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What was the name of the religion the lord ruler started


Zape

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they aren't the same the relation between them is kind of like the relation between judaism and christianity sliverism originates from the lord rulers religion and shares a lot of themes with it but they aren't the same thing silverism is about worshiping ironeyes aka marsh not rasheq 

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Beyond the name of the organization as the Steel Ministry, I don't believe we ever see a name for the religion itself. It wasn't much of a "religion" to begin with. 

Obey the immortal king that has the power to squash you if you refuse, isn't exactly a religion. 

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4 minutes ago, Zape said:

i mean they had a entire canton dedicated to religion the obligators must have had some sort of religious doctrine

I agree, although most people didn’t know much about the religion.  Elend didn’t seem to know that much, but they did have doctrine.  Afterall Yomen still beleived in the Lord Ruler even after Vin killed him.  There is a reason that Sliversim became a religion. 

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elend did mention that the Obligators attitude was basically "leave the religion to us" which does seem rather odd for what is essentially a priest someone needs to ask brandon about this for such a important part of the government of the last empire we barely know anything about it 

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1 hour ago, Zape said:

they aren't the same the relation between them is kind of like the relation between judaism and christianity sliverism originates from the lord rulers religion and shares a lot of themes with it but they aren't the same thing silverism is about worshiping ironeyes aka marsh not rasheq 

That sounds EXACTLY like the relationship between Judaism and Christianity...

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9 minutes ago, Zape said:

Obligators attitude was basically "leave the religion to us" which does seem rather odd for what is essentially a priest someone needs to ask brandon about this for such a important part of the government of the last empire we barely know anything about it 

We know a lot of things about it. Per Sazed:

Quote

The imperial religion, with its obligators, actually appears to have arisen from the bureaucratic mercantile system of the Hallant, a people who were very focused on weights, measures, and permissions. The fact that the Lord Ruler would base his Church on a financial institution shows—in my opinion—that he worried less about true faith in his followers, and more about stability, loyalty, and quantifiable measures of devotion.

Per Brandon:

Quote

Questioner (paraphrased)
What is the proper way for nobles to address Inquisitors?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
Your Grace. They are like cardinals in the Catholic Church.


Brandon Sanderson
I like the obligator scene in this chapter, as it gives Vin a chance to realize just what the whole obligator system is about. Regular priests watch over the spiritual well-being of their people. The Lord Ruler doesn't really care about that. So, his priests watch over the economics of his empire. Seems like something a living god would do.


Brandon Sanderson
Conventical is Moshe's word, by the way. I’d originally called it the Covenant of Seran. However, not only did the Halo games decide to make good use of the word Covenant, but my editor found it somewhat inaccurate. So, he suggested Conventical–which I liked immediately. It's a real word, though I think I spell it differently, which refers to a meeting of high level church officials. The term fits with the Steel Ministry, which doesn't have priests, but instead has Obligators and doesn't have a Priesthood, but instead a Ministry. Everything's pseudo-religious, instead of being directly "on" religious.


Brandon Sanderson
So the Steel Ministry, in the Mistborn books. The interesting thing I considered when I was writing them was "What is the purpose of the priesthood when god is there in the palace and everyone knows it? And if you disobey you just get your head cut off." So what do you do? I made the Steel Ministry more government, like the post office is run by priests. And a lot of what priests do is witness official business, take your money for doing so and give you a stamp that "Yes I witnessed this" and things like this, but they also run all the public works. It's not like they're cleaning the sewers themselves but overseeing the sewers, overseeing engineers, most of the engineers who built the city plans would be obligators.


Brandon Sanderson
Another big change was renaming the Lord Ruler's priests. Originally, they were called just that–priests. And, the Steel Ministry was the Steel Priesthood. I made the change to Steel Ministry and obligators because I didn't want the religion and government in the Final Empire to feel so stereotypical. This was a world where the priests were more spies and bureaucrats than they were true priests–and I wanted the names to reflect that. So, I took out "Priesthood" and "priests." I really like the change–it gives things a more appropriate feel, making the reader uncertain where the line between priests and government ministers is.

By the way, my friend Nate Hatfield is the one who actually came up with the word "obligator." Thanks, Nate!

Anyway, I when I changed the priests to obligators, I realized I wanted them to have a more controlling function in the Final Empire. So, I gave them the power of witnessing, and added in the aspect of the world where only they can make things legal or factual. This idea expanded in the culture until it became part of society that a statement wasn't considered absolutely true until an obligator was called in to witness it. That's why, in this chapter, we see someone paying an obligator to witness something rather trivial.

This was one of the main chapters where obligators were added in, to show them witnessing–and keeping an eye on the nobility. Moshe wanted me to emphasize this, and I think he made a good call. It also gave me the opportunity to point out Vin's father, something I didn't manage to do until chapter forty or so in the original draft.


Comatose [PENDING REVIEW]
I was wondering about the Steel Ministry's stance on sexuality.

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]
If you're paying them, they don't really care.


Brandon Sanderson
This altar room is about all you get to see of the actual religious trappings of the Final Empire. As I've said earlier, I intentionally gave the religion in this book a bureaucratic feel. I think that with a living God, the people would be less inclined to faith, prayer, or that sort of worship–and it would be more about obedience and loyalty. So, the obligators and Ministry are police more than they priests.

Yet, I did want to hint that there are some ceremonial aspects to the religion–they just aren't things that the Lord Ruler cares about the public masses taking part in. This little room, with its strange bowl of tiny knives and odd altar, was intended to evoke a kind of mystical, religious feel. Enough to hint that there's more that the readers don't know, but not enough to get boring.


Vin and Elend's Marriage
Some people have complained that this is just too quick a marriage. One thing to remember is what Sazed explains. For a thousand years, the only way to get married was to get the witness of an Obligator. Even for skaa, an obligator was required to authorize a wedding. And that's ALL it took. If an obligator said you were married, then you were. Sometimes, the nobility or the skaa had their own ceremonies surrounding a wedding, but they were more civil than religious. In fact, it's a tiny bit of a stretch to even have Elend associate a wedding with religion.


Metal Triangles
For those up on your obscure Mistborn trivia, in book one we get some glimpses (really our only glimpses) of the ceremonial aspect of the Lord Ruler's religion. In that religion, the common people—even the nobility—were not asked for devotion or faith. They were required to obey and fill their roles in the Lord Ruler's empire, but they never had to worship.

The priests, however, were required to do more. They had to perform daily prayers and ceremonies to the Lord Ruler, worshiping him and maintaining a religious air that the rest of the world never saw or knew about. Involved in these rituals, on occasion, was the process of slicing one's body with small triangular razors. When Vin and Kelsier infiltrated Kredik Shaw in book one, one of the Inquisitors shot a handful of the razors at Vin. My writing group wanted a return appearance of these things, though I don't know why. Still, I stuck them in, as they were a nice reference back to book one.


Chaos (paraphrased)

For people really into the obscure workings of the politics of the Final Empire, we asked about the legality of assassinations.

It turns out that you have to ask the obligators' permission to assassinate someone--and permission, of course, means bribe in this context. The Steel Ministry can say yes or no. Presumably more high level people would cost more money to be killed. Of course, if the Ministry says no, you can always risk it and assassinate illegally, but you'd have to be very careful not to get caught. Even with legal killings you need to keep things quiet. Brandon said the Steel Ministry has much more corruption than governments in our world. Corruption which we would abhor is commonplace in the Final Empire.

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that answered my first question but not the second the thing with the razors is interesting and il keep it in mind but i was thinking of asking him about religious lore rather then ceremonies

Edited by Zape
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1 hour ago, Zape said:

also this is just a small question that doesn't deserve its own thread but how did the people of scadrial know what a church is if conventicalism was the only religion for nearly 500 years  

Probably from the books Harmony left behind.  Also people starting worshiping the survivor even before they would have called it a religion.

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No, I was not being sarcastic. It’s actually very similar, at least if we are using traditional Judaism and Catholicism.

Church comes from a word meaning lord. This one may have a similar etymology. Church can also mean religion; so The Lord Ruler’s Church/ Church of the Lord Ruler could be a common synonym for the religion. Both explain the presence of the word in world.

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2 hours ago, Zape said:

but they called it the church of the survivor back in the second book

Era 2 has the Words of Founding(which essentially equate to everything that was in Sazed's Metalminds). There was a lot of information that could have potentially define "church," especially since Sazed specialized in religion back when he was a Keeper. I don't think it's unreasonable that somebody reinstated the word church during that 340 year gap.

Oh wait, you mean in Well of Ascension. Hrmm, they did do that didn't they? The chapter five annotations don't even mention it, so... we have a WoB:

Quote

Questioner
Did you purposely make the Church of the Survivor sort of like Christianity or not?

Brandon Sanderson
Kelsier intentionally made it like Christianity. In kind of a false way, meaning he read about and had Sazed tell him about religions that were similar and then he built that his own way.

Questioner
Oh so did Sazed tell him about...

Brandon Sanderson
Sazed told him about religions that were similar. I wouldn't say Christianity specifically, but their version and things. So there is a yes and a no.

So in the end, I don't have a solid answer, but it probably all leads back to pre-TFE knowledge, courtesy of either Sazed or TLR.

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4 hours ago, Zape said:

but they called it the church of the survivor back in the second book

 

1 hour ago, The One Who Connects said:

Era 2 has the Words of Founding(which essentially equate to everything that was in Sazed's Metalminds). There was a lot of information that could have potentially define "church," especially since Sazed specialized in religion back when he was a Keeper. I don't think it's unreasonable that somebody reinstated the word church during that 340 year gap.

Oh wait, you mean in Well of Ascension. Hrmm, they did do that didn't they? The chapter five annotations don't even mention it, so... we have a WoB:

 I think Sazed probably told the people worshiping the survivor that their beliefs fit into a church and religion.  That’s all I can see.  He was already fascinated by the survivor religion at the end of book 1.

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@Belzedar 

12 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Brandon Sanderson
Conventical is Moshe's word, by the way. I’d originally called it the Covenant of Seran. However, not only did the Halo games decide to make good use of the word Covenant, but my editor found it somewhat inaccurate. So, he suggested Conventical–which I liked immediately. It's a real word, though I think I spell it differently, which refers to a meeting of high level church officials. The term fits with the Steel Ministry, which doesn't have priests, but instead has Obligators and doesn't have a Priesthood, but instead a Ministry. Everything's pseudo-religious, instead of being directly "on" religious.

tl;dr its the name of the religion of the lord ruler

 

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6 hours ago, Aurora the Rioter said:

I think Sazed probably told the people worshiping the survivor that their beliefs fit into a church and religion.  That’s all I can see.  He was already fascinated by the survivor religion at the end of book 1.

thing is out of all the religions he studied in the third book we dont hear of any that sound even remotely similar to christianity they all sound like pagan "old world" religions 

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9 hours ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

No, I was not being sarcastic. It’s actually very similar, at least if we are using traditional Judaism and Catholicism.

Church comes from a word meaning lord. This one may have a similar etymology. Church can also mean religion; so The Lord Ruler’s Church/ Church of the Lord Ruler could be a common synonym for the religion. Both explain the presence of the word in world.

but he is called the Lord ruler the lord lord ruler ?

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