The Voices of Heaven Read Online Free Page A

Das Rheingold gave the role of Wotan to a Japanese singer. The Odinists called that blasphemy and tried (unsuccessfully) to black out the broadcast, but since there were only seven of the Odinists altogether they couldn't work up a real riot.
    (I won't even mention the secular churches that aren't really religions, exactly. They aren't allowed to have any representatives in the Congresses, but people belong to them so they'll have places to go to when everybody else is going to church; these are the Communals, the Ethicals, the Rationalists, and the Humanists.)
    I don't know what the total number of religious sects is. Maybe there are a thousand or so that are large enough, and well enough organized, to have their own official electoral constituencies, but there are thousands and thousands of splinter groups that are too small or too new to be registered.
    Most of the registered ones, even, are too small to elect their own people to the various world commissions. The legislative commissions are usually dominated by Christians, Muslims and Jews, although there are almost always a sprinkling of Taoists and Buddhists in the major legislative commissions. They are considered less dogmatic than most of the others, so their presence is encouraged to help cool down the steamier arguments. Some of the small ones make common cause with others, too, so they can run what they call a "fusion" ticket. Probably every registered sect has at least a part of an elected legislator somewhere.
    (You haven't asked me just how it happened that the religions ran the governments, but I'll tell you anyway. It wasn't always that way. They say that in the old days people used to vote for "political parties," but all the parties got to look pretty much alike. Whatever people said their "political" principles were, it turned out that they were generally voting their religions and their social and ethnic backgrounds anyway—sometimes with a lot of violence. It was simpler to cut out the middleman, I wouldn't say that solved all the problems, but at least we don't have much "car bombing" or "kneecapping" or "ethnic cleansing" going on anymore. Never mind what those things were. You don't want to know.)
    That's the story on the churches. It may not quite be what you were asking about, I think. Probably what you really want to know is what all these denominations believe in.
    That's a much harder question. I think that the principal thing, for most of them, is that their religious beliefs are tied up in some hope of eternal life. In the Western Orthodox church, for instance, we believe—or probably I should say they believe—that after you die you enter a kind of world of the spirit, and if you're good it's paradise and then you just live on forever in eternal joy of one kind or another. It's pretty much the same with most of the other religions, except that in some of their heavens you don't spend eternity singing hosannahs. Maybe you just get reincarnated and have to go through the whole thing all over again. Or maybe you just abandon all your individual, personal existence entirely and join some kind of universal Soul—I'm not too clear on some of them.
    On the other hand, a lot of the religions hold that there's a down side to the afterlife, too. That means that if you've been a rotten person in your lifetime—or maybe if you just ate the wrong kind of food, or didn't make the right sacrifices, or missed attending a service even—when you die you are going to pay for it because then you are going to get punished for your sins by roasting (or something) in some kind of totally agonizing hell. Forever.
    I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you, but we ought to be getting used to that by now. You're different from us in too many ways—especially this one, since you people have never had to worry about an afterlife at all.

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    IT is not evident that you are helping your case, Barrydihoa. In your description of these