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September 29, 2010 3:51 PM

Science Fiction character identification: Which SF story had a sort of Friar Tuck like character who followed all faiths simultaneously and had the symbols for multiple world religions hung around his neck?
posted by Artw to Media & Arts (14 answers total)

Probably not this, but The Mummy movies had a similar character. He was able to convince the titular baddie of his usefulness by speaking Hebrew like (quoting the movie here) "the pharaoh's slaves".
posted by 2bucksplus at 4:04 PM on September 29, 2010

Madrak in Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness was a fat "warrior-priest" who fought with a quarterstaff, but he was agnostic, not polyreligious.
posted by Zed at 4:14 PM on September 29, 2010

I'm pretty sure there was a character (or characters) in Terry Pratchett's discworld series that had piles of religious amulets/talismans around his neck -- the idea being that he wanted protection but he wasn't sure which religion was real/right so he was just trying them all.
posted by madmethods at 4:37 PM on September 29, 2010

Almost definitely not it, but Futurama has Father Changstein el-Gamal of the First Amalgamated Church...
posted by Merzbau at 4:44 PM on September 29, 2010 [5 favorites]

It sounds similar to Sazed from Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy but that's definitely fantasy, not sci-fi.
posted by shesbookish at 5:25 PM on September 29, 2010

Like Zed, I thought of Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness. Does the Agnostic's Prayer look like something you remember?
posted by fings at 5:32 PM on September 29, 2010

Half-remembered, but the Electric Monk?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 5:37 PM on September 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

In "Buck Godot: Gallimaufrey", Buck encounters a priest of the Slag-Blah religion:

"Slag Blah's philosophy is that of militant agnosticism; we don't know, and you don't either! So we believe in everything! No religion is too silly, no pantheon too crowded, no cosmology too counter intuitive!"

"But many religions contradict each other."

"True, so each religion has its own day, when its doctrines reign supreme over all."
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:22 PM on September 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

Hermann Goering in the Riverworld books?
posted by codswallop at 8:32 PM on September 29, 2010

I'm not sure, but The Broken God popped into my head, but I read it in the mid-90s, so I've forgotten almost all of it. Maybe the Wikipedia synopsis rings a bell.
posted by Kattullus at 8:44 PM on September 29, 2010

Could it be Dan Simmoms' Hyperion series? There's a big time religious component to it, including robed clerics...
posted by OneMonkeysUncle at 9:55 PM on September 29, 2010

Did any of these answer the question? We're dying to know here.
posted by magnoliasouth at 7:54 PM on October 1, 2010

Response by poster: Unfortunately not, though they are all good guesses. I'm beginning to wonder if I imagined it, or maybe I read it in something really obscure and terrible and not some 70s classic as I had imagined.
posted by Artw at 8:52 PM on October 1, 2010

Could it be something vampire related? A few shows and publications have played on the multiple religious symbols trope.
posted by biffa at 1:01 PM on March 19, 2011