Christian Literary Criticism - a New Departure, Misunderstanding, or Distortion (American University Based Observations)

This article presents the preliminary results of an investigation into the subject of Christian literary sholarship. My conclusions are grouped in four heads. (1) The discipline called 'studies of the sacred' in Poland (2) have their American equivalent in a variety of religion and literature studies. Since the 1970s the literary theory in America has been dominated by the Masters of Suspicion (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud). That is why these studies have been sidelined by the academic mainstream. The discrimination (3) provoked a backlash against it. Drawing on Christian background (T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, D. Sayers, K. Barth, P. Ricoeur, R. Girard, St Augustine) a (great) number of Protestant and Catholic academics (E. Griesinger, G. Marsden, C. Walhout, A. Jacobs, R. Lundin, L. Ryken and R. Labrie, J.F. Desmond and L. Ferretter respectively) have led a new departure in the studies of the sacred. (4) Their contribution, which includes a several original approaches and syntheses, has given Christian literary criticism a new Christian perspective.