What is a scripture? How does a text become one? In this class we'll study several American scriptures, relatively recent texts that allow important perspective on these questions. We'll read parts of The Book of Mormon, Science and Health, The Circle Seven Koran, and Dianetics, along with several other new-world scriptures and American iterations of some old-world ones. Emphasis will be on thinking through how these texts know what they know, and how they make that claim of knowledge to readers. We'll investigate their discursive influences, internal logic, and rhetorical effects to think about how scriptures function in the world.