Stupid PC Tricks: Religion

This has probably never happened in your game.

Forum D00d: There are no gods in the real world to correct worshipers on theological matters.  At least not ones that talk to their worshipers on a regular basis and can be reached for answers with a spell.  One of the best examples of how a god would act is in the Old Testament. Look at how jealous and wrathful Jehovah is, smiting people left and right for not worshiping him correctly or just because he feels like sometimes. There couldn't be various different factions of Lathander fighting, because he would smite all the ones that were wrong.

Another common shibboleth of gamers is this one: that there's One True Religion, everyone's in lockstep, there are no doctrinal differences, and God's in everyone's grille, all the time.

The answer above is certainly the answer many gamers give, when asked why there isn't an Orthodox Church of Rinanni and a Reformed Church of Rinanni and the Ride On Queen Rinanni Altanian Full Gospel Ministry of Love and Blowjobs.

And for those game settings where the Gods are in the ears of every priest, every day, to make sure they don't use bananas in the sacred feast instead of canonical mangoes, or that the vestments are made of linen not cotton, and that all matters of parish governance stem from parish councils instead of central bishoprics, fair enough.

Is your game setting one of those?  Mine isn't.  I've seen very few that were.  Seriously, how many of you have ever played a religiously-oriented character where the deity speaks in your ear, "You're doing it wrong" ...?  Even if you discount that real world religious adherents also claim that their god/s are real, and also claim divine revelation as the backing for their POVs, how many GMs actually smite players for alignment/faith dissension, and how many players put up with the ones who do?  Especially in the D&D of latter days, when clerics can get powers from frigging philosophical concepts (because, you know, we can't actually expect gamers to handle doctrine or dogma), I'm thinking there's enormous scope for the niggling differences to which schismatics cling.

I mean seriously: take the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church.  For the great majority of the history of the two faiths, they disagreed on just three things: who was in charge, whether priests could get laid, and whether parishioners could get divorced.  Countless wars between Shia and Sunni Islamists have spilled countless blood, the chief difference between which has to do with who Mohammed's successor was, 1400 years ago.  A number of Christian sects have the exact same doctrine and practices, but differ only over issues of church governance, and are otherwise at daggers drawn, because of course the Methodists and the Presbyterians always have hated one another, world without end, amen.

(Take a small town I lived in for a few years.  Want to talk about religious wars?  The three leading churches were all Roman Catholic.  The buildings were all within a couple hundred yards of one another.  What did they all hate one another over, and how could there possibly be three separate Catholic parishes clustered together, in a village of no more than four thousand people?  Well, one was the Polish church, and one was the French church, and one was the catchall church for all the other ethnic groups.  That was all she wrote.  And toss in that the village had an Episcopal church, a Congregational church, a Baptist church, and a Unitarian church ... each and every one within five minutes walk of one another.  Heck, four of those churches were at the same intersection.  Yikes.)

I can easily see a case for even heavy interventionist settings where the Gods don't worry about the small stuff ... any more than they smite clerics for each little niggling transgression.  They turn their attention to Fighting Chaos or Thou Shalt Not Lie! or Kill All The Set worshippers and leave their bodies to rot! ... and can't be assed to worry about whether or not the creed of faith includes "And on this we stake our immortal souls," or on the acceptable degree of iconography in local parishes, or whether you wear a yellow versus a pink sash on the high holy day, or whether that high holy day is celebrated on the 5th of Girithim or on the first Waterday of Girithim.