Struggling with the faith orientations of my characters

My brain feels like mush. I have the opportunity to write tonight, and yet I'm wasting time. If I'm not mentally prepared for exactly what I'm writing, before I write, I hardly get a thing accomplished. It takes so much mental discipline to write!

My mind has been wrestling through the religious orientations of my characters. I haven't made my decisions yet on what all their beliefs are. I realize now I need to know this, and I cannot know it by simply randomly picking for each person. I read a lot on personality theory (think Meyers-Briggs, Jungian theory, the old temperaments based on the humroal system, etc.) and I know that a person's orietnation toward religion and faith is infleunced by the same things that influience a personality toward everything else in life. I know enough to know my characters' faith orientations have to grow organically out of other characteristics I've given them. SO it's more like  I need to discover their relgiious oreitnataions--born out of both thier family of origin, life experience and basic temperament. At a recent conference,T L Higley, writer of Christian historical fiction, made reference to a book that addresses the faith aspect specifically. I should probably try to find that. It'd be interesting for me to see what things are common roadblocks to faith for certain personality types.

So this is supposed to be my warm up for wrting on my novel. What now?  I don't think anything about faith has been mentioned yet in the first number of chapters, except for in the prologue when a character makes reference to a Bible story. I had one other reference, but it got taken out cuz I took out the whole scene that had contained it. In reading a Brashares novel today (mainstream, not Christian fiction), I was surprised when, maybe 5 chapters in, the subject of God and a character's deep faith is mentioned. I liked how it was done--not forced, mentioned when it needed to be for the story. (In another blog post, I compare this to a very popular inspirational fiction novelists whose handling of this DID NOT impress me! )

Ah, maybe I need to journal form the perspectives of some of my character to find out what they think about God and faith. I know it about the main characters already, but I need to know it about some minor characters, cuz it'll determien how they show frinedship nad support to the main charaters when they undergo their trials. But all this journaling takes time. Is there a shortcut, a few questions I can ask of my characters, that will faster lead me to discovering thier answers to that big question? Maybe, but i don't know it. I have to invent their life stories before I can know how they affect them!

So here's to writing for mayb a half hour tonight. Maybe I'll write about Ash and what guilt feels like to him.

My other hobby is writing nonfiction articles:
Prostate Cancer: Nutrients for Prevention and Defense

Doctor Finds Depression Caused By Nutrient Depletion

Manufacture Your Own Electricity in Your Backpack or Briefcase?

Negative Health Effects of Genetically Modified Foods