Religion in Edury

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Religion in Edury is the total make-up of all religions actively practiced in the Commonwealth of Edury, of which civic and ritualistic Stroomism is the majority. Since the introduction of Stroomism in Edury around the 200's BC to 200's AD, this version of Stroomism has changed little. The religious make-up of Edury has changed more in recent years, with the introduction of minority religions of immigrants as travel gets easier. H'ejrad, Sortism, Ayekism and other world religions all have presences in Edury, primarily in large cities.

Minority religions have had a history of paradoxical tolerance and intolerance in Edury. Due to the public and civic nature of Eduran stroomism, personal beliefs were not important to society as a whole, and people could have whatever gods they desired, so long as the practice of their religion did not bring strain to the social fabric of where they lived. However, public rituals such as sacrifice, bathing, prayers, etc., were thought to be of the utmost importance, and considered by most to be a public duty, the same as taxation. People who's religions forbade appeals to other religions would be forced to give sacrifice and participate in these rituals.

Irreligion is hard to measure in Edury. As personal beliefs are not considered part of religion, many have expressed skepticism or outright disbelief in the gods of Stroomism, while also maintaining that public religion was an important part of society and useful for maintain social cohesion. In the modern day, while public practice of Stroomism has been on a decline through the 20th and 21st centuries, many people who profess to be nontheistic or even atheist also say they practice some form of religious practice regularly.

Technically, no edict or law has ever been passed which removed the status of Stroomism as the state religion. Functionally, Stroomism plays no functional part in politics today, as public oaths and vows to the gods stopped around the first Eduran Revolution. Some cities and towns do still have clerics on their payroll, but as these clerics have always had civic duties as important as their religious ones, today this usually manifests as municipal bureaucrats who practice religious rites as a matter of tradition.

Various survey groups have monitored the religiosity of Eduran people, but the government has never put much effort into putting together an official census of various faiths in the country. According to the University of Dambridge, after Stroomism, the largest religions in descending order are Ayekism, Sortism, H'Ejrad and other smaller, minority religions.

History
Stroomism was introduced to the Edu river valley in around 200-100 BCE. Around this time, migrations from the Gaal River brought north Germanic and Proto-Germanic ethnic groups to the valley. Merging with the various Proto-Myrish and Sedic groups there along the periphery of the Great Sedic Confederation, the religious practices brought from the Gaal river began to take root in the Edu river watershed. The Edu river was perfect for the various practices of early Stroomism, as the flow of such a large watershed into one river was seen as a divine sign that the people who were migrating were destined to live there.

Pre-Stroomist religion
Various pagan nonsense

Introduction of Stroomism
Germanic peoples from the Gaal river migrated to the Edu river basin around ~150 BCE. These people would merge and intermarry with the groups already living there to form the Eduran language and people. As the Great Sedic Confederation collapsed, much of the political structure in Edury unraveled; as new structures were built to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of the Confederation, large influxes of people moved out of the countryside and into cities along the river. From this, the situations that would contribute to the beginning of the feudal system in Edury began. The priesthoods of these cities also formalized.

Called beschmerchers in Ecoralia, or simply "clerics" in Eduran, these priests chief duties were the overseeing of religious ritual in order to ensure the city or other polity stayed in the good graces of the two gods of Stroomism. This was done through ritual bathing and sacrifice, which served as making the people presentable to pay the gods through the sacrifices that were due to them. Public prayer accompanied these, and it was thought that the correct recitation of these proscribed sayings were what invoked the gods to listen. Clerics also oversaw the making of public oaths and vows; oaths were typically a promise of one person to another, in which the gods were made a signatory, and vows were typically promises made to the gods, to render special service in return for good favor.

Clerics in Edury had civic duties that were as important as their religious ones. The first and foremost was the administration of granaries that would serve as food stores for the city in which they lived. As grain was the primary object of sacrifice, many Edurans had an obligation to provide wheat, barley, etc. to temples in order to facilitate these sacrifices. However, as the cities grew, the contributions began to outpace the rate of sacrifice. These temples soon began to use these granaries as a food store, distributing grain in times of hardship, and storing it in times of plenty. Clerics also served as scribes, bureaucrats, managers and administrators. In cities, these clerics would often be serving politicians, with their clerical duties being seen as an extension of, or a side gig to, their political life. Outside of cities, the mid-level landsmen who were part of the feudal system were often clerics themselves, or served some clerical religious duties as part of their feudal obligations.

Split of civic/ritualistic Stroomism from mainstream Stroomism
As attitudes in the two regions- Gaal river and Edu river- shifted, the two forms of Stroomism split around the 90's CE. The formalized priestly classes of what would become Ecoralia were closely tied to the king, and their duties were specifically religious. The priests of Edury were often serving politicians, and due to the nature of how political classes developed in the various independent city-states along the Edu river, there were no kings. A dispute arose between one of the early kings of Ecoralia, who used his priests to issue commands to these cities, who did not recognize his authority over them. Famously, the city of Eduvesting responded simply to a demand to issue public prayers asking for the health of the king- "There are no kings in our valley." While this is apocryphal, this saying turned into the motto of Eduvesting, which would go on to become the capital of Edury.

As the split developed, the kings of Ecoralia started to urge the conversion of bordering peoples to Stroomism. This introduced a proselytizing aspect to Ecoralian practice of Stroomism, where practitioners were encouraged to set up temples to the gods of Warmth and Frost in foreign lands, and encourage others to participate in public practice. Eventually, this would lead to an encouragement of converted people to abandon belief in other gods, and introduced an importance of personal belief in the religion- although the practice of the religion was still far and away the more important aspect.

Civic religion
Unlike in some areas but more similarly in others, religion in Edury is mostly practiced as an office of the state; it is not that there is little separation between the two, in most cases, they are not two things. The position of cleric is seen as a political posting, as a public servant who's job it is to maintain the good spiritual standing of the local people. When they interacted with other elected officials in their capacity as a cleric, they were supposed to advise rulers on what policy would keep the spiritual balance of the people and the city, which actions were needed to appease the gods, and what the gods could be asked to intercede on, such as harvests and rainfall. Appointed or elected religious figures also had the responsibilities to maintain calendars, administer holidays and days of rest, and other objects of semi-spiritual import. While controversial, many historians and philosophers argue that cleric's positions in society were more important to maintaining social cohesion rather than the worship of a god or gods; in many cases, it has been hard to argue against this.

Decline of religion
Following the Alutran enlightenment, and even more so during the Eduran Revolution, the elections of clerics dwindled off. After 1815, no major city had clerics officiating public political ceremonies, although they still did officiate the beginning of certain holidays in some places. After 1820, vows made to the gods stopped in written record, and no public officials make these religious vows today, although some people do choose to invoke one or both of the gods of Stroomism in oaths of office, and some clerics do still oversee these to this day.

However, Eduran culture has always placed strong emphasis on public ceremony and ritual as a demonstration of a good social standing, in part due to civic stroomism's influence. As such, while only 30-50% of Edurans profess to believe in the gods of Warmth or Frost, 55-75% still say they participate in the public practice of Stroomist religion. Sacrifices are still offered at least once every two months in 18 of Edury's 20 biggest cities, and most Edurans still live within 10 miles of a temple to this day. In rural and socially conservative areas, people who do not practice publicly can still be maligned for not participating in societal customs, which can expose practitioners of minority religions to certain intolerance, or harm the societal position of non-practicing Edurans.