Coca-Cola
My name is Charlie what's yours
I'm making a story for kids where many religions exist how do I do it without sounding rude (conditioning and not knowing any other religions personally)
Feedback requested How do I make a character of another religion without sounding accidentally offensive?
- Thread starter Coca-Cola
- Start date
Lorsh
Varlot
Look it up for some info, and watch some videos of people you're trying to portray.
Coca-Cola
My name is Charlie what's yours
THANK YOU SO MUCH/Pos
Whitespacer
someone
you can also do some more obscure religions to shine some light on them. there are lots here in africa, differing from tribe to tribe. perhaps the khoisan might be of some interest.
Solivagante
UTC -6
I'm assuming you're looking at representing real-world religions? Especially for kids, I would say see if you can find some books written for kids of that faith/culture - see how concepts are presented to younger audiences and what they focus on. I would guess that at that level, you'll find a lot of similarities between different faiths, with a lot of focus on how to be a good member of a society/respectful/kind.
Read or watch videos made by people of that background, as well. The important thing is that you want to understand how they see themselves/approach their beliefs, not just as they are viewed by outsiders. (As an atheist, I find a lot of things people do for religious reasons to be very strange! But my perspective is very different from that of a believer, or even someone who is raised in the culture but may or may not hold the same spiritual beliefs.)
On that note, depending on how many characters you have, consider including folks with varied relationships to the same faith. Not everyone is going to be as deeply invested in their religion; for some people it may be an intense experience, while for others it might be more about the social aspect, or a habit, or an aspect of their culture that they don't take literally. This is not even getting into the number of different sects it's possible to have within a 'single' religion, too!
If you're creating your own fictional religions, most of the above is still useful, as you will want to understand the variation in people's beliefs in a real-world context and extrapolate that to your setting. If it's a fantasy setting and the gods are real, you have a whole other angle to explore, too - who prioritizes one god over the others, and why? Are there consequences or benefits? Etc etc. But I'm getting the vibe that may not be the case, so I'm not going to go off on that tangent right now.
