This pastor of the Outer Church wears purple, considered as a symbol of love and majesty, and the clerical collar borrowed from catholic traditions. The white dot on their forehead signals that they are married according to the Eloran rite.

The Outer Church, sometimes known as the Church of the Outer Stars, is a branch of Christianity that developed in the Low Age and found prominence among interstellar Christian communities during the past century. Though it originated as a simple offshoot of the Catholic Church, the Outer Church has significantly diverged in doctrinal and practical aspects, to the point many theologians do not consider it Christian anymore — albeit Outerian believers generally see themselves as such. With 200 million believers, the Outer Church is among the three largest divergent interstellar faiths and is very well-represented in the solar system.

A Tritheist Church

The most striking theological divergence of the Outer Church is its refusal of the Trinity. The Outer Church negates the consensus of the Council of Nicaea and does not accept the idea of one God existing in three equal, eternal and consubstantial divine persons. This refusal is more radical than the usual forms of nontrinitarianism in Christian theology — they mainly hinge on a denial of the full divine nature of Jesus Christ (such as Arianism) or on the idea that the distinctiveness of the Father, the Son and the resurrected Spirit are merely perceptions of the believer (such as Modalism). Instead, the Outer Church considers that the Trinity is, in fact, three separate, equal and almighty deities which act in unison but possess their distinctiveness: the Parent, the Child, and the Word (Holy Spirit), all referred to with a singular They. Thus, the fundamental creed of the Outer Church is tritheism, which denies Christian monotheism.

The origins of this tritheist belief are unclear even to historians. While the Low Age saw many a spiritual resurgence, from paganism to simpler, older forms of monotheist spirituality, there are no records of prominent Christian sects defending an actual tritheist doctrine in history — the notion was generally used as an accusation, not as a self-proclaimed creed. Critics of the Outer Church in the Christian community consider the emergence of Outerian tritheism as a dire consequence of the loss of theological knowledge during the Low Age and multiple, subsequent misreadings of the Bible. The Outer Church itself defends tritheism on the basis of nominalist thought: if the Parent and the Word were truly one substance, then it would mean both of them would have to be incarnate as well, which is obviously not the case as only the Son existed as a physical body. In that regard, Outerian theologians align with medieval thinker Roscelin of Compiègne, though the reference is likely unintentional.

Stellar Saints, Elected Pastors, the One Sacrament and Inherent Salvation

The Outer Church refuses the cult of human saints (with the notable exception of Saint Joseph of Cupertino, patron saint of spacers), which it considers as a disguised form of idolatry — however, it encourages and enshrines a form of “stellar sanctity”, where astronomical objects are imbued with the values of the Church. Star saints are meant to direct prayers and provide a concrete, physical anchor to the worship of the faithful, not to be an object of worship themselves — despite what misguided Papist might say, Outerians do not “pray the stars”, they merely see them as direct evidence of the existence of God, exemplified by natural wonder. As the Outer Church, like all Abrahamic faiths, is concerned with eschatology, out-of-sequence stellar remnants are of particular interest to its pastors — the holiest site of the Outer Church is Saint Magdalene's Abbey, a sanctified station orbiting Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the core of the Milky Way.

The Outer Church is non-hierarchical: its pastors are elected by the communities of the faithful (generally at the scale of a parish). The canon of the Outer Church is established through referendums among pastors. As a result, the Outer Church is a very dynamic sect, at the forefront of modern theology. It is fairly common to see sub-sects orbiting in and out of the Outer Church as the accepted canon evolves.

The pastors of the Outer Church lead the prayer in the parish's local language and only carry out a single sacrament — the holy communion, which is done with unleavened sacramental bread and heavy water; following the tradition of the Plymouth Brethren, the Outerians believe the communion to be a symbolic re-enactment of the Last Supper, with no real presence of the Child. As the doctrine of the Outer Church considers all sophonts — and not only humans — to be saved and within God's realm by birth alone, the pastors do not carry out baptism. They also hold the view that non-human intelligences can receive the Gospel, including Sequence, Forgotten Traveller or Vriij aliens.

Illustration for Starmoth by Tiucoo.