She seems to swing from periods of absolute faith to absolute doubt. David Yezzi confuses the subject even more by adding "There are those writers, for example, who doubt that Dickinson's religious beliefs bear greatly on her poetry; others assert that she rejected religion outright, while still others feel poetry itself "became her religion." How are we to distinguish fact from fiction? To pull the true feelings out of someone's poetry and leave behind the fiction can be a daunting task. The critic Dennis Donoghue has aptly observed that "of her religious faith virtually anything may be said, with some show of evidence. She may be represented as an agnostic, a heretic, a skeptic, a Christian." Donoghue himself perhaps oversteps, however, when he argues that "Dickinson's Christianity was never a firm conviction." Her own words at the age of fifteen would seem to refute this. "I never enjoyed such perfect peace and happiness as the short time in which I felt I had found my savior. I feel I shall never be happy without I love Christ." .
To better understand Emily's Beliefs, and therefore her strange use of language, we need to understand the climate of the society she grew up in and experienced every day. Nicholas Tredell gives a little background information, "In 1846, Amherst experienced one of its periodic religious revivals, but Dickinson had already confided her doubts about faith to the more devout Abiah, and she kept her distance from the increased evangelical fervor. Her poetry was to display a strong fascination with faith, especially with the ideas of immortality and eternity, but it would combine this with agnosticism and with a subversive ambivalence towards the patriarchal aspects of Christianity." In 850, "there was another religious revival in Amherst, and Dickinson's father, sister, and Susan Gilbert, all joined the First Church of Christ. Dickinson, however, once more kept her distance, "standing alone in rebellion" as she says in her Letters.