AH Challenge: The Arthur Religion

[DMA]

Here's the challenge. Turn the myth & legion of King Arthur of Camelot into the predominant religion of Great Britain, if not elsewhere, replacing Christianity. Let's call it Arthurism for a wont of a better word.

So when & how could this happen?

What effect does this have on British history?

How is the world changed as a result?

Does Arthurism effectively compete overall against Christianity, Islam, & other major world religions?

Is it still around today as major religion?

Anything else?

Discuss

 

[mojojojo]

Here's the challenge. Turn the myth & legion of King Arthur of Camelot into the predominant religion of Great Britain, if not elsewhere, replacing Christianity. Let's call it Arthurism for a wont of a better word.

So when & how could this happen?

What effect does this have on British history?

How is the world changed as a result?

Does Arthurism effectively compete overall against Christianity, Islam, & other major world religions?

Is it still around today as major religion?

Anything else?

Discuss

Isn't there something like that in the World Of Warhammer?

 

[MarkA]

No unbelivers shall insult my religion.

Arthurism has a holy book written centuries after by somebody who collected all sorts of eclectic myths from different sources and standardized it. Just like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It has prophets lust like the others and has a once and future king who will come again in the hour of need. It IS a religion.

 

[DMA]

Isn't there something like that in the World Of Warhammer?

I have no idea as I'm completely ignorant of Warhammer to be honest

 

[Roberto]

I think it'd be interesting to have Arthurism become Britain's dominant religion when Britain is invaded (by the Danes? Normans?) to perserve a sense of Britonicity, possibly leading to earlier proto-nationalism.

 

[strangeland]

I agree with you that Arthurian legend has all the necessary ingredients for a religion. I think the POD you need here is to have Britain de-Christianize. After that, Arthurianism would become the ethnic religion of Britian, similar to the status that Shintoism has in Japan.

There is no king but Arthur and Mallory is his prophet!

 

[drrockso20]

one of the main roadblocks to this is that one the Christians readily adopted Arthur and the knights of the realm as heavily Christian and that a large amount of the legends are as J.R.R. Tolkien once said "the Arthurian legends are almost as French as they are British" although this did give me an idea that Christianity could have become a bunch of nationalized religions where each country's version includes alongside the Canon books and the more normal apocrypha they would also include alongside more normal modern legends like Roland and others that are more contemporary and even various historical events of national importance as well as Christianized versions of the old myths from before christ and thus Islam could have been regarded as nothing more than another version of Christianity and thus because a lot of the reasons of the fighting between the various churches are removed they might start focusing on the rest of the world and trying to convert them to the one true multifaceted faith and we might end up with for example instead of eliminating the old deitys turn them into angels and thus we might see those angel cosmologies contain for example Ganesha and Amaterasu and Buddha might end up becoming a saint and Mohammad a prophet for all we know and the world could end uniquely united

 

[Michael B]

...

although this did give me an idea that Christianity could have become a bunch of nationalized religions where each country's version includes alongside the Canon books and the more normal apocrypha they would also include alongside more normal modern legends like Roland and others that are more contemporary and even various historical events of national importance as well as Christianized versions of the old myths from before christ and thus Islam could have been regarded as nothing more than another version of Christianity

That is going to require a major change in the administrative structure of Christianity, ie no Pope or Eastern Orthodox Patriarch. Certainly in the West if you can be put on trial for preaching science, you could be put on trial for adding sections of Morte d'Arthur to the Bible.

It is also going to require a change in philosophy in how one sees the Bible. Instead of seeing it as an immutable set of books one is now seeing it as a work in progress. No problem with that myself, at least up to a point. However, as we all know there are people in the world who believe that it is carved in granite and the literal truth.

There is also the issue of what material to add to one's local Bible and what not to. Taking the Arthur legend, the various versions have come to be a reflection of the era in which they were written. The original pagan Jack the lad out for brawls, birds and booze mutated into a Christian king into law and order and courtly romance.

Still, and not withstanding my cold water, it is an interesting idea.

 

[Strategos' Risk]

Isn't there something like this in Faelin's Prince of Peace? Or maybe it was just a form of British Israelism.

 

[drrockso20]

I saw it as the pope still being head of Christianity but along a new title something like the Keeper of the Message there would be local administrators that would keep the local manuscripts organized and of course the various legends technically apocryphal additions but one of the earlier changes in catholic law is to establish that as long as additions to the bible don't contradict catholic law they are treated the same as other segments of the bible

 

[Codae]

one of the main roadblocks to this is that one the Christians readily adopted Arthur and the knights of the realm as heavily Christian and that a large amount of the legends are as J.R.R. Tolkien once said "the Arthurian legends are almost as French as they are British" although this did give me an idea that Christianity could have become a bunch of nationalized religions where each country's version includes alongside the Canon books and the more normal apocrypha they would also include alongside more normal modern legends like Roland and others that are more contemporary and even various historical events of national importance as well as Christianized versions of the old myths from before christ and thus Islam could have been regarded as nothing more than another version of Christianity and thus because a lot of the reasons of the fighting between the various churches are removed they might start focusing on the rest of the world and trying to convert them to the one true multifaceted faith and we might end up with for example instead of eliminating the old deitys turn them into angels and thus we might see those angel cosmologies contain for example Ganesha and Amaterasu and Buddha might end up becoming a saint and Mohammad a prophet for all we know and the world could end uniquely united

I saw it as the pope still being head of Christianity but along a new title something like the Keeper of the Message there would be local administrators that would keep the local manuscripts organized and of course the various legends technically apocryphal additions but one of the earlier changes in catholic law is to establish that as long as additions to the bible don't contradict catholic law they are treated the same as other segments of the bible

Have you ever heard of the period?

 

[drrockso20]

do you have to be such a Grammar Nazi because if you don't have anything else to say go set yourself on fire
p.s. I normally don't react like this but this guy is just a jerk coming here just to criticize the way I write

 

[Rick Robinson]

one of the main roadblocks to this is that one the Christians readily adopted Arthur and the knights of the realm as heavily Christian

That's the heart of the matter. For this scenario you have to pretty much wreck Western Christianity, and in the process you likely wreck any recognizable Arthur as well.

I waver on whether a historical Arthur is more likely or not, or perhaps stole Ambrosius Aurelianus' career and attributed it to Arthur, etc. But whatever the 6th c. facts, King Arthur and Camelot belong to the 12th century or not too much earlier, and took form in an already Christian milieu. If there was a historical Arthur he was surely Christian himself. Any POD that deep sixes Western Christianity probably leaves the Arthur story in an unrecognizable form, except possibly names - certainly not the story we all know.

It's too bad, because "Arthurism" really did play nearly the same role in medieval Europe that Homer did in ancient Greece, and its effect on mores was enormous. If Western Christianity just quietly evaporated, Arthurism might well fill the gap, but I don't see any non-ASB way to do that.

 

[drrockso20]

well my interpretation wasn't that Christianity would fail rather that it evolved in a different path than it did OTL perhaps as a way to reduce hostility with pagan Rome by partly acknowledging their faith's validity and perhaps early on in their history merge with the very similar faith the Mithras cult and thus begin the traditions that I've mentioned earlier

 

[drrockso20]

BUMP!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[drrockso20]

BUMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[HueyLong]

Don't bump twice and try and contribute.....

Maybe the 5500 years TL could produce this (in a post-apocalyptic society, all sorts of weird local cults will flourish among the survivors)

 

[drrockso20]

sorry just trying to keep this thread from being buried

 

[AirshipArmada]

Just tossing this idea out there, not sure if it works.

In the Battle of Callinicum (531) troops of the Eastern Roman Empire are pinned with their backs to a river. The Romans manage to retreat across the river during the battle and the Sassanid Persians decide not to pursue. General Belisarius, however, is fatally wounded during the crossing (POD).

Without Belisarius the Nika Riots weaken Justinian's rule (but he still manages to hang on), the Vandals retain control of North Africa, pirates ply the Mediterranean at will, and the Ostrogoths retain control of the Italy. Theodora is unable to remove the Goth Pope in Rome so she backs Pope John II in Constantinople as the One-True-Pope. Later Slavs and other tribes threaten Constantinople and are beaten back (but not nearly as easily as in OTL).

So . . . Constantinople is much weaker, the Mediterranean is a completely fragmented mess, there are two Popes, and dozens of competing Christian sects. Britain is a forgotten backwater. Cut off from OTL religious pressures, Britain develops its own sect: Arthurism. This faith exists on the island and in France. The French version faces more competition from other sects and eventually dies off. Britain's versions survives.

 

[Michael B]

Without Belisarius the Nika Riots weaken Justinian's rule (but he still manages to hang on), the Vandals retain control of North Africa, pirates ply the Mediterranean at will, and the Ostrogoths retain control of the Italy. Theodora is unable to remove the Goth Pope in Rome so she backs Pope John II in Constantinople as the One-True-Pope. Later Slavs and other tribes threaten Constantinople and are beaten back (but not nearly as easily as in OTL).

Not going to work because of a Pope in Constantinople is not a Bishop of Rome and thus an anti-Pope. Moreover, the patriarch of Constantinople is not going to be pleased to have another senior cleric using his city.

So . . . Constantinople is much weaker, the Mediterranean is a completely fragmented mess, there are two Popes, and dozens of competing Christian sects. Britain is a forgotten backwater. Cut off from OTL religious pressures, Britain develops its own sect: Arthurism. This faith exists on the island and in France. The French version faces more competition from other sects and eventually dies off. Britain's versions survives.

Britain already had a home grown sect, the Celtic Church. If it had been more aggressive and converted the Saxons (there is bound to a thread on this so I am not going to say how), that could be enough to keep Roman Catholism at bay long enough for Arthurist Christianity to evolve then become well rooted. Theological points in support of this:

1) The Holy Grail

2) Arthur's war with the Romans could be preached as a temporal struggle with foreign tyranny.

3) Avalon is a place where the good go when they will be needed in the future. In effect they temporarily sacrifice the bliss for Heaven for more service to the world.