Religious Faith in Composition Courses

by  Elizabeth Vander Lei, Calvin College

In the role of providing some background information and of sparking some conversation, I offer the following strong claim about religious faith and the composition classroom.

The flurry of recent publications that address the place and/or role of religious faith in the composition classroom might lead some to conclude that at some prior time (maybe a simpler, happier time), composition teachers could ignore religious faith as a shaping force on composition classes and still teach effectively. Given what we know now about the way religious faith pervades personal, cultural, social, and institutional practice, it seems unlikely that such a simpler time ever existed. Rather, it may be that by ignoring the presence of religious faith in our writing classrooms we failed to capitalize on its potential to foster good writing; it may be that by inviting religious faith into the composition classroom we can teach writing better. Let me proceed to build this argument by considering the ways that religious faith pervades the composition classroom.

First, religious faith enters the classroom with the people who populate it (students, to be sure, but faculty, too). Religious faith is inherently personal, and therefore intensely private, but we should resist two troublesome responses to the private nature of religious faith. To begin, many respond to the private nature of religious faith by attempting to quarantine the classroom. Research in composition suggests that it is impossible to do so (Smart), and attempts to do so can result in sterile pedagogy (Perkins). Furthermore, many claim that religious faith is an exclusively private matter, and thus it is off-limits for public discussion. Yet Barbara Couture notes that in contemporary American society the presumption that what it private is immune from critique has led to misuse of the private in public discussion. If we sequester religious faith from our writing classrooms on grounds that it is “private” we miss an opportunity to challenge students to think about the ways that private aspects of religious faith (their own or that of another) shapes public texts and arguments and we do not prepare them to engage with civic arguments based on religious precepts..

Second, as the impressive research on African American rhetoric demonstrates (see Moss, Richardson, and Peters as examples), some rhetorical traditions are saturated by cultural practice that is intensely religious. While little has been written about Middle Eastern Muslim students, Bronwyn Williams’ description of his student Mohammed’s writing suggests that religious practice may influence the writing of these students even more intensely than it does African American students. If we denigrate their view of the world by ignoring or down play the religious nature of their writing, we risk misapprehending their claim to power. And if we do not address how religious faith can be a rhetorical resource, we hobble students who might rely on these resources to write effectively.

Third, plenty of research on the religious character of American civil society reinforces Stephen Carter’s claim that “The battle for the public square is already over. The rhetoric of religion is simply there; it is far too late in America’s political day to argue over ‘shoulds.’ . . . . The question crying out most vitally for resolution, given the presence of religions in the public square, is whether and how to regulate that presence.” (101, emphasis his). Given the intensely religious nature of contemporary American society and given Couture’s apt assessment of our contemporary willingness to allow the private to enter the public immune from critique, we seriously jeopardize our students’ ability to perceive and critique civic arguments that are based on religious claims if we eradicate religious faith from our composition classrooms. Perhaps a more effective solution would be to invite in civic arguments based on religious warrants, arguments that can serve as a springboard for discussion of Carter’s “whether and how.”

Finally, as the work of historian George Marsden demonstrates, ostensibly secular academic institutions bear vestigial traces of their religious beginnings, traces that shape curriculum and institutional mission. Our own Lauren Fitzgerald and Nancy Welch have critiqued the religious presumptions that shape not only the composition classroom and the textbooks written for it (Fitzgerald) but also the training composition instructors receive (Welch). Despite our best efforts to extract religious faith from our composition courses, it is already there—in the institutions that offer the courses as part of a larger curriculum, in the training we offer new teachers, and in the textbooks we choose to use. It’s past time we acknowledged these traces and discussed, openly, what to do about them.

I concede the point that to invite religious faith into our classroom is to pave the way for some bracing conversations. But to me, it seems pretty clear that when we exclude religious faith from our composition classrooms we imperil our ability to help students become effective writers, readers, and thinkers.

Conversation openers:

• When teachers describe the times that religious faith has come into their classroom, usually it’s a student who brings up the topic/forces the issue. How might the fact that religious faith is most often an “uninvited guest,” one for whom we have not set a place at the table, shape our responses to religious faith?
• What are the common objections to opening the composition door to religious faith?
• Is this the best time to consider opening the composition door to religious faith?

Resources

Teaching Composition

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