On Faith in First Year Writing: Letter to a New GSI

Dear New GSI,

When you consider first-year writing (FYW), you probably don’t initially think about religion. After all, FYW is a service course that prepares students for the rest of their academic studies. However, beginning with the “liberatory pedagogy” of Paulo Freire and the critical pedagogy of Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, and bell hooks, the field has developed an ethos of valuing “students’ culture” and recognizing their “social identity and integrity” (George and Penrod 95). While theorists and researchers seem comfortable addressing ideas and classroom discussions surrounding race, gender, socioeconomic classes, and politics, one important aspect of students’ identities is glaringly absent: religion.

Without allowing for students’ faith, the cultural studies approach to composition seems hollow. After all, religion has an outsized influence on culture. Julie Drew asserts that “particular aspects of cultural studies offer a way, both theoretically and methodologically, for students to locate themselves within the complex and changing social structures that variously encourage or inhibit particular individuals in academic and social writing, and thus from effective, discursive participation and interventions” (418). In first-year writing, instructors urge students to reflect, but for students to do so, they must be allowed to tap their whole selves. Instead of pretending that spirituality doesn’t exist in the public square, we must develop a disposition of openness to students’ faith.

First-year writing instructors must resist the urge to “manage student interiors” by instituting pressure to leave their faith out of their reflections, writings, and rhetorical assertions (Miller 498). In fact, composition scholar Doug Downs creates a dichotomy based on students’ beliefs, juxtaposing “real scholars” against “true believers” (Downs 44). Michael-John DePalma argues that religious discourse and academic work are not “mutually exclusive and fixed” and that if instructors buy into Downs’ dichotomy, they may limit the ways we understand the “notion of belief.” Ultimately, such an atmosphere alienates spiritually minded students because Downs portrays “true believers” as “naïve and anti-intellectual” (DePalma 223[ME1] [RT2] ). The last thing we want to do in first-year writing is convey the idea that some students just don’t belong in academia.

Whether you’re teaching at a large public university, a small liberal arts university, or a religious university, it’s important to consider how you’ll manage faith in first-year writing. As a GSI who has taught first-year writing at Brigham Young University (BYU) for the past four semesters, I’ve contemplated strategies for incorporating religion into writing pedagogy and honoring the spiritual side of my students. BYU strives to prepare students to “take their place in society as thinking, thoughtful, and sensitive individuals” (Tanner 52). But even where educational institutions don’t have explicit charters to help students cultivate their spiritual side, instructors can be culturally sensitive to pupils who value their religious heritage and personal spirituality as important components of their identity. By adopting a disposition of openness to students’ religion and spirituality, instructors prime their classes for an authentic learning experience. In this letter, I explore five strategies gleaned from a variety of sources.

Strategy 1: See your religious students as “bilingual” or “translingual.”

As instructors, we have great respect for students who speak more than one language. We understand that bilingual students have unique strengths: they see the world with additional complexity that stems from the cultural, grammatical, and syntactical gifts that accompany language fluency. If we see religious students as “bilingual,” we can respect the complexity their faith brings to their writing and scholarship. Addressing BYU faculty, President Spencer Kimball said, “Your double heritage and dual concerns with the secular and the spiritual require you to be ‘bilingual’” (Tanner 46). Kimball’s statement correlates with research from Chris Anderson, an ordained minister for the Catholic Church and full-time English professor at Oregon State University. He refers to this “dual” situation as a daily journey between the wilderness and the world. He asserts that Christians must remain in the wilderness “because it’s only in the wilderness that we find our strength” (173). Anderson doesn’t see this constant journey between the wilderness and the world as a deficit. He thinks we should celebrate “the creative tension between faith and the world” (173).

Such creative tension exists, of course, in students who are linguistically bilingual. Words have slightly different meanings, connotations, and cultural contexts in different languages. Translators know that rendering a phrase into another language isn’t a one-to-one proposition. In addition to perfect clarity, translators aim for “just the right rhetorical pitch” (Talbot 25). Such nuanced understanding of two different languages allows rhetors and speakers to play within the lines, add dimension, and speak with the vocabulary and grammatical acuity of two tongues. Similarly, religious students can leverage their fluency in their dual heritage: religious and secular. And first-year writing instructors can encourage this interplay in several ways. First-year writing instructor Marion McCardell tells students, “Be both academically honest and true to your religious convictions. It is possible to be rigorous in research, report honestly what you find, and still see it from your own spiritual viewpoint. Don’t cheat your writing of the texture that your religious beliefs can provide” (Koenig and Savage 52). The texture McCardell refers to is the creative tension provided by a bilingual approach to education.

Part of this texture comes from explaining terms and ideas from one language to native speakers of the other. In translating terms from religion to secular academia, students think deeply about the connections and disparities between philosophies and worldviews. To explain religious terms to a secular audience, students must not only understand their readers’ languages but also perceive the gaps in cultural understanding. In this way, they become effective, empathetic rhetors; they have what Shannon Carter calls “rhetorical dexterity.”

In an environment where most or all of the students share a common religion, students may tend to slip into the assumption that their audience also shares their faith background. When instructors teach in this type of environment, they have an incredible opportunity to help students learn how they may be “more or less effective in different rhetorical situations” (Thomson-Bunn 392). Helping students learn how to be effective when discussing religious discourse does not need to be sustained throughout the semester. Instead, instructors could conduct a “discussion of a particular text that draws on religious discourses in rhetorically effective ways” (392). Such an activity inculcates a disposition of openness toward faith and helps students develop increased respect toward various viewpoints and cultures.

Seeing religious students as “bilingual” mimics the “translingual” approach introduced by Horner et al., which is built on the 1974 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) resolution declaring “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” (304). If and when students speak the language of spirituality and faith, they should not be seen as “defective.” In her dissertation, Heather Thomsen notes that “there is a tendency—apparent both explicitly and more subtly in the instructor data and in scholarship—to view religious identities from a ‘deficit’ perspective, and this perspective leads to the construction of religious students as hindered in their academic work as a result of their religious commitments” (Thomsen 216). Rather than viewing any first-year writing student as defective or deficient based on their culture, Horner et al. insist that we view “language differences and fluidities as resources to be preserved, developed, and utilized” (304). Religious students bring perspectives and language that is generative; instructors should strive to see these “differences not as a problem but as a resource” with the potential to “revitalize the teaching of writing and language” (305).

Strategy 2: Open the class curriculum to make room for the cultural histories of your religious students.

Cultural studies in composition typically focus on social class, race, gender, and sexual orientation and rely on foundational texts by theorists such as Foucault, Freire, and Butler (Walker 235). However, religion, a significant component of culture, is often left out. Nonetheless, composition instructors can use a cultural studies approach to engage their religious students and pique their interest in learning both reading and writing strategies.

            Mike Rose asserts that “honoring the histories of the people in the class” invites discussion about standards and what should be included in the literary canon. Therefore, Rose makes an effort to align his syllabus with the cultural histories of his students: “There can be great pedagogical power here, and anyone who has taught literature has seen it: students lighting up when they read stories with familiar languages, geographies, family scenes, or cultural practices that they haven’t read before in a classroom” (100). In the United States, about 90% of K–12 students attend public school. When students arrive at university, many of them will never have read texts for school that reflect their religious heritage. Their previous educational experiences might reflect this student’s experience:

I am careful to not actually put it . . . actually say, use the word “God” or Christianity in my paper, because my English teacher, . . . she’s like, “Be sure when you write this, don’t put too much Christianity in it because it doesn’t matter to [the university]” pretty much, not [university] students because it’s so diverse here. And I guess, I don’t want to offend anyone, so pretty much I just have to talk about the issue itself, so it is hard, but I definitely do put under wraps my Christian values and how I feel just without using those words. . . . I don’t always put it in . . . but if it has anything to do with my personal beliefs, then it will seep in there a little bit, in between the lines, so it’s pretty much there most of the time. (Cope 34)

In the courses I’ve taught at BYU, I’ve watched what Rose described as students “lighting up” when they recognize their heritage and realize that it’s acceptable to write about the religious part of their identities. They don’t have to self-censor or hold themselves back. They can be themselves, and when students can be themselves, they’re more comfortable with the words they commit to the page.

Strategy 3: Acknowledge student anxieties regarding writing about religion in an academic setting.

Whether you’re teaching at a public land-grant university or a private religious college, your students may harbor anxieties regarding writing about religion in first-year writing. Some of these stresses stem from previous uncomfortable experiences at school. Other anxieties may simply be worries about how teachers will react to convictions of faith. If you plan on offering students the freedom to explore topics of religious faith, be prepared to address these concerns. Carter acknowledges that “large segments of the academy are likely to remain hostile to faith-based ways of knowing,” and students seem to know about and anticipate this hostility (573).

Philosopher Charles Taylor uses the term “secular imaginary” to describe “the way we collectively imagine, even pretheoretically, our social life in the contemporary Western World” (A Secular Age 50[ME3] [RT4] ; see also Cope 13–14). We assume we can interact with others from a completely secular point of view, but in reality, we bring our spiritual and religious views to every interaction we have—we can’t help it. In this “secular imaginary,” religious students may imagine more hostility toward their beliefs than actually exists. On the other hand, many students have already experienced such hostility. At the very least, most (if not all) students know that teachers often avoid religion completely in the classroom. Some instructors also react to students’ faith in negative or condescending ways. Jeffrey Ringer describes deconversion efforts in composition classes and how these efforts affect students’ mindsets (270).

Because of negative classroom experiences related to their faith, some students assume that questions about their beliefs are meant to make them question or doubt their religions. DePalma suggests that pragmatism offers a helpful framework for investigating attitudes on academic and religious discourse as well as pedagogical responses to faith-based student writing (221[ME5] [RT6] ).

Heather Thomson-Bunn studied Christian students’ experiences at a public university, interviewing Christian students as well as their instructors. The students assumed that their professors were skeptical of their viewpoints and abilities. And they had reason to think so. Shari Stenberg writes: “In academic culture, religious ideologies are often considered hindrances to—not vehicles for—critical thought. This feeling may be especially true in regard to Christianity, which is often conflated with conservative politics and fundamentalism both in and outside of the academy” (271).

First-year writing instructors can provide a counterbalance to the anxieties students feel about including their religious identities in their writing. Maxine Hairston raises a warning bell about allowing first-year composition classes to veer too far into politics: “In most classrooms in which there is an obvious political agenda, students—even graduate students—are very reluctant to reveal their religious beliefs, sensing they may get a hostile reception. And with reason . . . . But a teacher who believes in diversity must pay attention to and respect students with deep religious convictions, not force them too into silence” (191). To ease students’ minds on this matter, instructors must keep students’ writing at the center of the course. Hairston suggests that students need room to explore ideas and develop their writing skills. If instructors impose their pet projects and ideologies on them, student voices will be stifled (186).

Emily Murphy Cope claims that the “public/private binary remains commonplace in the secular imaginary,” even as postsecularism continues to push back against assumptions that faith should be “privatized in public spheres” (69). Many students have learned to compartmentalize their religiosity, hiding it at school and in the public sphere. One of the evangelical students Cope interviewed had a highly compartmentalized faith. His faith “was relevant to him when he was at church and sometimes with his family, but he rarely perceived it as relevant in other domains of his life, such as schooling” (71). For the rest of the students Cope interviewed, however, their faith felt relevant to their schooling, even if it was not always “appropriate or welcome in academic settings” (71). While compartmentalizing may be an important rhetorical strategy in some situations, students may feel that they’re not truly themselves if they must hide their spirituality. Taylor points out that spirituality is self-discovery and actualization: “I have to discover my route to wholeness and spiritual depth. The focus is on the individual, and on his/her experience. Spirituality must speak to this experience” (A Secular Age 507). Allowing your students to write about their spirituality gives them a chance to write from a position of wholeness.

Strategy 4: Envision the first-year writing course as a way to develop effective communication that is distinctively mission-oriented.

Most university first-year writing programs state that a primary goal is to improve communication and critical thinking skills. However, universities increasingly aim to develop their students’ dispositions, which will lead to a more civil society. At the University of Michigan, for instance, first-year writing aims to help students develop the “ability to collaborate with people of different backgrounds and opinions.” Whether or not universities have a religious mission, first-year composition courses can play an important role in developing effective communication with people from many different backgrounds. For religious universities, first-year writing can provide students with the rhetorical tools to intellectually engage with religious doctrines and beliefs in the public square (Hurley 121).

Students who can write about their religious convictions enjoy more academic freedom than those who feel they cannot. Students learn writing best when they’re invested in their topics and feel free to express themselves. Therefore, allowing “the freedom of religious discourse in composition holds the potential for students to learn writing more effectively” (Lushington 34). According to Hairston, in many first-year writing courses, instructors, bored by a seemingly lackluster curriculum, focus the content on their own interests, often political. However, with this approach, “large numbers of their students end up feeling confused, angry—and cheated” (185). To avoid this problem, Hairston argues that students, not instructors, should drive course content. She recognizes that religion plays a big role in the lives of many college students and that “real diversity emerges” in the classroom when students have the freedom to develop their thoughts and “test them out on each other” (191).

Not all universities have mission statements that explicitly designate religious thought and development as a priority, but even public land-grant universities recognize the importance of increasing “global understanding” (“Mission and Values”) and “ensuring freedom of expression and dialogue” (“Our Vision, Mission, Principles and Values Statement”). Allowing religious students to explore their faith through writing certainly seems to reinforce these public university mission statements, but for private religious universities, first-year writing courses can go a step further in fulfilling the school’s mission statements. Grove City College, for example, is “committed to the foundations of free society”; the school aims to “develop leaders of the highest proficiency, purpose, and principles ready to advance the common good” (Grove City[ME7] [RT8] ). Likewise, at Aquinas University in Nashville, educators aim for “the harmonious integration between faith and reason can permeate every dimension of their lives” (“Mission Statement”). In conclusion, at state universities, openness to religion in first-year writing can increase diversity and strengthen student writing, and at private religious universities, it can reinforce mission-specific imperatives while allowing students to explore their spirituality.

Strategy 5: Help students hone their rhetorical skills with the goal of using them to engage in the public square.

First-year composition courses are uniquely positioned to help students prepare to engage with their personal beliefs in the public square. In recent years, many voices have claimed that it’s time for religion to return to the public square after several centuries of withdrawal. Stelian Gomboş, State Secretariat for Culture of Romania, cites Charles Taylor, Jürgen Habermas, José Casanova, and Peter Berger to assert that religion can return to the public square as “complementary rather than antithetical to Enlightenment values in science, culture, and democratic, pluralistic polities” (Gomboş 164). He argues that the revitalization of religion can serve modern society in several important ways: socially, religion has the tools to improve unity; culturally, it can help religious people overcome the “cognitive challenges of modernity”; and politically, religion can help untangle complicated political issues (168). But without practicing composing about religious topics, many religious people will remain on the sidelines.

By incorporating faith and religious topics in first-year writing, young people will develop the rhetorical tools necessary to assist their communities in the ways Gomboş mentioned. Additionally, young religious people can use “implicitly learned rhetorical strategies” to provide “public reason-giving” for their unique viewpoints (Cope 36). In her research on evangelical writing in secular imaginary, Cope highlights sophisticated rhetorical strategies used by religious people in public discourse. For example, the National Right to Life Convention (NRLC) website focuses on “providing legal, scientific, and humanistic arguments for making abortion illegal in the United States.” She mentions that this type of discourse is at odds with some of the stereotypes often alleged about religious people, such as large, homemade posters with Bible verses scrawled on them or people shouting at pedestrians about abortion.

Religious people may receive a better reception in the public square if religious students learn about minimizing misunderstandings and building bridges. Anderson proposes that Christians work to convert both atheists and fundamentalists at the university “not to Christianity but to a more literate and intellectually mature understanding of religious thought and so for their lives, whatever their points of view” (176). We are all connected to the great joys and sadnesses of the world, and we need ways of naming our commitments to one another and our communities. According to Anderson, “These are the understandings that we can argue for, for atheists as for Christians as for Muslims as for Marxists as for anyone” (176). Our public squares need more intellectual humility and genuine conversational engagement, and first-year writing courses can help students develop these dispositions and the rhetorical skills necessary to be productive forces for good.