redeem" heathens, the idea of an afterlife split into heaven/paradise and hell/jahannam, with the other major monotheisms of the world - Islam and Judaism. Core ideologies will be, if not the same, then similar, and if you have sects (which you should, something else that you don't see much, whilst history is full of them) be prepared for them to hate each other (again, history). If you are going to write a monotheism - it makes sense to do so, after all, the biggest religions today are monotheism, they are successful, not least due to the aggressive, expansion mindset they encourage - in the "evolution" of religion they out-compete polytheisms (many gods) because the polytheisms simply don't know they have to compete.

So basically, what it boils down to, is yes, write a monotheism, which will have many of the same traits as Christianity/ Islam/ Judaism - that is especially true if your world's social history is anything like ours, especially in the middle east where these religions came from -i.e heavily male dominated, so on and so forth. But don't set out to write Christainity - I think the easiet way to do this is to avoid many of the "Christain" holidays (all of which were stolen from pagan religions to make them more compliant to Christianity) - here I'm talking about celebrating Christmas (yule/ winter solcitice on Mithras' bday), easter (Germanic Goddess Eostre), the idea of three being "holy" - from Celtic europe and Ireland, ect, and various saints that used to be gods, such as Ireland's Saint Brighid.

Hope this wild, passive aggressive rant helps in some form - I've been reading too much Dawkins lately and the idea of monotheisms just makes me sigh and feel a bit depressed.

You have been reading too much Dawkins lately, and he really has not written anything of quality since he stopped being a scientist and has become a professional atheist. Many of his comments on history are both inaccurate and intentionally dishonest. You really need to read him critically if you want to get anywhere close to the facts.

Your post contains a number of both factual and logical errors and since it involves real groups of real people I think it important to point out a few of them so people who read it are not left with the impression it is true. I waited a while to respond which means this won't be right beside it, but it seems still worth the exercise.

I literally don't have time to correct all of the errors in this post but will just hit a few highlights.

Although your post is not clear, it should be clear that Judaism while monotheistic is not the slightest bit expansionist.

St. Brigid is not a stolen pagan god, she was a real person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigit_of_Kildare

She has the same name as a pagan god, but saying that having the same name means they used to be that person is silly. All of the people names Jesus or Mohammed used to be those people? Is the terminator really trying to say he is a black plowman? That is just a kind of silly/slanderous misinterpretation.

The origin of the english word "easter" possibly having a connection to a German god is interesting, but does not mean that the idea of easter has anything to do with that goddess. Even a moment's thought would make it clear that there were words for that celebration in Latin and Greek which had nothing to do with any German goddess, but were rather more closely related to the word for passover. So Christians were celebrating the death and ressurection of Jesus as a holiday long before any reference in literature to this German goddess, and thus since the idea of easter long pre-dates any findings of the name of this German goddess. You have unfortunately confused the etiology of the English word with the origin of the idea or event. It is like suggesting that the idea of courage did not exist before that particular word did. Faulty logic leading to a false conclusion.

I can't blame you for falling into these traps, there is plenty of pseudo-history being published these days that is hostile to the Abrahamic faiths and spouts lots of factual and logical errors that feed into pre-conceived biases, but with a solid grounding in history and a little basic logic you can avoid the worst of it.

 

[Mindfire]

Basically, whenever there is war between the Elves, Men and Orcs it is because a greater power is controlling the Orcs to use them as foot soldiers. When such a power is not controlling them, they tend to retreat into mountain settlements and only come into conflict with the other races when those races trespass on their territory. This pretty much makes them no worse than many human societies in Middle-earth who were in league with Sauron, often worshiping him as a god.

Well, yes... and no. The books make it clear that orcs/goblins and trolls are cannibalistic and inherently malevolent, even when there's no dark force directing them. I mean Sauron wasn't technically around during The Hobbit, or at least the orcs and trolls had no knowledge of the Necromancer in Dol Goldur. And yet they're still depicted as vicious, unintelligent savages.

 

[Mindfire]

On the subject of monotone religious depictions... I can't help thinking that it is at least partly because a lot of atheists seem to be incapable of viewing religion as more than a fraud, even in a fictional setting. And many atheists tend to paint religious people all with the same brush in real life too, so they do the same thing in fiction. I think it's easier for Christians to understand what it's like to disbelieve in God because we all have times of doubt. Many atheists don't seem to be able to understand what it's like to believe in God, and can't even imagine it. So they tend to include religions, because there's always been religion whether they like it or not, but can't make it believable because they can't really fathom it.

This seems to assume that all or most fantasy writers are non-religious. Given that the vast majority of the world's population is religious in some form, that seems improbable. Of course it's not impossible, but the implication is that- for some reason- non-religious people are more likely to write, or at least to write spec fic, than religious people are. Looking at the history of literature, I'm not sure I buy that. Maybe in sci-fi, which has typically been a haven for atheists and skeptics, but in fantasy?

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

On the subject of monotone religious depictions... I can't help thinking that it is at least partly because a lot of atheists seem to be incapable of viewing religion as more than a fraud, even in a fictional setting. And many atheists tend to paint religious people all with the same brush in real life too, so they do the same thing in fiction. I think it's easier for Christians to understand what it's like to disbelieve in God because we all have times of doubt. Many atheists don't seem to be able to understand what it's like to believe in God, and can't even imagine it. So they tend to include religions, because there's always been religion whether they like it or not, but can't make it believable because they can't really fathom it.

I think religious characters should be viewed as any other "diversity" case.

That is, if you want your world to be more "real," you want a diverse cast. But at the same time, you want to respect whatever ethnicity, orientation, religion, etc. that you represent. That doesn't mean that all characters not like you must be awesome, or you're dissing the ethnicity/orientation/religion… but you do want to avoid stereotypes and misconceptions, and strive for an honest depiction of the world through another's eyes.

A simple way of looking at a religious character or religion, for me, is based on two questions. (1) What the the god/dess stand for? (2) Is S/he good or evil?

A religious MC who follows a good battle goddess (properly) will be courageous and take risks for innocents, because these are good actions that are true to the religion. If she's ripping hearts out of her enemies and eating them for power, that blood magic might be good for a battle goddess, but not if the goddess is good. I know grey morality is popular, but I think the religion or the god/dess should be more "extreme" good/evil. It's the followers who are too human to be 100% good or evil. So maybe the devout follower of the battle goddess does get carried away, keep beating a corpse into an unrecognizable mess, and walk away from a fight speckled in the blood of many and with a piece of intestine knotted in her hair—or the villainous blood mage isn't so evil that she'd eat a baby, and she would turn on any blood mage who would.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

A little shout out to original Star Wars: Obi-Wan is an awesome religious character. Han Solo is an awesome atheist. Both ideologies are depicted respectfully.

 

[FifthView]

I was really just honestly curious about what sorts of books he found that treat Christianity as amazing and perfect. I'm certainly not upset or anything. (My comment about books making me pissed off was just to mirror his comment about books making him pissed off, to show the other side of the coin.) I still would love to know the names of some books or authors that treat Christianity that way, because really I've never come across that before outside of Christian Fiction, which is a whole other can of worms.

We are dealing with two different things here: Christianity expressed (expressly!) as Christianity, and pseudo-Christianity which might go under a different name but bears some of the trappings of Christianity.

As for explicit Christianity, I haven't read many fantasy novels or stories that include it.

"Trappings" might seem a derogatory term, but I don't mean it to be derogatory. However, when handled in monotone or as propaganda, "trappings" might seem an appropriate description, since authors take some of the tenets, symbolism, stereotypes, etc., of Christianity and slap them onto a "new" religion. This new religion might, on the surface, be polytheistic or pantheistic; but usually one expression of it will seem (at least to this reader) to be thinly veiled Christianity. Watching season 5 of Game of Thrones, I cringed when the Sparrows were on-screen; obviously, they were modeled on one historical manifestation of Christianity. Shaming, asceticism, the persecution of women, the hidden altar deep below ground, etc., I mention as examples.

For that matter, I wonder whether authors who are Christian will or should object to showing a medieval style of Christianity in a fantasy novel which has as its basis a medieval-ish society; or will they insist that a more moderate and modern Christianity should be slapped into that world, if Christianity is used as any kind of model in the novel? I don't mean to insult anyone's Christian faith, although I do wonder whether a modern Christian suddenly transported to 1200 A.D. Europe would find issue with some of the practices and tenets of the Church that was in power then. I also don't mean to imply that ALL expressions of Christianity in medieval periods were uniformly of one type, or that there was no variation or difference of opinion even at that time.

On the other side of things, I have, many times, experienced the "only positive" pseudo-Christianity in fantasy novels. Most inclusions of monasteries and monks don't bring to mind the Eastern, Asian variety (e.g., Buddhist monks) as described, particularly when they are a scholarly class copying texts and prone to give sanctuary to weary travelers. Often, clerics and priest-healers, and so forth will be drawn as selfless helpers following in the path of their peaceful god. Cathedrals, churches, and so forth will sometimes be where these healers and priests work. I even remember one example of a "savior" god of one of these priestly classes who sacrificed himself for the people—although I frustratingly can't remember the novel right now. Often in these novels, the primary villain will be some Dark Lord or a priestess of a dark religion involving demons, sacrifices, and all kinds of evil, and one of the MCs or significant side-character will be a member of the peaceful, selfless, golden-rule-following church. Sometimes, the infrastructure of the religion, the priestly class, won't play a major role in the novel (e.g., when the novel's main plot is not a war against some supreme evil but is instead some sort of internal political struggle), and so that class will play a background role — for whenever healing is needed or the MCs seek wise advice or need a place to pray and prepare for something.

Now, when looking for these pseudo-Christian examples, it can be easy to say that, no, this or that priest or healer is actually a pagan — pagan religions can be peaceful too! — and, it can alternatively be easy to say that the oppressive, persecuting, negative version could be thinly-veiled Islam, Zoroastrianism or polytheism. When the surface of the religion in question involves polytheism, these other cues could be misinterpreted, one way or another. So I wonder if an over-sensitivity might lead one to dismiss, or see, either the positive or the negative treatment of Christianity.

On the subject of monotone religious depictions... I can't help thinking that it is at least partly because a lot of atheists seem to be incapable of viewing religion as more than a fraud, even in a fictional setting. And many atheists tend to paint religious people all with the same brush in real life too, so they do the same thing in fiction. I think it's easier for Christians to understand what it's like to disbelieve in God because we all have times of doubt. Many atheists don't seem to be able to understand what it's like to believe in God, and can't even imagine it. So they tend to include religions, because there's always been religion whether they like it or not, but can't make it believable because they can't really fathom it.

Most atheists seem to me to have been raised in religious households or religious communities, many were in fact early adherents in childhood and even young adulthood (at least, have attended a church or temple as non-atheist during formative years), and actually have an ability to "imagine it." Atheists are not so thick-headed, stupid, and stubborn as you might assume. Of course, some are; but so are some believers.

 

[Mindfire]

I think religious characters should be viewed as any other "diversity" case.

That is, if you want your world to be more "real," you want a diverse cast. But at the same time, you want to respect whatever ethnicity, orientation, religion, etc. that you represent. That doesn't mean that all characters not like you must be awesome, or you're dissing the ethnicity/orientation/religion… but you do want to avoid stereotypes and misconceptions, and strive for an honest depiction of the world through another's eyes.

This is good advice, but I think there's an elephant in the room. Namely: if you have conflicting ideologies in your world, then clearly one of them has to be wrong and one of them has to be right. Unless you have some kind of higher transcendant truth that makes them both wrong, or both right for that matter. (Dragon Age was mentioned earlier and it seems to be moving in that direction. The Trespasser DLC is awesome!) But while you could use this technique to believably make the case that all religions are true or all religions are false (speaking solely of fantasy worlds here), I don't think it works for atheism vs. any kind of theism because these two stances are inherently contradictory. There can't be both gods and no gods at the same time. So the question is, how do you show that a belief in your world is false while still treating that viewpoint with respect? Won't designating a certain in-universe belief false be itself perceived as an attack on its real-world equivalent?

 

[Steerpike]

In fiction, you can always create a divide between reader knowledge and character knowledge. You could have atheists in a fantasy world where, while it is clear to the readers and even some characters that gods exist, it is unclear and unproven to other characters.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

So the question is, how do you show that a belief in your world is false while still treating that viewpoint with respect?

I think Star Wars did that well with Han Solo. Clearly, the Jedi religion is correct. There is a Force. The Force. But Han Solo's seen all kinds of hokey religions. BS, he says in a PG sort of way.

I think you could also have a religious character and an atheist character and leave both of their ideologies unproven. Those followers of good and evil battle goddesses I mentioned were being true to their goddesses, but none of their actions proved either goddess is real. Even the aforementioned blood magic might not be Proof of Goddess but the result of an adrenaline surge that happens whenever anyone eats a freshly plucked heart from one who died while experiencing an adrenaline surge himself, but only battle mages are crazy enough to do that.

 

[Mythopoet]

This seems to assume that all or most fantasy writers are non-religious. Given that the vast majority of the world's population is religious in some form, that seems improbable. Of course it's not impossible, but the implication is that- for some reason- non-religious people are more likely to write, or at least to write spec fic, than religious people are. Looking at the history of literature, I'm not sure I buy that. Maybe in sci-fi, which has typically been a haven for atheists and skeptics, but in fantasy?

No, I don't believe it does assume that. I certainly don't. Because I was addressing an issue that occurs within only a small percentage of fantasy stories, I was not implying anything at all about fantasy or spec fic in general. I was addressing "monotone" portrayals of religion in fantasy and what might be one of the main reasons for them, from my perspective. So already I'm not talking about fantasy that doesn't deal with religion at all, or fantasy that deals with religion well. And of fantasy that has "monotone" religious depictions I said merely that I think it is "at least partly" because of atheists who can't imagine true religious belief in a positive way. So, I'm not making assumptions about anything.

Most atheists seem to me to have been raised in religious households or religious communities, many were in fact early adherents in childhood and even young adulthood (at least, have attended a church or temple as non-atheist during formative years), and actually have an ability to "imagine it." Atheists are not so thick-headed, stupid, and stubborn as you might assume. Of course, some are; but so are some believers.

Well, there's a huge difference between being raised as a child in a religion and actually being able to understand religion as an adult. The one does not automatically lead to the other. And I'm not sure it's even the case that "most" atheists were raised in religious homes these days. I am certainly not assuming anything in general about atheists. But there definitely are some thick-headed and stubborn atheists out there and I'm sure some of them write spec fic. After all, it's an attitude that's pretty common among sci fi writers.

 

[Mythopoet]

On the other side of things, I have, many times, experienced the "only positive" pseudo-Christianity in fantasy novels.

Ok, but you still haven't given me a single concrete example. I'm really interested in a title or an author that I can look up because I would be interested in seeing how that kind of portrayal is executed.

 

[Mindfire]

I think Star Wars did that well with Han Solo. Clearly, the Jedi religion is correct. There is a Force. The Force. But Han Solo's seen all kinds of hokey religions. BS, he says in a PG sort of way.

Well yeah, but by the end of it all Han accepts the Force as real. (Anyone would after seeing Darth Vader block blaster fire with his hand before snatching the gun away with telekinesis.) And I'm pretty sure he says "May the Force be with you" either in Empire or RoJ.

I think you could also have a religious character and an atheist character and leave both of their ideologies unproven.

Theoretically yes... unless you're writing a story where gods/demons/spirits are directly involved. Or if for whatever reason you want to vindicate your protagonist's beliefs.

I was addressing "monotone" portrayals of religion in fantasy and what might be one of the main reasons for them, from my perspective.

Well I'm not convinced the fraction of books with "monotone" religions is as small as you say. I think the religions in most fantasy could be fairly described as "monotone", because most people don't really flesh them out. You say "monotone" religion is the work of atheists. I observe that most fantasy religions are "monotone". I therefore conclude that you are implying, though perhaps unintentionally, that most fantasy is the work of atheists. That seems unlikely to me, so I am skeptical of your explanation.