How Do You Solve a Problem Like ‘Religious Literacy’?: Thinking with Wolfart’s ‘Religious Literacy’ Reservations

Abstract

Abstract Wolfart persuasively locates religious literacy advocacy within the reforming, salvific myth of literacies. However, instead of Wolfart’s identification of religious literacy as ex-theological, I argue that a narrowly defined religious literacy is theological and, therefore, Religious Studies faculty should (re)negotiate what it means in relation to what we do as teachers. For this, Religious Studies faculty need to resist the civic soteriology and the seductive allure of claiming authority based on specialness or supposed distinctiveness of something called religious.