"Religion prevents any deep discussion of worthy literature. "    Not true at all.  The "disputations" method of the medieval Catholic Universities engaged with conflicting and opposing points of view all the time.  You can also credit the great monastic centers (such as in Ireland) for copying and preserving much of the secular literature of civilization.  For more on this, see "How The Irish Saved Civilization" by Thomas Cahill.  BTW: Many of the "great writers of the world"  had some religious (if not specifically Christian) starting point.  Think Flannery O'Conner,  JRR Tolkien, Walker Percy.  Some of the most interesting writers ever were at least open to transcendent realities of one kind or another.