IronAngel wrote:
A church organisation in which the 0.5% (if that) are clerics or otherwise formally ordained and allowed, not only divine spells, but monopoly on positions of authority, is not exclusive? I am not sure what dictionary you're consulting, but to me that is the very definition of exclusive. (You could check an example ratio by counting all the clergy in Waterdeep, assuming City of Splendors lists them, and comparing it against the population. The churches of Waterdeep are probably better-staffed than the average. I imagine it's one priest, cleric or not, for a few hundred lay followers.)
Most churches are based on hierarchy, obedience and restricted access, and I don't see how you could possibly argue otherwise. Do you suggest any beggar on the street could clasp his hands in prayer and cast Greater Restoration, without years of submission to rigorous study, obedience and review, during which time either your clerical superior or your deity can reject you for not being good enough? Do you suggest nobody in the history of Faerûn has ever flunked cleric school or did not have the money/social status to get admitted in the first place? You're grasping for straws that aren't there. I am not sure what the Catholic church has to do with it, either; it does not take a lot of reading into any culture to realize people do not equate the formal institutions of religion with the object of devotion as a rule. You can very well believe in God and follow biblical example despite criticising the local bishop and the church's recruitment policy; I wager that is the norm these days. Even the archetypically devout Middle Ages produced countless pages of estate satire making fun of lecherous friars and gluttonous priests.
You can, of course, play your characters how you see fit, but I'm personally unconvinced by your generalizations. I'm more interested in new, alternative perspectives to Ur-priests and their reception, though. If you don't find this one example convincing, you don't have to play it. What would you say might motivate an Ur-priest, what kind of a background might he come from, and what could his goals be?
show any proof that they are restrictive, any more than any other organisation that requires alot of training to become part of, and far more importantly, that this matters to the normal people, I would remind you, once again as have been said in many many other threads about the faithless, that you cannot compare to RL religions what so ever, as RL religions do not have any proof at all...none at all, in this world, clerics represents beings that actually exists, people dont critisize the gods in faerun, because they exist, most in waterdeep above a certain age have seen two duking it out in the middle of the city.
And as for your "submission to rigorous study, obedience and review" this might be true for some clerics of certain faiths, but its not all that are like that, you generalise horribly when you try to define all religions in faerun. You cant compare the structure of lathander with bane, you cant compare kelemvor to Chauntea.
Most people in faerun rely on the gods for blessings, chautea for a good harvest, lathander for a childbirth without death and so forth, this is very real to people of faerun because the gods are very real.
The best rl comparrison of how Ur-priest would be persieved, is comparing a educated trained surgeon with a uneducated person performing surgery with a scalpel he stole In faerun clerics are not just people spouting scripture, they are the people that saved your town from a storm, gave birth to your children, gave you luck in buisness and so forth
perhaps a Ur-priest would find allies in dark lands, but I would think people would prefer seeking the gods of light rather than aid a man who is just that...one man, and on top of that a one way ticket to the wall of souls
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