Colonial Theology Extracts

by Elias Shook

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Conventional wisdom dictates that planetary colonies in between the
First and Second Explorations were dominated by monotheology--that is,
nearly every Colonial Directive and colonist subscribed to the Wisdom,
or, if not, did not speak up about it. The illocicality of this view
is apparent on i....ery idea that a large and diverse group of people,
separated by millions of light years and hundreds of years, would
spontaneously adhere to a single and identifiable religious ideology
is, quite plainly....al religion" are published every year to great
popularity. Some of these books do not even pretend to name the
specific colonies whose theology they are supposedly describing. They
treat all colonies as if they were one and the same project, and all
religious practice as if they were one and the same idea. The wider
disinterest in religion, precipitated by an abrupt secularization of
society, is to blame in part for this, I think. And yet, this is bad
scholarship. The precepts of New Atheism may be all well and good for
one's personal life and perhaps for the affairs of state, but it makes
for bad hist....tempt, in some small part, to remedy this. I will
describe seven theological positions from seven different
colonies. These positions developed more or less independently, and
sometimes contradict one another. I present them as a case study for
the diversity of religious thought during this period, and hope by
presenting them to revive serious interest. The compression of
historical religious thought is as damaging, if not moreso, to
academic freedom and knowledge as the Great Inquisition was in its
censorship of scientific progress....  "The Substance of GOD consists
of....etrating all things. Without this Light there would be no life,
and there woulrd be no dimension either, since space is nothing other
than Light extended. Thus planets, being holes in space, shadows in
Light, are interruptions of the cosmic fold. It is here were we live;
the grand floridity of human experience is only a flickering shadow to
the real Light of the cosmos."....