Literature and Religious Experience

Matthew J. Smith is Associate Professor of English at Azusa Pacific University. He is the author of Performance and Religion in Early Modern England: Stage, Cathedral, Wagon, Street (Notre Dame, 2018) and co-editor, with Julia Lupton, of Face to Face in Shakespearean Drama (Edinburgh, 2019). He is guest editor of two special issues of Christianity & Literature: TheSacramental Text Reconsidered (2016) and Sincerity (co-editor, 2017).Caleb D. Spencer is Associate Professor of English at Azusa Pacific University. His essays appear in Religion & Literature, Journal of the Religion and Popular Culture, and Christianity & Literature. He co-edited Sincerity, a special issue of Christianity & Literature (2017). He also serves as Associate Editor of the journal, Christianity & Literature.

An exciting new collection that approaches complex questions, texts and authors from a fresh set of perspectives. These authors regard religion or spirituality not simply as a matter of intellectual assent but an embodied set of practices and phenomena. The so called ‘religious turn’ is reappraised and re-read in ways that powerfully remind us of its complexity and persistence.

• Introduction - Matthew J. Smith, Azusa Pacific University& Caleb D. Spencer, Azusa Pacific University1. Believing: Postsecular Belief and Unbelief in Marilynne Robinson's Home and James Wood's The Book Against God - Lori Branch, University of Iowa2. Benediction: Shakespeare’s Post-Secular Choreography of Hope and Healing - Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine3. Exercise: Poetry as Spiritual Exercise: On A. R. Ammons - Kevin Hart, University of Virginia4. Fantasy: Superstition Fiction and Magic Revival in the Euro-American West and China- Zhange Ni, Virginia Polytechnic University5. Gift: The (Im)possible Conditions of Grace in Melville’s Fiction - Tae Sung, California Baptist University6. Guidance: Understanding Providence in George MacDonald’s Phantastes - Mark Knight, Lancaster University7. Idolatry: Power, Meaning, and Violence in Conrad and Hesse - Larry D. Bouchard, University of Virginia8. Interruption: Conversion as Event in Paul of Tarsus and Paul of Burgos - Ryan Szpiech, University of Michigan9. Kindness: King Lear and Buddhism - Unhae Langis, Independent Scholar10. Metanoia: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Artful Apprehension of Conversion in Uncle Tom's Cabin - John Gatta, Sewanee, The University of the South11. One: Poetic Love in Ibn ‘Arabi - Jeffrey Sacks, University of California, Riverside12. Prayer: I will Love You in the Summer Time - Christian Wiman, Yale Divinity School13. Revelation: From Dante to Mallarmé via Shakespeare’s Hamlet: The Negativity of Poetic-Prophetic Revelation in Modernity - William Franke, Vanderbilt University14. Silence: “Why Do You Hide Your Face?”: God’s Silence in William Paul Young’s The Shack - Christopher Douglas, University of Victoria15. Turning: Alabaster’s Wager & the Experience of Conversion - James Kearney, University of California, Santa Barbara16. Vision: ‘Was it a vision or a waking dream?”: Rethinking Romantic Ideology - Gavin Hopps, University of St. AndrewsAfterword: Terry Eagleton, Lancaster University