The authors in Communion, largely of Christian background, approach the Bible not primarily as a religious text, but as literary, imaginative, and cultural bedrock. By comparing their first exposure to the Bible as children, as many of the authors do, with an exploration of what the Bible means to them and to their work today, the authors reveal the concussion and reverberation of the larger Judeo-Christian, American culture on our private lives.

In reexamining specific books of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament in such a personal way, the writers, essayists, and poets in Communion illuminate the text with their lives, bringing their counterparts among the Biblical authors to life as well. Such a rereading allows them to reinvigorate the Bible with new meaning, and to better reveal how the Bible has shaped and altered their thought.