Sisko Cult on Bajor
- Thread starter GulBahana
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The Bajorans already (legitimately) worship Sisko as the Emissary, so I'm not really seeing a cult here. 
He was already the emissary in the religion; what would a break off religion/cult do or believe differently? Wear baseball caps and cook jambalaya?
I'd hope so. There being a whole bunch of different interpretations of the Bajoran religion makes it feel more real, if that makes sense. I bet there's Bajorans who still didn't believe Sisko was the Emissary or the wormhole aliens were the prophets, and on the flipside I think there was a small Bajoran atheist movement who hated the idea the wormhole aliens manipulated their planet and built Sisko just so he could go throw a book down a hole and so junked the whole religion. Looking at my home planet, we have so many different religions and sects and what have you that I think it's realistic to have some variation in fiction.
Agreed, and even within a single religion (Christianity for example) there are a thousand flavours in larger and smaller streams, some of which might be so different they don't even recognise each other as being part of the same religion. Why would it be any different for Bajoran religion ?
That would actually be pretty cool...
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I'm still not enitrely sure on what the perceived role of the Emissary actually is in mainstream Bajoran religion to begin with. Be a link between the people and the Prophets? Defeat the pah-wraiths by sacrificing himself? Ushering in a golden age for Bajor? And if so, what would his role be after he returns from the prophets?
Totally agree. This is often called the 'planet of hats' trope where everyone from a particular world (even if there are billions of people there) have the same cultural values, morals and beliefs.
Here's a scene from another sci-fi universe that neatly illustrates the problem:
We spend an episode learning about the Minbari, the Narn and the Centauri's 'dominant belief system' and then we get this scene. An atheist, a Catholic, a Muslim, a native American, a Hindu, it goes on. Perhaps as we go forward, there will be less variation given how connected we are today. But there should be variation on other worlds too.
We have seen a couple of Vulcan minorities. But I wonder whether there are Klingon minorities who don't believe in honour the same way as the mainstream, or Ferengi minorities who don't believe in capitalism. The possibilities are endless.
Well, we know there are Klingon factions and even sects (the one that went to the Delta Quadrant to search for the Kuvah'magh, for example). We also know that not all ferengi are interested in proft ('eliminator' Leck - even though he is a pathological example it shows there are differences in the population). But I agree they could have gone further and shown Ferengi that don't actually believe in capitalism, of to whom honour is not a catchphrase that justifies everything.
In-universe, I would use the 'explanation' that Starfleet being the closest thing to a military/exploratory organisation they have, it would stand to reason they would foremost meet the military caste of the Klingons, not those who stay at home and simply farm; and the Ferengi entrepeneurs that search out new 'business opportunities', not those that stay at home and provide care for the sick.
In-universe, I would use the 'explanation' that Starfleet being the closest thing to a military/exploratory organisation they have, it would stand to reason they would foremost meet the military caste of the Klingons, not those who stay at home and simply farm; and the Ferengi entrepeneurs that search out new 'business opportunities', not those that stay at home and provide care for the sick.
The Bajorans already (legitimately) worship Sisko as the Emissary, so I'm not really seeing a cult here.
I agree...honoring Sisko as the Emissary would simply be an integral part of the existing religion, as I understand it.
If anything on Bajor could be called a cult, it was the group in "Covenant" who worshipped the Pah'Wraiths, with Dukat leading them on.
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An episode where Sisko has to de-escalate Bajoran sects becoming violent in their baseball game rituals (complete with Kai Winn adorning a sacred catcher's mitt) would make for a solid bit of television, I can't lie.
I'd be very surprised if there weren't sect or cults devoted to each of those aspects of The Sisko.
Wasn't there a scene with people wanting him to heal them by touching, like a mediaeval king?
dJE
Yeah, and a scene where people considered it a great honour if he would marry them, or bless them, or perform some other ritual.
But why this kind of veneration, exactly? His title 'Emissary' would suggest he was some kind of messenger, or link to the prophets, but apart from him having personal visions about what his path should be like, I'm not sure how he exactly fulfilled that role to the Bajoran population.. We also see that Winn (grudgingly) defers to his wishes sometimes, at least in public, because apparently, you shouldn't oppose the Emissary, not even as a Kai.
Once we understand better why the 'average' Bajoran seems to venerate him, I think it becomes easier to speculate about what cults there could be, too.
There were hints at local variations on Bajoran belief, such as the thing with the imaginary cloud creature and the village. And then there were Bajorans who didn't seem particularly religious at all, like Ro Laren (of course, in her case that's because the Bajoran religion hadn't yet been conceptualized in the TNG days).
Kor
Kor
I imagine in 200 years, Bajorans insisting that whatever they personally believe is exactly what Sisko would have done.
We already saw there are conflicting interpretations of the religion with Bareil. We saw Ro as a Bajoran atheist. But I don’t see atheism taking over the way it has been on Earth just because the Prophets directly and unambiguously interceded in the war to save them.
We already saw there are conflicting interpretations of the religion with Bareil. We saw Ro as a Bajoran atheist. But I don’t see atheism taking over the way it has been on Earth just because the Prophets directly and unambiguously interceded in the war to save them.
But... while I understand what they wanted to express, this doesn't make sense if it is about the "dominant belief system" of Earth. If they are talking about the dominant belief system, then Earth should have, at most, sent representatives of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism ( plus possibly Sikhism and maybe Atheism, though I sincerely doubt Atheism is unique to humanity) since those are the only ones big enough to count as major world religions. Unless there's a huge shift in those things by the time of B5 those various tribal faiths, for example, just do not represent a "dominant" faith. Their faith/traditions/culture is of course relevant, but it's not a "dominant" system.
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Once you dismiss the idea Earth has one "dominant" belief system, where do you make the cut off line? How many members or how much influence do you think a belief system should have to have to qualify? If the whole point he was making was that there was no dominant belief, then the more diverse beliefs showcased, the better.
