SOURCE: “Myth, Magic and Dread: Reading Culture Religiously,” in Literature and Theology: An International Journal of Theory, Criticism and Culture, Vol. 9, No. 3, September, 1995, pp. 261–77.

In the following essay, Salyer explicates the religious dimension of American cultural phenomenon represented in White Noise, contrasting the novel's mythical and mystical elements with those of Leslie Marmon Silko's novels Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead.

I have been asked to reflect upon the values and assumptions that inform my teaching and writing as a professor working in the area of religion and literature. My first response is to thank David Jasper and the contributors to this issue for even raising the question. All too often those of us who are trained to analyze texts and arguments are the most blind to the assumptions that pervade our own work as individuals and scholars working within the academy. I am not going to make...