narrative essay about religion

Essays About Religion: Top 5 Examples and 7 Writing Prompts

Essays about religion include delicate issues and tricky subtopics. See our top essay examples and prompts to guide you in your essay writing.

With over 4,000 religions worldwide, it’s no wonder religion influences everything. It involves faith, lessons on humanity, spirituality, and moral values that span thousands of years. For some, it’s both a belief and a cultural system. As it often clashes with science, laws, and modern philosophies, it’s also a hot debate topic. Religion is a broad subject encompassing various elements of life, so you may find it a challenging topic to write an essay about it.

1. Wisdom and Longing in Islam’s Religion by Anonymous on Ivypanda.com

2. consequences of following religion blindly essay by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 3. religion: christians’ belief in god by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 4. mecca’s influence on today’s religion essay by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 5. religion: how buddhism views the world by anonymous on ivypanda.com , 1. the importance of religion, 2. pros and cons of having a religion, 3. religions across the world, 4. religion and its influence on laws, 5. religion: then and now, 6. religion vs. science, 7. my religion.

“Portraying Muslims as radical religious fanatics who deny other religions and violently fight dissent has nothing to do with true Islamic ideology. The knowledge that is presented in Islam and used by Muslims to build their worldview system is exploited in a misinterpreted form. This is transforming the perception of Islam around the world as a radical religious system that supports intolerance and conflicts.”

The author discusses their opinion on how Islam becomes involved with violence or terrorism in the Islamic states. Throughout the essay, the writer mentions the massive difference between Islam’s central teachings and the terrorist groups’ dogma. The piece also includes a list of groups, their disobediences, and punishments.

This essay looks at how these brutalities have nothing to do with Islam’s fundamental ideologies. However, the context of Islam’s creeds is distorted by rebel groups like The Afghan mujahideen, Jihadis, and Al-Qa’ida. Furthermore, their activities push dangerous narratives that others use to make generalized assumptions about the entire religion. These misleading generalizations lead to misunderstandings amongst other communities, particularly in the western world. However, the truth is that these terrorist groups are violating Islamic doctrine.

“Following religion blindly can hinder one’s self-actualization and interfere with self-development due to numerous constraints and restrictions… Blind adherence to religion is a factor that does not allow receiving flexible education and adapting knowledge to different areas.”

The author discusses the effects of blindly following a religion and mentions that it can lead to difficulties in self-development and the inability to live independently. These limitations affect a person’s opportunity to grow and discover oneself. Movies like “ The Da Vinci Code ” show how fanatical devotion influences perception and creates constant doubt.

“…there are many religions through which various cultures attain their spiritual and moral bearings to bring themselves closer to a higher power (deity). Different religions are differentiated in terms of beliefs, customs, and purpose and are similar in one way or the other.”

The author discusses how religion affects its followers’ spiritual and moral values and mentions how deities work in mysterious ways. The essay includes situations that show how these supreme beings test their followers’ faith through various life challenges. Overall, the writer believes that when people fully believe in God, they can be stronger and more capable of coping with the difficulties they may encounter.

“Mecca represents a holy ground that the majority of the Muslims visit; and is only supposed to be visited by Muslims. The popularity of Mecca has increased the scope of its effects, showing that it has an influence on tourism, the financial aspects of the region and lastly religion today.”

The essay delves into Mecca’s contributions to Saudi Arabia’s tourism and religion. It mentions tourism rates peaking during Hajj, a 5-day Muslim pilgrimage, and visitors’ sense of spiritual relief and peace after the voyage. Aside from its tremendous touristic benefits, it also brings people together to worship Allah. You can also check out these essays about values and articles about beliefs .

“Buddhism is seen as one of the most popular and widespread religions on the earth the reason of its pragmatic and attractive philosophies which are so appealing for people of the most diversified backgrounds and ways of thinking .”

To help readers understand the topic, the author explains Buddhism’s worldviews and how Siddhatta Gotama established the religion that’s now one of the most recognized on Earth. It includes teachings about the gift of life, novel thinking, and philosophies based on his observations. Conclusively, the author believes that Buddhism deals with the world as Gotama sees it.

Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

7 Prompts on Essays About Religion

Essays About Religion: The importance of religion

Religion’s importance is embedded in an individual or group’s interpretation of it. They hold on to their faith for various reasons, such as having an idea of the real meaning of life and offering them a purpose to exist. Use this prompt to identify and explain what makes religion a necessity. Make your essay interesting by adding real-life stories of how faith changed someone’s life.

Although religion offers benefits such as positivity and a sense of structure, there are also disadvantages that come with it. Discuss what’s considered healthy and destructive when people follow their religion’s gospels and why. You can also connect it to current issues. Include any personal experience you have.

Religion’s prevalence exhibits how it can significantly affect one’s daily living. Use this prompt to discuss how religions across the world differ from one another when it comes to beliefs and if traditions or customs influence them. It’s essential to use relevant statistical data or surveys in this prompt to support your claims and encourage your readers to trust your piece.

There are various ways religion affects countries’ laws as they adhere to moral and often humanitarian values. Identify each and discuss how faith takes part in a nation’s decision-making regarding pressing matters. You can focus on one religion in a specific location to let the readers concentrate on the case. A good example is the latest abortion issue in the US, the overturning of “Wade vs. Roe.” Include people’s mixed reactions to this subject and their justifications.

In this essay, talk about how the most widespread religions’ principles or rituals changed over time. Then, expound on what inspired these changes. Add the religion’s history, its current situation in the country, and its old and new beliefs. Elaborate on how its members clash over these old and new principles. Conclude by sharing your opinion on whether the changes are beneficial or not.

There’s a never-ending debate between religion and science. List the most controversial arguments in your essay and add which side you support and why. Then, open discourse about how these groups can avoid quarreling. You can also discuss instances when religion and science agreed or worked together to achieve great results.

Use this prompt if you’re a part of a particular religion. Even if you don’t believe in faith, you can still take this prompt and pick a church you’ll consider joining. Share your personal experiences about your religion. Add how you became a follower, the beliefs that helped you through tough times, and why you’re staying as an active member in it. You can also speak about miraculous events that strengthen your faith. Or you can include teachings that you disagree with and think needs to be changed or updated.

For help with your essay, check out our top essay writing tips !

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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Personal Narrative Essay: What Does Religion Mean to Me

We may be aware that religion refers to the cultural and belief system. It is also about how values, humanity, and spirituality relate to religion itself. However, have we already asked ourselves if what religion means to us?

I am a Roman Catholic. The family I came from, they are Catholic. Ever since I was a child, they made me understand the importance of having faith in God. I learned that 7- sacraments and 10-Commandments are significant. They are the ways to become closer to God. My family also taught me how to pray fervently every time. When I feel blissful about something that happened to me, I pray and tell God how grateful I am. If I know that I'm wrong, I will ask for forgiveness. When I feel so alone, burden, and weary, seek God; he will always listen. As I grow up, my understanding of the Catholic faith becomes deep. I learned that as we love ourselves, we should also love others. We should also care about the creations of God. And always be humble and respectful. They are some of the values and guiding principles that my family and environment instilled in me.

Religion means a lot to me. Having faith makes me feel even stronger, regardless of being tired physically and emotionally. It is one of the reasons why I always choose to stay in this world, no matter how chaotic it is. It made me believe in things that I am not aware of before. And we might experience trials that can hinder us from being happy and triumphant. But knowing that God is always here with us, I know that we will overcome them. It changed me into a better version of myself. Religion is about how we embrace and accept it in our hearts. It is an understanding that we openly and warmly welcome in ourselves. It should not be the reason for misunderstanding. Instead, it should be the instrument of loving and connecting. For me, that's religion.

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Narrating Religion

This essay stands back and looks at the large variety of ways in which religious ideas are narrated, or ideas about religions are narrated. It appears in Jeffrey J. Kripal, ed. Religion: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2016, which is the first, introductory volume of what will be a 10-volume series on religion published by MacMillan, for use in upper-level courses on religion or by the general public. The volume that I am editing myself, called Narrating Religion, will be the final one in the series and should be out next year.

Related Papers

Sarah Iles Johnston

From *Narrating Religion* ed. Sarah Iles Johnston (MacMillan 2016)

Roshan Abraham

Abraham, R. "The Biography of a Pagan Saint: Apollonius of Tyana," in Sarah Iles Johnston, ed. Religion: Narrating Religion. Part of the Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Religion series. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2017. 227-242.

A description of Talmud for an edited volume aimed at undergraduates called "Narrating Religion." Part of the Macmillan Handbook series on Religion

David Frankfurter

Many cultures regard particular stories as not only essential to hear at certain times of the year but efficacious: as capable of blessing the hearers, bringing together the community, and acting in some positive and material way on the audience. At the same time, ancient manuscripts, as well as students of living cultures, such as folklorists, give evidence of healers and other ritual specialists adept at improvising on official religious narratives, at telling stories about healings and victories that often use those same principal gods but in this case to heal or protect individuals. How are stories thus envisioned as acting on people, as transmitting a kind of magical power? In this chapter, we look at the essential religious features of the performance of narrative and how recitation itself is traditionally imagined as bringing a power into the world. We look at the category " myth " as the repository of ideas, values, traditions, and heroes in which a magical power is imagined to reside and from which expert storytellers weave narratives in performance. And we look at the category historiola, the " little stories " that ritual specialists recite as the mythical basis of ritual efficacy—a story that narrates power, as it were, into the body of a suffering patient. When they tell, or inscribe, or most often sing historiolae, they conjure the magical powers of the heroes of these stories and direct them to their clients' predicaments.

Religion: Narrating Religion.

Catharina Graf

More than 1.8 billion images are being shared online via platforms such as Facebook or Instagram every single day. Each of these images is part of a story. Visual storytelling is the current trend in communication—and it is how twenty-first-century identities are created. Even though the number of images populating the earth (or rather the screens) is bigger than ever before, the concept of visual storytelling is far from new and has evolved in all cultures where images have been used. The origins of visual narratives can be traced to the origins of the image itself, to cave paintings dating back 30,000 years. Visual narratives are ubiquitous: from the art on Greek vases narrating myths to medieval frescoes on the walls of churches in Italy; from Japanese Emakimono scrolls of the twelfth century to twenty-first-century Manga; from the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages to the illustrated magazines of the twentieth century. With so many simultaneous developments, it seems impossible to write a consistent account of visual storytelling. The goal of this chapter is to understand what storytelling with images is: why and in what way is visual storytelling different from narrating with words? This question will be answered in three parts. The first part will trace the cultural and philosophical origins of images that tell stories: what needs do they fulfill, what purposes do they serve? The second part will examine the three main elements of visual storytelling: single images, continuity of an image series, and textual elements. The third and last part features short analyses of four examples of narrating with images in religious contexts throughout time and media, from objects such as pottery and church walls to paper and books to modern virtual screens.

Pamela Klassen

In Narrating Religion, ed. Sarah Iles Johnston, MacMillan Interdisciplinary Handbook, pp. 333-352. Museums narrate religion through objects, words, and space. Using many examples from a wide range of museums from North America and Europe, I discuss how museums are sites for both the curation and the contestation of what makes an object religious or spiritual. Focused on questions such as how museums engage with audiences that continue to venerate objects in their collections and respond to repatriation claims from nations and peoples who demand the return of their objects, the essay also considers museums founded explicitly by religious groups who seek to narrate religion on their own terms.

God and Gender

Sian Melvill Hawthorne

Origin myths are found in most cultures and often relate the creation of the world (cosmogony) by a deity or deities. They also provide accounts of how and why social arrangements are set in place ‘‘in the beginning’’ in terms that make those arrangements appear natural, inevitable, and/or god-ordained. Origin myths thus have a legitimating function: when social structures and relationships are narrated as fixed and unquestionable because of divine origination, the forms of power that underwrite those relationships and structures may also be presented as natural and inevitable. Pointing to a divine origin obscures the fact that social hierarchies are ‘‘man made.’’ In other words, communities mobilize origin myths in order to authorize (or challenge) social arrangements in the present, either by suggesting that some social structure or rule is beyond question because it is divinely ordained or by implying that an existing system is a distortion of or departure from an original state to which a community should return in order to restore order. Origin myths, as this chapter shows, are often preoccupied with gender, both conveying and in significant ways constructing and sanctioning values assigned to men and women and their positions in society. With striking regularity, a number of ancient cosmogonies narrate male gods as progenitors, as sole creators of the world and initiators of temporal orders; that is, they set up the instruments—celestial bodies or seasonal arrangements, for example—by which the passing of time can be marked, and they establish this-worldly structures of governance and power. Three such cosmogonies are considered in this chapter: the Babylonian Enuma Elish ¯ , the Hebrew creation story in the book of Genesis, and the ancient Greek poet Hesiod’s Theogony and the Oresteia of Aeschylus. Each myth portrays creation in terms of male parthenogenesis (asexual or monogenetic reproduction), using metaphors of birth-giving that appropriate or overturn female birth-giving capacities and setting up gods and thus origins and creation as paternal in nature. As this chapter shows, male procreation in these cosmogonies legitimizes social structures that emphasize the priority and primacy of male relationships (for example, father-son or fraternal bonds) and activities. In turn, the myths represent femaleness as passive, secondary to, dependent on, or vanquished by the male. Further, the characteristics of human maleness are implicitly connected to those of a divine male progenitor, linking God and man in a direct line of succession. This chapter explores how such figurations of male creative power create temporal (that is, relating both to concepts of time and to this-worldly affairs), social, and gendered orders. The relationship between origin myths, gender structures, and the social outworking of patrilineal orders is examined in order to demonstrate the pivotal role that male creator gods play in legitimating and naturalizing male-dominated power formations. The first section outlines the methodological principles by which myths in general and origin myths in particular may be understood to legitimize certain social arrangements and power formations and override others. The next sections provide three examples of origin myths from the ancient Near East and Greece that narrate creation through male parthenogenesis and the subsequent social order underpinned by patrilineal authority. The subsequent section identifies how the gendered motifs and structures they promote and naturalize enable both restrictive gender valuations and top-down social organization, which in turn direct a wide range of social formations that operate on principles of inclusion and exclusion.

Meghan Henning

Joel Gruber

Tibetan Buddhists live in a cosmology and maintain a worldview that cannot be easily fit into the standard Western definitions of scientific materialism. As the anthropologist Geoffrey Samuel (1946–) explains in Civilized Shamans: “Constantly reincarnating [saints] do not fit comfortably into a linear historical sequence, but there is no reason why they should. They are not part of a world based on such sequences” (1993, 296). Samuel’s summary of our struggles with understanding Tibetan history is illuminating in its simplicity: it points out the obvious. As students of religion, we need to be more careful when attempting to understand Tibetan literature. We need to refrain from unthinkingly grafting our own versions of history, biography, time, space, and religious experiences onto an entirely different world. Prior to summarizing Vimalamitra’s namtar, allow me to first present a short quote from the American philosopher/novelist David Foster Wallace (1962–2008), who, before tragically taking his own life, may have been imploring students to save their own during his famous graduation commencement speech at Kenyon College: If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying or miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options.... [It is] not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true.... The only thing that is “capital T True” is that you get to decide how you are going to see truth. (2005) When we consider that too many of our artistic and philosophical geniuses, like David Foster Wallace, have a strikingly high history of depression and/or suicide, best exemplified in the opening line of Allen Ginsberg’s (1926–1997) “Howl” (1956), “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,” perhaps our normal is less sane than we currently recognize. Perhaps our limited conception of history, scientific-based reality, and our secularized vision of happiness too frequently leads to lives that are “annoying andcmiserable.” Instead, as Wallace urged the Kenyon College graduates, perhaps we should strive to pay better attention to options that are less normal, particularly when they are not as miserable and depressing as the standard materialist worldview. Continuing the use of Wallace’s terms, the “mystical stuff” described in the sections you are about to read is not necessarily true. But there is no doubt more than a little truth to Wallace’s claim that the only “Capitol T” truth is that we choose how we see truth.This chapter details several supernatural features of Tibetan Buddhism’s “oldest” sect, known as the Nyingma, or the Ancients, by focusing on the legend of Vimalamitra and the Tibetans who claim to have met and even become emanations of him. The chapter argues that, for Tibetans, supernatural encounters with a long-deceased saint are evidence of enlightened activity resulting from the meditation-based ritual performance and visualizations of saintly namtars.

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Published: 06 June 2017
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Historical knowledge as well as contemporary research point out how narratives are essential in human life, culture, and society. The same holds for the formation and maintenance of religious worlds. Narratives of many kinds play fundamental roles in religion and (other) social constructions and, accordingly, narratives are crucial in individual self-understanding and social integration. The human imagination and the capacities for meaning-making depend on the use of narrative. Narratives also have fundamental epistemic functions in the production of knowledge and the origins of narrative, phylogenesis, and ontogenesis are interrelated. Humanity has grown with language and narrative, both of which seem to be the prerequisites for the development of intelligence as it found in modern humans. The chapter also examines the special features of religious narrative as they create, express, and maintain religious worlds.

Chapter Summary

Narrative is essential in human life, culture, and society, and in the formation and maintenance of religious worlds.

The study of narrative is interdisciplinary. The history of the study of narrative is crucial for the understanding of narrative theory.

Narrative plays a fundamental role in religion and (other) social constructions. Narratives are crucial in individual and social integration. Human imagination and meaning-making depend on narrative. Origins of narrative, phylogenesis, and ontogenesis are interrelated.

Narratives play a central role in creating religious worlds.

Definitions

The definition of narrative can be quite simple, as in The Oxford English Dictionary : “A spoken or written account of connected events; a story.” As trivial as this may seem at first glance, the definition highlights a crucial point about the nature of narratives: that they are about ‘connected events’ and as such they provide the means for communicating ideas and experiences about the world, real or imagined. Definitions may of course also be more fine-grained and problem-oriented; a ‘fuzzy-set’ definition would include multiple dimensions such as the spatial, temporal, mental, and formal or pragmatic dimensions ( Ryan 2011 , 28–29). When narratives connect events, across such dimensions, they also provide the relations between actors, events, and objects and so make sense of ‘what happens.’ The relations between what happens, events and their causes and effects are not given simply by perception and impression; they need to be interpreted. Especially when it comes to human (and human-like) actions, it is essential to grasp the modes of intentionality and rationality involved. It is unlikely that humans would understand much of their worlds (natural, mental, and social) without narrative competence, and they certainly would have difficulties in communicating jointly without narratives.

Narrative is Essential in Human Life, Culture, and Society

Humans use language and narratives to organize their thoughts and impressions into more comprehensive patterns in order to construct and participate in worldviews. Narratives serve as conceptual scaffolding that makes the world (seen, unseen, experienced, and/or imagined) understandable and shareable between individuals and groups. Values and norms are crucial for human life, and narrative is a capable medium for distributing these in the social dimension. For similar reasons, narratives are fundamental in religious worlds, whether as universes of thought or networks of practices (with related sociocultural institutions). When humans use narratives, they are able to ‘connect’ events, real or imagined, to group them together, to provide them with value and importance, and so provide the rationales for action and thought. In religious traditions, narratives abound in the countless myths and legends that are involved in how rituals and institutions ‘talk’ and ‘tell stories’ (explicit and implicit). Narrative is involved in even the most abstract or terse dogmas, as these are often condensed versions of what would otherwise be longer narrative sequences; and, conversely, narratives are used when the meaning of dogma needs to be explained and interpreted. Narratives are in the centre of a “matrix of relations between individuals, groups, cultural repertoires and social institutions” ( Geertz 2011 , 23). Thus, narrative is the primary medium of making sense, also in the worlds of religious traditions ( Paden 1994 , 69–92).

The Interdisciplinary Study of Narrative

Several academic disciplines contribute to the interdisciplinary study of narrative Herman et al. 2005 ). Most of these belong to the humanities. Narratology , that is, the general study of narrative, is now closely connected to literary theory and visual media (Ryan 2004 ; 2006 ; Herman 2005 ). Discourse analysis also studies narratives, especially their functions in the social world, in the formation of individual and social identities as well as the use of narrative(s) in the construction and maintenance of social and political power and influence. Both these fields owe inspirations to and have a theoretical legacy from the field of semiotics (see Yelle, “Semiotics,” this volume), that is, from the study of how meaning is produced and organized through the use of signs and symbols. In turn, these theoretical inspirations trace back to the groundbreaking influences of structuralism from the mid-twentieth century (Jensen 2000 ; 2005 ). These influences have accumulated and diversified over time and so, now, countless fields take an interest in narrative, from anthropology to discourse psychology, political theory to philosophy and theology. The study of religion, in turn, is so broad that it may benefit from the findings of these disciplines.

The History of ‘Narratology’: The Study of Narrative

The study of narrative can be said to have a long history if one includes ideas and theories (from Plato and onwards) about stories, myth, fairy tales, and other kinds of narratives ( Herman 2005 ). However, the more strictly scholarly study of narrative can be said to have begun with Vladimir Propp’s 1928 study of the morphology (i.e. the composition) of folk tales ( Propp 1958 ). This type of study paved the way for the later structuralist approaches that came to dominate the field. In the 1940s Claude Lévi-Strauss took inspiration from formal linguistics in his structuralist analyses of how myths were composed and how they (as narratives) conveyed various kinds of culturally important messages. Scholars began to take an interest in how elements and functions of narrative were combined and structured so as to make cohesive stories with plots. One general ambition was to discover the ‘grammar’ of story-telling as there seemed to be hidden rules involved in the composition of narratives—hence the value of the inspiration from formal linguistics. The point of the analysis is that narratives not only have surface presentations of actors and actions, but also ‘deeper’ structures that convey messages and analyze how they do so (e.g. the fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling” is not about birds). Slightly later, Roland Barthes used structuralist analyses on the ‘hidden’ narratives of modern culture, from racism to fashion. Barthes introduced the important distinction between narrative ‘functions,’ the sequence or elements of action that constitute the narrative, and ‘indices’ that ‘point’ to values (positive or negative) in the narrative ( Barthes 1975 ; Jensen 2009 , 290–307). For instance, the Exodus story in the Bible is composed of numerous functions that point to positive (‘ten commandments’) or negative (the ‘golden calf’) values. The legends of the Buddha’s enlightenment contain similar constructions. In fact, most myths do. Thus, from the 1960s the field of semiotics (the study of signs and symbols) began to flourish with analyses of various kinds of cultural and religious phenomena as if they were stories ( Jensen 2009 , 251–320; Yelle 2013 ). As a result of this development (‘semiotic turn’), it has now become common to ‘read’ human action as if it were narrative. In fact, social and religious institutions may be ‘read’ for what they ‘are about.’ For instance, a wedding (or any ritual) can be ‘read’ as narrative when considering its ‘aboutness’: there are always stories ‘hidden’ in rituals and institutions ( Jensen 2014 , 95–154). In 1966 the semiotician A. J. Greimas designed the ‘actantial model’ as a tool for analyzing all kinds narratives, as the ‘actant’ is an abstract role that may be cast with specific agents (human or non-human) ( Greimas 1970 , 249–270). In light of the discussion here, it proves useful also in the analysis of rituals and institutions. The ‘project’ axis displays a subject’s desire of gaining an ‘object’ (a goal of any kind) and how this project is surrounded by positive and negative agents or circumstances (Fig. 19.1 ).

A. J. Greimas’s ‘Actantial Model’.

Entire religious traditions may be plotted into the model as ‘cosmic dramas’ about salvation or bliss, where there are helpers as well as opponents. The model is deliberately simplistic, which only extends its utility. It is also a universal model in the sense that all cultures have stories that engage the actantial positions of the model. Narratives generate messages because of the structural relations and dynamics between the actantial roles. As an example, consider the hero who typically has to pass two tests: first the ‘qualifying’ test that demonstrates his competence and then the ‘glorifying’ test, which proves him the conqueror. Greimas also drew attention to the importance of modalities in narrative, where the analysis can include scrutiny of ‘be,’ ‘can,’ ‘do,’ ‘know,’ ‘ought,’ ‘will,’ and their negations, which characterize the action structures in the narratives. Such classifications of modalities facilitate the exploration of who does what, when, and why as well as the distribution of duties, possibilities, abilities, etc. in the universe of the narrative.

At the same time, the semiotician Claude Bremond added a theory concerning the logic of narratives and defined the basic narrative chain as consisting of three links: an opening situation with a possibility, i.e. a virtuality, where things can go well or wrong; the occurrence of the possibility (or not); and finally the achievement or failure of the project of the story. Bremond developed a complex classification of roles in stories. Here the distinction between agents and patients is important: agents start processes, influence the patients, and turn them into either victims or beneficiaries. The characters encounter difficulties that they may overcome (or not); there may be traps and deceit, seduction and threats. The relations between characters may rely on conventions (parents help children); they may negotiate and make alliances, either in solidarity relations (among equals) or in unequal relations (as between debtors and creditors). Bremond’s theory offers a careful analysis of the logic of tales ( Bremond 1980 ). It explains why a story may appear unfinished because it did not reach the equilibrium that seemed inherent in the plot.

Later, the literary theorist Gerard Genette (1990) added a number of terms and concepts for the study of narrative. Among these are order, frequency, duration, voice , and focus . Although intended for literary analysis, they may also be deployed in work on religious narrative(s) as they focus on the syntax of narratives and not the interpretation of contents. ‘Order’ may include flash-back or flash-forward, prolepsis, discovery, conflict, resolution, or anachrony (i.e. the disarrangement of events in unfamiliar ways). ‘Frequency’ or redundancy (continuous repetition) is often encountered in religious narratives, functioning mainly as a mnemonic tool. ‘Duration’ concerns narrative and discourse time: “From Adam and Eve until Resurrection” is a very long narrative time but only a short discourse time (taking one second to pronounce). Genette’s idea of ‘voice’ is fourfold and concerns ‘who speaks’: from inside or outside the text, and whether the narrator is a character in the story or not. Narrative ‘focus’ (or ‘mood’) concerns the ‘perspective’ of the narrator, as this changes in narrated speech, transposed speech, and reported speech. The perspective of the narrator is called focalization: who sees, perceives, or imagines? The perspective can be fixed, variable, multiple, or collective. Multiple voices may also be present in single narratives as may be indicated by the theoretical concepts of ‘polyphony’ (multiple voices) or ‘heteroglossia’ (conflicting discourses). All these aspects of fiction and literature apply equally well to religious narratives, with the added emphasis on existential importance: religious narratives are typically about the narrators’ and receivers’/listeners’ own life-worlds and are normative for thought and behavior. Religious narratives can be entertaining but more often they are engaging and socially important.

Currently, the study of narrative (‘narratology’) has developed into a variety of theories, concepts, and methods concerning the human ability to produce and process narratives in various forms, media, contexts, and practices ( Ryan 2008 ; Herman 2011 ). As that human ability to take impressions and perceptions (along with ideas and imagination) and turn them into stories has its roots in human cognitive ‘fluidity,’ scientists in such fields as psychology and cognitive science are now also involved in the investigation of the origin, properties, and functions of narrative ( Donald 2001 ; Herman 2013 ). The human ability to make sense depends profoundly on the properties and functions of narrative(s) and the human mind’s literary character ( Turner 1996 ). Humans understand things when they are able to talk about them. Narrative organizes basic epistemic functions, as linguistic constructions and event cognition converge ( Tomasello 1999 , 134–160; Herman 2013 , 225–251).

Theories from cognitive semiotics also contribute insights that expand knowledge about how (religious) narratives work and what they are composed of. They frequently contain metaphors , where meaning from one domain is used to make sense in another, such as “my love is a rose,” or “God is our father.” Narratives include scripts that order sequences of events and the thoughts about them, for instance going to the supermarket, going on a date, participating in a wedding, or attending a funeral. One’s behavior will be shaped according to frames , that is, existing cultural and mental models of such situations. Religious discourse is often about a world unseen, and so there is frequent use of metaphors, scripts, and frames taken from one domain onto another in order to produce mappings of the imaginable onto the known, e.g. paradise depicted as a ‘garden.’ When thinking in such ways—universal in religious life—humans apply mental space blending ( Fauconnier 1997 ).

Narratives are always embedded in discourse because narratives configure discourse. Discourse can be defined as a ‘manner of speaking’ about things. Thus, discourse consists of narrative(s) that (for example) speak(s) about humans in a certain manner: a medical discourse is different from a legal one, and these differ from a religious discourse that may talk about humans as created, sinners, un-enlightened, or divine. Narratives about religion may be religious, scholarly, and scientific, or public media discourse. These modes of discourse all differ in perspective and are at times incommensurable and incompatible ( Murphy 2000 ).

Origins of Narrative in a Phylogenetic Perspective

Undoubtedly, the origins of the human narrative capacity are to be found in the human capacity for mimesis, the ability to imitate and demonstrate objects, subjects, actions, and perhaps even thoughts and intentions. During human cultural evolution, with the appearance of language and other symbolic means of communication, it became possible to imitate and demonstrate not only existing but also imagined objects, actions, and intentions ( Donald 2001 ). Through imagination, humans could cognize (‘represent’) matters that were non-existing in the physical world, and they could talk about these matters. The ensuing narrative competence has been fundamental for human social and cultural evolution: narrative is important for remembering, for sharing information, and, most importantly, it makes planning ahead possible, insofar as it represents the future as already existing (‘prolepsis’). In cultural and religious evolution, myth-making and story-telling concerning actors, actions, and intentions in imaginary worlds became the means of providing paradigms for the narrative governance (action, cognition, emotion) of human life and the all-important ‘collectivity of mind.’ Whereas the development of narrative(s) in oral and prehistorical societies is almost impossible to investigate, the advent of literate culture (and so historical sources) provided definitive turns in cultural technology. First, the narratives (e.g. myths) could be written down; the meaning (‘semantic contents’) could then become fixed, being debated and, perhaps, even rejected. (For a discussion of ‘meaning’ in the study of religion, see Jensen 2004 ). The invention of literacy allowed for reflection and so for reflexivity and meta-cognition, that is, thinking about thoughts and expressing such thinking in ways that allowed others to take part in them, even if the narrators (i.e. writers) were not themselves present ( Donald 2001 , 305–315). In that manner, the contents of the narrative may be fictive, and the presence of the story-teller is no longer mandatory. Narratives about anything imaginable may then begin to circulate on their own. With the latest explosion of electronic and visual media, narrative(s) can be produced, stored, and distributed in cyber-space at immense speed, independent of distance in space. The evolution and history of narrative are thus closely interwoven with the growth of available technologies in culture and society. The functions of narrative in the evolution of language and the human mind and in the evolution of culture and society are closely related, and so studies of narrative have now become tightly linked with the sciences of mind ( Herman 2013 ).

Narrative(s) in Individual Integration

In many ways, narratives function as devices to process information ‘in and out of the brain’ and they likewise make possible the transmission of mental contents between brains. Add to this the technologies that make it possible to store mental contents (such as beliefs, ideas, intentions, and knowledge) in external media for later use or for dissemination, and the importance of narrative becomes obvious. Narrative is a technology for linking individual brains in mental networks. Narratives are instruments of mind. This may also (at least partly) explain why narratives look the way they do: cognitive processes of conceptualization ‘surface’ as dimensions of narrative and semantic structures that enable humans to organize representations of actions in temporal, spatial, perspectival, subject, and object networks ( Herman 2013 , 169–174). Language and narrative actually mirror mental processes: narratives generally resemble processes of perception and action, but they may exceed factual experience and ‘fire off’ the imagination. Narratives may then connect the individual with fictive action representations, orders, temporalities, and perspectives that are only imaginable. Narratives such as parables may situate the listening subject (‘receiver’) in normative cognition imageries where the potentialities and consequences of imagined actions can be played out. In literate religious traditions, the biographies of the lives of exemplary persons (e.g. hagiographies) demonstrate this function of narrative. The construction of fictional worlds may also be considered the ‘really real’ as when religious traditions assert ‘truth pretentions,’ and here narrative can transport the individual from the mundane to a sphere of special value to the tradition.

Individual Imagination and Meaning-Making

Humans live and act in constructed worlds. The ‘myths of modernity’ convey the impression that humans mostly live by rationality, but in fact they live as much by their (i) conceptual ecologies and (ii) imagined worlds ( Bruner 1986 ). These are the major constituents of religious worlds. In managing one’s own identity, thought, and action, a measure of imagination is necessary, and that is generally supported by the individual’s capability to enter imaginative realms. The Delphic maxim ‘know thyself’ is possible only through mental mirroring mechanisms that fundamentally rely on imagination ( Harris 2000 ). Meaningful narrative integration of the individual (i.e. ‘becoming a whole person’) demands imagination: you need to be able to imagine who you are and might be ( Modell 2003 ). Human experience of self and other is mediated in and through narratives that allow for imagining, simulating, and having vicarious experiences with others and their mind products: “Narratives, especially shared life narratives, are the basis of autobiographical memory itself. Stories and myths can completely reshape our semantic spaces, leading to a consensual definition of a shared virtual reality that is the core of oral culture” ( Donald 2001 , 296). Individual integration is a fundamental ontogenetical achievement. For the child and adolescent, narrative universes provide ‘scaffolding’ for playing, learning, remembering, and developing. How these complex processes expand in ontogenesis is becoming increasingly clear (e.g. Nelson 2006 ). Armin W. Geertz states that “The primary function of narrative is to maintain the illusion of an individual, controlling agent on the one hand and a member of the group who can be identified, held responsible and made predictable on the other” (2011, 23).

Narrative(s) in Social Integration

Narratives are crucially important in social integration where they contribute collective perspectives, reasoning, and courses for action as well as common knowledge, norms, and values. Culture may be considered a hyper-social network (‘a collective brain’) consisting of a sum of narratives that support collective internalization and integration into a cultural order ( Jensen 2011 , 47). Narrative offers shared identities and memories, the creation of collective representations (as proposed by Émile Durkheim), and stable social and cultural institutions. Collective imagination and meaning-making are above all encountered in the narratives of myths and mythologies. In 1964, Claude Lévi-Strauss stated that myths are narratives with objectified thought. Ingeniously, he set out to demonstrate “not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men’s minds without their being aware of the fact” ( Lévi-Strauss 1986 , 12). Since then, philosophers and psychologists have pointed out how human individual life is thoroughly social and cultural and mediated by narrative(s) (e.g. Bruner 1986 ; Clark 2001 ; Tomasello 2010 ). Being the ‘ultimate artefact,’ language and so also narrative make humans ‘smart’ and allow them to share experiences, perspectives, and thoughts for joint decisions and actions through the functions of their social institutions ( Douglas 2012 , 128). The construction and maintenance of social institutions are products of collective intentionality and are primarily language-dependent ( Searle 2010 ). Tomasello (2010 , 343) notes: “Language, or better linguistic communication [e.g. narratives], is not just any kind of object, formal or otherwise; rather it is a form of social action constituted by social conventions for achieving social ends, premised on at least some shared understandings and shared purposes among users.” Edwin Hutchins introduced the notion of ‘distributed cognition’ (1995). Here again, language and narrative are a medium for externalizing and distributing complex cognitive loads among members of a collective working on a joint project. Religious traditions offer multitudes of concepts, models, norms, and values that go into such cognitive distribution: the complex staging of elaborate rituals is a case in point. Thus, narratives have important social functions in that they support collective intentionality in groups and simultaneously augment individual cognition (and emotion) as an extension of mind. Collective narrative(s) in sociocultural traditions thus not only function to make groups work but also to help individuals function. Cognitive governance, that is, the general functions of consciousness, depend on social and cultural creations with narrative governance of action, cognition, and emotion. Humans depend on social and cultural universes and on tradition in order to become fully functioning social beings. Religious traditions offer (or impose) ‘life scripts’ consisting of roles, conditions, and stages for participants. In that sense, religious traditions play a dominant role in normative cognition. Additionally, most languages are saturated with religious terminologies. With language, and so narratives, humans are given certain ways of acting, because all languages come with built-in norms, values, symbols, and an implicit ideology: “A whole mythology is deposited in our language” (as once pointed out by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his comments on Frazer’s Golden Bough ).

Special Features of Religious Narrative(s)

In addition to the aesthetic and literary perspectives prevalent in general narratology (e.g. Fludernik 2009 ), there are interesting factors that are distinctive and crucial in the study of religious narratives. A conspicuous quality of religious narratives is their crossing of borders. Religious narratives go between and unite (‘mediate’) what is individual with the collective, the human with the super-human, the natural with the supernatural, and religious narratives may collapse time and eliminate space. From a non-religious or agnostic perspective, religious narratives are products of the human imagination and as such comparable to fiction. However, religious narrative(s) claim to be about the real—or, even more, about what is ‘really real’—and as such they differ from the stories that are told from aesthetic or entertaining perspectives. Religious narratives claim authority and have importance for social and cultural universes of meaning. They regularly have world-making and world-ordering qualities; that is, they are foundational stories about the world and how it came to be the way humans think it is and how they should accordingly behave. The power of religious narratives consists precisely and proportionally in the power they have over human minds. Religious narratives are the products and the bearers of reflective beliefs as these are the beliefs that are derived from the communication with others ( Jensen 2014 , 71–76). Remarkably, and in some contrast to the modern common-sense view, humans have a tendency to believe more in beliefs derived from others than in their own intuitive beliefs that are derived from their own experience ( Frith 2012 ). This may go a long way toward explaining the survival and success of many religious convictions, especially as these are backed with the authority of narratives embedded in traditions.

Religious worlds are worlds of human imagination and as such, they share many of the properties of other kinds of fictive or possible worlds. Religious worlds are ‘multi-person worlds’ with specific kinds of ‘narrative modalities’ that can be used or manipulated to different purposes. In Lubomir Dolezel’s model, these are alethic (about what is possible, impossible, or necessary), deontic (about what is permitted, prohibited, or obligatory), axiological (about what is good, bad, or indifferent), and epistemic (about what can be known or believed) ( Dolezel 1998 , 113–132). Any test of a set of religious narratives will attest to the existence and functions of these four modalities. One may note here, how the recent genre of ‘fantasy’ often relies heavily on motifs and schemata from religious narratives.

A peculiar aspect of religious narrative or discourse is that it often speaks in the second person, that is, it speaks ‘to you.’ Whether expressed in imperatives, wishes, or prohibitions, such second-person speech ‘speaks’ directly to its reader or addressee as in a dialogue. This kind of communication in religious narratives bears similarity to the concept of interpellation in ‘discourse psychology,’ where the receiver is hailed or summoned by the narrative or discourse. In condensed form, it addresses the receiver with a ‘Hey you!’ and then the contents of the message, e.g. ‘reform,’ ‘rejoice,’ or ‘repent.’ Most religious narrative(s) have explicit social functions focusing on behavior, and so religious narratives are often moralizing, instructive, normative, and prescriptive. Religious narrative(s) and discourse(s) encode normative cognition in members of the group according to the tradition.

When religious narratives or discourse appear as plainly descriptive, it is often in order to set the stage for a normative message. For instance, if the world is being described as a miserable place, this then makes room for another message that glorifies a different world to be achieved by changes in mind and behavior. In his studies of myths, Claude Lévi-Strauss stressed these functions of simultaneously separating and uniting the ‘world lived-in’ with the ‘world thought-of’ (Lévi-Strauss 1955 ; 1963 ). Religious narrative and discourse link together the ontologies of the two worlds: one ‘real’ and very difficult to change; the other imagined and ‘wished-for.’ It is noteworthy that many religious narratives carry messages that resemble a doctor’s diagnosis, such as when the Buddha taught the ‘Four Noble Truths’: the truth of suffering; the truth of the cause of the suffering; the truth of the end of suffering; and the truth of the path (to end the suffering). This model form of narrative may be termed the ‘prophetic model’—it is the kind of message that all prophets and reformers convey. Once such messages have been adopted, then change must be avoided and the modes of religious communication tend toward ‘auto-communication,’ that is, repeating and confirming the same messages continually. ‘Auto-communication’ introduces no new meaning because the important dimension is the confirmation of what is already known and the ultimate sacrality of existing meaning.

Importance of Religious Narratives in the Formation and Maintenance of Religious Worlds

In religion, the fundamental importance of narrative derives precisely from the ‘power’ of story to ‘connect things’ in words. All known religions are made of narrative, and so without narratives there would be no religions. The process of ‘putting things into words’ is called narrativization . Myths talk about how and why the world and all that is relevant in it was created. Narratives imbue the present world with meaning and value. Narratives provide identity and perspective, put things in their proper place, and give humans explanations and interpretations of existence, of why they live, act, think, and feel the way they do. Even when ritual participants are unable to present a reasonable narrative of what they do or why they have a specific social institution, they will, minimally, make up stories like ‘this is what we do’ and that may be story enough (e.g. when a priest speaks in a different language). Thus, rituals and institutions are ‘narrate-able’ in many ways when they are provided with references and sources in sacred narratives. Examples range from the many legends about the Buddha, Muslim stories from the biography (Seerah) of the prophet Mohammad, the Exodus narrative in the Hebrew Bible, pious legends about the doings of saints, to Japanese stories of the country’s origin in the ancient collection, Kojiki. Religious world-making narratives often have a ‘from A to B’ shape: the Maori have narratives about their legendary origins in Hawaiki and the Parsi (Zoroastrian) community has its story, Qissa–i Sanjan , about how they fled from Iran and settled in Gujarat, India. Religious narratives are important because they are able to posit imaginary worlds in relation to this present physical world. Whether the narrated world is imagined as a distant past, a displaced present, or a far future, the present is always compared to the narrated world as an exemplary blueprint for what goes on in the present world. Religious narrative plays a crucial role in producing, organizing, and maintaining shared, collective, and imaginary worlds. This is what myths do.

Religious ritual often provides similar functions. In rituals, the overarching religious narratives are often broken down into small units that apply to or are recited in the ritual context and process. To understand the meaning of the bits presented in ritual, the whole story must be familiar to the participant. Through the use of narratives, rituals may be imbued with traditional meanings and intentionality, and so the ‘aboutness’ of a ritual can be secured by the narrative anchoring of the event. Narratives permit a multitude of transformations of meaning such as decoupling ritual imitative behavior from actual events, thus playing out alternative and imagined scenarios. ‘Anything is possible’ in ritual where roles can be inverted or substituted: patients and instruments may act as agents etc. Narrative changes non-instrumental ritual actions into the ritual play with order, efficacy, action representations, temporality, and perspectives ( Jensen 2014 , 95–131).

Diverging scholarly views of ‘religious narrative’ not only depend upon definitions of narrative but they will necessarily also involve and draw on theories of religion (see Stausberg/Engler, “Theories of Religion,” this volume) in any assessment of the character and function of narrative. According to whether theories of religion emphasize a social, cultural, individual, or collective dimension, they will accordingly emphasize different but compatible dimensions of religious narratives, dimensions that correspond to what is being highlighted by the theory. For instance, whoever works from a theory of religion that stresses the functions of religion in emotion regulation or political hegemony will most likely study similar dimensions in the religious narratives, the theory in question being responsible for what emerges as the core thematic material. The foci of narrative analyses are always theoretically determined, and it is evident that even a simple or ‘innocent’ interest also involves a specific perspective for hearing, reading, and interpreting narrative. Apologetic and deconstructive interpretations may have directly opposing ideas of interpreting narratives. In modern and postmodern analyses of religious narrative(s), there is often a perceptible trace of a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’; that is, religious narratives are not taken at face value, but considered to be loaded with social, political, or economic interests. Also, the same narratives can be used very differently, in different contexts and discourses, so that narratives that signify salvation for some could mean domination, persecution, and perhaps even extinction for others. These cultural, social, and political dimensions only serve to underscore the importance of narrative in human life.

a manner of speaking about a subject, e.g. the human body, related to (e.g.) health, nutrition, appearance, or biology.

can be either (a) grammatical mode, such as indicative, subjunctive, and imperative, or (b) modality of being: real, virtual, prohibited, wished-for, etc.

story or account of connected events, mostly with a specific plot.

the development of the individual from new-born to adult.

the evolution of the human species in general.

the general theory and study of signs and symbols, how they are produced and organized.

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Religion Role in Douglass Narrative Story Expository Essay

Frederick Douglass was a slave in America where there were a lot of inequalities between the slaveholders and the slaves. Slaves were mistreated in terms of being whipped, not given enough to eat, poor resting conditions as their bed was just the floor; generally slaves hardly received the basic needs from their masters.

Both parties happened to believe and claim to practice the same religion- Christianity. One fails to understand why the inequalities and yet they both practiced the same faith. Religion therefore as presented in Douglass narrative story serves two roles; basically the symbolic functions and the narrative functions. This discussion therefore is inclusive of role played by religion in depth as the Christianity of the white south contrast to that of the black slave.

To start with, religion has been used to justify the suffering of the black slaves. The religious slaveholders oppressed the slaves as they argued that God admitted for the slave existence when He cursed Ham. This is found in the Christian teachings as they used the bible as their guide.

According to the scripture in the book of Genesis chapter 9 verses 24, Ham was cursed by the father Noah after he had seen the nakedness of his father and failed to cover him but instead told it to his brothers. Ham was then cursed into the bondage of slavery thus the whites believed that they were right in the practice of slavery (Douglass 11).

According to the Christian teachings, God gave the masters power to discipline their servants if they failed to do as they were commanded. This is well illustrated when a crippled woman received a severe whip when she failed to do as she was commanded by her master. In these two instances and many others, the teachings from the bible were used to the exercise of more cruel acts.

Douglass however does not blame the religiosity which is on the Christian teachings in the slavery acts which they faced, but he instead gives thanks to God with the full knowledge that the religion where he practiced Christianity was based on good morals (Douglass 32). Douglass and other slaves practice of Christianity contrasts with the Christianity that is practiced by the slaveholders.

The Christianity practiced by the black slaves is represented as the Christianity that is inexistence of purity, complete in peace in it, and also it serves as the full representation of the nature of Christ Himself and thus carrying out the activities in unity. Unity was present when Douglass held on the good spirit of letting his fellow slaves learn how to read and even offering his time to teach them.

Slaves’ Christianity does not support any corrupt deals, oppression through the act of slave holding or cruelty but instead, slaves continually believe and pray to God for their redemption. It is also against women whipping and any other form of whipping as they present a pure Christianity. Christianity is therefore a saving grace to slaves (Douglass 18).

On the other hand, Christianity represented by the slaveholders who were the whites from the south, is a hypocritical kind of Christianity. They offer prayers to God, hold Christians activities like preaching and keeping the Sabbath. They at the same time honor the Christmas period where Christians cerebrates the birth of their Lord Jesus Christ and the New Year as a sigh of appreciating God for His mercies to have them see the New Year.

One would automatically think that out of these Christian practices, they would at least show some good spirit in their deeds but instead they continue to oppress slaves. They even fail to give them enough food where they themselves have plenty to eat. According to Christian teachings, every person should actually love his or her neighbor and treat her of him in the best way possible. This is however not the case with the whites south.

The white slave holders have all through misused the Christianity institution as they take it for their advantages in gaining their selfish gains. One fails to understand why they do misrepresent Christianity. For instance, they used to give the slaves holidays during the Christmas and the New Year period.

One might assume that they did it out of good spirit so that slaves could have at least some time to rest. In fact this is however not right as the slave holders in their canning ways, planned on how slaves could get more drunk during this period where Christianity do not advocate drunkenness. They did this through betting with the slaves so as they could compete on who was able to drink a lot of whisky and still remain in soberness for a longer period. All what they enjoyed in, was to see slaves misuse what they had saved.

Douglass has spent much of his writing illustrating much on the main religion which is Christianity. He does this to show how much slavery and Christianity at any time can not be said to be compatible.

Christianity cannot be inexistence wherever slavery is present as slavery is an act that promotes inequalities in the human being treatment and lack of humanity. Religiosity portrayed in Christianity advocate for love and thus wherever slavery is practiced, this virtue is absent. The fact is Christianity religion is highly affected by the presence of slavery.

There is therefore a direct opposite kinds of life as what is illustrated in the Douglass writing that are lived by the both parties: slaves and their masters in terms of social life and the practical part of it, thus bringing out some differences in their spiritual lives. He therefore uses the juxtaposition of Christianity in the emphasis that there can still be a true Christianity rather than the representation of the hypocritical one (Douglass 18).

In conclusion, it is clearly evidenced that religion which is presented in the form of Christianity plays a very significant role in the entire Douglass story. It is illustrated as a means of serving individual’s need, monetary aspects, and political values just for a group portion and not to the liberty of all.

All these facts do not demoralize Douglass and his colleagues who were slaves in the belief concerning Christianity. In fact, they considered searching the will and the knowledge of God through reading instead of performing other acts like drinking of whisky which would on the other hand displease God.

They wanted just to be different rather than the act of calling themselves Christians and yet they do against God’s will. Christianity religion is therefore presented by the slaveholders as their reverence when defending their cruel acts where as to the slaves; it is the only source of consolation especially unto their souls. In difficult times, they believed God for His mercies and deliverance.

Works Cited

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. New York: Prestwick House Inc, 2005.

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IvyPanda. (2021, August 6). Religion Role in Douglass Narrative Story. https://ivypanda.com/essays/religion-role-in-douglass-narrative-story/

"Religion Role in Douglass Narrative Story." IvyPanda , 6 Aug. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/religion-role-in-douglass-narrative-story/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Religion Role in Douglass Narrative Story'. 6 August.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Religion Role in Douglass Narrative Story." August 6, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/religion-role-in-douglass-narrative-story/.

1. IvyPanda . "Religion Role in Douglass Narrative Story." August 6, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/religion-role-in-douglass-narrative-story/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Religion Role in Douglass Narrative Story." August 6, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/religion-role-in-douglass-narrative-story/.

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Narrative philosophy of religion: apologetic and pluralistic orientations

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Published: 16 October 2019
Volume 88 , pages 5–21, ( 2020 )

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Recent decades have witnessed a growing interest in narrative both in certain areas of philosophy and in the study of religion. The philosophy of religion has not itself been at the forefront of this narrative turn, but exceptions exist—most notably Eleonore Stump’s work on biblical stories and the problem of suffering. Characterizing Stump’s approach as an apologetic orientation, this article contrasts it with pluralistic orientations that, rather than seeking to defend religious faith, are concerned with doing conceptual justice to the range of possible human perspectives, both religious and nonreligious. By discussing various examples, the article makes a case for narrative philosophy of religion, especially in its pluralistic form.

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From the 1980s and 1990s onwards, certain areas of philosophical inquiry have been strongly invigorated by a turn to narrative art—including novels, plays and films—and to the concept of narrativity more generally. Discussion of narrative art, especially great works of literature, has had a particular impact upon moral philosophy, with figures such as Stanley Cavell, Richard Eldridge and Martha Nussbaum being among the pioneers in this field. Footnote 1 More recently, other philosophers have engaged with literature and with film in innovative ways, reflecting upon how narrative fiction can poignantly represent certain difficulties that confront us in our lives—difficulties to which standard forms of philosophy often fail to do justice because of a greater concern with building arguments that have generalizable conclusions than with bringing out the messy complexities of everyday experiences. Footnote 2 Also notable has been the turn to narrativity in the philosophy of personhood by those who argue “that the self needs to be understood in terms of narrative” (Rudd 2012 , 1). Footnote 3

In the broad field of the study of religion, narrative has featured most prominently in Christian theology, with some theologians contending that religious faith has a deeply narrative structure—that “[s]tories do not merely decorate or illustrate, but provide the substance of faith” (Tilley 1985 , xvii), for it is through the telling of stories that the distinctively human story can “be bound in with that of God and Jesus” (Mauz 2009 , 262). Footnote 4 The philosophy of religion, by contrast, has been somewhat slow to pick up on the significance of narrative. Rare exceptions include Stewart Sutherland’s insightful examination of the themes of atheism and faith in relation to Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (Sutherland 1977 ) and two collections of essays by D. Z. Phillips ( 1982 , 2006 ). A more influential intervention has been Eleonore Stump’s major study of biblical narratives as a vehicle for thinking through the problem of suffering (Stump 2010 )—a study that has in turn elicited numerous responses, both critical and complimentary. Footnote 5 What all these works demonstrate is the promising potential of a turn to narrative in the philosophy of religion.

The purpose of the present article is twofold. One of its aims is to establish not that the turn to narrative is necessarily superior to other ways of engaging in the philosophy of religion, but that it constitutes a coherent and productive approach, or cluster of approaches, capable of yielding richer and more nuanced understandings of religious possibilities than is often supplied by other methods. In connection with this aim, I shall, for the most part, be using the phrase “narrative philosophy of religion” to identify the type of approach in which I am interested. What I mean by this phrase is not—or, at any rate, not primarily—a type of philosophy that takes a narrative form itself rather than the kind of more recognizably argumentative form that is typical of philosophical essays and monographs. There have, of course, been important philosophers who have authored literary works that are rightly celebrated for their philosophical content: figures such as Voltaire, de Beauvoir, Camus and Sartre immediately come to mind. And elsewhere I have argued that certain literary works that were not composed by philosophers can nevertheless be regarded as participating in philosophy of religion, broadly construed (Burley 2017 ). In this article, however, what I mean to designate by the phrase “narrative philosophy of religion” is the type of philosophical inquiry into religion that, without becoming a work of narrative art itself, takes seriously the contribution of narrative sources to our philosophical understanding of religion and, in the course of developing a philosophical argument, engages with such sources in a sustained manner rather than, at most, citing them only cursorily as mere decoration.

Beyond making a case for narrative philosophy of religion in general, the second aim of this article is to distinguish between two orientations in narrative philosophy of religion. For the most part, I shall refer to these two orientations as apologetic and pluralistic respectively, though in certain instances other terms might serve just as well. What I am calling an apologetic orientation to narrative philosophy of religion is one that sees its principal task as being to defend religion—and most commonly this will be Christianity in particular—from critical philosophical attacks. A primary example is Stump’s aforementioned work on the problem of suffering, for Stump is not interested merely in exploring how this problem is treated in various narrative sources; rather, she wishes to draw upon biblical narratives to inform her argument “that suffering can be redeemed for the sufferer in personal relationship, that heartbreak can be woven into joy through the reciprocity of love” ( 2010 , xix). What I am calling a pluralistic orientation, meanwhile, is one that seeks not to defend either Christianity or any other religious system, but rather to promote a deeper understanding of a plurality of perspectives, both religious and nonreligious. Sutherland and Phillips are among the exemplars of this approach. Although each of them is more knowledgeable about, and more personally interested in, Christianity than in any other religion, they both strive to bring out the intelligibility of multiple points of view without overtly endorsing any of them as the true, or most rational, position to adopt.

While not simply dismissing the apologetic orientation, I emphasize the merits of a pluralistic orientation to narrative, especially as a means of diversifying the range of religious traditions and forms of religiosity that are amenable to being discussed in the philosophy of religion. To this end, in addition to the examples of Sutherland and Phillips, I also include a section on work by the Indologist Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty on Hindu mythology as a philosophical resource. A growing chorus of voices has been calling in recent years for an expansion of philosophy of religion, both methodologically and in terms of subject matter, and it is my contention that a turn towards narrativity is one among other important means of rising to that challenge. What I am calling apologetic and pluralistic orientations, respectively, will each be discussed below. A theme running through the discussion will be conceptions of, or responses to, evil and suffering, for not only is this among the paramount themes in the relevant literature, but it also facilitates a higher degree of comparative analysis across my various examples than would otherwise be the case. First, however, let us consider the more general question of why narrativity might be of philosophical interest at all.

Why narrativity?

Much of what needs to be said in this article about why a narrative approach to philosophy of religion might be a fruitful one to pursue will come out in the discussions of the apologetic and pluralistic orientations that follow. Before coming to those discussions, however, it is worth pausing to register some important observations about narrativity that can be gleaned from other philosophical areas, especially moral philosophy. These observations may help to strengthen the case for taking seriously narrative philosophizing in general, thereby also motivating the case for looking more rigorously at narrative philosophy of religion in particular.

Among the salient motivations for regarding literature, or narrative art more broadly, as being in some sense internal rather than external to philosophy is a twofold conviction in the importance of style. First, there is the conviction that the style or form of a piece of writing “is not separable from philosophical content, but is, itself, a part of content” (Nussbaum 1990 , 3). Second, is the related conviction that, in the case of certain perspectives on human life or the world, these perspectives can be adequately articulated only by means of narrative (ibid., 7). When combined together, these two convictions generate the view that narrative artworks can make valuable contributions to our understanding of what it is to be human, and of what it means to live a good human life, that are not translatable into the dry emotionless prose of standard academic philosophy. Whether the contributions of the narrative artworks in question may then be treated as properly philosophical will, inevitably, depend to a great extent on how capaciously the notion of philosophy is conceptualized. In the case of moral philosophy, or ethics, Nussbaum opts for “the very simple Aristotelian idea that ethics is the search for a specification of the good life for a human being” ( 1990 , 139). She chooses this formulation not arbitrarily but because she considers it “broadly correct” and “sufficiently inclusive to command wide agreement” ( 1990 , 139)—but also because of its potential to encompass what certain works of literary fiction are in the business of doing.

In an essay that is largely sympathetic to Nussbaum’s project, Cora Diamond ( 1983 ) takes as her starting point Nussbaum’s recognition of the need for an expansive conception of moral philosophy if narrative art’s relevance to it is to be acknowledged. For additional conceptual resources, Diamond looks to ideas from Iris Murdoch about the place that morality has in human life. In a contribution to a symposium on “Vision and Choice in Morality,” Murdoch observes that our assessments of other people are not limited to their actions or choices, but extend to “something more elusive which may be called their total vision of life” or, in another metaphor, “the texture of a man’s being” (Murdoch 1956 , 39). While noting that it is the metaphor of vision that tends to be uppermost in Murdoch’s own philosophical work, Diamond finds the term “texture of being” more evocative of what is at issue in moral philosophy’s relation to literature (Diamond 1983 , 162). This is the case because when we pay close attention to what many novelists offer, we see not only that it is precisely what might be termed an account of the “texture of being” of particular human lives, but also that it is offered “out of an interest we may properly call moral” (ibid.). Extending Murdoch’s point, Diamond adds that it need not be only the lives of individual people to which moral reflection is directed, but also “forms of social life” (163). In passing, we might mention that these could include forms of life that are distinctly religious.

It is beyond the scope of my own discussion to enter into the debate over which conception of moral philosophy ought to be preferred. The crucial point for our present purposes is that the question of what, if anything, literature or other narrative art has to contribute to moral philosophy is inseparable from the question of what moral philosophy is (or ought to be). Those who operate with a narrow conception—one which views moral philosophy’s task primarily in terms of questions about the permissibility, impermissibility or obligatoriness of certain types of action—are apt to see narratives as relevant only insofar as they can furnish “evidence” in support of or against general action-guiding principles (see Raphael 1983 , 1). Those who are favourable to broader conceptions, meanwhile, will tend to be more sympathetic to the view that, beyond merely supplying examples or counterexamples, narrative art can itself be—to invoke a phrase from Cavell—“in the condition of philosophy” (Cavell 1979 , 14; see also Mulhall 2016 , 85, 88).

Thus, what philosophy has to gain from a turn to narrative inevitably remains contested. But the fact that the turn itself facilitates a deepening of the argument over what philosophy is, or what its possibilities are, speaks in favour of taking the turn seriously. What those who recommend an expansive conception of philosophy often appreciate most about narrative sources is their ability to draw to our attention the details of particular characters and situations—details that are routinely glossed over in the broad-brushed theoretical claims of mainstream philosophy. By refusing to simplify the complexities of the everyday, and by striving to bring those complexities to life in vivid description, narrative art can heighten our awareness of certain features of human existence—its “texture of being”—that are otherwise readily missed or ignored. This, at any rate, is among the signal benefits that many philosophers see in narrative materials: the affordance of richly contextualized scenarios that invite cognitive, imaginative and emotional involvement from the audience, as opposed to thinly formulated arguments that are forced to traffic in simplifications by virtue of the high level of generality that they attempt to achieve. With these points in view, we are now in a position to examine different ways in which narrative sources have been engaged with in the philosophy of religion.

An apologetic orientation to narrative philosophy of religion

Narrative philosophy of religion with an apologetic orientation has much in common with narrative theology. Both enterprises appeal to religious stories, principally in the form of biblical scripture, to support the viability of faith in the face of “the challenges of Enlightenment thinkers to the cognitive plausibility of Christian doctrine” (Oakes 1992 , 38), and central among these is the challenge to the belief in a God of love that results from the pervasiveness of evil and suffering in the world. Eleonore Stump situates her major work, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering ( 2010 ), within the field of philosophy of religion, though it is no less an attempt at Christian apologetics than are the numerous products of narrative theologians.

Early on in her project, Stump ventures an incisive critique of much of what passes for philosophy of religion in the analytic tradition. While recognizing its virtues of argumentative rigour and logical precision, Stump cautiously concurs with those who complain of the “aridity” and “narrowness” typified by this style of philosophizing ( 2010 , 23). A particular weakness that Stump highlights, citing Bernard Williams as a critical ally in this regard, is the apparent inability of many analytic philosophers to do justice in their discussions to the intricacies of interpersonal encounters and relationships. Instead of invoking “complex cases drawn from real life or from the world’s great literature,” Stump charges, such philosophers typically make do with under-described thought-experiments featuring perfunctorily sketched characters (with generic names such as “Smith,” “Jones,” etc.) ( 2010 , 25). To overcome these deficiencies, Stump proposes a marriage between standard methods of analytic philosophy on the one hand and “the study of narrative” on the other (ibid.). Articulating this marriage in terms of a union between two modes of knowledge, she designates these modes “Dominican” and “Franciscan” respectively (after the Catholic religious orders of those names).

In Stump’s vocabulary, Dominican knowledge is what is commonly referred to in philosophical parlance as propositional knowledge or “knowledge that ” (i.e. knowledge that such-and-such is the case); it is a type of knowledge that is acquirable via the methods of analytic philosophy. Franciscan knowledge, meanwhile, is gained by acquaintance, and among its varieties is knowledge of persons. Characterizing this latter knowledge as “direct, intuitive, non-propositional,” Stump adds that, though normally enabled by direct acquaintance with a person, it “can also be transmitted to a greater or lesser extent by stories” (Stump 2012 , 199). Stump’s central claim concerning biblical narratives is, then, that these provide the attentive reader with Franciscan knowledge both of the characters in the story and of the lifeworld they inhabit, much as visiting a foreign country facilitates knowledge of its people and places ( 2012 , 198). For Stump’s purposes, the crucial consequence of this is that the insight gained into the world of the narrative enables one to understand how the suffering of certain characters is redeemed: it is redeemed on account of its engendering a deepened relationship with God on the part of the characters in question. Moreover, it is in “the details of the narrative of a life” that we learn how suffering can, at least in some circumstances, be received “as a gift” ( 2010 , xviii).

Stump’s exposition and analysis of four biblical stories is too extensive and elaborate to be discussed in detail here. In order to explicate the contrast that I wish to make between apologetic and pluralistic narrative philosophizing, I shall focus on her treatment of one biblical narrative, the story of Job; in doing so, I borrow a line of criticism from Wes Morriston.

In her discussion of the Book of Job, Stump is careful to acknowledge that “interpretations of texts can invite one to see the text in a certain light, but they cannot compel assent as philosophical arguments are meant to try to do” ( 2010 , 178). Nevertheless, the light in which Stump invites us to see the story of Job is liable to strike many readers as excessively one-sided in its sanguinity. Focusing especially on the passages in which God is portrayed as speaking directly to Job, Stump maintains that these speeches “suggest that God’s relationship to all his creatures is personal, intimate, and parental” (191). Even in the difficult case of a passage about female ostriches, which are described as incompetent mothers who forget that leaving their eggs on the ground could result in the eggs’ being trampled by wild animals, Stump discerns a “loving” and “tender” insinuation. There is tenderness here, Stump opines, because it is God who reminds the ostrich and safeguards the eggs that she “so forgetfully left vulnerable” (189). If we read the biblical passage as a whole, however, we see that the ostrich is described as dealing “cruelly with her young, as if they were not hers,” and as lacking fear because God has deprived her of wisdom and understanding (Job 39:16–18). Footnote 6 It is hard to see how Stump’s insistence on God’s parental tenderness could be made to fit with such descriptions.

Similarly, when God asks Job rhetorically who it is that “provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God, and wander about for lack of food” (Job 38:41), Stump zeros in on the phrase “cry to God” as exemplifying how intimate the relationship is between God and the animals he has created (Stump 2010 , 189). As Morriston points out, however, the feeding of young ravens—in cases when they are fed at all—is part of a broader context in which prey animals are killed by predators, since the ravens scavenge from the carcasses that the predators leave behind (Morriston 2017 , 233). The natural world, as depicted in the Book of Job, is a place of violence and death at least as much as it is one of nurturing love and benevolence, and yet Stump downplays the violence and accentuates what she perceives as the caring relationship in which God stands to his creatures. Morriston thus regards Stump as reading the text through the filter of her own assumptions concerning God’s providential plan and its portrayal in the Bible rather than as making a genuine effort to do justice to the narrative itself ( 2017 , 229).

Morriston’s critique of Stump’s idealized and romanticized interpretation of God’s speeches, and of other aspects of the story of Job, is well taken. By exaggerating the extent to which God is depicted as a loving parent in the story, Stump presents a one-sided construal that, in the absence of a counterbalancing reading such as Morriston’s, risks obscuring the variety of interpretations to which the text is amenable. While there is nothing inherently wrong with propounding a partisan interpretation of a narrative source, it is essential that readers of the interpretation remain alert to the interpreter’s agenda, which in Stump’s case is decidedly apologetic and theodicean.

Before moving on to consider a pluralistic narrative orientation, it will be instructive to note a deep tension in the book of Stump’s that we have been examining. The tension concerns Stump’s attitude towards discussing the Holocaust or Shoah in the philosophy of religion. As important background for pinpointing the tension, two elements of Stump’s book may be mentioned. First is the fact that she chooses as the book’s incipit an anonymous poem, found on a wall at the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp, that declares grace and wonder to be “hard to see, / hard to embrace, for / those compelled to / wander in darkness” (quoted in Stump 2010 , xx). Footnote 7 It is from the poem’s final line that her book’s title, Wandering in Darkness , is derived. Second is Stump’s assertion that the Holocaust is among the evils that “are not fit subjects for the academic exploration of the problem of evil,” for to treat it “as one more example or counter-example in academic disputation” would be “unspeakably awful” ( 2010 , 16). The tension that interests me is not, strictly, between Stump’s use of the poem from Auschwitz and her refusal to discuss the Holocaust directly, since it is one thing to pay homage to victims of the Holocaust in an epigraph and another to dwell upon the terrible details of their suffering as part of one’s argument. The tension, rather, is between, on the one hand, Stump’s apparent recognition that there is something baffling about the horror of the Holocaust—a horror that renders attempts to incorporate it into philosophical discourse inadequate at best and downright offensive at worst—and, on the other hand, the claim of her book as a whole to have supplied a response, by means of interpretations of biblical narratives, to every form of suffering there is.

While acknowledging that instances of suffering more horrendous than those recounted in the biblical stories she has discussed occurred during both the Holocaust and the era of American slavery, Stump maintains that, considered together, the four stories with which she deals—namely, those of Job, Samson, Abraham, and Mary of Bethany—afford a comprehensive typology among which “[a]ll modes of suffering” may be found, “even if many of its species are missing” ( 2010 , 375). Given that she regards her overall argument as amounting to a “defense”—in the technical philosophical sense of an account that shows, not the truth of, but the coherence of the claim that God has reasons for allowing suffering that are “morally sufficient” to “defeat” the negative value of the suffering itself (see Stump 2010 , 13)—the contention Stump is making on behalf of her project becomes puzzling. The contention seems to be that, without having discussed the Holocaust or American slavery directly, a defence has nevertheless been provided of how the “modes” of suffering endured by victims of those, and other, dreadful historical events could be consistent with the propitious designs of a God of love. If this is not a fair summary of the claim Stump is making, then it becomes unclear how the argument of her book amounts to a defence at all, for if paradigms of extreme suffering such as those experienced by victims of slavery or the Holocaust are to be left aside (on the grounds that discussing them in this context would be “unspeakably awful”), then in what sense has a defence that “defeats the badness of suffering” ( 2010 , 13) been supplied?

The difficulty of understanding the intended scope of Stump’s argument derives from a clash between her totalizing apologetic ambition and her recognition that certain “species” of suffering are simply not appropriate subjects of philosophical “explanation” or “defense.” What I have also contended in this section is that an apologetic orientation to narrative philosophy of religion encourages a one-sided interpretive approach. This in itself need not be problematic, provided it is balanced by readers’ having access to alternative interpretations of the relevant narrative sources. What a pluralistic orientation actively fosters, however, is precisely such a two-sided, or multisided, approach, thereby encouraging a richer appreciation of interpretive possibilities. Insofar, then, as one values an appreciation of this sort, one has a reason for approving of a pluralistic orientation, which I shall now elaborate in relation first to Sutherland, second to Phillips, and third to O’Flaherty.

Pluralistic narrative philosophy of religion 1: Stewart Sutherland on Dostoevsky

The publication of Sutherland’s that is most pertinent in this context is his Atheism and the Rejection of God: Contemporary Philosophy and “The Brothers Karamazov” ( 1977 ), in which he analyses how Dostoevsky’s final novel vividly depicts, first, a compelling form of atheism in the character of Ivan Karamazov, and second, the deeply religious form of life both of Ivan’s younger brother Alyosha and of Alyosha’s mentor, the elder monk Father Zossima. Like Stump, Sutherland is keen to show that a story can advance a perceptive account of the place that suffering has in human lives and of how individuals respond to the existence of suffering in the world—an account that cannot readily be paraphrased in the more austere prose of standard philosophical exposition. Unlike Stump, however, Sutherland is not trying to advocate for one particular attitude to suffering, an attitude that views the negative value of suffering as being outweighed by the closeness of the relationship with God that it can expedite. Rather, Sutherland’s purpose is to demonstrate that divergent responses to the existence of suffering can each be viable, and that Dostoevsky himself ensures that his novel does justice to the competing responses, laying them before the reader without didactically commending one and denigrating the other. If readers are to learn anything from the novel, it is that a plurality of responses to the world, a plurality of ways of being human, can make sense and exhibit a high degree of moral seriousness without its being the case that we can decide between them on the basis of a knockdown philosophical argument.

Through the character of Ivan Karamazov, Dostoevsky voices the strongest conceivable moral objection to the claim that the world is overseen and cared for by a God of love. That objection consists in the incontrovertible observation that we inhabit a world in which the most terrible atrocities occur, including the torture and agonizing deaths of children. By describing such incidents, Ivan—and hence Dostoevsky—refuses to allow the defender of religion to hide from the grisly reality by taking refuge in the conjectures of theoretical discourse. In this respect, the tools of narrative are deployed to the end of starkly confronting Christian faith with its greatest challenge, and in the person of Ivan we are shown someone who, out of a professed “love for humanity,” feels compelled to reject any “entrance ticket” into a world where obscenities such as the torture of children are forgiven (Dostoyevsky 1900 [1880], 291). (In passing, we might note that Stump, in contrast to Dostoevsky’s Ivan, restricts her deliberations to the suffering “of adult human beings who are mentally fully functional” ( 2010 , 4), thereby again casting doubt upon her claim to have covered all the “modes” of suffering there are.)

Having articulated the case against faith in a God of love and mercy, Dostoevsky proceeds, in Book 6 of the novel, to develop an “answer to all those atheistical propositions” in the form not of a “point by point” riposte, but of “an artistic picture” (Dostoevsky, in Coulson 1962 , 224). As Sutherland puts it, Dostoevsky imagines (and thus enables his readers to imagine) a form of life in which the distinctively Christian vocabulary—comprising concepts such as those of God, worship, eternal life, miracles, prayer and so on—can be seen to retain a profound meaning and vivacity for Christian believers, notwithstanding the extent to which it has been harangued by Ivan in terms that many readers are apt to find morally persuasive (see Sutherland 1977 , 86–87). This resurrection, as it were, of Christian discourse is performed through Dostoevsky’s portrayal of the sincere religious lives of Father Zossima and his disciple Alyosha.

As Sutherland sees it, and as I have concurred elsewhere (Burley 2017 , 116), the issue of whether Dostoevsky’s novel is successful in presenting a possibility of religious sense—a possible way of living out a Christian life—does not require that it convince anyone of the truth of Christian doctrine. Sutherland follows Mikhail Bakhtin in regarding The Brothers Karamazov as a “polyphonic” novel, in which a “plurality of independent … voices” are brought together without being fused into one (Bakhtin 1984 , 6). The plurality remains undiluted, for “No single vision could encompass all that Dostoevsky refused to omit” (Sutherland 1977 , 140).

Clearly, much more could be said both about the work of Dostoevsky himself and about the ways in which Sutherland explicates that work in order to make a case for its philosophical value. For my purposes here, however, enough has been said to indicate how the novel, and what Sutherland makes of it, may be treated as instances of pluralistic narrative philosophy of religion. The orientation is pluralistic inasmuch as it seeks to elucidate more than one perspective, or more than one “texture of being” (to borrow the phrase that Diamond adapts from Murdoch), as opposed to building a one-sided defence of a religious ideology. To illustrate the orientation further, I turn now to work by D. Z. Phillips.

Pluralistic narrative philosophy of religion 2: D. Z. Phillips on Elie Wiesel

A characteristic of Phillips’s philosophical work in general is its emphasis on “possibilities of sense” or “possibilities of meaning”—the clarification of possible forms of human life rather than the attempt to establish the superiority of any one of them. This emphasis carries over into his work in the philosophy of religion, where he strives to “discuss possibilities of religious sense, often ignored by contemporary advocates and critics of religion” (2006, xi). When selecting narrative sources as his focus, Phillips prioritizes those that, by grappling with the gritty realities of people’s impulses, emotions and commitments, tend to avoid “the distortions of human suffering so often found in religious apologetics” (ibid.). Especially poignant in this connection is Phillips’s treatment of Elie Wiesel’s harrowing autobiographical accounts of his experiences as a teenage Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps towards the end of the Second World War.

We might note immediately that Phillips shared Eleonore Stump’s revulsion at the thought of treating the Holocaust, or any other occurrence of extreme human suffering, “as one more example or counter-example in academic disputation on the problem of evil” (Stump 2010 , 16, quoted earlier). Phillips frequently rails against the type of instrumentalist thinking of theodicists who suppose that finding a religious “explanation” of the Holocaust is simply a matter of establishing what Richard Swinburne (among others) describes as “the greater good which allowing … such horrible things to occur makes possible” (Swinburne 1998 , 107), such as the opportunities for displaying bravery, sympathy and other virtues (ibid., 151). Both Phillips and Stump would agree that even entering into such cost-benefit analyses is, as Phillips puts it, already to have travelled too far along a road “we shouldn’t have turned into in the first place” ( 2004 , 71). But Phillips discovered more subtle ways of reflecting philosophically on the implications for religious faith of immense human tragedies, including the Holocaust, and Wiesel’s memoirs are among the sources that facilitated those reflections.

Like Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s novel, Wiesel refuses to romanticize the horrors of extreme suffering; he is not afraid to point out the extent to which torture and humiliation can crush a person’s spirit and provoke debased behaviour. He recounts, for instance, how, on a long forced March from one concentration camp to another, the son of an elderly rabbi hurried ahead of his father, hoping thereby “to free himself of a burden that could diminish his own chance for survival” (Wiesel 2006 , 91), and how, when packed into cattle wagons, the inmates would fight among themselves over scraps of bread thrown to them by passers-by, sometimes killing even members of their own family in the process (101). These are experiences that, for Wiesel and for many of his fellow prisoners, far from engendering a closer relationship with God, destroyed their faith. This is a fact that Phillips recognizes: that encounters with evil can, and often do, obliterate a person’s ability to believe and trust in God, and it is through the testimony of witnesses such as Wiesel that we are enabled all too vividly to understand that response. Yet Phillips also wishes to acknowledge that this is not always the case. For some victims of catastrophic horrors, faith is retained or even strengthened. To make the point, Phillips cites a prayer found next to the body of a dead child at the Ravensbrück camp: “And may the love that we have known be their forgiveness” (quoted in Phillips 2004 , 269). Footnote 8 The purpose of citing such a prayer is not to furnish evidence in support of an argument that this is how religious believers ought to respond to brutal oppression; it is to indicate that this response is possible. A believer in God might regard such faith as a gift of grace. For the pluralistic philosopher of religion, it may indeed be something to marvel at—as a human possibility—but it remains one possibility among others.

In the examples I have so far adumbrated, from Sutherland on Dostoevsky and from Phillips on Wiesel, we see ways in which narrative sources, whether novelistic or autobiographical, may assist philosophical reflection upon aspects of faith, and upon the loss or rejection thereof, in broadly Christian or Jewish contexts. It is also important to the case I am making in favour of a pluralistic orientation to narrative philosophy of religion that at least one example be given of how this orientation can help to widen the range of topics discussed in philosophy of religion beyond the usual domain of “theism” construed in Christian-centric or, at most, in loosely Abrahamic terms. Phillips’s own work on non-Abrahamic religions tends to draw more upon cultural anthropological sources than on narrative ones (see esp. Phillips 2001 ), so in the next section I instead look to work by the Indologist Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty on the concept of evil in relation to Hindu mythological stories.

Pluralistic narrative philosophy of religion 3: evil and suffering in Hindu mythology

Philosophy of religion as it is practised in Western academic settings has struggled to find ways of overcoming the constraints of a relatively fixed canon of topics that revolve around the rationality of a “classical theistic” conception of God. The so-called problem of evil as it is standardly formulated is one of those topics, presupposing, as it does, that God is to be conceived of as, among other things, omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. One of the implications of a turn to narrative is that the focus is shifted—away from forms of argumentation that involve marshalling premises in support of a conclusion that can be stated as a concise proposition, and towards more nuanced accounts of the lived experience of determinate characters, whose responses to suffering may help to open our minds and imaginations to human possibilities we had previously neglected or undervalued. More than this, however, the turn to narrative can also provide a route into the examination of modes of religiosity beyond the usual repertoire of Western philosophical preoccupations. Exemplary of this potential is much of Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty’s work, including her book The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology ( 1976 ). Footnote 9

By using, as a resource for reflecting upon the concept of evil, the variegated body of narrative texts deriving from multiple Hindu (and also some Buddhist and Jain) traditions, O’Flaherty demonstrates how philosophical ideas may be found outside of what are normally treated as properly philosophical works. Her remark that “scholars have overlooked the problem of evil in Indian thought because they have sought it in philosophy rather than in mythology” ( 1976 , 7) might thus also be regarded as a plea to revise the assumption that a sharp distinction obtains between the philosophical and the mythological, whether in Indian or in other cultural traditions.

Once the turn to mythology is made, there comes into view a wealth of material—indeed, a veritable “ embarras de richesse ” ( 1976 , 10)—relevant to the concept of evil and to closely related themes. One of the most important findings of O’Flaherty’s research is, precisely, that evil and suffering have been thought about in numerous ways over the long course of Indian religious, philosophical and cultural history. Unsurprisingly, one of the most salient of these ways is to invoke the doctrine of karma and rebirth, according to which there is, built into the structure of the universe, a retributive function that generates, either in this life or in some future reincarnation, unpleasant experiences or circumstances for those who breach the code of right action and pleasant experiences or advantageous circumstances for those who fulfil their duties. What sustained attention to the mythological literature reveals, however, is that this doctrine of retributive karma has often been supplemented by or even subordinated to other conceptions of the roots of evil, such as the notion of malevolent demons who repeatedly try to supplant the benign gods as rulers of the universe or the further notion of an ultimately supreme deity who incorporates evil into the divine plan for reasons known only to the deity himself or herself—or for no specific reason at all. To give even a brief summary of all the mythic themes that O’Flaherty examines is beyond the scope of my present discussion. As an illustrative example, however, I shall here outline an aspect of how gender-related and sexual ethical values can be expressed through mythic narratives concerning the origin of evil and sin.

In this connection, O’Flaherty reminds us how Indian myths are typically set within a comprehensive cosmological framework, involving cyclical cosmic ages that last for thousands of years each. As one age gives way to the next, there is a continuous degeneration of morality and a corresponding decline in lifespan and general well-being. Eventually, a cosmic collapse or conflagration or inundation occurs, followed by a period of quiescence and then a renewal of the golden age, at which point the serial degeneration begins again. Articulations of sexual ethics are embedded in these cosmological narratives by the association of different methods of reproduction with the successive cosmic ages: originally, “people were born by imagination,” but then different forms of sexual intercourse became necessary (O’Flaherty 1976 , 27). In one version of this type of myth, enunciated in the Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa ( c . third to ninth centuries CE) and the Kūrma Purāṇa ( c . eighth century CE), it is said that procreation originally happened without the need for women to menstruate; at that time, people lived long, fulfilling and virtuous lives “without desire” and “without any affliction”; then, as an insidious physical and moral corruption spread, “lustful passion arose, and because of their passion women began to menstruate, and they conceived again and again”; greediness escalated, trees died because they had been “fenced in,” hunger increased and cities had to be built to house the excessively growing populace (O’Flaherty 1976 , 27).

As O’Flaherty brings out in her analysis, stories such as the one just summarized give voice to the view, derived from ascetic strands of ancient Brahmanical orthodoxy, that the production of offspring is to be kept separate from sexual passion. Menstruation, often symbolic both of female sexuality and of spiritual impurity, is linked through the narrative not only to overpopulation, but also to an ensuing scarcity of food and a move from rural to urban habitation, replete with its stresses and strains (ibid., 28). Building upon O’Flaherty’s exposition and interpretation, we might add that mythic narratives of this sort contribute not so much to the presentation of philosophical arguments for a certain origin of sin or suffering, as to the construction of an elaborate worldview, of which distinctive values and attitudes are in large part constitutive. In this case, the values and attitudes are concerned especially with women’s sexuality and with erotic impulses more broadly; in other myths, meanwhile, different features of human existence and its place in the world are apt to be foregrounded. The value of studying such myths in the context of philosophy of religion is not to form, or reinforce, one-sided pictures of Hindu conceptions of womanhood, since a diverse range of representations of women and goddesses is available in Hindu mythology as a whole. Rather, it is, again, to discover a point of entry into religiously inflected ways of thinking and responding to the world that are not only of intrinsic philosophical interest, but also transcend the standard Western philosophical fixation on narrow conceptions of theism.

Concluding remarks

The preceding three sections have been intended not as an exhaustive exposition of what a pluralistic orientation to narrative philosophy of religion has to offer, but as a selection of poignant examples that illustrate the orientation’s potential. Narrative approaches constitute one among several directions that may productively be pursued by those who wish to diversify the subject matter and methods of philosophy of religion. What I have sought to expose in my discussion is that an apologetic orientation is liable to result in one-sided treatments of the narrative sources. Provided readers have access to alternative interpretations of the sources at issue, this need not be disastrous. But there remains the likelihood that the apologetic proponents’ own readings will be driven by preformed ideological agendas rather than by a sustained willingness to do justice to subtleties and possible ambivalences within the texts.

A pluralistic orientation is, by its nature, internally variegated. That is why I have used the term “orientation”—to indicate that it is something broader than a strict method directed towards a single goal. Its pluralizing tendency facilitates a deepened appreciation, on the part of the reader, of plurality among the religious beliefs, practices or forms of life themselves, though there is no neatly summarizable formula for how that deepened appreciation is achieved. When prosecuted effectively, however, a pluralistic narrative orientation will amount to far more than a mere retelling or repetition of the stories that are examined. Rather, the stories are invoked and explicated by the philosopher for particular purposes, the principal purpose being to disrupt or call into question any presuppositions held by the reader, or by other philosophers, that prematurely close down the range of possible religious (or nonreligious) responses to the world. That is the critical dimension of a pluralistic narrative approach.

Owing to the pluralistic nature of a pluralistic orientation, I opted in this article to outline some indicative examples instead of constructing an abstract account. Despite the multifariousness of the examples, the fact that each of them is concerned in some way with issues of evil or suffering affords a higher degree of coherence to my comparative analysis than it would otherwise have had. In Sutherland’s engagement with Dostoevsky, we see how a great work of imaginative literature can be discussed in ways that accentuate the work’s philosophical richness—a richness that consists not in portraying a single ideological position, but in giving vivid expression to divergent perspectives on life and the world. By that means, both the novel itself and the philosophical discussion of it are able to participate in a pluralistic analysis of the various textures of human life, elucidating possibilities of sense rather than presuming to know the one correct perspective for everyone to adopt. Meanwhile, the example of Phillips’s appeal to the chilling memoirs of Elie Wiesel illustrates a means by which the horrors of the Holocaust can be brought within the sphere of philosophical reflection upon horrendous evil and suffering, without the need to turn those horrors into mere evidence for an overgeneralizing thesis. As Eleonore Stump, and Phillips himself, recognize, to treat immense human tragedies in that way would be a debasement of philosophy. But what Stump has not obviously noticed is that shying away from any discussion of those tragedies while nonetheless claiming to have supplied a “defense” of every “mode” of suffering, has its own unpalatable, and implausible, implications.

Finally, I offered an example of how a narrative orientation opens the door to religiously relevant sources from diverse cultural traditions. In Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty’s work on Hindu mythology we see a pluralistic sensibility in operation, since she treats the mythological sources not as merely alternative inflections of an underlying monolithic worldview, but as representing “several recognizably different conceptual attitudes to evil” (O’Flaherty 1976 , 11), each of which has a place in Hinduism’s “rich chord of unresolved harmony” (13).

The pluralistic strategies that I have been commending here have nothing, or very little, to do with what has commonly been called “religious pluralism” in the philosophy of religion. When a philosopher such as John Hick, for example, urges his readers to accept his “pluralistic hypothesis,” he is seeking to promote the idea that all religions—or, at any rate, all the “great” ones—subscribe to the same set of ethical values and are, in essence, directed towards the same metaphysical reality. Footnote 10 A pluralistic orientation to narrative, by contrast, places the emphasis on heterogeneity and divergence. Without simply ignoring commonalities where they exist, such an orientation is one that turns to narratives as resources for attending to the details of particular cases rather than always craving to subsume those particularities under a general theory. It is in this spirit of a more radical pluralism that a pluralistic orientation to narrative can make a valuable contribution to an expanded and diversified conception of philosophy of religion. Footnote 11

See, e.g., Cavell ( 2003 [1987]), Eldridge ( 1989 ), Nussbaum ( 1990 ).

Work by Diamond ( 2003 ; reprinted in Cavell et al. 2008 ) and Mulhall ( 2009 ) is especially relevant. On film as a philosophical and ethical medium, see Mulhall ( 2016 ) and Sinnerbrink ( 2016 ).

See especially work by MacIntyre ( 2007 ), Taylor ( 1989 ) and Ricoeur ( 1984 –1988). For critical perspectives, see Strawson ( 2004 ) and Lamarque ( 2007 ).

For an accessible survey of narrative theological approaches up to 1987, see Comstock ( 1987 ). For more recent perspectives, see Ganzevoort et al. ( 2014 ). For a critical view, see Murphy ( 2007 ).

Notable responses include Draper ( 2011 ), Fales ( 2013 ), Efird and Worsley ( 2015 ). See also Stump ( 2012 ).

Revised Standard Version ( Holy Bible 1952 , 471).

Stump derives this English rendering of the poem from Czarnecki ( 1989 , 11).

In a more common translation of the prayer, this line reads “and when they come to judgement let all the fruits which we have borne be their forgiveness” (see, e.g., Appleton 1985 , 112, prayer 367).

From 1989 onwards, Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty has published under the name Wendy Doniger. Besides the book that I discuss here, publications of philosophical interest include O’Flaherty ( 1980 , 1984 ) and Doniger ( 1998 , 1999 ).

See esp. Hick ( 2004 ). For my own critical appraisal of Hick’s purported pluralism, see Burley ( 2018 ).

I am grateful to two anonymous referees, whose comments on a previous draft helped me to clarify my argument.

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A Narrative Essay on Faith

As humans, we have always wanted to believe in something. Ranging from religion to other people, we are always finding something to see as greater than us. This belief can even stretch to only believing in ourselves. Has the way our belief system functions evolved over time? How do we even find something like that out? In order to answer many other cultural enigmas, we turn to a specific century’s media. By reading between the lines, we are able to extract the full story. A period's media shares the culture, values, and morals. Everything is concealed in the words and actions of the stories, especially in literature. Belief began blind, and it has matured into a personal decision based on our own introspect.

So, how has our style of beliefs changed? In Chaucer’s The Cantebury Tales: The Prioresses Tale, we read a perfect example of that period’s blind belief. The story of the boy’s innocence and faith describes the mentality of people from this time. At least, this is how they tried to believe. Flash forward to the current period, we have a plethora of mass media to provide insight on how we form our belief system. The popular 2000’s TV show, Psych, is a prime example of how we form our own personal beliefs. The storyline of Psych follows a long moral: how much do we trust in what we value. Allow us take a look at the beginning of this chain of change, starting with Chaucer’s story.

The Prioresses Tale begins by setting the scene of the traveling troop. The Prioress sings in honor of Mother Mary, praying for her to grant the Prioress the ability to tell an honorable story. Psalms VIII contains a comparison of a child’s innocence with the ideal path of belief. (INSERT PSALMS QUOTE IN TEXT). This is the preamble for the true demonstration. We open up to a boy who loves the Mother Mary so much, he learns a song in her honor. He sings it twice everyday, but there is a catch. He has unaware of the meaning behind the lyrics. Yet he persists, so intensely that he ends up murdered by a group of “cursed” Jews. Despite having his throat slit, the boy survives by his faith, and has a grain bestowed on him by Mother Mary. (insert textual quote)

The Prioress relays this as an example of the churches expectation towards their followers. The followers of the church tried to embody the boy's innocence in their own beliefs. They had unfailing trust in the clergy, and thus in God. It reigned as a power play from the church, and in major part to the limited media. Lower classes, aka ‘everyone else’, had no access to books themselves. The everyday people were focused on surviving in the world and providing for their families. When they went to church, they did not have the means or the interest to investigate for themselves. They were to have (insert child’s innocence quote) towards everything preached at them. Having analyzed between the lines, it is a safe assumption that this period put a lot of stock in religion. Now, allow us to traverse time to our own period of existence.

From the year 2007 to the year 2015, Psych aired its series on the CW. The series followed Shawn Spencer, an unemployed young man. Shawn had an acute interpretation of detail. Shawn would help the police via hotline on cases, until the police accused him of being a criminal. The accusation formed because of his gift and how often he was able to pick out the real criminals. Shawn, having a mental age of 10, instead of telling the truth, claims to be psychic. He and the police department traverse on cases. During these adventures, Shawn runs into a multitude of people. Some believe in his ‘heavenly gift’. Others ...do not, (Insert carlton lassiter quote). This array of different personalities showcases how our personal experiences dictate our beliefs. This process is common in our age.

Psych has shown introspect into how our modern belief system works. We had many characters that believed with unwavering faith, (insert unwavering faith quote). This mirrored the traditional way of believing. People similar to this trope are more likely to be from traditional or passionate backgrounds. Others had more skepticism, (insert quote). These people represented those who held a more realistic expectation of others. They took into consideration that humans decieve and have selfish agendas. Both groups made their decisions based on their own personal experiences. The followers believed in the traditions and made that choice. With strong similarity, the skeptics made their decisions based on their experiences. The modern age finds itself leaning towards our beliefs to be personal revelations.

Both The Prioresses Tale and Psych display the beliefs of the past and current times. Going through texts in the between times, we are able to see the small changes and how they have evolved. We started our existence believing in things with a child-like innocence. We followed the clergy without question because we stayed uninformed. We had other matters to concern ourselves with. As the human race aged to what we are now, our beliefs changed. We became introspective. We decided on our beliefs for ourselves. We began picking and choosing parts to create a unique experience. Belief became less about what the mass thought from the church’s influence. It became what we as individuals chose to believe in.

We have changed. Change is what humans are proficient at, whether it is voluntary or not. Often times, we do not even notice the change. The literature we look into allows us to pin point moments in time when it was different and then trace the change. Our beliefs are one of those traceable changes. Chaucer’s The Prioresses Tale and Psych are two specific media outlets that convey the change. Beliefs are powerful. We shape most of our lives in accordance to our beliefs. It is quite eye opening to witness how different it was in the 15th century. We see how their lives are so different from ours now, all because of belief. I’m strongly confident it will change even more and someday. We never know, they may be analyzing our literature years from now.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Olaudah Equiano — Religion, Culture, and The Question of Equality in Equiano’s Narrative

Religion, Culture, and The Question of Equality in Equiano's Narrative

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This essay stands back and looks at the large variety of ways in which religious ideas are narrated, or ideas about religions are narrated. ... ENTERTAINMENT The first part of this chapter mentioned the film Noah, a narrative about religion that was designed to be entertaining. It's not hard to think of other examples of entertaining ...
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The past few decades have seen an increase in discipline-specific theorization on the nature and role of narrative in fields such as philosophy (Dennett 1992; Nussbaum 1990; Velleman 2003), theology (Frei 1974; Hauerwas and Jones 1997), and philosophy of religion (Stump 2010). In what follows, we offer an overview of important discussions ...
How to Write a College Essay about Religion
What matters is that narrative. Every essay must have a beginning, middle, and end. There must be a conflict, big or small, and there must a triumph, tiny or massive. While you write, you need to keep yourself at the center of the story. Don't let religion take over your role as the point of this essay.
Narrative Essay On Religion
Narrative Essay On Religion. 622 Words3 Pages. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.". I said as i dutifully made the sign of the cross and picked up my book of hymns. As the organist began playing, I stared at the large golden cross that hung above the altar, its metallic sheen contrasting with the deep ...
Truth and Christian Ethics: A Narratival Perspective
Some religious traditions, in effect, extend the idea that places can bear a narrative identity by supposing that the significance of whole regions of experience can be represented in storied terms. In these traditions, the stories of the gods, or in general of sacred figures, serve to epitomize various domains of human thought and action.
Essays on Religion. Examples of Definition Research Paper Topics
Religion is a thought-provoking subject matter. Essays on religion are always interesting since they talk about something that has existed since the beginning of life. You can be assigned a religion essay if you are studying sociology, literature, or religion itself. Since religion essay topics are so deep, you have to deal with philosophy.
Narrative Essay On Religion
Narrative Essay On Religion. Warm Greetings in our Lord's name. How are you? Its been a while I sent you a mail. I pray and hope you all are doing well and taking care of yourself. I continue to keep all of you close to my heart in prayer and thank God for each one of you every time I think of you. The season of Lent is my favorite season.
(PDF) Introduction: Religion, Experience, and Narrative
Within the ﬁeld of religious studies, there ar e two main conceptualizations of the. relationship between "experience" and "narrative". The ﬁrst one conceptualizes this. relationship ...
Narrative
Narratives of many kinds play fundamental roles in religion and (other) social constructions and, accordingly, narratives are crucial in individual self-understanding and social integration. The human imagination and the capacities for meaning-making depend on the use of narrative. Narratives also have fundamental epistemic functions in the ...
Historical Narratives on Religion
As indicated in history in 1430, the whole of Peloponnesus was ruled by Byzantine since the Fourth Crusade in 1204 making it the Byzantine Empire. This was done through marriage, annexation and winning of wars. When the last Constantine came into power in 1448 , he carefully ensued his successors 's hated agreements for church unions with the ...
How to Write a Narrative Essay
Interactive example of a narrative essay. An example of a short narrative essay, responding to the prompt "Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself," is shown below. Hover over different parts of the text to see how the structure works. Narrative essay example.
Religion Role in Douglass Narrative Story Expository Essay
Religion therefore as presented in Douglass narrative story serves two roles; basically the symbolic functions and the narrative functions. This discussion therefore is inclusive of role played by religion in depth as the Christianity of the white south contrast to that of the black slave. To start with, religion has been used to justify the ...
Narrative (Chapter 4)
Shaping the public image of Islam: The Shiis of Ireland as 'moderate' Muslims. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 31 ( 4 ), 518-33. Google Scholar. Schegloff, E. ( 1997 ). Narrative analysis 30 years later. In M. Bamberg (ed.), Oral versions of personal experience: Three decades of narrative analysis.
Personal Narrative: My Interview With Religion
Personal Narrative: My Interview With Religion. Good Essays. 1527 Words. 7 Pages. Open Document. I was very lucky to have the opportunity to interview one of my husband's friends through his church. I interviewed a 51 years old woman who was born in Belle Plaine, Minnesota and has been living in Belle Plaine, Minnesota for the entire time.
Narrative philosophy of religion: apologetic and pluralistic ...
Recent decades have witnessed a growing interest in narrative both in certain areas of philosophy and in the study of religion. The philosophy of religion has not itself been at the forefront of this narrative turn, but exceptions exist—most notably Eleonore Stump's work on biblical stories and the problem of suffering. Characterizing Stump's approach as an apologetic orientation, this ...
A Narrative Essay on Faith
The story of the boy's innocence and faith describes the mentality of people from this time. At least, this is how they tried to believe. Flash forward to the current period, we have a plethora of mass media to provide insight on how we form our belief system. The popular 2000's TV show, Psych, is a prime example of how we form our own ...
Narrative Essay About Religion
Narrative Essay About Religion. Decent Essays. 538 Words. 3 Pages. Open Document. Abby watched the remaining attendees to this evening's sermon disappear into the snow-blanketed gloom. It was not normal for the church to hold sermon's in the evening hours; however, here in the holidays, many people grew so entrenched within their seasonal madness.
Christian Religion in The Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass
In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the author analyzes how Christian religion is practiced in the ante-bellum South.From Douglass' perspective as a slave, he finds Christianity in the still slave-holding South hypocritical. Although he is personally committed to the Christian religion, for Douglas, Christianity as it is expressed through the behavior of slave-owners violates ...
Religion, Culture, and The Question of Equality in Equiano's Narrative
In the abolitionist piece "The Interesting Narrative," Equiano uses his native country's religion and compares it to Judaism to form a bridge between the the two cultures and establish a set of matches, in order to best link European and African roots together under the collection of humanity. ... Available at: <https://gradesfixer.com ...
Narrative Essay On Religion
Several studies have indicated that various religious worldviews have significant impacts in the society and the marketplace in different ways both positively or negatively. This paper seeks to write an essay on an article by Stonestreet (2013) on the current Affairs of religious worldviews and its impact on the marketplace of a society.

Essays About Religion: Top 5 Examples and 7 Writing Prompts

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7 Prompts on Essays About Religion

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19 Narrative

Chapter Summary

Definitions

Narrative is Essential in Human Life, Culture, and Society

The Interdisciplinary Study of Narrative

The History of ‘Narratology’: The Study of Narrative

Origins of Narrative in a Phylogenetic Perspective

Narrative(s) in Individual Integration

Individual Imagination and Meaning-Making

Narrative(s) in Social Integration

Special Features of Religious Narrative(s)

Importance of Religious Narratives in the Formation and Maintenance of Religious Worlds

Further Reading

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Religion Role in Douglass Narrative Story Expository Essay

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Narrative philosophy of religion: apologetic and pluralistic orientations

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“Pervading the Sable Veil”: Phillis Wheatley as Early Modern Philosopher of Religion

Faith, violence, and phronesis: narrative identity, rhetorical symbolism, and ritual embodiment in religious communities

Genealogies of Indifference? New Theoretical Thoughts on the History and Creation of Narratives Surrounding Christianity, Secularism and Indifference

Why narrativity?

An apologetic orientation to narrative philosophy of religion

Pluralistic narrative philosophy of religion 1: Stewart Sutherland on Dostoevsky

Pluralistic narrative philosophy of religion 2: D. Z. Phillips on Elie Wiesel

Pluralistic narrative philosophy of religion 3: evil and suffering in Hindu mythology

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A Narrative Essay on Faith

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