LibLog

July 1, 2007

Religion at a State College
By Celia Chazelle - The College of New Jersey

Much attention has been paid of late to the apparent increase of interest in religion on the part of American undergraduates. College administrators, like political candidates, are paying more attention to religion, no longer assuming it will just fade away. But what does this mean for the individual faculty member, especially those in fields other than religious studies? Are there pedagogies that respond to students’ engagement in, or curiosity about religion in ways that enrich their liberal education?

I was at a conference recently in Frankfurt where I had a conversation with a scholar of medieval liturgy (an interest I share). He noted that he had been a monk for eight years before he turned to the scholarly study of religion. He also noted his surprise, on a recent visit to the US, at the hostility toward religious belief among the American academics he met. Antipathy toward religious faith, they seemed to think, was a hallmark of scholarly seriousness. Thus they stressed their own secularism and the need to draw a clear line between the alleged neutrality of the subject matter they covered in courses and the religious beliefs of their students. Such attitudes, he suggested, were foreign to his experience in Germany.

I run into similar attitudes all the time, both at my institution and at other colleges and universities. Where I teach, though, a state college, they are probably even more pronounced than at many institutions because we have to abide by legislation intended to maintain the separation between “church” and state. One consequence is a lack of funding at the college for campus ministries, and thus a near-total absence of ministers except from conservative evangelical groups seeking to proselytize. There is no Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu representation, for example, and a Buddhist association has only recently started thanks to a volunteer faculty member. As a consequence, “ecumenical” gatherings (for instance, prayer services) that extend beyond Protestant groups are rare, and some that have taken place have been marked by overt acts of intolerance.

This situation, it seems to me, precisely demonstrates the importance of studying religious issues in the classroom, and not only in established religious studies courses. In fact, on my campus there is little as yet in the way of a regular religious studies program—though we’re working to change that—largely because of the long-lived assumption that religion is not an appropriate subject of liberal education at a NJ state college. The onus almost entirely falls on faculty in other departments of the humanities and social sciences to offset the narrowness and rigidity of the discussions concerning religion (as some students complain) that occur elsewhere on campus. It’s up to us to familiarize them, from the scholarly perspectives of history, literature, art, etc., with the diversity of religion and its myriad forms of cultural expression, and also with the tragic histories of religious conflict, violence, and oppression. I find that the students very much want to learn about these topics as a counterweight to what they experience on the outside, where they are far less likely to be exposed, in a reasonably neutral fashion, to a range of alternative viewpoints. Our classes are small enough for easy discussion. Since I teach courses on premodern history, religion is necessarily a theme just about every week of the semester. Often lectures and discussions directly concern the history of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, the most common religious backgrounds of my students (especially Christianity). The best practice, I generally find, is to allow anyone who wants to do so to draw comparisons with their own beliefs or with their assumptions (however misconceived) about other belief systems. I try to create an atmosphere where the students can feel comfortable doing this, and to respond to their questions and comments by illustrating other ways of thought through lectures, assigned readings, or films, and by encouraging other students to share their knowledge and experience. If we get off topic because of the discussion, so be it. My one rule is that the classroom atmosphere must always remain civil so that we can learn from one another. In my view, that’s the defining feature of a liberal educational program.

Celia Chazelle is professor of history at The College of New Jersey.

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