MotF 29: Our God is a Jealous God

Yes, it has been mentioned the wording is a little... Modern.

But Still - A Swede-Wank with a Radical Lutheran church rising to become a major sect.

This was inspired by the Frederik Pohl story "Slave Ship", which has a somewhat similar scenario, if much wankier... a syncretistic religion, like Cao Dai OTL, arises in Vietnam, and thanks to being staunchly anti-Communist and a timely WWIII, expands rather substantially...

Bruce

My humble contribution. Hope it's all good.

A last minute entry- something from Fight and Be Right. It's a page from a secret Foreign Policy briefing prepared by the State Department in late 1940 for President Roosevelt, dealing with the growth of the Kimbanguist religion in the Congo Free State and the security implications of this trend.

B_Munro said:

Interesting! I am somewhat tickled by the notion of a religion being founded by someone named "William Boggins", which sounds like the name of a comical Charles Dickens charater.

Bruce

Click to expand...

I don't think you can make comments in this thread.

In the year 530 TC, a man from the city of Bostah, that great metropolis, second in size only to the capital of the Manhattan of the (formerly) great Union of Hodenosaunee-Powhaton, stepped forward and preached. This preacher, Hatasop Babineaux, the sole son of a French trader and a Powhaton prostitute, preached that across time great men and women, reformers who sought to "bring about the great joy and kindness in all of the Great Spirit's children" were born and made massive marks on the world. Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, and the Great Prophet of Hokaweanism, Isi Osyka, all where the "true children of the Great Spirit," and that to emulate them would be "as near divine as mortal man can be."

Babineaux gathered a small group of followers, now known as the "Fusionner-apôtres," and went about the city and the countryside preaching. He slowly gathered a good number of believers, including some of the ranked officials of Bostah. His preachings spread quickly then, but mostly underground. The government, fearing that Babineaux was working in collusion with possible Sioux or English spys, began a crackdown on the religion. Babineaux commanded his followers to not take up arms, but preached non-violence.

Babineaux was captured in July 538 TC, and was detained until September of that year. He was executed on charges of treason and having heretical views outside of the city of Bostah (the only city that allowed free worship in the Union). His "Fusionner-apôtres," then took up his mantle, and elected Alsoomse as their new leader. Alsoomse fled back to Bostah, but continued to use his underground network of believers to continue spreading the message.

In 576 TC, the Union voted to allow this new religion, Amalgamism, to freely worship in the Union, though many locals continued to privately persecute the believers. Many of the believers fled to the Zaara Islands (Cape Verde), establishing the Amalgmist Free State. Others traveled to Europe, Africa and India, and spread the message to the locals. Most, however, remained in the Union.

The year is now 630 TC, a full hundred years since Babineaux first preached. Most of the nation continues to cling to old Hokaweanism, but many, if not most in the coastal regions have now converted.

"Tsarism. A combination of Christianity, Islam, leader-worship, and the ancient Norse religions, it arose after the conquests of the Mongols. In some ways, it could be seen as a sect of Christianity or Islam, but, in reality, it has very little in common with either of those. The Tsar is the prophet for each new generation, and all Tsars, no matter what they are called before their ascension, are named Peter, after the first Tsar of Tsarist Russia. Russia has built an empire on this religion, currently stretching from Warsaw, Holiest city in Russia, to Tokyo, newest acquisition."-Karl Edgemont, head of Inter-Faith Relations at Oxford University

Excerpt taken from "In the Ministry of Boggins: The History of the Urielates in East Australia and beyond", Archangel Press, Sydney 1987.

"…for this reason that the followers of the Ginead faith became known as Urielates even before landfall was made at Botany Bay. Initially judged a breach of discipline and a possible threat, they were harshly suppressed but the Word spread quickly amongst the convict population. The British officers soon noted the increased discipline and morals of Boggis’ flock, particularly compared to the lack of enthusiasm for discipline displayed by the marines. As overseers were picked, they were more often than not chosen from the ranks of the Urielates. In the harsh and alien environment of the new colony, the new faith began to spread through the convict population. There were many initial successes in this period, including the construction of the First Temple of Brickfields by the architect convert James Bloodsworth; and the missionary work of the negro prophet John Caesar among the aborigines.

Eventually, the power of the military in the form of the N.S.W. Corps became intolerable. Maintaining a reign of terror through the use of the vile rum imported illegally, the Corps clashed repeatedly with the Urielates until zealots were forced to rise against them. This uprising, brutally crushed, led to the exodus across the God’s Glory mountains to the west of Sydney of almost a thousand converts in 1809. The first Free Urielate city was founded there, Tabernacle, with the assistance of the local aborigines, many of whom had recieved the Word of the Archangel already thanks to enterprising bush prophets.

The labor shortages this caused in Sydney forced the authorities to bring in greater numbers of convicts, many of which eventually escaped into the bush and found their way to the holy community being built in Tabernacle. As time passed, three societies developed separately on the Australian continent and it’s islands. The first, the classist convict settlements of the East Coast, where marines, administrators and their descendants formed the ruling Exclusive class and freed convicts and their offspring, the Emancipists, were never treated as anything more than second-class citizens. In the interior, the blessings of God and the natural fertility of the land, combined with a respect and love for the native inhabitants, saw the holy community of the Urielates spread far and wide raising crops and droving cattle and sheep. Meanwhile, New Holland, Van Dieman’s Land and New Zealand were almost entirely settled by freemen, creating societies that were soulless but prosperous thanks to the so-called “Dutch Luck”.

The N.S.W. authorities regarded the Urielates as “squatters” and constant skirmishes were fought, often in the depths of the God’s Glory mountains where the coastal and interior cultures came face to face. In most cases, the zealots were victorious over the philistinic invaders, until the beginning of the reign of the Bitch Queen Victoria II in..."

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The above text gives most of the information you need, but to make it clear: a convict named William Boggins recieved a visitation from the archangel Uriel while being transported to the Botany Bay penal colony for the crime of stealing a bedsheet. His revelations spread through the convicts aboard the vessel, and a holy book is composed. The religion, while heavily derivative of elements of Anglicism and Irish Catholicism, diverges much further from Christianity than, say, Mormonism. The Urielates believe in an orthopraxic faith wherein Right Action and following the Law is more important than belief, where there is a single unitary God, wherein prophets (including Jesus, demoted from Son of God) recieved the word of archangels who are the intermediaries between man and the awesome creative/destructive power of God.

The Urielate community swells in the penal colonies and runs afoul of the colonial authorities, forcing them to flee into the outback. They spread throughout the interior region before British colonials can get there by intermingling with the aborigines (All men are equal before the glory of God | Prejudice of language or skin is the tool of Satan - Book of Caesar 28:12-13) and maintaining a high birth rate. Continual wars with British colonials eventually were brought to an end by the might of the British Empire, but this eventually led to Urielatism spreading into the cities in the early 20th century as the faithful were pressganged into factories and ports of the coast to assist with war efforts.

Eventually, the Union of East Australia (despite multiple attempts, successful federation with New Holland, Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand always failed, due to various economic and social reasons and a fair dose of prejudice) became a "Gineadian" democracy. With an elected government overseen by powerful matriarchs and patriarchs, it is reasonably comparable with OTL Iran. To an OTL observer, East Australia is hard to judge as good or bad. On the one side, the aboriginal population is much higher and racism is unknown (contrasting strongly with New Holland, which has always had a strong "Yellow Peril" paranoia and is recieving influxes of former white minority ruler classes from southern Africa), and East Australia has helped to bring New Guinea economic prosperity. On the other hand, it's highly religious and has enough odd doctrines (mandated female circumcision at birth, f'rex) to give some pause.

Then again, if you like to go down to the beach to swim, surf and cook sausages and fish on the barbecue while watching adulterers, homosexuals and outspoken evolutionists being hanged, you'll probably love it.