[mcman]

I think the issue with the idea of religion being an important or not so important part of an average medieval man/woman's life stems from the generally accepted wide view of Medieval life as a whole by most, in reality medieval life was massively varied and changed rapidly over the years and in different countries, its very difficult to have a view of an 'average' medieval life.

That's a fair point, and even the term "medieval" reflects an awful lot of biases regarding the relative glory of the classical period and eurocentrism. However, if we are talking about medieval Europe and the Middle East, one of the unifying factors was that religion had quite a significant presence in society, whether Christianity or Islam. In most places the church was one of the most (if not the most) dominant social institution, and that fact is difficult to argue. This is partially why the medieval history courses at my secular liberal university seemed- to my dismay- to focus disproportionately on religion rather than the knights or bards that most would envision.

Lately I've been hearing more about how belief in god or indeed simply a higher power was just a generally accepted norm by most common men and women but they rarely took any in depth interest or care in it. Indeed most church goers simply went for the community gathering rather than actually for the teachings and connection to god.

While certainly not every medieval person had such religious beliefs, they were indeed treated as the norm, and any deviance was interpreted as the exception. The sense of community was extremely important as you say, however that does not discount the fact that they were going to church. You could easily say that many people do the exact same today. But yes, theology would not be interesting to the average person, and we'd hardly expect that the average character would find it interesting either.

At any rate, that's the history of it but it's another matter whether we want to imitate history. I like the prospect but we are a fantasy RP rather than a historical RP so as Zark says it's up to the individual. However, I do think that it could be rewarding to RP a more holistic life in a more holistic representation of human culture, and that is why I look forward to RPing religion despite being irreligious myself.