Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea IV : Eric and religion

"Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea " that's a very familiar exclamation to readers of the Sookie Stackhouse books and I decided to take a closer look at churches, religion, the Bible and prayer in the Sookie books.

*Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea Part I : Sookie and faith

*Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea Part II: The Bible

*Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea Part III: Prayer

We have a number of references in the books to Eric's religion.

Club Dead , Bk 3

All this while, I'd held the phone clamped to my ear, and when it squawked, I was actually startled. "We got him down in time," Betty Joe said brightly. "The call came in time," I told Eric. He closed his eyes and seemed to be offering up a prayer. I wondered to whom Eric prayed. I waited for further instructions.

Dead to the World, Bk4

"I was never a Christian," Eric said. Now, that didn't surprise me. "But I can't imagine a belief system that would tell you to sit still and get slaughtered."
I blinked, wondering if that wasn't exactly what Christianity taught. But I am no theologian or Bible scholar, and I would have to leave the judgment on my action to God, who was also no theologian.
Somehow I felt better, and I was in fact grateful to be alive.

All Together Dead , Bk 7
(Eric is ordained by the Church of the Loving Spirit)

"Church of the Loving Spirit," she told me, bagging three copies of the CD and handing them to a fangbanger sent by his master to pick them up. "He got his certificate from the online course, with Bobby Burnham's help. He ( Eric) can perform marriage services."

From the BBC: History

The Viking Age was a period of considerable religious change in Scandinavia. Part of the popular image of the Vikings is that they were all pagans, with a hatred of the Christian Church, but this view is very misleading. It is true that almost the entire population of Scandinavia was pagan at the beginning of the Viking Age, but the Vikings had many gods, and it was no problem for them to accept the Christian god alongside their own. Most scholars today believe that Viking attacks on Christian churches had nothing to do with religion, but more to do with the fact that monasteries were typically both wealthy and poorly defended, making them an easy target for plunder.

The Vikings came into contact with Christianity through their raids, and when they settled in lands with a Christian population, they adopted Christianity quite quickly.