Introduction

Over the last two decades or more, scholars have proclaimed the advent of postsecular literary studies, thereby conferring increased recognition on the significant role that religion—more particularly, Christianity—has played in the development of American literature. Such a recognition of this pervasive influence on the work of many nineteenth-century American writers is long overdue and follows a period of relative neglect in the later twentieth century as theory and cultural studies won an increasing number of critical converts. But despite the recent proclamation of the arrival of postsecular literary studies, the larger debate over the historical reality of secularization in the United States and elsewhere is far from over. Certainly, the remarkably tenacious hold of evangelical Christianity on the contemporary United States accords with traditional ideas of American religious exceptionalism—after all, a third of Americans today still think the Bible is the literal word of God—but the steady rise in number...