LibLog

June 26, 2007

When Religion and Politics Collide in the Classroom
By Stanley N. Katz - Princeton University

I suppose it matters quite a lot what one is teaching undergraduates. I am trained as an English and American historian, though it has been quite some time since I gave a course in the History Department at Princeton (I now teach public policy in the Woodrow Wilson School). My field was early American history, and of course my subject matter was deeply involved with the history of Christianity, belief and practice, in the development of American societies before the Revolution. It never occurred to me that there was a problem in talking about Puritanism or other sectarian views, and I do not recall awkward situations in the classroom—although it was probably clear to at least some of the students that I am not myself a Christian. More recently I have taught law and public policy, in which religion is frequently a major concern. My standard undergraduate course now is called "Civil Society and Public Policy," and I have found an increasing (and explicit) demand from my students to include more material on the relationship of religion and civil society. I quite regularly ask my students if they belong to faith organizations (just as I ask if they belong to other civil society organizations), and I cannot think of an instance in which students have failed to respond—I also talk about my own religious commitments. I sense no resistance, and the anonymous course evaluations have never commented on this aspect of the course.

In my own work, the potentially contentious aspect of religious content comes at the intersection of religion and politics—particularly in student attitudes toward the Bush administration's Faith Based Initiative. I find, frankly, that students are more reluctant to discuss their political than their religious commitments, and the combination of the two can be volatile. This is particularly true on campuses like my own, on which there are conservative political organizations that have (sometimes covert) religious commitments. When religion is implied and not explicit, open discourse is difficult.

From my perspective, the convergence of conservative politics and evangelical Christianity sometimes create extremely tense situations in and out of the classroom, especially when sponsored by prominent faculty members. This can and does lead to situations of misunderstanding and mistrust. As the director of an undergraduate program, I have more than once had to try to mediate conflicts between teacher and student that arose out of perceived tension between scholarly and religious values. In my judgment, this is the most serious area for concern about the role of religion in undergraduate education at the present moment.

Stanley N. Katz is Lecturer with the rank of Professor in Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School. He also directs Princeton's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies.

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