Organization
In addition to the technician-priests (an atomic priesthood that controls the technology of nuclear power) from Terminus who travel to the worlds of the Four Kingdoms, the church also recruits priests from among the native populations of those worlds. They travel to a Temple School in Terminus City, where they are taught the operation (though not the theoretical underpinnings) of the Foundation's technology, along with more traditional religious instruction in church dogma, theology and ethics. Any novitiate priest at the Temple School who is bright enough to see through the mystical surface to the scientific principles underneath remains on Terminus to become a research student. The rest return to the Four Kingdoms to form part of the priesthood.
As a character in "The Mayors" notes, the priesthood is built on strictly authoritarian lines, forming a hierarchy with the king (who is regarded as a minor god) at the apex. The priesthood is in charge of all technology in the Four Kingdoms, including hospitals, power plants, and military installations (it is mentioned that the navy yards on Anacreon are religious sanctuaries completely inviolate on the part of the lay public). Every ship in the Four Kingdoms' space fleets is assigned a complement of Foundation-educated priest-attendants to maintain the technology as well as provide spiritual guidance to the crew.
There is mention made of an ecclesiastical court, implying that members of the priesthood are beyond the reach of whatever secular justice system exists in the Four Kingdoms. The ecclesiastical court is also empowered to try laymen for violations of church law (in "The Mayors" the head priest-attendant of the Anacreonian Navy orders the king's cousin, Admiral Lefkin, tried before an ecclesiastical court for blasphemy).
The Church of Science also includes a missionary organization whose purpose is to spread the Church's spiritual dominion (and hence the Foundation's political control) to other worlds. However, Hober Mallow remarks in "The Merchant Princes" that "however well your religion has succeeded in the Four Kingdoms, scarcely another world in the Periphery has accepted it." One of the exceptions to Mallow's remark is the planet Askone, and as revealed in Part IV of Foundation, "The Traders", Askone was first brought within the Foundation's orbit by a trader, with the priesthood only following on afterwards.
Read more about this topic: Scientism (Foundation)
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