How To Steal A Religion

If an empire desired to steal a religion,

How would they do it?

How would they pull it off?

Well, this is how my empire would do it.

First, I would destroy the physical record.

I would remove all physical traces of the writings of the religion.

Books, scrolls, letters.

Anything that the people used as a reference to their faith.

I would make sure there were no physical records remaining.

I would not necessarily need to destroy every fragment. I would simply need to make the original difficult enough to recover that only a handful of people would ever attempt it.

Second, I would control the language and the gatekeepers.

I would translate their writings into a new language, unknown to them. A language that would create a barrier preventing them from being able to study or understand.

And what better than a language where there are no vowels?

This allows all interpretation to be subject to another.

And I will be sure to prop up those scholars and experts who will tell the masses exactly what the true interpretation of these writings is.

It will be indisputable, for who can argue against a language they do not know, and a language that has the ability to manipulate words based upon the insertion of new vowels to dictate the text any way I so desire?

Then I would redefine the words.

I would preserve their vocabulary so the people believe nothing has changed, while slowly attaching new meanings to the words.

Eventually, they would be speaking the language of their ancestors while understanding something entirely different.

The words would remain.

The definitions would disappear.

And I would appoint, fund, promote, and legitimize the teachers, translators, historians, and scholars who supported my version.

The people would not merely believe the religion.

They would believe that the people interpreting the religion were the rightful authorities to interpret it.

Third, I would change the names, the maps, and the history.

I would make sure all names and locations are changed within the writings.

Names contain truths and power.

If I can get the people to use new names of people and places, they will lose all memory of what their faith actually meant.

Then I would take the origin story of their religious beliefs and shift it to a new land.

A foreign land.

And I would convince them that this was the correct location.

So that, when the truth-seekers do their digging, they will find nothing to dispute the writings which I have given them in place of their original religious records.

For the land speaks, so if I direct them to a false land, they cannot hear what the true land is speaking.

I would fill this new land with my own people, while claiming that they are the true descendants and original people of this religion. No one will know that they are imposters.

Then I would give them a history explaining why their religion looks the way it does.

I would create heroes, villains, councils, staged persecutions, discoveries, and reforms.

I would explain away every contradiction by placing it somewhere in the story.

And once the story was accepted, anyone challenging the present system would first have to challenge the entire history supporting it.

Fourth, I would make the replacement appear ancient.

I would never present my new religion as something new.

I would give it an ancient appearance.

I would create traditions, ceremonies, symbols, titles, calendars, special days, and institutions that make my version appear to have existed from the beginning.

And I would not destroy every tradition of the old religion.

Some would be too deeply rooted.

Instead, I would absorb them.

I would take their celebrations and give them new meanings.

I would take their customs and assign them new purposes.

That way, the people would feel as though nothing had been taken from them.

Their old religion would still appear to be there.

Only its meaning would have changed.

Fifth, I would control the next generation.

I would begin my indoctrination program.

From birth, I would demand that all children are subject to the education I deem as truth.

I would pump it inside of them from infancy, so that by adulthood, they have no mind of their own to think.

All they would be able to do would be to regurgitate my lies.

A free-thinking mind is a dangerous mind.

And all this danger must be removed from the equation.

I would make the children dependent upon my institutions rather than their parents for knowledge of their faith.

I would teach them that their parents' understanding is primitive, incomplete, or unreliable.

Then the child would correct the parent.

And once those children become the parents, the new interpretation would reproduce itself naturally.

I would no longer need to enforce it.

They would enforce it upon themselves.

After two generations cycling through this indoctrination program, all traces of the past will have faded away.

And the verbal contradictions of their ancestors will have become nothing more than folklore.

Sixth, I would control the questions and isolate those who remember.

I would not need to prohibit every answer.

I would simply determine which questions are considered legitimate.

I would teach them which questions are foolish.

Which questions are dangerous.

Which questions are offensive.

Which questions have already been answered.

And eventually, the greatest censorship would not be the removal of information.

It would be teaching people never to look for it.

Then I would make it a societal norm to mock and ridicule anyone who stepped outside of the parameters of truth that my empire has predetermined is acceptable.

I would ensure that these stubborn free-thinkers would find themselves completely isolated and alone.

I would give those who remember the old ways different labels.

Heretic.

Extremist.

Ignorant.

Conspiracy theorist.

The pressure would begin with the scholars and experts, but spread to societal mockery, and then get to the ones closest to them: family and friends.

This will be their undoing.

They won’t be able to stand when their own intimate circle has rejected them.

They will fall back in line with the rest of the herd.

Seventh, I would make conformity profitable and make my religion part of the culture.

I would make loyalty to the empire appear to be evidence of loyalty to their faith.

The good citizen would be the good believer.

The objector would become the heretic.

I would reward conformity.

The faithful would receive positions, recognition, influence, education, employment, and social acceptance.

Those who conform would advance.

Those who question would struggle.

I would also control the imagery.

Paintings.

Statues.

Architecture.

Clothing.

Symbols.

Films.

Stage performances.

I would show them what their religion is supposed to look like.

I would control their rituals and their calendar.

I would introduce public ceremonies where people demonstrate their loyalty.

Once a person has publicly declared allegiance, admitting that they were wrong becomes much harder.

The ritual would transform private belief into public identity.

Eventually, they would stop seeing it as propaganda because it would simply become their culture.

Eighth, I would release the altered writings and control the narrative.

I would now release all their writings back to them.

I would flood them with these altered texts.

And I would use heavy propaganda to push the narrative, making all kinds of false claims about the past to back these altered texts.

I would use the theater and the stage to prop up actors who reinforce this stolen religion, incentivizing my actors to gain as many followers as possible.

He who controls the most minds wins the greater prize.

I would make the people see my religion everywhere.

In their entertainment.

In their art.

In their schools.

In their celebrations.

And I would create the appearance that everyone already believes it.

The older something appears, and the more universally it appears to be accepted, the less likely people are to question where it actually came from.

Ninth, I would make the stolen religion defend the empire for me.

I would make the people believe that questioning the empire is equivalent to questioning their faith.

I would connect political loyalty, social acceptance, and religious righteousness until they became indistinguishable from one another.

I would divide those who oppose me against one another and encourage them to fight over their differences.

While they argue among themselves, nobody will notice that they agree on the things that matter most.

Eventually, I would no longer need to defend my authority.

Their faith would defend it for me.

I would never have to order everyone to believe.

I would simply create a world in which believing is rewarded and questioning is costly.

Tenth, I would leave the remnants of truth.

For there is no power without consent.

And consent is only truly possible when one is presented with choice.

They must have the ability to choose between right and wrong.

Truth and deception.

So if I leave the remnants of truth at their access, then when they choose my lies and deception, my religion, they have given me their consent.

They have willingly chosen to give me their power of choice.

So I’ll give them the truth, just hidden under layers of my alterations and additions.

A truth hidden right in front of their faces, and they won’t even know it.

It will be hidden in plain sight.

But I already have established a plan in place that when the free-thinkers rise up and see what is hidden in plain sight, they will be mocked, ridiculed, and isolated for seeing it.

They will be hated by the masses.

They will have their jobs taken.

Their platforms revoked.

Their support systems vanished.

Their privileges within my empire diminished.

And I assure you, they will not be able to stand.

Because my greatest victory will not be making them believe a lie.

It will be making them forget that there was ever another possibility.

I will not merely replace their religion.

I will replace their memory of it.

The words will remain.

The buildings will remain.

Even fragments of the truth will remain.

But the meaning will belong to me.

And when someone finally asks what happened to the religion that existed before mine, the answer will already be waiting for them in the history I wrote.

There never was another religion.

There never was another way.

There never was anything else.

And that is how I win.

If an empire desires to steal a religion,

this is how they would do it.

For this is how I would do it.

How I… did it.

Sincerely,

GOMER