The difference between religious narratives and fictional literature: a matter of degree only

Abstract

The existence of fiction-based religion makes it obvious to examine the relationship between fictional literature and religious narratives. Although the fiction-religion distinction is tangentially related to the faction-fabrication divide, the author argues that they do not amount to the same. Rather than pursuing the question of what differentiates fictional from religious narratives, the author focuses on those elements in fictional literature that enable interpretative communities to attribute them a religious character. Three assertions come to the fore of the discussion. He considers them crucial for how narratives may be attributed a religious nature: (1) narratives may be assigned religious status in so far as they include a repertoire of p-s-t-coordinates (person, space, and time) that allows elements of the story-world to be projected onto an actual landscape; (2) narratives may be ascribed religious status in so far as they include agents with counter-intuitive abilities who are capable of intervening in the world of the ordinary recounted figures. By virtue of this contrast, distinguishing the characters in the story-world, the relationship between counter-intuitive agents and ordinary persons may be transposed onto a comparable distinction between different worlds in the world of the interpretative community; and (3) narratives may be assigned religious status in so far as they by virtue of embedded discourses and openness or indeterminacy with respect to p-s-t-coordinates, invite readers to view their own lives in continuity with the recounted world.