> You can't define Malkionism to exclude people who call themselves
> Malkioni, no matter how heretical they are. (I'm not suggesting
> anyone is; just that it's a danger.)
Notslor, the Holy Monk (and proto-Saint) who did most to convene the Seventh Ecclesiastical Council, proclaimed: "All is lost if we are not One! We must Unite!" This is why anyone who professed to be a Malkioni, however tenuously, was invited along to the Council. Many of the more mainstream believers would have thought, "Once we've got them to the Council we can find out if they're willing to Unite with the rest of us: if they aren't, they're hardly Malkioni, are they?" The Council could therefore both Unite and Divide by defining Malkionism; those who accept its doctrines are Malkioni, those who don't are self-confessed heretics.
BTW, in your quotation, who's "You"? If he's a Gloranthan Malkioni, this would be a very strange attitude indeed; if not, he's hardly going to be an authority on Malkionism. I prefer writing game-useful stuff, setting out what individual worshippers believe, to writing culturally-neutered gunk which views the world through a colourless, scientific, analytical lens. Every sect of the Malkioni knows that it defines the true form of Malkionism, and that the other so-called Malkioni Churches are all in error to a greater or lesser extent, distorting or rejecting key parts of the One True Malkioni Faith. "What, you don't revere the Great Prophet Zarquon? You've never read his 'Elementary Principles'? Die, infidel!"
In a nutshell, I think we are better served by first writing up nine or ten distinct flavours of Malkionism, and afterwards analysing them. The risk in first deciding what they may or may not have in common and only then applying this definition is that it could easily act as a limiting factor in our investigations of Glorantha. (Just as the God Learnerish* "worldwide cult writeups" did).
Anyway, Martin himself (a tolerant man) has refused to see Islam as a Christian heresy, although this reasonable-enough attitude was prevalent throughout the middle ages. This is perhaps why his brush must become so broad for purposes of this discussion. I'd say, be narrow-minded. Most Gloranthans are!
IMHO, the best way of sorting out the Malkioni from the infidels would be to get a whole bunch of bishops from various churches, sects and heresies together in one room and let them sort it out for themselves. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I? ;-)
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