Editing Heresy (section)

== On Heresy, Blasphemy, Heathens, Schismatics, Sinners, and Apostasy ==
Similar but not identical terms you'll often hear include Heathen, Blasphemy/Blasphemous, Sin/Sinner, and Apostate/Apostasy. Explaining them is pretty simple so we'll start with the one that comes first alphabetically.

An apostate is someone who abandons a pre-existing faith for either another or no faith at all while apostasy is the act of abandoning said faith. A lot of what is often called Heresy in 40k is more correctly called apostasy, such as people taking up worship of the Dark Gods or the Tyranids through Chaos and Genestealer cults in Warhammer 40k and abandoning the Imperial Cult. Apostasy is usually the most serious sort of religious crime you can commit in highly religious societies for obvious reasons. It can take the form of converting to another religion, being a theist (a person who believes in and tries to follow God or gods but doesn't follow an established religion), a deist (a person who believes God or gods exist but doesn't see them as having an active role in society) or becoming an atheist (believing there is no such thing as gods and not following any religion - [[Skub|except maybe Buddhism]]).

'''Example''': <s>I praise Chaos not the Emperor!!</s> {{BLAM}} {{BLAM|Apostasy!}}

Blasphemy is saying or writing something that is obscene to the faith. Blasphemy can overlap with Heresy but blasphemy is saying something disrespectful about the god/s or something sacred in the religion in question, where heresy is distorting the religion's teachings and spreading those ideas. For the Imperial Cult, calling the God Emperor a magpie driven by his draconic heritage to hoard golden and shiny objects would very definitely be blasphemous on multiple levels.

'''Example''': <s>The Emperor and Khorne are the same deity!</s> {{BLAM}} {{BLAM|Blasphemy !}}

Heathens are people who were never part of a faith to begin with and the term broadly overlaps with the labels of Infidel and Pagan, though Pagan tends to more specifically refer to polytheistic faiths (Interestingly, the term pagan itself was originally a Latin word that was their equivalent of "hick" or "redneck", and was an insulting term that Roman Christians referred to followers of Greco-Roman polytheism as) while Infidel is usually used for other monotheistic faiths. Someone born into a religion different from yours has committed no heresy nor apostasy and while being a Heathen is seen as something to be corrected by evangelical faiths, most evangelical faiths want to convert heathens rather than kill them. In history, the Catholic Church even complained to the Pope that the Spanish were killing most of their potential converts in the new world and thus preventing them from bringing the native Americans to Christianity because the survivors started seeing the faith as an instrument of terror. In 40k, technically speaking most non-Imperial humans are heathens due to having been born to a different faith, and the Imperium will usually try to convert human heathens who are not tainted by Chaos, aliens, or thinking machines.

'''Example''' <s><span style='color:blue;font-size:115%;font-family:serif'> Your faith is false join the Logic of the Greater Good!</s>{{BLAM}} {{BLAM|Heathen!}}

'''Example''' The Omnissiah directs our footsteps along the path of knowledge. {{BLAM|I really want to BLAM you for that Infidel!}}

Schismatics are those who follow a branch of a religion created by some form of schism, most famously the Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox branches in Christianity or the Sunni and Shiite branches in Islam. It doesn't see much use today (because in this era Christians of different branches, and to a lesser degree Muslims of different branches, have learned to tolerate each other's existence or at least not start wars over which branch is the "true" religion) but it's still there and occasionally gets used by Traditionalist Catholic nutcases (think the Catholic equivalent of Jack Chick) still fighting the Thirty Years' War almost 500 years after the fact. It technically overlaps with heresy, but it can be properly thought of as the term to call heretics who have become big enough to gain some form of legitimacy. Like the difference between "cult" and "religion" mostly being one of scale these days.

'''Example''' <s>These are the tenates of the [[Cult of the Redemption]] Join us as do the Emperor's work!</s> {{BLAM}} {{BLAM|Schismatics!}} 

These are all considered forms of sin, which can be thought of as spiritual crimes. Sinners are essentially anyone who commits such wrongdoings, and given how broadly defined sin as a concept is for religions that care about the concept essentially everyone is a sinner to varying degrees (and that's before we even get into original sin). "Forgiveness for your sins" is essentially the religious equivalent of getting a pardon for crimes. Like secular crimes, sins come in varying degrees of severity with similarly variably harsh punishments or requirements to earn forgiveness for them. In more extreme cases, the sin cannot be forgiven by any means available to the mortal coil and the sinner must be put to death. Given that modern countries really dislike other institutions intruding on their ability to enforce and create laws, most religions that aren't the ruling power of a theocracy of some kind can't proscribe punishment for sins that clashes with the laws of the country (eg; most countries that don't have corporal punishment would not permit caning from Islam's Sharia Law). 

Now, if you do live in a theocracy on the other hand... what if any punishment you suffer depends on the theocracy and religion in question. The odds for mercy are good in the Vatican City; worst you can get is being fired and having your Vatican City passport revoked by the King of Vatican City (who is also the Pope - it's complicated), but very bad in (for instance) Saudi Arabia, where the worst is being tortured and executed.

To make this as simple as possible: 
*A heretic is someone who still claims to be part of the faith but makes irreconcilable challenges to its dogma. 
*An apostate is someone who outright abandons the faith for another.
*A blasphemer is someone who says something deemed spiritually obscene to that faith.
*A heathen, infidel, or pagan was someone who was never part of that faith to begin with. 
*A schismatic is someone who follows a rival church of the same faith.
*A sinner is basically any sort of religious criminal. 

Ironically, this means the [[Horus Heresy]] which is defined by half the legions and a third of the army forsaking the Imperial Truth for [[Chaos]] might be more correctly called the Horus Apostasy while the [[Age of Apostasy]] whose primary conflict was a doctrinal schism between Vandire and Thor is more correctly called the Age of Heresy or the Vandirian Schism. But on the other hand, "Horus Apostasy" just doesn't have the same ring to it. Maybe if Horus were named "Amon" or "Anubis" instead...hrm...