Religion in Composition Classrooms

Scholars in rhetoric, composition, and literacy have offered a range of perspectives on how (or even whether) to address religion in composition classrooms. Some have noted discipline-wide tendencies to avoid addressing religious rhetoric or belief in the composition classroom (Dively, Timmerman). Others have embraced spirituality in the writing process only insofar as it is kept separate from religion, claiming that the two can “easily be disconnected” (Foehr and Schiller 42). A number of scholars, however, have acknowledged both religion and spirituality as important dimensions of writers’ lived experiences and have worked toward nuanced ways of addressing these dimensions in writing instruction contexts (Barron et al., Bizzell, Campbell, Daniell, Moffett, Ringer, Vander Lei and kyburz,).

The assignment sequence posed in this chapter is founded on the claim that, even in light of the challenges that accompany negotiating (Vander Lei and kyburz) such a highly charged topic, religious dimensions of literacy are important to address in the composition classroom. The US is among the world’s most religiously diverse countries (Eck), meaning greater opportunities for engagement (both positive and negative) with individuals of different religious traditions. In the wake of a deeply divisive election in which religious concerns played significant roles on both sides, and especially in light of proposed policies targeting minority religious groups (Chow, Trump), I argue that explicitly addressing both spiritual and religious dimensions of literacy in classroom contexts is extremely important for fostering dialogue between diverse voices and perspective. [Nash here somewhere—along with Nash, I identify the university as an especially important/fitting/appropriate space for sharing/exploring religion and beliefs through storytelling, to which a classroom focused on literacy and composition may be especially well suited]

Furthermore, literacy studies has long recognized that the teaching, learning, and deployment of literate practices are never ideologically neutral (Brandt, Delpit, Graff, Street). Students and teachers alike enter the composition classroom with deeply held beliefs (religious or otherwise) that often significantly shape both their identities and their processes of inquiry (Ringer 363). Attention to writers’ lived experiences of religion (Vasquez) acknowledges the complex material networks out of which their literate knowledge and practices emerge (Hawk), which in some cases can be obscured by attempts to disconnect religion from spirituality. If, as Duffy argues, questions of ethics and the moral life are at the heart of teaching writing (221), it is important to build space in writing classrooms for acknowledging and taking seriously the different meaning-making resources (religious, spiritual, and secular alike) that participants use to answer these questions.