Includes bibliographical references (p. 189-203) and index

"What social conditions and intellectual practices are necessary in order for religious cultures to flourish? Paul Griffiths finds the answer in "religious reading"--The kind of reading in which a religious believer allows his or her mind to be furnished and his or her heart instructed by a sacred text, understood in the light of an authoritative tradition. Memorization and recitation, lectio divina, legal and exegetical commentary, scholasticism, and a host of related practices fall under this rubric. Griffiths offers two case studies of religious reading, focusing on pedagogical practices and the use of literacy." "In examining and analyzing these practices, Griffiths develops a picture of the intellectual and moral commitments involved in being a religious person. Griffiths favorably contrasts the practices and pedagogies of traditional religious cultures with those of our own fragmented and secularized culture and insists that religious reading should be preserved. He concludes with the controversial proposal that the modern university should make room for traditional scholastics."--Jacket