Later Days {Star Trek Enterprise Fan Fiction}

Bread, Chapter 2

"For our allies," President Archer stated, "I suppose it's a little strange to be showing you some of our many faiths. But we decided on this for a reason."

Ambassador Soval rose. "Unlike in many other cultures, humans do not have just one belief system. Rather, there are several, some of which are represented here this evening. Wars have been fought over these religions. Yet they survive." He sat back down.

Representative Gral got up. "These faiths – many of which are conflicting – have made peace. Let us hear from them."

"In my faith," stated a representative Catholic priest, "we were originally persecuted for our beliefs. When the religion was very young, it was nearly wiped out, as Christians were thrown to lions."

The Caitian representative asked, "Lions?"

President Archer smiled a little. "They're felines, Representative Gopalahr." A nod to his aide and the young Vulcan man showed a PADD to Gopalahr.

"A few centuries after we were persecuted, we turned around and did it to others," the Catholic priest confessed. "During a time period referred to as the Inquisition, heretics, both real and imagined, were often burned to death. Jews and Muslims were slaughtered for our view of piety." He sat down.

The Imam got up and picked up the thread of the narrative. "My faith," began Mahmout, "it was also both the persecuted and the persecutor. It depended, often, upon location and the date in history. We conquered much of a continent called Europe. In part, the Inquisition was in response to that. And there were innocents, too, who were killed during the Christian Crusades. Those were brutal times." He sat down, shaking his head a little.

Other representatives of the Earth's religions stood and offered what was essentially testimony of how they had treated other faiths, or they had been treated. Finally, it was Leah's turn to speak. "The Jewish people have often been a paradox. We refer to ourselves as the Chosen People, yet that seems to have created so much resentment over the millennia that we often wonder whether this being chosen business is at all positive. And we have been conquerors, and slaveholders, and annexers of territory. We have neither a monopoly on suffering, nor on causing it. Our hands are far from clean." She, too, sat down.

President Archer again spoke. "I know that this may seem strange, but we are showing you our many faiths, warts and all, as a way of demonstrating to you that we understand differences. And we understand ideologies and even a bit of fanaticism. As we have gone into the greater community of space, we have learned that that fanaticism, and those kinds of ideologies, and certainly there are differences, and all of these things are out here. They are all magnified when we have misunderstandings. It is painfully easy to lose our way."

He paused and cleared his throat a bit. "But these faiths also do an enormous amount of good. They were the first of our philosophies, and often were the very beginnings of our sciences. They were our first charities, and our first governments at times. Even during the harshest of times, such as during our Third World War, they were often our only social safety net. They offer comfort to the bereaved and can provide a basic moral path for the unsure. And they have even adapted over time, and have learned to embrace not only each other, but even the skeptical agnostic and the fervently nonbelieving atheist."

He paused again briefly. "We offer then as a snapshot of our evolution as a civilization and as a symbol of our adaptability as a people." He looked around the room, as there were not only the member states' representatives, but there were even people there who represented other species that had not yet joined their new alliance. "We also offer them up as a means of communicating to you that we are open to working with people at all stages of development. We want you to know that space is not a monolith. It is not all about humans, or Vulcans, or Andorians, or Tellarites. The Federation is not in the business of making the galaxy just like the Alpha Quadrant. Daranaeans aren't going to be chastised for not being Caitians. Enolians are not going to be persecuted for failing to be Xyrillians. And the Xindi will not face destruction because they just aren't Denobulans. We have set aside our internal differences, but we also celebrate them. We have not forgotten them. And we feel, truly, that they should be celebrated rather than swept aside."