WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Way of X #1 by Si Spurrier, Bob Quinn, Java Tartaglia, and VC's Clayton Cowles, on sale now
The question of faith has long been at the center of some mutants like Nightcrawler, presenting new challenges and questions in the modern era where concepts like the resurrection of mutants make metaphysical quandaries less abstract and more practical. It turns out that mutants like Nightcrawler aren't the only ones thinking of human/mutant conflicts in this manner.
In Way of X #1, Nightcrawler and his team just discovered that Orchis is expanding their anti-mutant interests into the world of religion, effectively creating a branch of their organization that could turn hearts and minds against the mutants of Krakoa in a very dangerous manner.
Introduced during the events of "Dawn of X," Orchis is a growing coalition of various governmental and powerful forces across the globe, united in their shared fear of mutant culture and community growing. To this end, Orchis has been working to unite these forces, creating an alliance between different organizations with different motivations and means of affecting the world, all working towards a planet where mutants have been reduced in power and standing. There are seven arms of Orchis, although only one of them -- Infrastructure/Influence -- has been formally revealed so far, operating under the command of Henry Peter Gyrich and Alpha Flight. But as Nightcrawler and his band of mutants discover during a mission into Venice, there are also some attempts to foster hate on a cultural and spiritual level.
While in Venice, Nightcrawler and his allies discover a shrine dedicated to every crime ever committed by a mutant -- a veritable museum of hate and intolerance, dedicated towards convincing people about the inherent danger of all mutants. While in their base, Nightcrawler discovers evidence that the museum is being funded by Orchis -- and that by recruiting members of the clergy, Orchis is essentially creating anti-mutant missionaries who can take these ideas of hate and spread them across the world as the "word of God." It's a terrifying element of the Orchis strategy, potentially giving the kind of vitriol they have for mutants to an entirely new generation of people around the world.
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It's a deeply corrupted version of the beliefs that long inspired Nightcrawler, giving hateful people hope that their darker sides are actually their truest inner strengths. Almost making matters worse, Pixie utilizes her hypnotic dust to convince many of the priests to stop attacking -- only to allow herself to be gunned down in cold blood in an attempt to traumatize them into not preaching against mutants. But this could end up being used as further "proof" of the danger posed by mutants, with only Nightcrawler truly seeming to perceive the sheer horror of the situation. The fact that Orchis, like Nightcrawler, sees the potential in a religious angle to the future of mutant/human relations speaks to the potential power they could wield if they succeeded.
Orchis could easily foster the kind of power that nefarious groups like the Friends of Humanity or the Purifiers spent years trying to accrue themselves. The fact that they paint themselves as moral champions against a mutant scourge only makes them more dangerous, as it could start to give the people behind Orchis the chance to see themselves as genuine heroes for trying to murder children -- some of the worst kinds of foes the X-Men have ever had the misfortune of confronting. If they could help spread the Church of Orchis, then the mutant-hating organization could gain a serious leg-up on Krakoa, which is only now really confronting the possibility and potential for a mutant religion -- and with a great deal of hand-wringing, as evidenced by Nightcrawler's conflicted emotions about the island nation.
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