Faith in the Classroom

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Cognitive Dissonance Theory and the Induced-Compliance Paradigm pose some interesting questions for those teaching religious studies in publicly funded colleges and universities. Given that religious beliefs can be challenged by the historical-critical study of scriptures, for example, and that the cognitive dissonance generated when this occurs can result in unconscious alteration of beliefs and attitudes, it is vital to make explicit the potential for manipulation of student beliefs. The author asks what, if any, responsibilities are implied for the instructor.

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What is contemplative pedagogy and how is it practiced in Religious Studies classrooms? Contemplative pedagogy cultivates inner awareness through first-person investigations, often called “contemplative practices.” Contemplative teaching practices range widely: silent sitting meditation, compassion practices, walking meditation, deep listening, mindfulness, yoga, calligraphy, chant, guided meditations, nature observation, self-inquiry, and many others. Since narrative is a mode of instruction prevalent in contemplative literature, the article includes first-hand reflections from students and a narrative account of how an initially skeptical professor came to incorporate contemplative teaching methods into her courses. It expands from the personal narratives to highlight the work of many contemplative professors in the field. These real-life examples are put into the context of recent publications on shifts in higher education and meditation research. The article seeks to demonstrate the power of contemplative teaching to fulfill many hopes for liberal arts learning. Of particular importance is its emphasis on interior qualities of lifelong impact, such as self-knowledge and ethical cultivation.

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Contemplative Pedagogy is a new and sometimes controversial pedagogical practice. Faculty often have basic questions about how to implement the pedagogy in their classrooms, in addition to questions that challenge the educational value and appropriateness of the practice. Assembled here are the most frequently asked questions about Contemplative Pedagogy, with responses from six contemplative professors, each from a different institutional and philosophical location. The respondents are founding members of the Contemplative Studies Consultation of the American Academy of Religion. The diversity of views expressed by the respondents invites the reader to see that there is no single theory or praxis of contemplative pedagogy.

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Much debate exists regarding the purpose of education. This article explores the idea that religious education can be used to inspire change and action in the lives of students beyond the classroom. We describe a study of students who took a required religion class at a private religious university. The intended outcomes of the class centered on encouraging students to make the following changes in their lives: to develop a habit of regular scripture study, to use new methods to study the scriptures, and to make positive choices in their lives. Specific assignments were designed to encourage these outcomes. At the end of the semester, students were surveyed as to whether they had made changes in their lives in these three areas. The vast majority of students reported that they had made changes in their lives because of assignments given in the class. Implications and limitations are discussed.

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As the number of people of South Asian heritage in America has greatly increased over recent decades, the study and teaching of Hinduism has come under ever greater scrutiny. During this time, the number of students of Indian background has vastly increased in some schools in some parts of the United States. This increased presence and scrutiny has had some salutary effects, including greater attention to and accountability in our field, but has also led to some unwelcome conflict and feelings of misrepresentation by both academics and adherents. Some of us are in the perplexing position of being keenly aware of and in conversation about tensions elsewhere, yet still having few (or no) Hindu students in our own classrooms. This essay will discuss two matters given this background: first, I will describe how I present Hindu religious traditions in my local context, and then I will offer some more general reflections on teaching and researching Hinduism in the United States today.

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This paper presents a critique of a set of teaching strategies known as “contemplative pedagogy.” Using practices such as meditation, attentive listening, and reflective reading, contemplative inquiry focuses on direct first-person experience as an essential means of knowing that has historically been overshadowed and dismissed by an emphasis on analytical reasoning. In this essay, I examine four problematic claims that appear frequently in descriptions of contemplative pedagogy: (1) undergraduate students have a kind of spiritual hunger; (2) pedagogies focused on cognitive skills teach students only what, not how, to think; (3) self-knowledge fosters empathy; and (4) education needs a new epistemology centered on spiritual and emotional, rather than intellectual, experience. I argue that these claims underestimate the diversity of undergraduate students, the complexity of what it means to think and know, the capacity for self-knowledge to become self-absorption, and the dangers of transgressing the boundaries between intellectual, psychological, and religious experiences. [See as well “Response to Kathleen Fisher's ‘Look Before You Leap,’” by Andrew O. Fort and Louis Komjathy, published in this issue of the journal.]

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This article provides two short responses to Kathleen M. Fisher's essay “Look Before You Leap: Reconsidering Contemplative Pedagogy,” published in this issue of the journal.

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This article revisits the pedagogical dilemma of maintaining neutrality in the religious studies/theology classroom. I argue that if the boundary between teaching about religion and actually teaching spirituality seems to be vanishing, it is because the boundary was inappropriately constructed in the first place. To the extent that the religious concepts, even when compressed into religious studies categories, inherently inspire personal transformation, how can a boundary exist between the ideas students encounter and the power of those ideas to transform? Spiritual guidance emerges naturally in the academic study of religion, and those of us who teach in the field might as well get used to it. In explaining my position, I draw on my experience as a teaching assistant in Professor Walter Capps's course, "Religion and the Impact of the Vietnam War." I, then, develop a pragmatic teaching strategy, neutral enthusiasm, which preserves the important neutrality of classroom presentation in religious studies courses, yet recognizes the unavoidable evocative power present in the intellectual territory that is religion. Neutral enthusiasm allows the content to do the work.

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This article emphasizes the need for religious educators to address the issue of divine violence in Scripture with students, and it offers various pedagogical strategies for doing so. The focus is on violent Old Testament texts, with special attention given to the issue of Canaanite genocide. A general framework for structuring class time around divine violence in Scripture is proposed which includes (1) encouraging students to encounter violent biblical texts firsthand, (2) helping them understand why people find these passages problematic, and (3) offering various options for dealing with the potential problems these passages raise. In the second half of the article, significant attention is devoted to a number of practical considerations that should be taken into account when talking about this sensitive issue in class. A brief word about assessment is offered at the end.

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The increasing religious diversity in educational space has raised a legitimate question on how Catholic theology/catechesis must be taught in Philippine Catholic universities given the institutional mandate to educate students “into the faith of the Church through teaching of Christian doctrine in an organic and systematic way” (Wuerl, 2013, 1). On this note, the paper makes reference to “centered pluralism” (CP), a positional posture espoused by Georgetown University in dealing with this predicament. In an attempt to (re)appropriate CP into local context, there is a need to explore the Filipino conception of self/others as enveloped within the indigenous concept of kapwa. Hereon, the paper finds that CP is not just feasibly suitable in local context but with kapwa's more inclusive description of the relationship of self and others, a CP‐based teaching paradigm in theology/catechesis is a promising project in the educational scene of the Philippines.

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This study ventures to sketch the dimensions of stress in religious thinking among young Muslims studying theology in Turkish universities and the ways in which these tensions are handled in educational institutions. As a result of a review of related literature, together with the use of a questionnaire with 382 respondents and interviews with 15 participants, the extent of experienced intense religious stress, the source, the content, the ways of resolution, the duration, and the period of religious stress were identified. Finally, the cognitive, educational, theological, and socio-cultural challenges to which young Muslims were exposed were delineated and possible ways to overcome these problems were outlined, with some suggestions for educational settings.

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One page Teaching Tactic: Scaffolded activities and assignments beginning the first day of class to help students engage significant life questions in the Bible.

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Recent research by Barbara Walvoord suggests a perceived disparity between faculty learning objectives and students' desire to engage “big questions” in the introductory religion classroom. Faculty opinions of such questions are varied, ranging from a refusal to employ any approach that diverts attention away from critical thinking, to a willingness to integrate personal questions of meaning and purpose into the introductory religion course. This essay argues that, in light of work currently being done by such developmental theorists as Sharon Daloz Parks and Marcia Baxter Magolda, the integrative approach has much to commend it. It concludes with suggestions for how religion faculty can expand this approach through learning covenants, service learning, and seeing the religion classroom as a gateway to various mentoring communities on campus.

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What is the relationship between the academic knowledge of the guild and the formation of students in the classroom? This Forum gathers four essays originally presented at a Special Topics Session at the 2009 conference of the American Academy of Religion (Atlanta, Georgia), with a brief introductory essay by Fred Glennon explaining the genesis of the panel. Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen clarify some of the issues at stake in undergraduate liberal arts classrooms by distinguishing between four dimensions of what they refer to as “the (in)formation teaching matrix: institutional context, course content, faculty roles, and student outcomes. John Thatamanil argues that all learning necessarily presupposes formation. Amanda Porterfield argues against using the word “formation” because it complicates and undermines her teaching goals to historicize religion and narratives about it through open-ended inquiry. And, finally, Mary Elizabeth Moore explores the interactive processes linking formation, information, reformation, and transformation.

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Biblical studies professors in Christian liberal arts colleges typically face greater hostility from students nurtured in fundamentalist churches than they do from those who attend mainline churches. Guiding them through their first academic study of the Bible poses many challenges. To avoid the course becoming a battlefield, and to facilitate integration on a higher level, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral provides a middle way between right-wing and left-wing extremes. This approach gives priority to the Bible as the primary source for determining theology and practice, but relies heavily on tradition, reason, and experience as well. It also promotes interaction with the spiritual, moral, and ethical concerns expressed in the biblical texts. To adopt the Quadrilateral involves active concern for character formation, inspiring students to become better people. If we merely dispense historical-critical or literary information without considering contemporary relevance, we bore students and fail in our duties as educators.

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This article explores the disconnection between ethical theory and ethical practice in ethics courses at secular U.S. colleges and universities. In such contexts academic ethics focuses almost exclusively on “ethical reasoning” and leaves the business of practical moral formation of students in the realm of “student life.” I argue this disconnection is inevitable given the dominant understanding that moral formation must be guided by a consistent ethical theory, and must eventuate in certain prosocial behaviors, while norms of pluralism and free inquiry mandate that academic courses not attempt to dictate certain views or behaviors as normative. Drawing on the Confucian model of moral cultivation expressed by the early Chinese figure Mengzi, I argue for a different understanding of moral formation that focuses on open-endedness, self-direction, and the acquisition of skills in directing attention and will. This approach avoids the most serious challenges to practical moral formation in secular contexts, and I suggest some broadly applicable principles for implementing these ideas in ethics courses.

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This classroom exercise developed out of an effort to make the methodology and practical techniques of our field come alive for students of New Testament at a variety of undergraduate levels. Adapting the controversial "voting" technique of the Westar Institute's "Jesus Seminar," students vote with colored beads on the authenticity of Jesus' sayings in Matthew's Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3–12). The point of the exercise is not to judge or dismiss Biblical text, but to work actively and thoughtfully with the critical tools and methods of New Testament scholarship, to ponder the implications of academic assessments of "authenticity" when it comes to Biblical text, and to stimulate discussion concerning how we, as professional scholars of the Bible, approach the Gospels.

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One of the most illuminating finds in Barbara E. Walvoord's Teaching and Learning in College Introductory Religion Courses (2008) is what she calls “the great divide,” a mismatch between instructors’ goals for their courses, which are academic, and the students’ reasons for taking them, which relate to their personal interests and development. Motivation – or, rather, the lack thereof – is not explicitly considered as a potential victim of this mismatch. This article will turn its attention squarely to this issue. First, I will review data about the “great divide” and link them to the common practice of asking our students to bracket the personal when they take our courses. The article will juxtapose this practice with what research tell us about motivation, which will allow us to further explore why the divide Walvoord and others have identified is so problematic. The article will conclude with pedagogical strategies that can help instructors intentionally influence motivation in religion courses. Ultimately, I suggest that we may be doing students – as well as ourselves, as the purveyors of our discipline – a disservice, if we do not attend to (or, worse, if we actively avoid) what we know motivates students to learn.

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Recently scholars of religion have disputed whether theology properly belongs to the study of religion in institutions of higher education (McCutcheon 1997a, 1997b; Cady 1998; Brown and Cady forthcoming). At the same time, religious authorities have increasingly censored the work of theologians in seminaries and church-related schools; witness the loyalty oaths required of scholars in religious studies programs at some Protestant denominationally related colleges and the Catholic Church's recent stand expressed by Ex Cordae Ecclessiae. Both scholars who would exclude theology as a field from the study of religion and ecclesiastical authorities who would censor it fail to acknowledge the emergence of academic theology as a field that does not depend on institutional religious affiliation or personal confession of faith, a field that by its nature does depend for its continued existence on academic freedom. This article suggests a working definition of academic theology and then poses three questions: What might studying different kinds of theology academically teach us about religion? How, properly speaking, is theology as performed in a non-sectarian environment now a nomad wandering within the formal study of religion? What are the implications of this shift in status for how academic theologians teach? The article is a revision of the inaugural address, by the same title, given for the Margaret W. Harmon professorship in Christian Theology and Culture at Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota, November 18, 1999.

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Two theologians teaching religion at the same college engage in a dialogue about differences in their understandings of teaching religion in order to explore serious pedagogical and theological issues. Their reflections on their teaching touch on issues of learning goals, institutional identity, student freedom, faculty self-revelation, and the liberal arts that most teachers of religion face. Along the way, they explore the relation of pedagogy to theological topics like grace and ecclesiology. We invite readers to join the conversation begun in this article by engaging Webb, Placher, and one another through the public discussion list we've created for this article on the Wabash Center Discussion Forum at http://ntweb.wabash.edu/wcdiscus/.

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This note examines some pedagogical strategies for the formation of students who read the Bible both confessionally and critically. Some students in both church-related and secular colleges and universities enter courses with confessional views of the Bible that inspire a literal interpretation of the text, what the author calls a flat reading. Teachers struggle to lead students to a more nuanced view of the text in a way that is both sensitive to the students' development and academically responsible. The author indicates how he approaches this challenge through: (1) a discussion of texts that have been used to enable students to see the nature of the biblical text and to transform their understanding of it; (2) a description of techniques and exercises that work toward the same goal; and (3) reflection on the application of sociological research on group change in the transformation of individuals.

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By reclaiming the role of confession in the classroom, we can rethink the fundamental question of what it means to teach religion. That is, the project of thinking about the religious dimension of pedagogy should also force us to rethink religious studies in general. Pedagogy, after all, is not an incidental expression of religious commitments but is instead one significant place where the religious imagination takes shape and form. All religious reflection is confessional, because scholarship is only one form of pedagogy, and teaching is the act of saying who we are, where we are from, and where we are going.

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This essay asks: What are the ethics of engaging self-identified "conservative" students in topics and processes of learning that may unravel their world-view and possibly their personal lives? We should take their concerns, fear, and distrust seriously and not simply dismiss them as ignorant. We should strive to be "trustworthy" educators, guiding students through the consequences of transformative education. This paper argues that conservative students are critically examining and reacting to the liberal academy by leveling critiques similar to those found within feminist, post-colonial and post modern pedagogies. This essay reviews contemporary postmodern, postcolonial, and feminist pedagogies, which analyze bias and power in the classroom and have sought to represent marginalized voices in the classroom in order to challenge the way education often simply serves and protects the interests of the privileged. Pedagogies centered on subject or disciplinary method cannot secure a trustworthy pedagogy since method, thinking skills, and subjects are themselves bias-laden. But critical pedagogy offers insights to help us achieve the goal of becoming trustworthy educators for students coming from a wide spectrum of religious perspectives.

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An undergraduate liberal arts education can help students be not simply shaped by tradition but also shapers of tradition. Specifically, undergraduate theological education, aimed at ministry preparation in a liberal arts setting, can seek to graduate students who are responsible shapers of the traditions that shape them, that is, who are tradents. The work of a tradent involves active engagement that requires skills and capacities well beyond simply passing on the past formulations of a tradition. The pedagogical question, then, is how to engage in undergraduate theological education if this image of the tradent is what we have in mind for our students. Three aspects of this image can serve as pervasive or recurrent themes across the structure of a major or program. One aspect is the interpretive nature of the tradent's work, a second is facility with traditions, and a third is the creative, constructive work of thinking theologically. Whatever particular traditions characterize a department's context, the image of students as tradents can help focus pedagogical reflection on the department's work: teaching students as shapers of the traditions that shape them.

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In the face of a mounting mental health crisis among college students, professors have an opportunity and responsibility to respond to their students’ psychological distress. Psychological and historical scholarship suggests that the proliferation of modern media and breakdown in traditional sources of existential meaning like religion are significant factors in young adults’ declining mental health. In response to this crisis, this article examines the crucial role of the imagination in constructing meaning and proposes an imagination‐centered pedagogical process by means of which teachers can assist students in recovering meaning and integration in their lives.

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One page Teaching Tactic: structure, prompts, and evaluation rubric for final summative exams conducted orally with individual students.

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Teaching theology within academic institutions with confessional commitments and theologically conservative students requires holding together, in creative tension, two pedagogical goals. The challenge is to promote rigorous academic inquiry by encouraging student openness to engagement with perspectives that challenge their own beliefs while simultaneously constructing a course that is experienced as a safe space where students do not feel their personal faith is under attack. This essay presents the argument that a methodological framework for introductory theology courses informed by Alasdair MacIntyre's reflections on the nature of living traditions holds great promise for achieving these objectives. The essay will also describe how a creative extended analogy drawn from the game of basketball facilitates student comprehension of this initially abstract intellectual framework. Finally, the essay will offer some representative examples of student participation in course online discussion forums in order to illustrate the effectiveness of this approach for student learning.

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In this set of essays, three authors provide different perspectives on whether personal religious sensibilities and identities affect the ways we teach religion. Elliott Bazzano discusses how, as a white Muslim convert teaching at a Catholic college, he incorporates selective autobiographical anecdotes into his classes as a way to problematize the meaning of “insider” and “outsider,” and pushes his students to recognize the many layers of identity that any given person embodies at a given time. In the second essay, Audrey Truschke explains why she makes no reference to her own religious beliefs or affiliations in class as part of her strategy to demonstrate how students can study any religion regardless of personal convictions. In the third essay, Jayme Yeo explores the benefits of discussing personal religious identity as a means to resist the categories of “inside” and “outside,” which she sees as heterogeneous concepts that do not always offer explanatory power upon close examination.

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Role‐playing games have been a part of scholarly conversations about pedagogy for several decades. However, more work is needed in understanding how gaming pedagogy can best fit with and augment particular disciplines. After providing two examples of role‐playing games that have been used successfully in teaching the New Testament, this article argues that role‐playing games contribute to theological and religious studies classrooms by forming positive values (e.g. openness to multiple viewpoints, civility, and empathy) and assisting students in integrating their faith and learning. Because of the low‐risk settings that games provide, students can practice skills that increase their achievement of learning outcomes and contribute to their value formation and faith formation.

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We analyzed 2,621 written student comments to better understand themes which most contribute to religion classes being rated high or low in terms of the spiritual benefit students received from the class. From 2,448 religion classes taught from September of 2010 through April of 2014, comments from the top 61 (2.5 percent) and bottom 51 (2.1 percent) rated classes in terms of being “spiritually inspiring” were compared for emerging themes. The most frequent themes in higher-ranked spiritually inspiring courses were (1) intellectually enlightening and (2) applied religion to life. In lower-ranked spiritually inspiring courses the themes (1) class time was ineffective and (2) poor assessments were prevalent. We explore the practical implications from these and other findings.

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There seem to be two irreconcilable approaches to reading the Bible, and these often collide in an undergraduate's first college class in religion. Students from a devotional background find the scholarly approach a disappointment compared with their preferred way of reading. Yet upon closer examination the limits of an exclusively devotional way or an exclusively academic way soon become apparent. A way beyond this impasse is described as an incarnational approach, which seeks to honor the integrity of the literary, cultural, and historical features of the Bible while also taking seriously the personal faith of both student and instructor. This strategy is not original of course, but is a case study of a way in which the Christian tradition may address the quarrel between two competing ways of reading and turn it into a conversation.

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A pervasive, yet under-discussed, problem in religious studies classrooms is the presence of faith crisis. Many students face a type of cognitive dissonance when faced with the critical-analytical approach in the academic study of religion. This essay, in an open and conversational tone, addresses the learning opportunity underlying such crisis moments. The discussion begins with a delimitation of what constitutes the secular university's goals in pedagogy and research. After arguing that a reductive limitation of knowable knowledge construction is to be the focus of the university, the discussion moves to the presence of cognitive stages of development, or liminal rites of passage as analogous for explicating the learning process in which crisis moments emerge. Finally, the discussion concludes with a reflection on the coherence of reductive limitation and collaborative pedagogy.

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Increasing numbers of college students enrolling in religion courses in recent years are looking to develop their religious faith or spirituality, while professors of religion want students to use and appreciate scholarly tools to study religion from an academic perspective. Some scholars argue that it is not possible to satisfy both goals in the classroom, while authors in this journal have given suggestions on how to bridge the gap between faith and scholarship. I argue that such authors are correct and that, in my experience, historical-critical methods can help devout students understand the original texts in their own religion better, comprehend why changes in interpretation have occurred over time, and appreciate the values in religions other than their own. Not all devout students are comfortable with an academic study of religion, but many can attain a more mature faith by such an approach.

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A study of sixty-six highly effective teachers of introductory theology and religion courses in various types of institutions reveals very complex challenges for instructors. The majority of students have as a goal their own religious and spiritual development. Faculty members’ most frequent goal is critical thinking. Students much less frequently mention critical thinking, and their expectations and voices may be more appropriate for a place of worship or a counseling center. To meet these complex challenges, faculty encourage four student “voices”: the questioner, the applier, the thinker/arguer, and the autobiographer. These voices can help students explicitly to bring their own experiences and beliefs into relationship with course material and critical thinking. Careful planning and guidance for students are the key to making these voices work well.

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These three articles deal with the issue of faith in the classroom – whether one should teach “to,” “for,” or “against” faith. While their institutional settings and experiences are different, the authors all contend that more serious reflection needs to be given to the matter of how religious commitment plays out in our diverse pedagogical settings. The initial article by Carolyn Medine surveys the current climate regarding student spirituality in the classroom, the broader governmental concerns, and, the tensions that inform the choices available to a professor. Todd Penner's essay analyzes faith-as-ideology in the undergraduate classroom, and Marjorie Lehman's contribution analyzes how the issue manifests differently in Jewish Studies.

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Can one uphold a call from an ecclesiastical body while teaching in a college classroom? This paper will argue that the dual roles of pastor and professor can be integrated by the adoption of faith development as a learning goal. This goal seems to stand at odds with three important aspects of academic teaching: the demographic reality of religious pluralism, the ethical requirement to preserve student autonomy, and the overarching goal of a university education to promote critical thinking. My argument will be that, far from violating these three areas, faith development as a broad learning goal can actually provide a valuable deepening of pluralism, autonomy, and critical thought in the educational experience of students. The method of exploration will be autobiographical. I will show how it is that in my dual roles as an ELCA pastor called to a faculty post I articulate and use faith development as an overarching learning goal in the context of (1) a theological pedagogy based on an interfaith logos theology, (2) a value-laden pedagogy vis-à-vis consumerist self-formation, and (3) an adaptation of stages of faith development to the classroom.