This is a page for the trope The Church. For pages with similar names, see also:
The 1989 film The Church | The Australian band The Church
The 1989 film The Church | The Australian band The Church
Organized religion serves as a major source of authority figures. Fiction can build on this by attributing to The Church an absurd amount of power, official or not, and organization, or go the other direction and portray its members as harmless old men sipping tea.
Subtropes:
Examples that don't fit any of the above:
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Anime & Manga
- The futuristic "Catholic" Church in Trinity Blood is basically a military with a different kind of dress uniform.
Fan Works
- In the Fire Emblem: Three Houses fanfic You'll Get No Answers from the Blue Sea Star, the Church of Seiros, more or less as in the game, is a major power in Fódlan, with the elite Knights of Seiros at its command, extensive holdings, and thousands of worshipers spread through the Kingdom, the Alliance and the Empire. Garreg Mach monastery is its huge and well-supplied center of operations
Literature
- The Faith of the Seven in A Song of Ice and Fire. It's the largest organized religion in the Seven Kingdoms and the state religion everywhere except for the North (where the folk worship of the Old Gods predominates) and the Iron Islands (where a different organized religion which worships the Drowned God is supreme). Although the Faith play a background role in the first three books, they gain a larger role from A Feast for Crows onward, as Cersei Lannister allows them to revive the Faith Militant, an armed group that quickly win the hearts of the smallfolk through their acts of charity, as well as actions against corrupt nobles, resulting in a religious revival in the Seven Kingdoms.
- In the Dreamblood Duology, the priesthood of Hananja essentially rules the city-state of Gujaareh, with most of the city's power centered in the Hetawa, where the priests live, rather than with the palace and the Prince. Hananja's priests also serve as the gatekeepers of Hananja's magic.
- The titular Church in Quantum Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner. It is the command center of the Junkyard, and dictates both the religion and the laws that define the Junkyard. In fact, every tribe has a Bishop that has an online connection with the Church to provide information and commands.
- The various temples in This Used To Be About Dungeons have a complicated relationship with their gods, being more of a professional organization for the clerics rather than something with divine sanction. The gods themselves don't really care what form their worship takes, so long as it is in keeping with their individual ideals. It is entirely possible for a cleric to never step foot in a temple, or even be actively hostile to them, and still be in good standing with their god.
- Release That Witch has "The Church", the main religious institution within the setting which supports the elimination of monsters, witches and all other magical things. They're eventually revealed to be the remnants of an ancient witch organization devoted to fighting the Demons out in the Wild Wilderness, who created anti-witch propaganda to help in the capture and sacrifice of witches, whose blood was necessary for their Super-Soldier program.
- Shtetl Days: The German Christian Church is the state religion of the Reich, no other religions or even permitted Christian denominations are mentioned. It's explicitly stated that the Church really worships the Reich, not God.
Podcasts
- Dice Funk: The religious center of Stoneroot is powerful enough to challenge the lord and important enough that the populace simply refers to it as "The Church."
Tabletop Games
- The Ecclesiarchy in Warhammer 40,000 is the center of theology in the Imperium of Man. It tells the populace how to properly worship the God-Emperor. After ten thousand years, it has been entirely forgotten that Emps really didn't like being worshipped.
Video Games
- The Church of Abraxas from Choice of Magics worships Abraxas, a long-dead mage and immortal specter, though many of its followers consider Abraxas metaphorical and consider love and faith more important than the actual existence of their god. It is divided into two separate traditions: the House of the Sun (which preaches a creed of love and charity) and the House of the Flame (which focuses on the battle against evil). The Church also has Saints, who invoke divine miracles, and Inquisitors, who hunt down mages to capture and imprison them. Overall, it's neither a Saintly Church nor a Corrupt Church; it has good and bad aspects to it, though it's undeniably got a lot of skeletons in its closet and lies about the nature of its Saints.
- The Elder Scrolls
- Throughout the series, the Aedra-worshiping Temple of the Nine Divines is the primary religious sect of most of Tamriel and is the official religion of each incarnation of the Cyrodiilic Empire. It is treated as a Saintly Church in every facet, with it being uniformly benevolent in every series' appearance to date.
- However, in the backstory, the Alessian Order was a rabidly anti-Elven religious sect which established a Theocracy in the 1st Era that wielded nearly as much power as the Emperor at its height. It was a very solemn, strict, severe, spartan, and sometimes outright cruel Order. In addition to their pogrom against the remaining Ayleids in Cyrodiil (many of whom sided with St. Alessia during the Alessian Revolt and were allowed to keep their lands as vassals) which included the destruction of Ayleid artifacts and writings, the Order attempted to purge the gods themselves of their Elven basis. Wielding ill-begotten divine power, the Order caused what is known as the "Middle Dawn", the first and longest Dragon Break on record with a heaping dose of Reality-Breaking Paradox and Reality Is Out to Lunch. The excesses of the Order would eventually become too much to accept and the Order would be destroyed in the War of Righteousness by an alliance of Tamriellic nations. However, their influence on Imperial law and religion can still be felt in the Empires that have come since their fall.
- As primarily seen in Morrowind, the Dunmeri (Dark Elf) Tribunal Temple is another. They worship ALMSIVI, or simply "the Tribunal," a trio of formerly mortal Physical Gods. Though thought of by most non-Dunmer as a Scam Religion, in ages past, when the Tribunal deities themselves lived and worked among their people, the Temple was an undeniable force of good. However, when the Tribunal were cut off from the source of their divine power, they were forced to withdraw from the day-to-day affairs of the Dunmer in order to conserve power. When mortal leaders took over the Temple, it quickly became a Corrupt Church (though individual worshipers could still fall anywhere on the scale). As a result of the events of the game and its Tribunal expansion, the Tribunal are permanently cut off from the source of their power and two wind up dead. As revealed in Skyrim's Dragonborn expansion, the "New Temple" has been formed in the two centuries since Morrowind took place, and it is quite a bit less corrupt. The "Good Daedra" Anticipations of the Tribunal (Azura, Boethiah, and Mephala) are slotted back in as the Temple's chief deities known as "Reclamations", while the Tribunal themselves have been demoted to Saints.
- The Karma Temple in Digital Devil Saga is the command center of the Junkyard, and its orders are indisputable and to be followed immediately. The building itself also serves as The Very Definitely Final Dungeon of the first game.
