Yevon
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This article is about the Spiran religion; for the ancient leader of Zanarkand, see Yu Yevon.
As the main religion of Spira during Final Fantasy X, Yevon could excercise control over all aspects of Spiran life. Yevon preached that the life of hardship Spirans lead is owing to the sins of their ancestors in ancient Zanarkand and Bevelle, and that atonement will not be easy, but is the only way to make Sin leave for good. Owing to the power of the Yevonite church, the leader of the church is seen as the leader of Spira. At the start of FFX, the leader is Maester Mika.
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History
Foundation
The Yevon Church was founded immediately after the Machina Wars, and the ascendancy of Sin. Yunalesca, the daughter of Yu Yevon, had, in an agreement with her father, offered a way of keeping Sin at bay to the terrified Bevellians - in exchange for an assurance of Yevon's deification. In reality, most of these teachings were designed to protect Dream Zanarkand; the rest simply augmented total social control. Yunalesca also created the tactic for "defeating" Sin - the Final Summoning. The leaders of Bevelle, desperate for a way to defeat Sin, accepted these teachings and implemented the new religion.
Yevon quickly set about implementing the commands of Yunalesca. A series of radical changes were put in place throughout Spira. Sin's destruction of most of the Machina Cities had meant that machina was already few and far between; Yevonites merely banned the rest of it - except in a few cases, notably the city of Bevelle, where the use of machina was deemed vital. Additional commandments forbidding most technological advances, as well as attacks by Sin, kept Spira back technologically for 1000 years - except for the Al Bhed, who resisted the Yevon religion from the start.
Yevonite theology suggested that the reason for these restrictions was that it was the sins of people in the Machina Cities, and the evil of machina themselves, which led to the rise of Sin. Thus, only by removing all machina and attempting to atone for these sins could Spira rise free of Sin. In reality, Sin was merely a defence mechanism and believed impossible to defeat. Yevon, however, supported the Final Summoning tactics of Yunalesca. Although Calms were only temporary reprieves from Sin's terror, they offered Spirans hope - and the Church another means of control.
Domination
For the next 1000 years, Yevon was the dominant power in Spira. To rise to the position of Maester meant that you were respected and adored wherever you went, and the head of the church was the de facto leader of the whole of Spira. However, the Church was very corrupt - its own teachings were ignored and flouted by the clergy; and the entire religion was only intended as a system of control - first by Yu Yevon and Yunalesca, then by the Bevelle leadership itself.
Events in Final Fantasy X
During Final Fantasy X, the Summoner Yuna and her Guardians discovered the corruption of the Yevon Church, as well as the fact that Sin could never be defeated by the Final Summoning. The companions exposed this corruption to the people of Spira; in fact, their actions in trying to defeat Sin without the Final Summoning and with the help of outcast Al Bhed had already planted the seeds of doubt in people's minds. The defeat of Sin, the exposing of the Church's hypocrisies and corruption and the newfound redundancy of many of their teachings all combined to make the Yevon Church fall at the end of FFX.
New Yevon
However, some Yevonites persisted and, although their teachings were mostly withdrawn and the past mostly drawn over, continued. Rebranded as New Yevon, and realising they couldn't stop the sweeping changes happening in Spira, New Yevon nonetheless offered a conservative, one-thing-at-a-time approach to these changes; a comforting reminder of the old order in Spira. New Yevon is therefore quite popular amongst those who find the change in Spira rather too much.
This Final Fantasy X-related article is not a stub, but feel free to help FFOWA by expanding it anyway.
