When evangelical Christian students enter the academy, they often find that its tenets and values conflict with their reliance on the Bible as a source of truth and evidence. In this essay, the author attempts to articulate the ways in which rhetorical dexterity might enable students to use literacies they already possess (like deep knowledge of the Bible and its applications in day-to-day life) to negotiate those the academy expects them to exhibit. In that much of the current argument rests on the tensions between a community of practice that "lives inside the Bible" and one that is often perceived to be openly hostile to it, she relates the stories of two graduate students in their program who--though they were able to maintain deep ties with both their religious communities and their academic ones--experienced some rather painful lessons early on about the irreconcilability of Christianity and the academy. She takes a much closer look at conservative and evangelical literacies as articulated in public discourse within and beyond the academy. Academics, particularly those in the humanities and social sciences, appear to many conservative and evangelical leaders as promoting agendas of "secular humanism" and "cultural relativism," agendas they view as antithetical to their own position. (Contains 16 notes.)