religion and fanfic

A few random scribbles on religion and fanfic:

The important thing to remember is that religion is not a positive
experience for everyone who experiences it. Some people feel negatively
about religion as a result of their own negative experiences with their own
religion. Therefore, when introduce religion into fanfic in a fandom where
canon is completely secular, there are going to be some negative reviews
simply because you have introduced a new element that is negative for some
people. It's like if you wrote a teacher-student romance, you'd get a
visceral negative reaction from readers who were led on or exploited by
someone in a position of authority. That doesn't mean that religion HAS to
be completely avoided, but just understand that there will be some negative
reaction whenever religion is used, simply because an element that does not
exist in canon and is
negative for some readers has been introduced.

When the presence of religion does not contribute to the plot, the reaction
will be even worse because the use of religion will seem completely
gratuitous. Canon doesn't need religion to work, so if you want to use
religion in a fic it would have to be for a particular plot reason. When it
doesn't contribute to the plot, it seems at best irrelevant and at worst
preachy. For me personally, it give the impression that the author lacks
the ability to get inside a character's head, and has to replace the missing
elements with bits of their own self. It feels like the author cannot
imagine a person who isn't actively religious, which is not a good thing in
a secular fandom. Authors who cannot get inside the head of a person who is
not actively religious should write their own characters who can be as
religious as they want rather than appropriating existing secular characters
and making them religious because they are not creative enough to do
otherwise.