Apocalyptic traveler priest sent down a river in search of something important. Middle school text book 1990s

Question

I'm trying to locate a short story I taught in the late 1990's to early 2000's. I remember it being after the world lived through an apocalypse. There were religious overtones and a religious man or young priest traveling a river in search of answers. I can't remember anything else but really need to find it.

Answer 1

While the description is a little vague, I'm going to guess it's probably the classic "By The Waters of Babylon" by Stephen Vincent Benét, which often ends up anthologized and taught in school.

From the Wikipedia description:

Set in a future following the destruction of industrial civilization, the story is narrated by a young man[4] who is the son of a priest. The priests of John's people (the hill people) are inquisitive people associated with the divine. They are the only ones who can handle metal collected from the homes (called the "Dead Places") of long-dead people whom they believe to be gods. The plot follows John’s self-assigned mission to get to the Place of the Gods. His father allows him to go on a spiritual journey, but does not know he is going to this forbidden place.

John journeys through the forest for eight days and crosses the river Ou-dis-sun.

Which deals with the religious aspect, the post-apocalypse, and the river.

The work (written in 1937) is in the public domain in Canada at least, and possibly other places, so I leave it up to you to decide, but the entire story is available, legally to many like myself, here:

Answer 2

Try a Canticle For Leibowitz...

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller, Jr., first published in 1960. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the Southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the story spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the fictional Albertian Order of Leibowitz take up the mission of preserving the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the day the outside world is again ready for it.
- Wikipedia