ABSTRACT
This essay describes two approaches to teaching Religion and Literature to undergraduates within introductory courses constrained by particular departmental and disciplinary goals within a public university setting. The first part examines how “secularism” is useful based on my experience as a teaching assistant discussing secular texts within a Religious Studies department, and how this lens allowed students to appreciate what “religion” means within cultural artifacts and ways that “secularism” still carries religious meanings. The second part of the essay describes how “secularism” can be employed within English courses as a way of helping students understand the inherent ambiguity of texts and ways that literature provides a kind of truth that seems correlative to the kinds of truths involved in religious practice in spite of the absence of certainty involving a deity.
