The Church of Destiny

You might have suspected that people would have left religion behind when we finally colonized the stars, and you would have been wrong. What absolutely no one saw coming was that, in the wake of our exodus from Earth, the major religions stopped trying to kill each other long enough to realize that they had a lot in common. Maybe it was the fear of venturing into the great unknown. Or maybe it was the fear that people would urn away from God once they'd conquered the heavens. Whatever the reason, all the religions worshiping the God of Abraham finally realized that they all worshiped the God of Abraham... and all of their Holy texts pointed out that this deity was constant and unchanging. So they banded together and formed the Church of Destiny - a single monolithic church. There were still different sects, people were still people, after all, but those distinctions suddenly mattered less.

Headquarters: The Cathedral Ship ND Wanderer, Empyrean SystemMembers: Roughly 7 billion people claim membership

Symbol: A green crescent moon shielding a white dove on a red cross over blue six-pointed star
Hierarchy: The Church of Destiny has a rigid hierarchy. The leader of the church is known as the Primum Servi Dei or First Servant of God. The Primus lives and works aboard the massive cathedral ship, the ND Wanderer. This ship continually travels the Empyrean system spreading the word of God... and making it hard for enemies of the church to kill its leader.

The Primus is advised and assisted by the Curia. By tradition, the Curia consists of thirty members, with at least three representing the three major branches of the church. Members are appointed by the Primus in consultation with his, her, or their deity and can only be removed by the same. Anyone can be called to serve on the Curia.

While the Curia helps administer the church, its most important function is selecting a new Primus. This selection process follows the same time-honored process used to select a new Pope back on Earth. Normally, this happens when the Primus dies however, church law does allow the Curia to remove a Primus for several reasons. Most of these reasons involve a scandal that brings shame upon the office of the First Servant and/or the church as a whole.

Beneath the Curia are a plethora of officials and dignitaries, both major and minor, using a myriad of confusing titles stemming from the bearers religious tradition. To help ease the confusion, the third Primus, Saint Joshua the Wise, decided to rank the Servants of God using Latin Ordinals. He was the Primus. Those directly below him were given the title Secundus. Those ranked directly beneath the Secundi were given the title of Tertius. And so on and so forth. This cuts down on the confusion... if you happen to know Latin. Though after the thirty-ninth tier, it still confuses some of them.

Motivation & Goals

The stated purpose of the church is to spread the word of God so that all may be saved. The laity and the low ranking clergy seem to genuinely believe that, and they may be right. Others aren't so sure. The Church has its a sizable navy complete with marine shock troops. It has land holdings on every planet, and even chapels inside most megacorporate buildings. This makes the powers that be fearful that the church may have something more sinister in mind. Of course, these fears play right into the church's persecution narrative. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Recruiting

The Church of Destiny actively recruits new members. They run seminaries, colleges, hospitals, orphanages, and shelters across the three systems. These institutions make it easy for the church to recruit new members to the laity and even the clergy.