In Defense of Reading Pagans

Guest post by Stephen E. Lewis:

Last week, a controversy erupted over a book I assigned in a five-student advanced literature seminar at the Franciscan University of Steubenville (FUS) during the Spring 2018 semester. Not wishing to further divide our university community, I trusted that my superiors at FUS would handle the matter appropriately and I refrained from public comment. But many observers have assumed that Franciscan University’s decision to remove me from my role as chair of the English Department confirms that I assigned the book out of hostility to orthodox Catholic belief. Because nothing could be further from the truth, many friends have urged me to explain why I put Emmanuel Carrère’s The Kingdom on my syllabus in the first place. Now that some time has passed, I feel a duty to the Franciscan University community and others concerned by the uproar to provide an account.

Read the rest here: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/conviviumsalon/2019/01/in-defense-of-reading-pagans/

Stephen E. Lewis is professor of English at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Photo by Jenny via Creative Commons. Image cropped.