Down in the Black Gang and others: a story collection / Philip Jose Farmer/ 1971 / pp215

This scifi collection showcases some interesting stories from Farmer. Although not stated, most of the stories have a religious bent to them. I give these 2 interpretations: the generous one is that he was influenced/interested in the changes in american religious life in this time; the less generous one is that these are the stories that sold. Interestingly, Farmer is credited as the first author to bring sex into scifi, so it might also be that he liked to push boundaries, and writing about Jesus being reincarnated into a never-dying, never-changing, not-heaven, not-hell, not-purgatory place-- just like everyone else in the world-- is an easy way to do this ("Riverworld").

"A Few Miles" has a convict-turned-monk accidentally impregnated with a fetus of a zoo animal on the day he is assigned to minister to a far-off earth colony; instead of ministering, he's sent to the animal's planet to live among the animals and birth the child, and the "scientists" he works with use his placement as a covert anthropological expedition. He ends up 1. teaching the animals to talk, but to the frustration of the scientists, he teaches them the easier, almost incomprehensible slang of the day; 2. giving them theology. "The Blasphemers" features a young man who believes that his world's religion is bunk. He gathers a group together to (he thinks) bravely stand up to the leaders, only to learn that he's right and because he has discovered this, he is on the fast track to the priesthood.