I always found it interesting how gamers immediately associate the brief and hinted religious aspects of FF7 with Christianity or Judaism.
This may be drawn from a few things within the game.
1) The use of the word 'God' appears several times in the game (usually in the form of "Godammit!") This instantly means that the concept of God exists.
2) There are four main places of potential religious worship that appear in the Compilation; the Sector5 Church (prominent in OG and AC), Kalm's Cathedral or "the West Church" as I believe it is called in DC (and its interior is actually a map in DC Online), the Temple of the Ancients and the fountain at the Forgotten Capital. We can all thus be in agreement that religion as a concept exists.
3) During Case of Nanaki, Cid directly refers to "God"
What I find intriguing is that these philosophies actually directly contradict many of the historical aspects of the Compilation.
For example, the Cetra are very clearly described as having a direct affinity with the Planet and worship the Planet as their creator. Not God, the Planet.
Spirit energy works in such a way that all living things die, return to the Lifestream, and are reborn as new beings. This is reincarnation - a concept which is strictly opposed by Christianity.
The Goddess Minerva, the consciousness of the Lifestream. Her very existence is a pagan ideal. And that doesn't even touch on what the summon creatures actually are.
Is it just me, or have SE messed this up?
I think a lot of it is down to us overlaying our western religious concepts on game designed by minds raised in an eastern culture. All I kow about Shinto is what I've read in a book, so rather than pretending to be an expert on the subject, I'll just tell you what this guy Mitropolous has to say.
The Japanese word kami (or gami, as in shinigami), is usually translated as 'god' or 'spirit' , but according to somebody called Floyd Hiat Ross who wrote
Shinto:The Way of Japan, "kami is more like a spiritual energy that permeates all matter. 'Kami is in nature and man is in nature also, and kami is in man.'"
Apparently the Japanese word "tsumi", which is often translated as "sin", really means something more like "polluted" or "pollution". "Sin" involves conscious choice: we choose to sin, and as a consequence, we are guilty of our sin. But even the innocent can be polluted - and are, in Advent Children. Mitropolous thesis is that just as Jenova "polluted" the Lifestream, so western culture polluted the way of Shinto.
He brings Vincent Valentine into the argument thus: Lucretia is polluted by exposing her body and her fetus to Jenova cells. Vincent is polluted by standing by and allowing this to happen. Just hearing Cloud talk about the things that have happened as a result polluted him even more. He isn't so much trying to atone for his sins as to cleanse himself of the pollution.
The Judaeo-Christian-Muslim tradition sets man in a position of privilege with respect to the rest of the natural (or created) world: the creator God, our father, has delegated to us the control and management of everything He made. This, clearly, is a very Shinra way of looking at the world. According to Mitropolous, Shinto does not put man in this same privileged position, but sees him ina symbiotic relationship with nature:"Spirit energy makes all things possible, trees, birds, and humans. Not just living things. Spirit energy makes it possible for Planets to be Planets". "Such a philosophy does not privilege human life over non-human matter, as the two are interconnected and interdependent."
When we see Aerith's Church, we immediately think: Jesus! because that's the association our western minds make. I'm just suggesting that maybe, for the Japanese game developers, a church is nothing more than a generic place of worship, and no specifically Christian associations were intended.