What Counts As Christian Criticism? (Essay‪)‬

As the title of my article suggests, I am concerned to determine what Christians can contribute to literary studies that non-Christian critics cannot. It is not unusual today for some Christian literary scholars to assume because they are Christians the work they do is also Christian. But I will argue that most of the time when we are doing literary critical work, our Christianity makes little, if any, principled difference to our scholarly activity and, more strongly, cannot make any theoretical difference unless we are willing to adopt theophanic models of reading. Religion's return to the Academy is marked by conferences, special issues of journals and magazines, books, articles, and curiosity from scholars who are themselves indifferent to religion as a form of personal commitment. Outside the Academy, it has become a platitude to comment upon the rise in church attendance after 9/11, the prominence of faith on the national political scene, and the centrality of Islam and Christianity in the global south and east. These and other signs suggest that it is quite possible to explain the return of religion to English by reference to events that have occurred outside it: English has returned to religion because the world around it has.