Fun doesn't make "good", in my book. You can have a bunch of nobles actively preaching about how squirrels will end us and about how we must worship the holy badger while wearing pink tutus, and RP a bunch around that and actively spread it. Could be fun. Would be stupid as hell, though, and wouldn't qualify as "good" in my book simply because it is fun.
I wouldn't call such a religion a good one either. And it definitely wouldn't be a fun religion for me. But there are people out there that like such things. Dunkontology, the donut religion on EC, developed a pretty large following. At one time, before religions were actual game mechanics, they had the second largest guild in the game, and were established on two or three islands. I personally think it was pretty ridiculous, but lots of people enjoyed it.
Does a lot of theology text result in a lot of tl;dr? Yes, of course. But then again, I'd bet most SA players never really read the few SA texts there are either, and almost all of them never contributed to developping RP. So what's your point, if the end result is the same in both cases?
The end result is most definitely not the same. If one person creates and delivers the entire theology, then one person has contributed to it, and only that one person is invested in it. When that person leaves, it will most likely fail. This is a pattern that we have seen over and over again. If ten people make major contributions to it, then ten people are invested in it. When he "founder" leaves, it will continue, carried on by the other people that are invested in it. That's what happened in SA when Mathurin left, and we didn't know if he would ever be back. Most of us thought he was gone for good. Other people that were invested in it took over, and kept things going, adding more to the theology.
You don't have to have 100% participation and activity to keep things alive. You just need a large enough core group of people that are actively invested in it, that it can survive the loss of a single key person. But as those key people leave, those that are left have to make an effort to get more people involved. That was the reason behind the large pool of elders we designed for SA, with regular elections for some of the elder positions. Keep interest going for a larger pool of noble, as well as leave the option open for almost anyone to actually become a guiding member of the faith.
