The Demonization and Recovery of Religion: Villains and the Transformation of Narrative

IntroductionReading religious history, ethics, biblical scholarship, along with a host of other disciplines, what one discovers is a consensus that there is no value free, objective, non-interpretive experience of the world. Hermeneutics in particular raises consciousness of the complexity of human engagement with the world.1 While hermeneutics has been focused on the understanding of texts, authors, and readers, the field of hermeneutics need not be limited in this way. Forrest Clingerman ("Interpreting Heaven and Earth"), for example, has taken hermeneutics into nature where interpretation of place and oneself in relation to place is a broadening of the hermeneutical enterprise. Hermeneutics as an art and science of interpretation opens up understanding and meaningfulness as one takes in and makes meaning out of our reality as we see it.The "as we see it" is important. Interpretation does not happen by simply taking in data. Interpretation comes within the context of the values and perspectives already present to a person, as Gadamer (Truth and Method) pointed out, each person has a hermeneutical horizon. Moreover, as seen in the work of thinkers such as John D. Caputo (More Radical Hermeneutics), each person's horizon is distinct, which creates a gap between one's own horizon and that of the other. Living in the world requires sorting through the information constantly being received, and the only way to do that is through the lens already given to each person. This unfolding of interpretation is the creation of narrative.This narrative is one's worldview. One does not simply interpret individual bits of information but unfolds them in relation to each other, into the story that shapes one's identity. Narrative, then, is how one experiences the world. Each of us has a narrative identity, to borrow a phrase from Ricoeur {Oneself as Another). Each person understands him or herself through the way that person unfolds the interpretation of history, the present, and the possibilities for the future in constant interaction with the other. As Philip Davies describes it:Stories are never innocent of point of view, plot, ideology, or cultural value. We tell our stories of the past in a historical context, looking at the past from a particular point: the present. We cannot be objective, neutral observers. We ourselves are in history, in the sense both of events happening and of the stories (news, gossip, history books) that interpret these events- not to mention our own memories. {Memories 11)Our narrative identity is not simply the past of ourselves, it is culturally constructed-what Davies calls cultural memory and others (including myself) call sacred history. Within the life of a person who considers him or herself religious, there is a particular quality to the narrative, and that is the relationship with the holy or sacred as the driving force of the narrative. In such narratives, everything is at stake. The unfolding of one's story in relation to the holy, one's narrative identity, is in relation to one's community, cultural period, and place in time. And these narratives point to the future of how the narrative will continue to unfold. As Ricoeur pointed out, the process of hermeneutics is a dialogue, a continual back and forth with that which one is interpreting ("What Is A Text"). And in the case of personal and communal identity, one is always adding to the story of life itself and its telos by every interaction with the world. Others, then, are characters in our own stories.The underlying assumption of this essay is that there is no non-narrative engagement with the world. One is always in the process of interpreting the world in light of the pre-existing narrative and adding to that narrative through new experiences. But there is a problem with the assumption. In the postmodern turn of the mid and late 20th century, narrative was challenged. In terms or religious narrative, Mark C. …