Are Narratives the Key to Everything?

I would like to attempt to connect the Rastafarian movement with the ideas of narrative we have discussed in class. In doing this I will draw parallels between Rastafarianism, and the Ethiopian religious movement brought about by the Kebra Negast.

As we discussed in class, narrative develops as a result of three things: 1. vagueness in an existing story, 2. the need to explain something current, which leads to 3. the expansion of ideas off of the explanation. These are all clearly visible in the Kebra Negast. The vagueness is achieved with Sheba, the explanation is that Ethiopian rulers are descendants of Solomon, and the expansion has lead to an enormous increase in faith in Christian Ethiopian’s. I have discussed possible reasons for this increase in faith in my previous blog “Evolution (both biological and religious) leads to Stronger Identity.”

Now let’s take a look and see if the Rastafarian movement has followed this pattern as well. Vagueness was quite crucial in forming the movement. As described on the Wikipedia page, Rastafarianism relies a great deal on loose interpretations of the bible and specifically on the same claim that Ethiopian rulers are descendants of Solomon. This vagueness is what leads to the explanation in the Rastafarian movement that Haile Selassie is the messiah. The final element in narrative is expansion. This is most evident in Rastafarianism in the music and culture that has been produced. Inspirational song lyrics like those in many of Bob Marley’s songs have been the driving force behind its expansion.

The question I am left with after this analysis is: Does this idea of creating a narrative apply to all religious movements? We have discussed in class that religion was only able to form after the development of symbolic language. Perhaps we need to add another link into the chain. Symbolic language allowed humans to construct narratives, and the narratives are what actually allowed for the development of religion.