TL;DR: I have religious aliens be worshipped as angels by humans after helping them in the past, but they didn't like it and asked them to stop. So right now, I'm trying to figure out how to dissolve the worshipped-worshipper relationship between them while keeping them allied and not having the aliens teach their religion to humans.
Ok, so basically, I made an advanced race of aliens called the EOA, who were seen and worshipped as angels by a large group of humans in my world, while they themselves have not made themselves present in a long time after having guided them to build civilizations in the past. Essentially, it's your classic ancient aliens story from the History Channel.
But then, I decided to make it more interesting in that, instead of the usual cold and calculated aliens with no emotions and talk all logic, they are emotional beings and have a monotheistic religion somewhat similar to the ones in our world, in a way that it still has its superstition, myths and whatnot, despite them having significantly better understanding of the world than human ever does. I just thought that it would be fun to have them be this ironic since it's very rare to see religious aliens in any alien-related stories.
So, the problem arose after I made my protagonist group finally meet with one of them at the end of the story, who had been guiding them through telepathy the whole time. The alien told them that their ancestral religion is a misunderstanding and that they themselves prayed to an even higher divine entity for help. I even made it dramatic by having them apparently incapable of going against the military superpowers in my world, since humanity had advanced far enough to defeat them in direct combat, so acquiring help from them would still not guarantee you full protection, let alone victory. This is important because the protagonist group had been wondering the whole journey about why the angels had not taken direct action against the destructive empires, when many innocents needed them the most.
Everything sounded amazing until I realized the major implication:
Since the humans' religion is false, while the aliens themselves are religious, wouldn't the expected outcome be to have them spread their religion to the humans?
I genuinely dislike this idea, since it carries too much resemblance to our world's colonial history, where the colonizers would preach to the natives about their religion to 'teach' them to be more civilized. This is even made worse by the fact that my whole story is about the weak humans going against the empires in their world, so adding this would make my story an unintentional allegory to the Spanish Colonization of the Americas.
Since I want to keep the relationship between the aliens and the humans as friendly, I'm now trying to figure out how to dissolve the worshipped-worshipper relationship between them in a way that they remain allies while not needing to have my humans follow the aliens' religion. How should they see and work with each other after knowing the truth?
Please share your thoughts.
Not all religions proselytise. The aliens might believe that everyone has to arrive at the big truth on their own time, and humanity isn't ready yet. Or they might believe that they are a chosen people and so the religion is only for them. Or they might have violent conversion in their history and are trying to be better, and so they are careful not to impose anything on their allies (which creates an opportunity for subfactions who disagree and want to forcibly convert anyone they can get their hands on but it's against the law and is prosecuted by the majority faction).
Something like that.
Prime Directive. Or maybe their religion forbids proselytizing. If a human asked to be taught it'd be a different matter.
When the humans meet the aliens they find out their entire religion is false. Thats going to shatter their worldview for a minute. If the aliens then say "actually here's a real religion you need to get behind," I can see the protagonists rejecting it immediately. Maybe having their religion pulled out from under them makes them distrust any other religion. They could be angry, bitter, or just skeptical. I think that would be a more interesting angle to explore- what happens when you find out you had faith in something false, and are you able to find faith in something new?
I have aliens who merged their religion with with human religious traditions and created a pluralistic beast known as Imperial Faith. A mixture where ritual side mostly comes from human side and teachings are mostly alien.
Also in real history there were cases of conquerors converting into religion of the subjugated people : Xianbei and huns in north China becoming Confucian and Buddhist, Goths and Lombards converting to Latin Christianity , Gutians converting to Sumerian/Babylonian religion .
The aliens absolutely don't need to convert the humans to their religion, nor do the humans have to draw the conclusion that their own religions are inherently false.
The aliens realise they've been misinterpreted as divine so they inform the humans that they are, in fact, just people - misunderstanding solved.
I see a few options:
You might hate me for pointing this out but the 'ancient aliens teach early humans how to build civilisation' trope already resembles colonialism.
Rational aliens may understand the high cost or course correction and unwillingly disengage - this is literally international diplomacy at work.
Or they may have a view that it's free will by the decree of the higher being - they'll weep that their beloved brethren humans are losing their way, but step back, hopeful that humans come back and keeping the door open - that's literally parenting.
Maybe the aliens don't want the human to follow their religion, or even don't tell them about it.
Maybe the human rejects this new alien religion
Maybe the aliens religion and the alien are the same one, save for a few details
Their religion doesn’t have to be much like our earthly proselytising ones - it could be something very personal to the angels that they would never expect to share with humans. Maybe it’s a “chosen people” thing, or they believe that they have a creator god but humans have a different origin so there’s no reason for them to proselytise to humans about it.
Also make the angel aliens a bit more inscrutable, conveying their knowledge to humans but doing so cryptically and requiring much translation / interpretation. Adding that layer makes it more believable that it’s been thousands of years and somehow nobody realised this miscommunication. That also helps give you a handy excuse for having the humans be helped in some areas but maybe not in others.