Miller, Grace2019-02-122019-02-122018-12https://hdl.handle.net/11299/201680University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation.December 2018. Major: English. Advisor: Daniel Philippon. 1 computer file (PDF); i, 181 pages.Postsecularism has recently become a popular field of inquiry in literary criticism, but literary critics frequently overlook religious writers and texts in their studies. This dissertation argues that religious works share many similar traits with the established canon of postsecular literature and bring many aspects of their value systems into dialogue. These postsecular religious works are marked by two noteworthy elements; first, they adapt their approach to their own religion to emphasize the same aspects that postmodern theologians and postsecular writers tend to emphasize: mysticism beyond rationalization and faith versus practice, a tendency that is possibly meant to make the works more palatable to postsecular readers. These authors do not need to wander from their own religious traditions to accomplish this; they simply incorporate their religions’ own traditions in the realm of mysticism or aesthetic experience. The second aspect of these works, however, which provides some tension to the narrative, is a keen sense of religious nostalgia and loss. This loss influences every narrative differently; sometimes it ungrounds the faith experience from history, emphasizing the transitory nature of lived experience, including religious experience. At other times, it brings into stark relief the modern age’s inability to provide enough comforts to dull the passions of the human spirit. As this argument progresses, the implications of religious nostalgia—and the sense of loss that often comes with it—become increasingly grave, from the death of an individual in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead to the destruction of an entire culture as portrayed throughout Louise Erdrich’s novels, then examining eschatologies in the work of Walker Percy, and finally, Don DeLillo’s portrayal of religious history as it might be applied to mass destruction and death. Each of these narratives illustrate, in their own way, the way these authors and their characters abandon theological authority in favor of emphasizing aspects of religion that can be preserved in the postmodern world, namely, its mystical, ineffable characteristics. As they write, they erase unnecessary difference and preserve the aspects of their faith that deserve preservation, achieving what Habermas called “the mystical fusion with a consciousness that embraces the universe.”enContemporaryLiteratureLouise ErdrichMarilynne RobinsonPostsecularThesis or Dissertation