Re: Hey, everyone! DRG's DS9 novel after Sacraments is called ASCENDA
I had a discussion about religion and religious characters in Trek with a friend of mine who is Jewish Orthodox...he was actually disheartened by some of the new borderline token characters, as he always felt that the federation era earth had moved beyond overt displays of relgious belief towards something more personal to the individuals. I am inclined to agree with him to an extent.
McCoy is an early example of a quasi religious trek character (very southern baptist) and sulu is shown in the novels...star trek vi, just before the praxis wave hits...practicing buddhist meditation.
Then we have characters like Chakotay, whose facial tattoo is more overt, and even Ro with her secularised wearing of her Bajoran earring.
However, I do suspect things like burkhas, hijabs, large uniform adjustments....possibly even full turbans for sikh characters would indeed feel out of place on the bridge.
Religion seems to be something our heroes, of varying faiths, tend to leave in their quarters a la Spock or Worf.
I would never agree, however, with the militant/radical atheist view of Trek being an atheist text.
Things like Q and the prophets automatically make that a false assumption, and the recent Q son of Q stuff over in Voyager fit nicely into that nicely vague area Trek has carved out as opposed to say Babylon 5.
In terms of this new book however.....yes olease. I hate the broken narrative we currently have, and the sooner its back on track, the better.
And some dark corner of my fan heart secretly wishes they ditch the new station and bring the old back with a prophets switcheroo. They wont. So more than one line if dialogue from Miles will be a start, and maybe find out what he thinks about all Bashir went through, maybe explain why he wasnt more involved.
) so just leave them be, no need to correct them.
But there are certainly other Federation worlds that have been established as having religions. Earth's major religions are still known to be alive and well, at least among some segments of the population; we've seen novelverse characters who were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindi, and so on. "Yesteryear" established that Vulcans have shrines to their gods. Andorians in the novels worship Uzaveh the Infinite; Tellarites look to Kera and Phinda. I'm sure there are more.
