The Crisis of an Excess of Gods in Christianity

In many branches of Christianity, over the centuries, an enormous number of figures recognized as saints, blessed individuals, especially anointed persons, or beings possessing exceptional effectiveness in specific matters of everyday life gradually accumulated. Collective memory continued to absorb additional saints, popes, mystics, visionaries, patrons of professions, illnesses, elements of nature, travel, weather, birth, death, suffering, trade, war, animals, crops, and family relationships. An extensive system of spiritual intercession emerged, resembling a multilayered administration of the sacred, bypassing God, or mentioning God only in homeopathic doses.

For some people this began creating a condition resembling a crisis of spiritual orientation. Within religious practice, the question ceased to be simply “whether to pray,” and instead became “to whom exactly, to which god, or deified being.” One person prays to a patron saint of weather for wind for sails or agricultural fields, while another shortly afterward asks a different saint to stop their own “winds,” meaning intestinal ailments. In one place the prayer concerns rain and wind, elsewhere its cessation. Some pray for victory in war, others for the victory of the opposing side. The same religious system begins servicing contradictory expectations.

As a result, some believers cease distinguishing the boundary between God and the expanded world of intermediary figures. Saints, popes, and religious figures begin functioning like specialized entities assigned to specific existential problems. A spiritual segmentation of competencies emerges: one “for lost objects,” another “for severe illnesses,” a third “for hopeless situations,” a fourth “for storms,” a fifth “for protection of the home,” a sixth “for fertility.” For some people this system becomes more practical than relational.

The growing number of saintly figures also creates an overload of religious memory. New generations of believers inherit enormous quantities of names, stories, apparitions, and spiritual recommendations, often mutually inconsistent culturally and historically, especially since some saints or holy dignitaries are opposed within other religious groups. For example, Pope Aloysius Stepinac was declared blessed despite being associated in public memory with the forced conversion of Serbs under threat of death. In one part of the world, a given saint is venerated almost like a local spiritual ruler, while elsewhere remaining completely unknown. Local “ecosystems of the sacred” emerge, competing for the attention, devotion, and emotional attachment of believers.

In practice, some people begin navigating religion as though moving through a catalogue of spiritual services. Prayer becomes the selection of the proper figure for the proper problem. At the same time, many believers possess no clear criteria for distinguishing between symbolic patronage, cultural tradition, and the actual place of God within the entire religious system of references.

The crisis caused by an excess of saintly figures may also lead to a fragmentation of spiritual responsibility. Instead of one central relationship, a network of partial relationships appears, often built around fear, the need for effectiveness, or hope for “specialized assistance.” For some individuals, religiosity then becomes more a management of spiritual risk than an experience of unity of faith and the effectiveness of prayer.

At the same time, for other people this system fulfills an organizing and emotionally intimate role. Saints and religious figures become symbols of identification, protection, and local tradition. The crisis therefore does not consist solely in the number of figures themselves, but rather in the difficulty of distinguishing between symbol, intercession, worship, tradition, and God Himself.

As a result, Christianity in some of its forms begins to resemble an expanded world of spiritual specializations, where a person attempts to find the proper point of contact for a particular life problem through cultural memory, family tradition, and ritual rather than through spiritual awareness, understanding of dogmas, and understanding the consequences of such actions.

Authors: Sławomir Majda, Adam Żak.

Opublikowano: 09/05/2026
Autor: Sławomir Majda
Kateogrie: Religions, priests, sects, idolatry, vows.

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