Religion in the Wild Republic

AJD and I are both Jewish.  If this factoid led you to assume that the Wild Republic is essentially Jewish, you would be wrong.  Diversity is one of the hallmarks of the Wild Republic, and religion is no exception.

That's not to say that none of the animals are Jewish.  Desmond (the manatee) is very Jewish.  As a matter of fact, Desmond is currently studying to become a rabbi.  His studies aren't progressing as quickly as they could be, because his Wild Republic duties take up enough time that he's only a half-time studentt; he was a rabbinical student before he ever got here, and he still has a way to go.  I quite respect his ability to multi-task.  But Desmond is the sort of fellow who believes in doing many things and all of them well, so the dual vocation will probably work out for him in the end.

Some of the animals are of uncertain religious affiliations, by which I don't mean they're necessarily areligious, but that they don't talk about it.  Sleepyhead (the panda), for instance.  We haven't even been able to get his name, let alone his religious preferences.  Murchison (the Arctic fox) is another.  He's a consummate professional, and his profession happens to involve espionage, so he's pretty closed-mouthed about anything pertaining to his personal life.

Sir Tristan, of course, is a member of the Church of the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy, or "Church of WPM".  At least, he's nominally a member.  He seems to be the sort who enjoys elaborate liturgies but doesn't follow the Church's official stance on much of anything.  I'm not totally clear on the theological or social positions of the Church of WPM (it's not even clear to me whether they're Christians - as you'd assume from the name - or something else), but I'm given to understand that Sir Tristan's attitudes are very typical of its parishioners, so possibly the details don't really matter all that much.

Seleucus, on the other hand, is a bona fide hard-core Zoroastrian.  This is because he's a Bactrian camel.  Actually, he's not just any Bactrian camel; he's a royal Bactrian camel, and apparently the royal family takes their continued adherence to Zoroastrianism very seriously.  Heritage is very important to royal Bactrian camels.

Then there's the situation with the cats (with the exception of Sir Tristan).  They're all Buddhists. Three of them - Mahler, Flurry, and Rusty - are from Asia, so geographically speaking it makes sense that they'd be Buddhists, but Khamsin and the lion are African, and Cami's Mesoamerican, so given the general areal distribution of human Buddhists, one might expect they'd be something else.  Apparently, though, Buddhism spread like wildfire amongst felines of all types, so now they're all Buddhists wherever you go, outside the Wild Parliamentary Monarchy.  This seems rather improbable to me, given that, well, they're all carnivores, but there you are.  Apparently the doctrine of Feline Buddhism is extremely complicated.  Cami has tried several times to explain it to me, but I think you have to be a cat yourself to understand how it works.

One of the complicating factors is that many cats aren't only Buddhists; they're Buddhists plus something else.  Cami himself, for instance, is a Buddhist and a Jaguar Agnostic.  Jaguars, as you probably know, were considered sacred in Mesoamerica and South America, which put the jaguars in an odd position: they were being worshipped, but they weren't really clear on why, given that they didn't see themselves as divine and felt kind of weird about the whole thing.  Had they been lions or tigers, they probably would have just drank it up, but jaguars are both less full of their own consequence and a lot more given to philosophic speculations.  Rather than enjoy their perceived divinity, they developed a bit of theological insecurity, and this eventually led to a mass conclusion that they couldn't know whether gods existed or not.  I'm given to understand that this somehow made them more receptive to Buddhism, but again Buddhism didn't supersede the local agnostic movement.

Not all of the animals are averse to self-worship.  Take Tibby, for instance.  Don't let his name fool you: he's an imperial penguin, after all, and "Tibby" is short for "Tiberius Claudius Pingo".  Like the human Claudian emperors, the Claudian penguins are more than happy to see themselves as divine, and their religion is more or less identical to the pre-Christian emperor cult of the Roman empire, modulo the fact that all their divinities are penguins.  It's easy to forget about this; Tibby's a modest little chap, and pretty matter-of-fact about the whole divinity thing.  One does wonder if it contributes to his cheerful self-confidence, though.

Most of the other animals either adhere to the native faith of their species or mix it with a dash of the religion of the nearest human population.  I'll use the wolves (Alfredo and Beppe) as an example, both because there are two of them and because their theology is possibly the most complex of all.  Our wolves are Italian wolves, and their religion is a tangled mixture of the human polytheism of ancient Italy (before the emergence of the emperor cult) and the native lupine tribal beliefs, with a pinch of Catholicism thrown in for good measure.  We haven't really got a good grasp of how it works just yet, because we've had wolves here less than six months.

No discussion on this topic would be complete without explaining Plouie's take on theology.  Plouie believes in the Blue Penguin of Happiness.  We're not really quite sure if this is an Adelie penguin thing or something he came up with on his own after listening to us reading too many faery tales out loud, or some odd combination thereof, but whichever it is, he's quite earnest about it.  He even remembers it from one day to the next, which is really impressive by Plouie standards.  We don't have too many details about the Blue Penguin, but our working hypothesis is that it's some sort of Santa Claus/Easter Bunny/Tooth Faery figure.  Beyond that it's hard to tell.  Plouie's end of all of our attempted conversations on the subject consists primarily of "The Blue Penguin of Happiness!  The Blue Penguin of Happiness!", accompanied by increasingly fervent jumping up and down until he passes out.  It makes him pretty happy, though.