Three Questions for American Literature and Religion

The Spiritual Authority of Literature in a Secular Age

“…But he finds that this term does not quite satisfy: ''I want to know, in short, what we mean by 'religious authority,' how that authority relates to other kinds of authority in the world.'' 10 It is a fair question. In my book I tried (with only partial success) to avoid the term ''religious authority''-it had a whiff of incense about it, implying something too ecclesiastical for my purposes-and fell back instead on ''moral authority'' or, less often, ''cultural authority,'' terms with their own problems.…”