It usually goes that way, in fiction and often in real life, because the ones who have enough zealotry to get off their butts and get involved also generally* tend to be the ones who are intolerant, closed-minded, judgmental and generally unhelpful.
I've met plenty of close-minded, judgmental, and unhelpful atheists as well. Religion doesn't hold the patent.
True. And I should preface the rest of what I'm going to say with this: prejudiced, judgmental, close-minded groups of people really, really pisses me off. But how many atheists threaten to hold Quran bonfires? Or suggest that Muslims - as a whole - are evil? I, personally, haven't met one.
This is not to let any other group of judgmental, close-minded people off the hook. But the truth is, I don't have to go very far to find a Christian who reminds me of Furness. As a practicing Christian (Quaker), it's more frustrating to me to see other Christians preach or act out hatefulness than just about anything else. Although, as said above, hatred and/or ignorance toward a people group by anyone infuriates me.
I certainly wouldn't disagree that people out "fighting evil" in the name of any religion are likely to also be raging assholes of one degree or another. I just get irritated by the "strong faith = evil or at least duped by evil" meme, and I was disappointed to see it recapitulated here.
Scattercat, I sympathize. Really. And personally, I'd be happy to see more fiction come in that shows people of faith as well-developed characters, including Christians and Catholics. (Moar awesome Quaker fiction STAT!) Seriously - stories that wrestle with faith or are spiritualy provocative or display people of faith as strong characters make me
very, very happy. As long as it's not wishfulfillment, and as long as it's good, of course.
Regarding this story? For me, Furness was a well-developed and thoughtful character who went to the dark side, and I didn't have a problem buying his journey, and didn't really feel like it was a stereotype. But I certainly understand where you're coming from.
That said, I don't
think PodCastle has a history of discriminating against people of faith. We've run several stories in the past year that put them in the spotlight.
"Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela" and
"The Dybuuk in the Bottle" come to mind right off the top of my head. It'd be nice to see stories that feature priests or preachers, but honestly - I can't think of too many (any?) I've read in the last year in the PodCastle slush.