As a sci-fi/fantasy author, one of the most significant things I’ve worked on in world-building has to be the idea of religion and religious movements. Religion is something that plays a vital role in our real world, so it only makes sense for it to play a vital role in fantasy worlds too. Oftentimes, religion plays a major role in fantasy stories and plots because of how grandiose and epic religious stories and orders often are. For my series, The Fallen Age Saga, the root core of the overarching conflict is essentially an ancient religious conflict that spans the universe. Designing a religion for your fantasy world may seem complicated at first, but it’s actually something I would consider to be the most fun part in designing a world. So, here’s a full, comprehensive guide on how to design a religion for your fantasy world to implement in your next project.
Step 1: Why Does the Religion Exist?
The first thing you need to consider when designing a religion is the “why” question. Namely, why does this religion exist in the first place in your book? What purpose does the religion play in the overall story? Don’t just plop a religion in there for the sake of sounding cool–think about the ramifications the religion has on the overall story.
For example, the religion of the ancient alien race called the Ones Above is very significant because their religious beliefs drove them to conquer galaxies, start wars, and imperialize entire systems. Obviously, they were motivated by something!
Step 2: Consider the World
World building is obviously something that I talk about all the time on my blog because I consider it to be extremely important to writing and crafting a good story. Religious systems in fantasy books need to consider the overall context of their world.
Magic and the supernatural can play a role in the overall world and religion of your main cultures. Consider things like geography, history, language, culture, and more when designing your religious systems. If you want to design a culture for your fantasy world, check out my guide on that!
These things play roles in real religions, so they will obviously be important to consider going into this process.
If you’re a bit lost on world building or don’t know how to get started, you can check out my ultimate beginner’s guide.
Step 3: Design a Deity (Or Many)!
Part of religion is this idea of a central figure or figures of worship. This is when you should consider if your religion will be monotheistic, polytheistic, or based on things like ancestor veneration and honoring spirits. Monotheism would be religions like Islam and Christianity while polytheism would be religions like Hinduism. Ancestor veneration is popular in southeast Asian countries for example.
When designing a deity/deities, develop the ideas of things like creation, conflict, miracles, divine intervention, impact on society, etc… I’ll give you another example from my series about the creation story in the religion followed by the Ones Above:
“When the Ten Suns aligned, eclipsing over Karnakania, Diabroka began the Age of Creation. From his breath arose the Ones Above, who were his Chosen Ones. They were instructed to populate worlds and spread their influence across the galaxy. As time passed, they lost their way. Then, the Prophet of Mythotechnology descended upon the Ones Above and returned them to their glory.”
Malware, Page 229
Step 4: Establish Beliefs, Doctrines, Principles
All religions have sets of core tenets, beliefs, and doctrines. For the most part, there are moral principles that work to guide a religion’s followers. These things involve stuff like the afterlife, the purpose of existence, the idea of good vs evil, morality, justice, laws, etc…
If we analyze real religions in our world and their respective texts and scriptures, we find that all religions have some elements that guide their followers. Think about religions that have set laws and take inspiration from those. Think about sects in your designed faith. Are there more liberal or extremist groups? Are there some that have differences in beliefs? Are there things that some groups reject? Consider these ideas when going into designing your religious system.
Step 5: Establish Rituals, Ceremonies, Practices
Religions often have specific practices like rituals and ceremonies that are central to the faith. These things include prayers, festivals, etc… For example, in Islam, Muslims pray five times a day. Christians go to Church on Sunday. These are things that are ritualistic for their respective religions.
For example, there is a sacrificial cult in my series that worships an ancient titan called Akala. This cult obviously practices sacrifice, and they often have sacrificial parties. I won’t go into too much detail so as to not spoil you, but this is an obviously super dark example of a ritual. Still, it’s a ritual nonetheless.
Magic, which is something important in fantasy, may also play a role in these rituals, ceremonies, and practices. Think about the impact of magic when designing the religion for your fantasy world. If you need help with designing a magic system, you can check out my guide on that!
Step 6: Design Hierarchies and Authority
Religions often have some sort of a leadership hierarchy to them. There are things like priests, shamans, cardinals, inquisition leaders, and more that define a hierarchical nature to a religion. In a work-in-progress of mine, there are many different countries that follow the same religion and each one has a different structure in disseminating religious authority, with some countries having temples and others having a more militaristic approach with military leaders policing religion.
Consider things like the relationships between the religious authorities and the general population. Think of things like their impact on the people, how they maintain power, if they are a force of good or bad, these sorts of things.
Step 7: Create Symbols and Iconography
Most groups and religions have symbols that matter to its adherents. Symbols have a huge purpose as well, as they are identifying cues for a religion. Sacred icons are also important, as they can impact things like how adherents worship or perhaps things that they are required to put up.
Create things like holy symbols, sacred animals/people, colors, or other forms of imagery that can mean something for the adherents. You can even get more creative and showcase how the adherents would incorporate these things into art, clothing, architecture, food, etc…
Step 8: Design Holy and Sacred Sites
In religion, there are often places that hold a level of importance within the religion for its adherents. Islam has Mecca as a holy site, Catholicism has the Vatican as a place of religious importance due to the Pope being there, and so on and so forth.
Sacred sites can be landmarks, temples, or other places that hold mystical values. Oftentimes, people will make pilgrimages to religious sites too. You can take a dive into the mythological importance of these religious locations as well.
Step 9: Conflicts, Sects, Divisions
In real life, there are plenty of internal conflicts that occur in religions across the world. One of the biggest and most well-known is the Great Schism between the Catholic and the Orthodox churches.
Of course, with this in mind, an important thing to talk about when you’re designing your religious system is if that system faced anything similar. Are there sects that are different from each other in some aspects? Do they differ on important topics? How would members of the sects interact with each other?
Think about conflict for the religion and if most of the conflict is internal or external, as well as how these conflicts impact the adherents of the religion.
Step 10: Weave the Religion
What I mean by this is basically that you spent a lot of time and used a lot of effort to design this religion that you created for your world. So, actually weave it into your story! Don’t just leave it as a backdrop, as most religious people do not think of religion as a backdrop—it’s a way of life for many!
Add more to the narrative of your story and take the impacts of your religious system into account. Show how characters who adhere or don’t adhere are impacted by the religion. Show if there are skeptics or rebels or possibly people trying to create new sects to fit their agendas.
The religion you designed can introduce totally new angles to your story that you may not have considered before.
But the most important thing is to have fun while you’re designing it. Creating religions in fantasy and sci-fi is, in my opinion, the most interesting thing to design. It can really change a story and can add a ton of depth to your characters when you introduce it as an element. You can make the religious system as dark or as light as you want it to be. It’s totally your choice how you want to shape this system and how you want to ultimately shape your story.
Hopefully that helped you learn how to design a religion for your fantasy world. If you need a place to keep track of all of your notes on your world-building work, check out my article on the top ten best world building tools you can use right now. There are plenty of free ones on that list that are definitely worth checking out if you’re maybe not so sure about paying up cash yet.
Before you go, check out my sci-fi fantasy series, The Fallen Age Saga, which is available to purchase over on Amazon and other bookstores!
Happy world building!