Mining as a symbol
Mining is shown within the religious context of Bruno's miraculous survival. Mining is to Bruno's life what carpentry was to Jesus's life. Mining is also a symbol for looking deep within nature, which is what Eleanor does to discover her religious attachment to Bruno and his story of survival. Mining is inherently dangerous, too, so it serves as a suitable metaphor for the difficulties of life.
Eleanor as a prophet
Eleanor is a prophet of her god, Domiron, who reigns over her psychology with an iron dominion, allowing her a very narrow pathway to follow. Domiron gets what he wants in Eleanor's life, and when Domiron has something to say, she says it too. This relationship doesn't necessitate a spiritual explanation, because schizophrenia might be a suitable explanation, but that doesn't mean Eleanor isn't a prophet. She is a prophet of her own proprietary religion. She is a sign for religious intuition.
The explosion as a catalyst
When the town was all normal, there was no need for a cult, but when suddenly, many of the town's leaders and fathers are all dead, then Bruno's survival becomes a critical sign of hope for the town. They form a cult around him, because the explosion catalyzes it. The event is a true "inciting incident," and it also shows the baffling nature of human life, because things change very quickly sometimes.
The dead sister
The religion is weak because it predicated on Bruno's immortality, but when his sister dies, that serves as a too-literal reminder of Bruno's own mortality, so the sister's death is a symbol for the inevitability of death. It is a sign that there is nothing special about Bruno's blood or identity. He is just a regular human, so they stop worshipping him.
The allegorical suggestion
If the reader sees the cult disband and says, "Good riddance," they might have missed the point. There is a blatantly allegorical aspect of the story (the allegory of divinization; cf. Greek and Egyptian history, and also Christianity). The suggestion is that perhaps Bruno really is a god in a way, worth celebrating in the religious sense. But, ultimately, his life isn't a perfect religion because its scope is so limited, but to those who know him, the religion simple suggests that we celebrate the people in our lives.
