Is Allegorical Religion better than Fundamentalism?

[Angrboda]

I think revelation is an important concept here.  A revealed truth is a fundamental truth about reality that is communicated directly to a mortal by the divine.  So religiously apprehending something, I think, would require some elevated communication, beyond that achievable by mortal to mortal, and it must communicate a fundamental, or perhaps important truth.  Take Jesus' command to turn the other cheek.  People can read that and have a response of wth?  How does that makes sense.  But if turning the other cheek is an important truth, getting it from a divine authority can bypass our critical filters.  So, the same would apply to stories, allegory, and parable.  If Jesus' parable about the sower communicates an essential truth that couldn't be communicated non-narratively, then it is a more religious narrative than one which simply relates an easily accepted more through the medium of story.

So a person reading, say, Martin Buber or Simone Weil, and feeling these are very wise writers but with no expectation of divine revelation, is not apprehending their books religiously?

I'm being simplistic here, knowing that even Ninian Smart's 7 dimensions of religion at times is inadequate for the complexity, but I think ultimately religion is about situating your life in relation to the divine, a higher power, a deeper, imperceptible order, or some transcendent dimension of reality. So, no, I wouldn't consider the experience of reading Martin Buber or Simone Weil religious (I haven't read either, so I'm making an educated guess about the content). Nietzsche, on the other hand, maybe. I feel the same way about it that I feel about free will or emergentism; if there is a mundane, mechanistic path to the goal, then it lacks the indeterminism that defines them; if a reading isn't extra-mundane, then it's not religious.