Disecting Worship

What is worship? Like, how would you define it? What are the outward manifestations of it? How does it affect a person's interaction with the world around them? How would the act of worship or the object worshiped change their attitude, their behaviors, their fashion sense? House decor?

These are the questions I find myself pondering as I try and dredge up the details of a fictional religion. Discovering and describing the object of worship is usually easy. But the nature of worship... well, that's far more complex. And I say this as a religious person, but mainly as a religious person who recognizes that my worship differs vastly from the worship of those outside of my immediate community. The manifestations are multitude, but all have some sort of root in the subject of worship. But how do you start with that subject and artificially derive manifestations from it in a way that feels as if those manifestations developed organically?

In essence, how do you make a fictional religion feel like an actual religion?

Maybe the internet can help out with this. In what I hope isn't a shock to you frequenters by this point, my first inclination is to chase down the etymology of the word. Interestingly versus most of the words we trace etymology for on this blog, 'worship' actually does come from Old English. It's actually very closely related to the ancestor of 'worth', and back in Ye Olde Times referred to the "condition of being worthy". That meaning is still present in a small way in contemporary English, if you were to titlize someone as "your worship", for instance.

Han is a shockingly good example of this definition in use.

The sense of "reverencing a divine or supernatural being" came later, in the 1300s, and the contemporary tendency to expand that to the act of paying any sort of reverence to anything springs from those roots. Interestingly the verb sense of 'worship' didn't appear until around the same time as this shift in meaning. So armed with a better understanding of the meaning of the word, what kind of information can we derive toward our goal of convincing fictional worship?

I'm going to skip the obvious first step, defining the object of worship. That carries with it added wrinkles like "how real is this object" and "how closely can worshipers interact with it" that I'm not going to be able to properly address without a lengthy theological discussion. Suffice it to say the object of worship is obviously going to change the nature of worship, and it's up to you to describe how people interact with whatever it is they're worshiping.

The next tidbit of information we can pull from our research is the act of reverencing that object. This raises interesting questions all on its own, because 'reverence' is distinct from 'awe', as we have discussed in the past. Reverence does find its roots in the same Latin word as awe, but it comes to us today through a different etymological evolution, meaning that in contemporary English we have a distinction between "respecting something because you fear it" (awe) and "respecting something because you love it" (reverence).

I'm not so hung up on definitions of words that I'm going to say "you can't worship something you're in awe of, only something you reverence" just because a dictionary said so. But that simple act of delving has taught us something. You need to know the object of a religion's worship, as well as the form of that worship. Do people worship because of fear or because of love? Is it a combination of the two? If so, how might that difference manifest in the qualities of their individual worship?

There, we're closing in on a useful path forward already. Now let's back up to another interesting tidbit you can pull from the etymology of 'worship'; it originally functioned to identify someone who was worthy. That is somewhat distinct from the religious applications of the term, but the tie between the early and later meaning could conceivably be a 'worshiper', someone who is chasing the condition of being worthy. In a general sense religion does hinge around some form of personal or societal worth, and participants in that religion would find themselves chasing that ideal. So what are the conditions of worth for this religion? Are they entirely personal, entirely social, or some combination of the two? How does the pursuit of worthiness manifest in the qualities of an individual's worship?

Another interesting path of reasoning. We're starting to form a list of what needs to be identified in order to make a religion feel organic. The object of worship, the cause of worship, and the conditions of worth tied to that worship. All taken together these will suggest a fourth line of reasoning that needs to be addressed; the effect that worship will have on someone's life. When compared to a member of their community focused solely on personal considerations like survival, comfort, and interpersonal relationships, how would a person who also has to consider this religion of theirs differ? How do they speak, dress, or act differently? Does it affect their schedule, or the places they're likely to go? Does it affect the company they keep, or their personal daily rituals?

This requires some familiarity with the community this religion lives in, but it's worth noting that this reasoning can work in reverse as well. Defining the manifestations of those who worship something in a community will also help solidify the lives of those who don't.

Finally, there's one last thing I think we can learn from the research we've done into 'worship'. Look at how it's changed over time, subtle shifts in meaning accompanying changes in the way the people speaking the language changed. The word 'worship' has a history, and any group of people engaged in worship will likewise have a history. How have the events of their history changed their worship over time? Are there any current shifts happening in the nature or manifestations of that worship? How much of this history is commonly known, and how much of what is commonly known is actually true?

That is a lot of questions to answer (I've compiled the list below), but I would say that if you can considerately answer all of them you'll have a really solid blueprint for constructing a fictional religion that will feel like an organic part of a character's life. If you find this list helpful, feel free to share.

Fictional Religion Questionnaire

• What is the object of worship, the central figure/figures of the religion?
• Do people worship them because of fear or because of love?
• How might the difference manifest in the worship of multiple individuals within this religion?
• What are the conditions of worth for this religion?
• Are they entirely personal, entirely social, or some combination of the two?
• How does the pursuit of worthiness manifest in an individual's worship?
• When compared to a member of their community focused solely on personal considerations like survival, comfort, and interpersonal relationships, how would a person who also has to consider this religion of theirs differ?
• How do they speak, dress, or act differently than non-religious members of their community?
• Does it affect their schedule, or the places they're likely to go?
• Does it affect the company they keep, or their personal daily rituals?
• How have the events of their history changed their worship over time?
• Are there any current shifts happening in the nature or manifestations of that worship?
• How much of this history is commonly known, and how much of what is commonly known is actually true?