ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the discourse of Christian spirituality to representationally demonstrate how religion 'gets things done' in the university English classroom, specifically the writing classroom and the literature classroom. It explores Kreeft's final reason for introducing religion into the classroom: that religion is 'difficult, challenging, and mysterious'. The chapter then excavates how the experiential complexity of spiritual discourse can productively facilitate writing skills, rhetorical communication, and critical thinking in all university English classrooms. Subjective experience is the cornerstone of spiritual discourse. The aims and the operations stem from this experience the rhetorical and informational purposes are built upon it. Moreover, interacting with spiritual experience requires students to synthesise the operations of discourse, rather than picking 'expressive', 'persuasive', or 'referential'. Textual discourse of spirituality opens up public, respectful dialogue in a way that can be sustained in both religious and secular universities. The experiential aspect of spiritual discourse remains integral to the text, despite shifting the rhetorical context.
