Literacy Practices in Christian Traditions: Bibliography
Subgroup Organizer: Suzanne Rumsey, Michigan State University
Contributors:
Joleen Hanson, University of New Hampshire
Laurie Smith, Saint Louis University
General Critical Studies of Literacy/Faith-based Literacy:
Amorose, Thomas. “A Christian Rhetoric for the Public Sphere.” The Journal for Peace
and Justice Studies XX (1999): 21-49.
Bacik, James. "Religious Literacy." Ministry & Liturgy. 28.4 (May 2001), 20-21.
Brandt, Deborah, Ellen Cushman, Anne Ruggles Gere, et al. “The Politics of the
Personal: Storying Our Lives against the Grain” College English 64 (2001): 41-62.
Cipolla, Carlo. Literacy and Development in the West. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
Daniell, Beth. "Composing (As) Power." College Composition and Communication 45.2
(1994): 238-246.
Graff, Harvey J. The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western
Culture and Society. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.
Graff, Harvey J. (Ed.) Literacy and Social Development in the West: A Reader.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981.
Heath, Shirley Brice. “Protean Shapes in Literacy Events: Ever-shifting oral and literate
traditions” In E. Cushman, E. R. Kintgen, B. M. Kroll & M. Rose (Eds.), Literacy: A
critical sourcebook (pp. 138-155). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.
Jeffery, David. People of the Book: Christian Indentity and Literary Culture. Grand
Rapids, MI: Erdmens, Cambridge: Inst. for Advanced Christian Studies, 1996.
Kennedy, George A. Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from
Ancient to Modern times. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.
Laubach, Frank C. and Robert S. Laubach. Toward World Literacy, The Each One Teach
One Way. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1960.
Vegge, Tor. "The Literacy of Jesus the Carpenter's Son." Studia Theologica. 59.1 (2005):
19-37.
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Faith-based Literacy and the Composition Classroom:
Anderson, Chris. “The Description of Embarrassment: When Students Write about
Religion.” Association of Departments of English 94 (1989): 12-15.
Browning, Mark. “Symposium on Teaching in the Whirlwind: When Religion Becomes
Visible in the Classroom.” Dialogue: A Journal for Writing Specialists. 6 (1999): 6-7. ---.
“Your Logos Against Mine.” Dialogue: A Journal for Writing Specialists. 6 (1999): 8-13.
Dively, Ronda Leathers. “Religious Discourse in the Academy: Creating a Space by
Means of Poststructuralist Theories of Subjectivity.” Composition Studies. 21.2 (1993):
91-101.
Goodburn, Amy. “It’s a Question of Faith: Discourses of Fundamentalism and Critical
Pedagogy in the Writing Classroom.” JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory (1998):
333-53.
Hashimoto, I. “Voice as Juice: Some Reservations about Evangelic Composition.”
College Composition and Communication. 38.1 (1987): 70-80.
Moffett, James. "Women's Ways of Writing, or, Iamges, Self-Images, and Graven
Images: A Response." College Composition and Communication 45.2 (1994): 258-263.
Neuleib, Janice. “Spilt Religion: Student Motivation and Values-Based Writing.” Writing
on the Edge. 4.1 (1992): 41-50.
Perkins, Priscilla. “A Radical Conversion of the Mind: Fundamentalism, Hermeneutics,
and the Metanoic Classroom.” College English. 63.5 (2001): 585-611.
Rand, Lizabeth A. "Enacting Faith: Evangelical Discourse and the Discipline of
Composition Studies" CCC 52:3, 2001.
Ritz, Jon. “Spirituality and the Personal Essay: Pedagogical Perspectives.” Dialogue: A
Journal for Writing Specialists. 6 (1999): 23-30.
Trapp, Joona Smitherman. “Religious Values and the Student: A Plea for Tolerance.”
Dialogue: A Journal for Writing Specialists. 6 (1999): 14-22.
Vander Lei, Elizabeth and Bonnie Lenore Kyburz. Negotiating Religious Faith in the
Composition Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton Cook 2005.
Vander Lei, Elizabeth, and Donald R. Hettinga. “A Comment on ‘A Radical Conversion
of the Mind”: Fundamentalism, Hermeneutics, and Metanoic Classroom’” College
English 64 (2002): 720-723.
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Worth, Jan. “Student Pieties and Pedagogical Hot Spots: Mediating Faith-Based Topics
in First-Year Composition.” Writing on the Edge. 14.1 (2003): 21-30.
Educational Issues/Studies Beyond the Composition Classroom:
Brock, Michael. "Cultural Literacy and the Catholic-school Curriculum." Today's
Catholic Teacher. 21 (Mar 1988), 51-2.
Camille, Alice. "You're Never Too Catholic to Learn." U.S. Catholic. 66.2 (Feb 2001),
34-37.
Gillen, Marie and Maurice Taylor. Adult Religious Education. New York: Paulist Press,
1995.
Moffett, James. “Censorship and Spiritual Education.” The Right to Literacy. Ed. Andrea
Lunsford, Helene Moglen, and James Slevin. New York: MLA, 1990 113-9.
Oosdyke, Mary Kay. "Liturgy, Religious Education and Adult Spirituality: A Matter of
Faith and Literacy." Listening. 33 (Winter 1998) 44-59.
Peshkin, Alan. God's Choice: The Total World of a Fundamentalist Christian School.
Chicago: Chicago UP, 1986.
Rose, S. D. Keeping Them Out of the Hands of Satan: Evangelical Schooling in America.
New York: Routledge, 1988.
Zinsser, C. "For the Bible Tells Me So: Teaching Children in a Fundamentalist Church."
The Acquisition of Literacy: Ethnographic Perspectives. Eds. Bambi B. Schieffelin and
Perry Gilmore. Norwood: Ablex, 1986.
Historical Faith-based Literacy Studies:
Aston, Margaret. Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval
Religion. London: Hambledon Press, 1984.
Burton, Christie Douglas. "Listening, Reading, Praying: Orality, Literacy and Early
Christian Monastic Spirituality." Anglican Theological Review. 83.2 (Spring 2001): 197223.
Burton, Vicki Tolar. “John Wesley and the Liberty to Speak: The Rhetorical and Literary
Practices of Early Methodism.” College Composition and Communication 53.1 (2001):
65-91.
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Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. "The Struggle for the Right to Speak" "Responding to
Opposition Based on Theology: Proposing a Single Moral Standard." Man Cannot Speak
for Her: A Critical Study of Early Feminist Rhetoric. Praeger: New York, 1989. 17-48.
Gawthorp, R., and G. Strauss. "Protestanism and LIteracy in Early Modern Germany."
Past and Present, 104 (1984): 31-55.
Haines-Eitzen, Kim. Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of
Early Christian Literature. Oxford: Oxford Up, 2000.
Laquer, Thomas W. Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class
Culture, 1780-1850. New Haven: Yale UP, 1976.
Moody, Joycelyn. Sentimental Confessions: Spiritual Narratives of Nineteenth-century
African American Women. Athens : U of Georgia P, 2001.
Nord, David Paul. "Religious Reading and Readers in Antebellum America" In E.
Cushman, E. R. Kintgen, B. M. Kroll & M. Rose (Eds.), Literacy: A critical sourcebook
(pp. 244-260). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.
Payne, Rodger M. The Self and the Sacred: Conversion and Autobiography in Early
American Protestantism. Knoxville: U of TN P, 1998.
Peters, Kate. Print Culture and The Early Quakers. New York: Cambridge P, 2005.
Phillips, Joyce B., and Paul Gary Phillips, Eds. The Brainerd Journal: A Mission to the
Cherokees, 1817–1823. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
Spack, Ruth. America’s Second Tongue: American Indian Education and the Ownership
of English. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.
Wyss, Hilary. Writing Indians: Literacy, Christianity, and Native Community in Early
America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000.
Critical Studies Specific to Faith Tradition or Ethnicity:
Balmer, Randell. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989.
Boone, K. C. The Bible Tells Them So: The Discourse of Protestant Fundamentalism.
New York: SUNY Press, 1989.
Brandt, Deborah. "'The Power of It.' Sponsors of Literacy in African American Lives."
Literacy in American Lives. Cambridge UP:Cambridge, 2001. 105-45.
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Farr, Marcia. “Literacy and Religion: Reading, Writing, and Gender Among Mexican
Women in Chicago.” Language in Action: New Studies of Language in Society. Eds. P.
Griffin, J. K. Peyton, W. Wolfram, & R. Fasold. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000.
139-154.
Farr, Marcia. "En Los Dos Idiomas: Literacy Practices Among Chicago Mexicanos." In
E. Cushman, E. R. Kintgen, B. M. Kroll & M. Rose (Eds.), Literacy: A critical
sourcebook (pp. 467-487). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's.
Fishman, Andrea. Amish Literacy: What and How it Means. Portsmouth: NH, 1988.
Geneva, Katie. Teaching Preaching: Isaac Rufus Clark and Black Sacred Rhetoric.
Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002.
Gerado, Marti. A Mosaic of Believers: Diversity and Innovation in a Multiethnic Church.
Bloomington IN : Indiana U P, 2005.
Guerra, Juan, and Marcia Farr. “Writing on the Margins: Spiritual and Autobiographic
Discourse Among Mexicanas in Chicago.” School’s Out! Literacy at Work and in the
Community. Ed. G. Hull and K. Schultz. New York: Teachers College Press, 2002.
Johnson, Jay Emerson. Dancing with God: Anglican Christianity and the Practice of
Hope. Harrisburg PA : Morehouse, 2005.
Kapitzke, Cushla. Literacy and Religion: The Textual Politics and Practice of SeventhDay Adventism. Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishing Co., 1995.
LaRue, Cleophus. Power in the Pulpit: How America's Most Effective Black Preachers
Prepare Their Sermons. Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002.
Lohmann, Roger Ivar. “Introduced Writing and Christianity: Differential Access to
Religious Knowledge Among the Asabano.” Ethnology 40.2 (2001): 93-112.
Luke, C. Pedagogy, Printing, and Protestantism: The Discourse on Childhood. Albany:
SUNY Press, 1989.
Moss, Beverly. A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and a Literacy Tradition in
African-American Churches. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2003.
Moss, Beverly. "Creating a Community: Literacy Events in African-American Churches"
In B. Moss (Ed.), Literacy Across Communities New Jersey: Hampton Press, 1994.
Neal, Lynn. Romanicing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction. Chapel
Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2006.
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Fictional and non-fictional faith literacy narratives: Books and Articles that illustrate
how faith literacy interacts with the everyday - how faith literacy is expressed in the
culture through creative work.
Lamott, Anne. Plan B; Further Thoughts on Faith. Riverhead Books: New York, 2005.
Lamott, Anne. Traveling Mercies; Some Thoughts on Faith. Anchor Books: New York,
2000.
Robinson, Marilynne. Gilead. FSG Books: New York, 2004. Rodriguez, Richard.
"Credo." Hunger of Memory; The Education of Richard Rodriguez. Godine: Boston,
1982. 75-111.
Schaap, James Calvin. "Singing and Preaching: Christians in Writing." Poets and Writers
Magazine 26.1 (1998) 18-26.
Wagner, Melinda B. God' Schools: Choice and Compromise in American Society. New
Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1990.
Wendell, Margaret M. Bootstrap Literature: Preliterate Societies Do It Themselves.
Newark: International Reading Assoc., 1982.
Whiteley, Raewynne J. and Beth Maynard, eds. Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the
U2 Catalog. Cowley Publications: Cambridge, MA, 2003. Collection of sermons that
utilize both scripture and U2 lryics for their background text. Fascinating example of the
often powerful combination of traditional faith literacy with popular culture.
Yancey, Philip, ed. Reality and the Vision: 17 Christian Authors Reveal Their Literary
Legacy. Word Pub: Irving, TX, 1990.
Zinsser, C. (1986). “For the Bible Tells Me So: Teaching Children in a Fundamentalist
Church.” In B.B. Schieffelin & P. Gilmore (eds.), The Acquistion of Literacy:
Ethnographic Perspectives. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, pp. 55-71.
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