James W. Turner: “In the Beginning Was the Word” Language, Time, and Narrative in the Origin of Religion

Rappaport (1999) saw the relationship between religion and language as one of reciprocal causation. As symbolic communication, language is a prerequisite for the existence of religion. But language makes it possible to lie, which undermines the trust that social life requires. Religion counteracts the centrifugal force of the lie by sanctifying the principal tenets of the belief and social system through ritual. I argue here that the key link between language and religion is not a consequence of the lie, but, rather, a consequence of language’s experience of time.

[religion, language, displacement, episodic memory, mental time travel, narrative]

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