A Very Christian World

A Very Christian World:

In this world Mohammed never has his severe religious experience and never develops Islam. Christianity continues to spread into the rest of the Middle East and eventually certain denominations and sects are able to become the majority in the region.

Though the faith does fragment and new denominations do develop, some with rather bizarre derivatives, the Christian faith continues to expand to become a the dominant religion of the world.

Today Christianity, in some form or another, is the dominant global religion, outstripping all other faiths by a wide margin (though Hinduism comes close through sheer volume if not range). Of course these denominations do still fight one another, whether due to religious disputes or secular conflict and the attempts to impose a universal faith have failed miserably and simply led to more conflict and division.

One of the premier nations of Europe is the Empire of Francia. Their distant ancestors did form a (sort of) Holy Roman Empire in the past and the current occupants of the throne do claim the title of Emperor of the West. Of course to most other nations (especially the Skandians who also claim the title) they are simply Francians.

Francia is officially the centre of the Roman Catholic Church after the Papacy was forced to flee in the 1400s. They have since subjugated the official Papacy and made it into another political tool for the monarchy. Of course certain popes have also worked over the centuries to free themselves of the monarchy's influence and by this point there is a degree of separation between state and church. The church is still the primary means of education in Francia, with religious schools providing free education to all so long as they accept the teachings and religious education. Higher education, on the other hand, is private and substantially more secular which allows the sciences to advance more freely.

Officially Francia is an absolute monarchy but by this point the bureaucracy and the upper class (titled and untitled) are firmly in power. The government is not elected but it is possible to climb the ranks of power through the civil services. Traditionalism and widespread elitism keeps society very stratified and the academics and intelligentsia are encouraged not to involve themselves with political philosophy. Life for the rest of the population is very traditionalist with both the church and the state promoting social cohesion, large families and the general consensus of the status quo.

Francia's viceroyalties are largely independent now and are mostly tied to the homeland through religion and a loose economic association. These states are mostly creole and a lot of the native languages still persist with pure Francian (and Latin) being spoken by the upper classes and a pidgin being more common amongst the middle and working classes. The governments are oligarchic with the local elites dominating everything and the Francian emperor serving as a figurehead. The position of viceroy is now hereditary and practically powerless, serving as a fig leaf to the emperor.

Francia's primary rivals are the Skandians. The Skandian Empire sprawls over most of Northern Europe and is focused around an attempted 'Pan-Germanic' identity that is trying to incorporate the other races of their empire as well. They too claim the title of the Western Roman Empire and also embrace Catholicism but their claim is much more tenuous. They do not have their own papacy but their Catholicism is divorced from the politics of the Francian Papacy which allows them to challenge the Francians without compromising their religion.

The Anglican Schism was the first major split within the Catholic sphere of influence. Somewhat similar to nationalist Catholicism, the differences between Anglicanism and Catholicism are largely political though monastic and knightly orders (most of whom are redundant anyway) are abolished in Anglican lands.

The British Empire was supposedly the first and greatest Anglican state. Of course they aren't the power they used to be, the loss of their Occidentan territories hitting them hard and colouring their overseas experiences since then. They did manage to build a new empire for themselves but it has also been largely abandoned in the last century or so due to the cost of maintaining it. Despite still having some Catholic issues (ironically it is worse in areas like Scotland rather than Ireland) they are fairly stable and are edging towards religious tolerance. Due to their old empire, they have slowly opened up to immigration but the laws around it are very strict and foreigners are expected to conform with their societal values.

The Federation of Avalon, Britain's former primary colony is the strongest Anglican state. Ironically they are far more religious than their faith's homeland, having initially been founded by religious extremists that left the British Isles to found a more pious society.

Avalon is an elected monarchy with the pool of candidates being chosen from amongst the top most elite families. This list has changed in the past but they do have to hold some form of aristocratic title. Like all Anglican states the monarch is the head of the church but they don't really possess any ecclesiastic authority, they do, however, have to follow the faith in order to qualify for the throne.

The Amerindian population of Avalon is much higher than the OTL equivalent lands. However, due to British techniques of conquest, more of an effort was made to culturally assimilate them rather than shove them off onto reservations. There is a substantial percentage of mixed race citizens which has made racially motivated politics much more difficult. The black African population (most of whom are descended from either slaves or slavers) still suffer from a lot of political and social bias against them but things are improving due to a much less severe history of racism. Slavery was abolished over a gradual period with portions of the black population being emancipated separately over the course of the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries.

The Greek Church suffered horrendous losses when the Nestorian Kwarezm Empire conquered everything between Persia and the Alps and tried to impose their faith on the area. There are still several states that still follow their doctrines, primarily amongst the various states in Eastern Europe that emerged after the Kwarezm Empire in Europe collapsed but they are a shadow of what they once were.

The Federated Republic of Grand Turkomania is the latest state to emerge in Central Asia. Born of revolution in the 1910s, the republic was previously the Holy Khanate of the Kipchaks got embroiled in a series or poorly thought out wars in India.

Turkomania used to be an authoritarian state but they have moderated in the past few decades and have largely transitioned to a democratic, if highly conservative, state. They are still devoutly Nestorian, which helps maintain their largely conservative society. Unlike their predecessors, the Federated Republic is not a decentralised state and has taken the traditional common laws that the Kipchaks promoted and has expanded that to curtail the old regional privileges. This in turn led to the attempted 'Turkish' identity developing at the behest of the government. Turkomania's laws are still as draconian as they always have been but are applied fairly. The growing surveillance state they are building is officially viewed as simply another stage in Turkish legality.

The remnants of the Kwarezm Empire have once again begun to gain notoriety in the modern world. Despite still being a shadow of their former selves (at least for those who like to mention the empire at its height), the Kwarezms have become a valuable state due to their oil. Having held off the predatory attempts to steal their territories in the 20^th Century, the Kwarezms have been seen as a significant ally to court. Unfortunately the recent unrest from their Iranian subjects (who they have consistently failed to stamp out as an identity) is about to pull everything they've built down.

China has always been a difficult state for Christianity to make inroads. Nestorianism did finally rise to prominence in the north through the Turks and Mongols but the core territories remained separate. However, in the early 20^th Century, the Shen Revolution took place and instated a Christian theocracy over the southern coast.

Shen Christianity is a very bizarre combination of traditional Chinese faith with Christian beliefs. The current son of heaven is officially supposed to be a descendant of Jesus Christ (this has really annoyed people elsewhere). After so many generations and moderation of their politics, the Son of Heaven's authority has been curtailed by several unofficial restrictions and instead the bureaucracy now runs most things.

Long China, which touts itself as the defender of true Chinese traditions, holds the rest of the empire. Despite frequent inroads by the Nestorian steppe nomad empires in the Middle Ages, the Chinese have managed to retain their old culture and traditional faiths. Like their Shen rivals, they are a traditional monarchy that has largely been subsumed by the bureaucracy but are much more militant. They had a cultural revival that strengthened the tenets of their old faiths in the face of Christian infiltration.

Africa is still colonised in most places. The Lusitani used to have the greatest empire on the continent but this began to unravel in the Late 19^th Century when the British took much of it in addition to their own territories. Britain is still trying to keep them but things are still looking turbulent. Francia still has a fair amount of land under their control in northern Africa but the local anti-papal heresies are becoming incredibly troublesome as they grow in size and power. Catholicism is the most powerful and widespread denomination on the continent followed by several local interpretations and derivatives that have sprung up over the centuries.

Technologically this world is at about the same level as the 1970s. This world's Christianity was much more politically secure and less prone to suppressing intellectualism. The Heliocentric Model was accepted without any real problems but evolution and more modern theories about cosmology are proving to be much harder to accept by most states.

Nuclear weapons are more common in a more multi-polar world and have even seen more use since they were used aggressively in the Turkoman Revolution when rebels acquired several of the Kipchak Khanate's stockpile. An internet is in the theoretical stage of development but it is still merely being designed as a defensive communications network. There was a Space Race that the Francians won and are continuing with plenty of new satellites. Earth's orbit is seeing more activity as new devices and apparatus are being put in space.