Higher Ed

“God is not in this classroom”

This is a paper presented at the 2006 SBL. I am negligent in preparing it for a volume on teaching the Bible in a secular context. I thought I would repost it here now in hopes that a few more folks might offer their thoughts and comments that I may incorporate into the final product. There is a wide range of experience out there and I think this would be a much stronger work with your contributions.

“God is Not in this Classroom” or Reading the Bible in a Secular Context

Description: Teaching biblical literature in a secular Liberal Arts environment requires allowing the texts to speak for themselves, so that students might hear what the texts have to say (which may not necessarily be what we want to hear). This is easier said than done since we must attempt to leave religious convictions, traditions, and specific agendas behind. At the same time, we must also recognize that we will not always be able to avoid our own historical context and bias. In light of these challenges and through my eight years experience as a Christian teaching courses in a Jewish Studies program at a secular university I have developed methods (and discarded others) for teaching the Hebrew Bible that include reading the texts critically as literary and historical sources while salting the course with Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and other interpretations. The goal is to use the potential handicaps of preconceived ideas and convictions as gateways into the material. God may well be in the classroom and miracles may well occur, but the students know that they have to determine that for themselves.

When I originally proposed this paper, as you can see from the description I intended to share with you how I sprinkled my courses on the Hebrew Bible with readings of various readings of the text. Next semester I will be teaching Genesis, for example, and in that course we will being by reading the biblical text itself and then read Bonhoeffer’s little work on creation. When we get to Noah we will read the Genesis Apocryphon and when we get to the story of Tamar we will look at a feminist reading of the text (and make oblique references to The Red Tent). But I think this approach is fairly self-evident, that by showing students multiple readings of the same or similar text they will begin to see the challenges and promise of reading a text that is so ancient and yet still so relevant to so many. I also realized, as I surveyed the field and looked at the other proposals for today, that this is an approach that many have found useful and I did not want to burden you with my rendition of this theme.

It seems that the sort of strategies most often employed in teaching the Bible in a secular liberal arts context involve teaching the Bible as something, e.g., “The Bible as Literature,” “The Bible as History.” Or we might provide “readings” of the Bible, such as a feminist, liberationist, modern, etc. Please note, this is not a criticism per se, these are legitimate and useful strategies and that I regularly employ, yet each of these methods is an attempt to read the biblical text as something other than it is.

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“Religion Financed With Student Fees” – Inside Higher Ed

Mar 8th, 2011

by Christian Brady.

2 comments

Nice title by Inside Higher Ed, wouldn’t you say? The case is interesting and important although apparently the ruling “is not binding in areas other than the Seventh Circuit.” (That doesn’t quite make sense to me, it is the Supreme Court that is upholding the appeals court after all.) The story is fairly simple.

A 2-to-1 ruling by the appeals court in that circuit last year took away the right of Wisconsin, and potentially other public colleges and universities, to support some student activities while denying funds to organizations for worship services, proselytizing, or other activities that explicitly involve the practice of religion. Wisconsins rules permitted the funding of many activities organized and run by religious student groups. But the rules barred activities related to prayer or proselytizing. Among the activities that Wisconsin told a Roman Catholic group could not be financed leading to the litigation were summer training camps with Roman Catholic Masses, a program to bring nuns to campus to help students determine if they have the calling to be priests, and the distribution of Rosary booklets.

The majority opinion from the appeals court said that once a state university supports student activities that involve leadership development or counseling, it cant exclude some activities simply because they are religious in nature.

via News: Religion Financed With Student Fees – Inside Higher Ed.

Still, I am not convinced that this is an unalloyed good. If the university is being completely even handed and supporting all groups equally that is appropriate, but is it really in the best interests of either the student groups or the institution to be in a financial relationship?

I would add one further wrinkle and challenge IHE’s title just a bit. If we ask the question a different why does our view change? The student fees are not going to “finance religion,” they are going to support students who are in some way religious. Does that perspective make a difference? Perhaps.

“Making Student Blogs Pay Off with Blog Audits” – CHE

Oct 12th, 2010

by Christian Brady.

1 comment

ProfHacker at the Chronicle of Higher Education has a great little piece about how to make students’ blogging more effective, not in terms of production, but in terms of learning. We require students in our leadership academy to blog all three years they are in it and many find it daunting and frankly useless. I think this may well prove a useful method.

My adaptation of Blau’s reading log audit is essentially a blog post about blogging, as my guidelines for the assignment suggest:

Begin by printing and reading all of your posts and comments (you can access a list of your posts from the Archive menu at the top of the site). As you reread them, take notes, critically reading your entries as if they were written by somebody else (or at the very least, recognizing that they were written by a different you at a different time). You are not grading your own work so much as commenting on it and noticing what you notice week to week.

Compose a short analysis and reflection of your posts. This meta-post is open-ended and the exact content is up to you, although it should be thoughtful and directed. Feel free to quote briefly from your own posts or to refer to specific ideas from the readings we’ve studied so far.

Some questions to consider might include: What do you usually write about in your posts? Are there broad themes or specific concerns that reoccur in your writing? Has the nature of your posts changed in the past five or six weeks? What changes do you notice, and how might you account for those changes? What surprised you as you reread your work? What ideas or threads in your posts do you see as worth revisiting? What else do you notice? What aspects of the weekly blogging do you value most, and how does it show up in your posts?

via Making Student Blogs Pay Off with Blog Audits – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Teaching of Religion at U of Ill

Jul 30th, 2010

by Christian Brady.

No comments yet

Seems a resolution of sorts has been reached. I commented on this earlier, see the comments for thoughtful replies.

A Separation and a Return

July 30, 2010

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced Thursday that it is ending an unusual relationship under which an independent Roman Catholic center has for decades nominated instructors to teach Catholic thought at the university and paid their salaries. Further, the university announced that a controversial adjunct who has taught under the relationship would be back for the fall semester.

The decision by the religion department at Illinois to tell that adjunct, Kenneth Howell, that he could no longer teach set off a huge public debate over academic freedom and also led to renewed scrutiny of the highly unusual way Howell has been hired and paid. He has been the only instructor at Illinois who has been nominated and had his salary paid by an outside group.

Teaching religion at a secular university

Jul 19th, 2010

by Christian Brady.

4 comments

NB: Rick’s comment made me realize that I did not clarify at the outset that I was not commenting directly on the merits of Howell’s hiring or firing. I was commenting on the practice of allowing an organization or donor outside of the university dictate the hiring or firing policies.

The University of Illinois is receiving a lot of flak right now over the decision to not reappoint a lecturer of Catholic thought. From Inside Higher Ed:

The way the University of Illinois teaches Catholic thought has attracted widespread attention in the last week with the news that a long-term instructor, Kenneth Howell, was told that he would not be rehired, following complaints about an e-mail message he sent to students, which many viewed as misinformed about homosexuality, and as hostile to gay people.

The full piece is worth reading as it presents the arguments and concerns quite clearly. It seems that for decades UI has had an arrangement whereby St. John’s Catholic Newman Center vets, approves, and pays the salary for this instructor who then teaches courses within the religious studies department. Needless to say, this has brought up questions of separation of church and state (UI being a state school) and academic freedom.

As someone who has always taught religious subjects in secular schools, both private and public, as well as having directed both Jewish studies and religious studies programs, I have very strong and clearly formed views about such hirings. I can certainly understand the origins of such a position and payment situation. It was a common scenario in Jewish studies as well where the college or university had its roots (or assumptions) in Protestant traditions and the only way other religions were to be taught was through external funding. Such funding often comes with pressures and guidelines from the donors. But that is not where UI is anymore. They have a well established department of religion with top-notch faculty.

In order for religious studies to maintain its integrity and for the proper academic (as opposed to apologetic) teaching of the subject matter, it is imperative that the department and faculty make hiring decisions according to appropriate guidelines. In such a manner the process can be assessed and put under the usual rigors of the hiring and tenure process rather than being at the capricious whims of the donor. (I wonder what the outcry would have been had St. John’s not renewed Howell’s contract?) Catholic thought is certainly a field that is appropriate for a department of religion and I hope that UI funds a permanent tenure-line appointment within the department of religion.