Religious literacies have emerged over the last 10 years or so as a more pressing concern for the field. Investigations vary across multicultural, theological, curriculum studies, and queer lenses, among many others. This suggests a maturing subfield of research, one that having established itself might choose to take care to define its interests in increasingly sophisticated ways. This could take many forms, but what I suggest in this brief article is a turn to think about secularisms—as theory and field—as fertile ground for complicating the work of literacies researchers interested in religious literacies as well as religion, broadly conceived, going forward.
AsadT. (2003). Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity. Stanford University Press.
2.
BairdR. J. (2008). Late secularism. In JakobsenJ. R.PellegriniA. (Eds.), Secularisms (pp. 162–177). Duke University Press.
3.
BarrosS. R.JuzwikM.GajasingheK. (2024). Conceptualizing the dangerous rise of ethnoreligious nationalist literacies in education. Journal of Literacy Research, 56(4), 400–418. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X241300483
4.
BauerE.RazfarA.SkerrettA.DobbsC. L.Gee JangB.ParsonsS. A. (2024). Critical religious literacy: From conflict to convergence. Journal of Literacy Research, 56(4), 303–307. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X241300814
5.
BlakelyJ. (2020). We built reality: How social science infiltrated culture, politics, and power. Oxford University Press.
6.
BlumenfeldW. J. (2006). Christian privilege and the promotion of “secular” and not-so “secular” mainline Christianity in public schooling and in the larger society. Equity and Excellence in Education, 39(3), 195–210. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665680600788024
7.
Blumenfeld-JonesD. (2016). The violence of words, words of violence: Keeping the uncomfortable at bay, a Jewish perspective. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 31(1), 4–23. https://doi.org/10.63997/jct.v31i1.636
8.
BurkeK. J.JuzwikM. M.PrinsE. (2023). Christian nationalism: What is it and why does it matter for educational research?Educational Researcher, 52(5), 286–295. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X231163147
9.
DávilaD.VolzA. (2019). Disrupting protestant dominion: Middle school affirmations of diverse religion images in community spaces. In JuzwikM. M.StoneJ. C.BurkeK. J.DávilaD. (Eds.), Legacies of Christian languaging and literacies in American education: Perspectives on English language arts curriculum, teaching, and learning (pp. 160–174). Routledge.
10.
FendlerL. (2010). Michel Foucault (Vol. 22). Continuum.
11.
GlanzerP. L. (2022). Recognizing Christian complexity and secular privilege in higher education: A response to recent Christian privilege arguments. Religion and Education, 49(2), 119–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/15507394.2022.2051973
12.
GretemanA. J. (2020). Ambivalence in two parts: Legacies of Catholic languaging. In JuzwikM. M.StoneJ. C.BurkeK. J.DávilaD. (Eds.), Legacies of Christian languaging and literacies in American education: Perspectives on English language arts curriculum, teaching, and learning (pp. 179–191). Routledge.
13.
HadleyH. L. (2021). Navigating moments of hesitation: Portraits of evangelical English language arts teachers. Myers Education Press.
14.
HartwickJ. (2015a). Public school teachers’ beliefs in and conceptions of God: What teachers believe, and why it matters. Religion and Education, 42(2), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/15507394.2014.944065
15.
HartwickJ. (2015b). Teacher prayerfulness: Identifying public school teachers who connect their spiritual and religious lives with their professional lives. Religion and Education, 42(1), 54–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/15507394.2014.856745
16.
HeathS. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge University Press.
17.
JakobsenJ. R.PellegriniA. (eds) (2008). Secularisms. Duke University Press.
18.
JarvieS. (2020). Myth and Christian Reading practice in English teaching. In JuzwikM. M.StoneJ. C.BurkeK. J.DávilaD. (Eds.), Legacies of Christian languaging and literacies in American education: Perspectives on English language arts curriculum, teaching, and learning (pp. 71–81). Routledge.
19.
JoshiK. Y. (2020). White Christian privilege: The illusion of religious equality in America. NYU Press.
20.
JuzwikM. M. (2014). American Evangelical biblicism as literate practice: A critical review. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(3), 335–349. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.72
21.
JuzwikM. M. (2020). (Re)mystifying literary pedagogy. In JuzwikM. M.StoneJ. C.BurkeK. J.DavilaD. (Eds.), Legacies of Christian languaging and literacies in American education: Perspectives on English language arts curriculum, teaching, and learning (pp. 222–233). Routledge.
22.
JuzwikM. M.LeblancR. J.DávilaD.RackleyE. D.SarroubL. K. (Eds.) (2022). Religion, literacies, and English education in global dialog [Special issue]. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 21(3), 225–329.
23.
JuzwikM. M.McKenzieC. (2015). Writing, religious faith, and rooted cosmopolitan dialogue: Portraits of two American evangelical men in a public school English classroom. Written Communication, 32(2), 121–149. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088315576480
24.
JuzwikM. M.WitteR. L.BurkeK. J. (2024). Biblicist proof texting, White Christian nationalism, and literacy curriculum and instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 60(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.571
25.
KavenyC. (2016). Prophesy without contempt: Religious discourse in the public square. Harvard University Press.
LeblancR. (2020). Institutional rituals as interpersonal verbal rituals as interactional resources in classroom talk. In JuzwikM. M.StoneJ. C.BurkeK. J.DávilaD. (Eds.), Legacies of Christian languaging and literacies in American education: Perspectives on English language arts curriculum, teaching, and learning (pp. 51–66). Routledge.
PaughP.HandsfieldL. J.MacPheeD. (2025). Religious metaphor in media reporting on the “science of Reading.”. Journal of Literacy Research, 57(2), 163–191. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X251329246
30.
PerezN. (2020). Exploring the multilingual, multimodal, and cosmopolitan dimensions of two young Cuban American women’s religious literacies. In JuzwikM. M.StoneJ. C.BurkeK. J.DávilaD. (Eds.), Legacies of Christian languaging and literacies in American education: Perspectives on English language arts curriculum, teaching, and learning (pp. 192–204). Routledge.
31.
RackleyE. D. (2014). Scripture-based discourses of Latter-Day Saints and Methodist youths. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(4), 417–435. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.76
32.
SandsK. (2008). Feminisms and secularisms. In JakobsenJ. R.PellegriniA. (Eds.), Secularisms (pp. 308–329). Duke University Press.
33.
SarroubL. K. (2005). All American Yemeni girls: Being Muslim in a public school. University of Pennsylvania Press.
34.
SarroubL. K.SchroederC. (2023). Religious influences on the growth of literacy practices. In TierneyR. J.RizviF.ErkicanK. (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (Vol. 4, pp. 209–216). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818630-5.07019-6
35.
SchweberS.IrwinR. (2003). Especially special”: Learning about Jews in a fundamentalist Christian school. Teachers College Record, 105(9), 1693–1719. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-9620.2003.00306.x
36.
SkerrettA. (2014). Religious literacies in a secular literacy classroom. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(2), 233–250. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.65
37.
SkerrettA. (2020). Real religion”: The roles of knowledge, dialogue, and sense-making in coming to a faith. In JuzwikM. M.StoneJ. C.BurkeK. J.DávilaD. (Eds.), Legacies of Christian languaging and literacies in American education: Perspectives on English language arts curriculum, teaching, and learning (pp. 21–36). Routledge.
38.
TaylorM. D. (2024). The violent take it by force: The Christian movement that is threatening our democracy. Broadleaf Books.
39.
WhiteheadA. L.PerryS. L. (2020). Taking American back for God: Christian nationalism in the United States. Oxford University Press.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
