A dear friend has pointed out to me that my fantasy novels do, indeed, display a certain “Protestant” slant. This is not an unfair observation; but there’s more to it than meets the eye.
The Temple in Obann–that is, the Religious Establishment–is riddled with corruption. Under Lord Reesh’s direction, the Temple has given itself over to worldly concerns and has no real connection to God. Although the Temple is corrupt, the worst thing about it is that it is ossified.
I never meant the Temple to be analogous to the Roman Catholic Church. The First Prester is more like the Archbishop of Canterbury than a Pope, and he has a seat on the High Council of the nation’s oligarchy. What’s really wrong in Obann is that the Temple doesn’t preach and teach the word of God and has led the people into an empty, ritualistic semblance of religion.
In that respect it resembles many churches and denominations in our own world, Catholic and Protestant alike. In that the Obann Temple has substituted man’s words and traditions for God’s laws, it resembles the religious establishment in Jerusalem as characterized by Our Lord Jesus Christ: for instance, “Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition” (Matthew 15:6). There was no RC Church when Our Lord spoke those words, but there was a religious establishment.
I’m sure that if one reads all the books in the Bell Mountain series, it will be easily seen that the Temple in Obann does not represent any particular church in our world, but rather an established religion in general, an institution whose interests have become an end in themselves.
The difference is that there are probably more good individuals in the Temple than there are in the three branches of the United States government.