Illuminating the Landscape of Religious Narrative: Morality, Dramatization, and Verticality

Abstract

A major dilemma confronting religious educators in the utilization of short stories, film, and other emerging forms of narratives is the question of how to evaluate their “religiousness.” This can present dilemmas in the selection, analysis, and comparison of narratives for the purposes of teaching Religious Education. This article forwards useful characteristics for doing so by: (1) constructing a cross-disciplinarian conceptual framework for the comparison and analysis of religious stories, (2) extrapolating three characteristics from this conceptual framework (morality, dramatization, and verticality), and (3) using these characteristics in examining and comparing the religious elements of two short stories: Andre Dubus' “A Father's Story,” and Flannery O'Connor's “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

Timothy J. Martin is an adjunct professor at Loyola University, Chicago in the department of educational leadership and policy studies and is a theology teacher at Loyola Academy in Wilmette, IL. E-mail: [email protected]