World Building> Culture>Invented Religion

When world building, the religion or ideology you choose to saddle it with can flavor the entire culture.  Look at the influence Western Christianity has had on both Europe and the Americas. Sure, there are some Native American influences on Latin American Catholicism, see for example the Virgin of  Guadalupe being the Aztec goddess Tonantzin syncretized to the Virgin Mary. And there are other examples, too numerous to mention in Central and South America.  

Getting away from Christianity now, I wanted to develop an antagonist for my intergalactic contact story, which I am now in the process of creating.  The evangelical jesoids proved to be too easily killed, and I wanted an antagonist with some oomph behind him/them, so I decided to invent my own religion.  Although decidedly alien, being from another galaxy (Andromeda) and all, I wanted this faith to have the most annoying characteristics of several Earth religions I knew of, namely evangelical Christianity, Mormonism, Hare Krishna, and Scientology.  

One factor that stands out, for me, anyway, will be male leaders with hypnotic control over their flocks.  These leaders have supernatural power over their flocks. They can get them to do anything for the good of the cult, including sacrificing their  very lives.For this exercise, I also decided to bring out a concept I’d used in a piece of fanfic I’d written some 40 years ago, the opposite of the Force, the Flow.  It does what you might imagine it does; it flows over a person, enabling hir to do what s/he would reckon to be impossible, if not highly unlikely. This means s/he can go invisible, flow under doorways, and teleport.  S/he would have total command over matter and mass. Of course, I’ll have to think of some limitations. It wouldn’t do to have hir be omnipotent, after all, and maybe hir power is relative to hir status within hir congregation.  Yeah, that’s the ticket, I’ll go with that.  

Of course, were you to invent a religion, it would have vastly different parameters, depending upon your experience and reading on the topic.  See what you can do, starting with a tabla rasa, a clean slate, so to speak..