We’re not going to be addressing systemic theology on a large scale today. It’s a huge topic that people can, and often do, study for their entire lives on a scope ranging from personal reflection to rigorous academic investigation. It’s also important to note that very few people embark on those studies. They’re not topics that interest most people nor is the study of them very accessible to most people, as writings and talks on systemic theology are generally addressed towards those who are already very aware of the questions and contradictions that they attempt to address. That doesn’t change the fact that big, world changing beliefs have days and years of constant, diligent, intelligent thought behind them. The problem this poses to a storyteller is twofold.

First, when dealing with anything as all encompassing as religion, if your story is going to address the topic then if you fail to adequately understand it you will come off as insulting and uninformed. Second, systematic theology is so complex, obscure and full of jargon most people aren’t familiar with it. The observant will notice that these two things are somewhat in tension.

There is no direct contradiction, mind you, but the first thing the average writer must work with is the fact that most people who profess a religion do not know the full intricacies and nuances of hundreds or thousands of years of religious study and meditation. That’s not a judgment, just a fact of life. I drive a car with only a basic understanding of what it is and I go to church with only a marginally greater understanding of God. What writers must understand is that systematic theology does exist. This is something modern Western culture seems to entirely reject, as if acknowledging the fact that people work hard to create coherent, consistent ways of understanding their beliefs is bad.

Modern writing’s approach to belief is the Bajoran approach. To the extent people believe anything, they engage with it as a way to promote a nebulously understood ‘good’ for their community that comes from the solidarity and continuity of religious expression. This approach identifies strengths of religion – solidarity and continuity – and mistakes them for the purpose. However, as stated in my introduction to this topic, we are defining religion as something that connects its adherents to a concept or being that transcends the material. Solidarity and continuity are certainly immaterial concepts. The problem with them is that they do not transcend the material, nor do those religions focused on them ever insist that they do.

Consider the Vulcan belief in logic. Nothing about logic is bound up in the Vulcan people, it is entirely abstract. If there were no Vulcans, logic would still exist. Its basic principles would still be discoverable by anyone with an ordered mind and a desire to systematize the world. In fact, it is the discovery of those principles that drives Vulcan belief. While the methods Vulcans use to discover logic are unique to their people and build a sense of shared community and understanding among them, logic is not dependent on Vulcans. In fact, Vulcans find particular insight from the methods used to uncover logic by other species.

In short, logic is transcendent. Logic is logic regardless of the who, what or where and will continue to be so no matter how much time passes.

The Klingon belief in honor is rooted in courage and conquest, virtues of a warrior who bends the universe to his will. In the far past, the Klingons were attacked by a spacefaring people. Their homeworld was stripped of many vital resources then the invaders departed, leaving the castoffs of their technology on Qo’nos. Impoverished and enraged by this travesty, the Klingons fell into petty infighting. Eventually they would be united by Kahless the Unforgettable, who conquered the planet, taught them the importance of honor then pointed his people towards the stars.

The Klingon understanding of honor is rooted in the example Kahless set. It stands in stark contrast to the Federation’s understanding of honor. Starfleet honor is rooted in loyalty, excellence and the promotion of the common good. And yet from the moment we first see Kirk meet Kor we see that these different senses of honor result in similar actions and attitudes. These similarities and contrasts are part of what make the Klingons such a powerful foil.

Honor is transcendent, it will exist whether or not anyone holds to it. And yet the ways people hold to it create a very rich and nuanced understanding of what exactly honor is and how we can try to reach it. By showing the many different shapes honor can take when it interacts with specific circumstances, personalities and cultures we get a better understanding of those conditions, peoples and cultures.

Neither the Vulcans nor the Klingons have anything approaching a systematic theology. At least not one that we see on camera. Even if creating such a thing was one of the goals the writers had when inventing these cultures they couldn’t have the depth of thought and nuance we see in the real world theologies of long lasting world religions.

Yet we can still see how the core, transcendent pillars of their beliefs function. They inform vast swaths of their cultures and thoughts and no one looks at them quite the same way. If there were a religion like the Klingons’ or the Vulcans’ I can easily believe it would have a systematic theology. By the same token, I don’t think members of those species would be upset with how their religions are presented in Star Trek. It is handled with nuance, depth and empathy, even if the writers are not adherents themselves.

The Bajoran religion isn’t quite so lucky.

The Prophets are so named because they often predict the future to benefit the Bajoran people. These predictions, along with the religious rituals and traditions of the Bajoran people who are waiting for new prophecies, exist mostly to keep the Bajorans alive and give them a sense of community, rather than to give them an understanding of the Prophets. They are mechanisms for survival rather than transcendence. Unlike the Vulcan understanding of logic, the rituals and Prophecies the Bajorans study cannot serve as a bridge to other civilizations. They’re too particular to share.

Even Benjamin Sisko, the Emissary, a human being who is seen as a go-between anointed by the Prophets to prepare the Bajorans for a major crisis, doesn’t deepen this facet of Bajoran spiritual life at all. He occasionally gets cryptic prophecies but the key to unlocking them is the circumstances he’s in, not his understanding of the Prophets or some transcendent virtue they teach.

These survival driven tenants also negate nuance. Because prophecy and ritual are entirely circumstantial none of the different perspectives or cultural approaches to reach the same end can exist. There cannot be a broad examination of what it means to interact with the Prophets in different situations. The Prophets give revelations to relate to single circumstances for a single group of people or a single person.

We never really get a clear idea of why the Prophets behave this way. In the best case, their interest in Bajor seems to be some kind of inter dimensional charity project. Because these transcendent figures are so nebulous I never get the feel that the Bajorans have any kind of systematic understanding of them. (They do have a highly politicized clerical hierarchy, but that’s outside the scope of this post.)

It’s fine for transcendent figures to have specific points of interaction with those who seek them, by the way, and to be incomprehensible to those they interact with. The problem arises when those seeking the transcendent make no attempt to draw lines connecting those points of contact. They don’t have to all agree on how to connect those points or the order to draw the lines. No one ever has, no matter what clerics and priests sometimes tell you.

The point is they have to try. That’s the key to writing a belief system that implies a systematic theology without actually trying to create one. As a bonus, you’ll unlock all the nuance and depth of character we see in the Klingons and the Vulcans free of charge! Try it some time. The effort won’t be wasted.