The principle of a single religion

The principle of a single religion makes shared worship a foundation of order in the Blazing-World, then becomes a program the Empress deliberately cultivates. The narrative contrasts the inhabitants’ existing unanimity in belief with her effort to convert them to her own religion: institutional arrangements and persuasive spectacle turn religious unity into both a devotional ideal and a means of governing.

The Existing Faith and Its Institutions

When the Empress asks the priests whether the separate churches of the different kinds of inhabitants indicate separate religions, they explain that the whole world has one religion and no diversity of opinion about the worship of God. They do not identify themselves as Jewish, Turkish, or Christian; instead, they profess a unanimous acknowledgment of one omnipotent and eternal God. Their worship consists of prayers framed for different needs, including petitions, humiliations, and thanksgiving. Distinct communities may have separate churches, but, in the priests’ account, they do not constitute distinct confessions.

The statesmen offer a parallel argument for a single political sovereign: as one body has one head, a political body should have one governor. They connect monarchy to the inhabitants’ religious model, reasoning that just as they worship one God in one faith, they submit to one Emperor in obedience. Religious unity thus appears not merely as a matter of worship but as a pattern for political unity.

That uniformity is maintained through exclusion as well as agreement. Women do not attend the public congregations; the priests say they remain at home and pray privately. They claim that mixed attendance would distract worshippers, and that women’s influence over husbands and parents could cause trouble in Church and State. The Empress points out that women and children hold no public employment, but the priests answer that private influence can still affect public affairs. The resulting religious order is unified in doctrine while restricting women’s participation in its public institutions.

The Empress’s Conversion Program

Although the Empress admires the people’s knowledge, she judges their religious understanding deficient and considers whether she can convert them to her own religion. She builds churches and establishes a congregation of women, placing herself at its head and teaching its members the articles of her faith. The women become devout and zealous, and her preaching wins her unusual affection among her subjects. This development does not simply preserve the inhabitants’ original religious unanimity: it redirects that unity toward the Empress’s own religion.

The Empress also seeks to make the new belief endure. Worried that people may tire of religious truth and follow their own desires, she commissions investigations into a burning mountain and obtains a stone that ignites when wet. She asks the Bird-men for a piece of the Sun-stone; they say they cannot obtain one without diminishing the world’s light, but offer to demolish a star instead. The proposed substitute supplies the Star-stone for a second chapel.

She constructs two chapels on pillars in the middle of a dark, round cloister, where they remain open to view and revolve continuously in opposite directions. One is lined with diamonds and uses the Fire-stone: pipes carry water over it, making the chapel appear aflame while the stone is wet. There the Empress preaches about punishment for sin. The other, lined with Star-stone, gives a comfortable light without heat; there she comforts those who repent. The paired chapels make religious teaching visible as contrasting images of punishment and consolation, while the Empress’s sermons give those images their interpretation.

Persuasion, Order, and Limits

The Empress presents her conversion as achieved through ingenuity and persuasion, without compulsion or bloodshed. She holds that belief should be instilled gently rather than forced, and argues that love keeps people to their duties more securely than fear. The chapels’ staged effects therefore accompany instruction rather than replacing it: terror and comfort are distinct appeals within a program led by the Empress’s preaching.

The principle’s political force becomes explicit when the Empress later faces divisions among the Blazing-World’s learned societies. She tells the Duchess that the world was more peaceful under its earlier government and fears that disputes among its different peoples will lead to rebellion. The Duchess advises restoring one sovereign, one religion, one law, and one language, describing a united world as one family. Religious uniformity is thus part of a larger prescription for suppressing faction and preserving governmental stability.

The account also reveals a tension within the ideal. The priests’ original claim of one shared religion coexists with separate churches and the exclusion of women from public worship; the Empress’s response expands women’s organized religious life, but places their congregation under her own leadership and teaches her own faith. Her method favors persuasion over force, yet religious unity remains closely bound to centralized authority and the management of dissent. The principle is therefore both a claim of common devotion and an instrument in the Empress’s effort to make the Blazing-World peaceful and governable.