Activity: Anonymous Christian Experiences

Usually, I do this activity the first day of my Introduction to Christian Theology class. We arrange all the desks in a circle. I then ask my students to get a piece of paper and write for a few minutes about one concrete experience they’ve had with Christianity that still impacts their view today. I ask them to write legibly, hinting that these will be read by someone else. Then, I ask them to crumple the page into a ball and throw their experience into the middle of the classroom.

At this point, I usually get some confused looks on people's faces: You want me to throw stuff the first day of class? What's going to happen to what I just wrote? I count to three quickly, and just like that: we have a pile of crumpled pieces of paper, filled with stories that say a lot about the assumptions people carry as they enter into a THEO 100 classroom.

We go around the room, with each student picking up someone else's experience and reading it out loud. These are completely anonymous contributions, but the energy in the room is heightened: people are waiting to hear their own experience read aloud, or they may be nervous to read the story on the spot. Sometimes it is difficult to read someone's handwriting. Sometimes, the experience is very emotional, and the reader feels nervous about representing someone else's life story with the respect it deserves. Other times, the experience describes a boredom so thorough with this religious tradition that they barely thought when they scribbled down a response.

This activity is useful because it gives a safe space for people to express concerns about taking this class, either because of their lack of experience with Christianity or religion, or a painful experience of religious abuse or trauma. Sometimes, people share ecstatic moments of communion with the Divine, miracles, moments where they found their faith in a new light. Grandmothers, parents, aunts, uncles, and siblings join us momentarily in the circle as people share stories of those who have inspired, or stunted, their understanding of faith. The room gets filled with whatever experiential knowledge that students already have entering the theological classroom.

I do this activity, and I share this exercise here, because it is a concrete classroom experience that actively demonstrates my own assumptions about transformative education and the sacred, expansive possibilities of a theological classroom. At its best, I believe the theological classroom can be a space of self-exploration. It should be a place of recovery from religious education that dismissed or even discouraged questioning. I tell students that this classroom can be a place to ask your biggest questions and think critically. We might not end up with clear-cut answers; I can almost guarantee we will end up with more questions. But this ability to go deep also makes the theological classroom a site of emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual growth.

Deeply influenced by popular educators like bell hooks and dian marino, I believe that in a liberatory education, students and professors are both learners and teachers to every single person in the class. This is not to erase the power dynamic: I am still the one in charge of managing group dynamics, giving grades, and choosing the content to discuss. But it is an attempt to highlight how egalitarian classroom learning like this can honor the students and the professor as complex humans with meaningful experiential insights to share.

This activity can be adapted for any topic when you want an in-the-moment survey of what assumptions and perspectives students are bringing with them at the start of the semester. You will notice that having a metadiscussion about what students felt, heard, and observed leads nicely into making classroom agreements. These were shared anonymously, but what guidelines would need to be in place for you to share your experiences?

I have also adapted the activity for online courses. When sending out pre-course surveys, I have added this question about one experience that shapes your view of Christianity today. Then, I compile the answers without any names attached to them into an Excel spreadsheet, and we can analyze this data as a class, either synchronously by reading it out loud and then discussing, or asynchronously, as described below.

This activity reminds each one of us that we are here to learn about ourselves and each other. Each one of us enters the classroom with valuable knowledge that is derived from our different life experiences. Assigned readings will present us with a variety of perspectives, but our task as co-learners is to explore how these topics show up in our lives and our classmates’ lives in different ways. Sharing our perspectives and hearing our classmates’ perspectives gives a more complex and nuanced understanding of religion and the world that we collectively inhabit. My hope is that we leave the classroom with a stronger sense of our responsibility to work to make life more livable, more just for each other—even if we don’t always agree with each other, we can understand why someone might think the way they do given their life experiences.

Activity Description:

Ask students to write about one concrete experience that still shapes their view of your class topic (Christianity, social justice, religion, death and dying, etc.) to this day. Ask them to try and describe just one instance, with specific details, rather than a broader summary. They may have multiple experiences, or very few experiences. Tell the students that it is okay—however partial or seemingly small it may be, for today, just focus on one.

If it is in person, ask the student to crumple their response and throw it in the center of the classroom. If it is digital, make a format where students can anonymously view each other’s responses.

Read aloud the anonymous Christian experiences with intention. If it is a classroom setting, make sure each student reads one. If it is digital, let students read them on their own. Encourage them to pause and digest the stories that their classmates are telling. Invite them to notice where their own story falls into this compilation. Celebrate the fact that we have a group of beautiful, complex, intriguing human beings gathered for this course!

After hearing these stories/reading through this document, ask students to reflect on these questions and share in class/post their responses on the forum. Invite the students to pay attention to their classmates’ responses—they may be referencing their experiences in their own theological learning process already...

Possible Discussion Questions:

1. What did it feel like reading through this list? What was it like to read other people's stories? What was it like to hear/see your own experience in class/within the document?
2. Which stories did you relate to the most? Why? Which stories were different from yours but made you want to learn more? Why?
3. Which patterns, if any, did you notice in the responses? How might this impact the way our discussions happen throughout the semester?
4. What did you learn by doing this activity? Why do you think we did this as our first activity for this class?
5. These experiences were anonymous. What guidelines would need to be in place for you to feel comfortable sharing some of your life experiences in class?