@AndrewField81 and all, I left a comment on this idea, which I really like, in this other thread: Visionary Voices Read Aloud (Milton, Blake, Whitman, etc.) - #29 by madrush. Just making the connection for interested readers.
With regard to engagement with “secular religious literature,” and solitariness of reading (and yet the odd community of solitary readers), you may appreciate some of my exuberant comments here: The Ecstasy of a Book Club
I really hope some others will respond to your course proposal because I think it could be a really powerful learning experience. From your list, I would be particularly interested in studying: Homer, Augustine, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Bishop, Dickinson, and especially, Ralph Ellison and the King James Bible.
Reading Ellison would be a way to revisit the hermeneutic circle opened up in these early discussions:
- Antagonistic Cooperation as Mind Jazz: Ralph Ellison vs. Amiri Baraka (as Reimagined by Greg Thomas and Greg Tate)
- Race, Art, and Essentialism - #14 by madrush
- Reading Albert Murray in the Age of Trump - by Greg Thomas - #3 by Greg_Thomas
While reading the Bible—as literature—would give us the deep context for pretty much anything and everything else we would read in the Western canon, especially Milton, Blake, Whitman, and other Visionary Voices. With such a profound grounding in the sources of our selves, we could then re-encounter the Great Books of the East and perhaps forge the early paths of an integral-planetary literary tradition and a cosmic culture. This could easily take us the rest of our lives, and then some!