American-British poet, playwright, and essayist T. S. Eliot wrote the oft-quoted "Religion and Literature" in 1935 from a decidedly Victorian Christian viewpoint. For this reason, contemporary readers may find his angle prudishly archaic. I don't. The stylistic quality and narrative line of this Nobel laureate's writing remain relevant to developing writers and literary enthusiasts.
A third of the way through the essay comes this surprising sentence:
I am convinced that we fail to realize how completely, and yet how irrationally, we separate our literary from religious judgements.
I will not muse over how readers approached literary and religious judgments 86 years ago, so I'll take Eliot's word for their analytical shortcomings. But I can safely say that to disagree today with his premise, that we cannot separate literature from theology, is to admit to not having read enough theology or literature or both. Biblical themes of betrayal and punishment, loyalty and reward, encroachment and vengeance, suffering and conquest, flight and deliverance, enslavement and freedom, disgrace and redemption, and death and resurrection are retold in modern books, plays, and movies in so many forms. The sentence still surprises today because so many of us think that literature and religion are unrelated, or we forget to remember that they are related.
