It’s difficult to write out a statement of faith and learning just as it would be challenging to write a how-to manual on being a Christian.  I’ll do my best to convey what I feel are the most important tenets of my approach to teaching and learning from a perspective of faith, but I confess to really feeling the limits of my self-expression here.

You should be able to guess much of what I believe about faith and learning from reading  my meditation on teaching philosophy.  To teach from faith, I believe that the professor must be hospitable–this includes gentle open-mindedness, compassion, and vulnerability toward the students, as well as intentional time set aside to talk with students individually whenever possible–and willing to dwell among questions without clear answers and texts and ideas that don’t always mesh comfortably with one’s worldview.

The most important way I can integrate faith and learning is to embody faithfulness and Christ-oriented thinking in the way I comport myself with the students and towards the course material.  Just as the best way to preach Jesus is to act like Him, the best way to teach history from a Christian perspective is to model thoughtful, Christ-oriented engagement with history myself.

What does that look like in concrete terms in the classroom?  Here are a few examples of  classroom assignments, discussions, or out-of-class mentoring that helped my students place their education and their faith into conversation with one another:

Faith and Learning in Civilization I

There are several moments in Civilization I that provide key opportunities for discussion of faith.  In the first weeks of the class, we read the Ancient Mesopotamian text The Epic of Gilgamesh, which contains the Flood Narrative of Utnapishtim.  It closely echoes the Noah story in many respects.  And Gilgamesh is older than Genesis, at least as a written text.  In discussion, the students often ask about this themselves.  If they don’t, I point out the similarity and ask what they think about it, leading into a discussion of the function of myth—a story that tells Truth, not necessarily historical fact or scientific explanation.  We talk about the importance of reading a primary source for its meaning and purpose to the people of the time that created the text.  I ask them, what is Genesis saying about Yahweh and Yahweh’s relationship to humanity?  How is that different from what Gilgamesh or the Enuma Elish are saying?

This discussion gives me the opportunity to model informed, critical scholarship from a Christian perspective.  My conclusions—which I present as the opinion of someone who has been reading these texts for a while and is still working out how she feels about them—make some students uncomfortable (see further discussion below); for others, it’s old news; and some seem intrigued by the new perspective.

Another good touchpoint in Civ I for the integration of faith is our study of Islam and the Crusades.  Here, I engage fairly directly with contemporary political rhetoric about the clash of Christian and Muslim civilizations and ask the students to evaluate it based on what we’ve learned of Western history in class, and based on Christian principles.

Lastly, because we cover the medieval West in the course, we spend a great deal of time discussing Church (and largely Catholic) history.  In this context, I seek both to make connections and draw contrasts between 21^st century Protestant Evangelicalism, particularly in Restoration churches, and medieval faith.  I try to show the students why and how hierarchy, Creedal statements, and clericalization developed in the church, and ask them to consider why such things might have been necessary.  I also strive for a very balanced view of the Protestant Reformation.  In my experience, many ACU students tend to view the Reformation as an unequivocally good thing; I agree with them to a point, but also ask them to consider what was lost in the Reformation.

Overall, I feel like I do a very good job of integrating faith and learning in Civilization I, because there are so many perfect opportunities for it.  In doing so, I often challenge or question what many of the students have always assumed or been taught, but I hope that I do so in a way that teaches them how to think, not what to think.

Student Responses to Civ I and Opportunities for Spiritual Mentoring

A non-traditional student took Civ I with me in the fall of 2010.  Several weeks into the semester, she came to my office hours in some distress.  In a very short span of time, she had heard “Bible as literature/Genesis as myth” from three different faculty members, myself among them (see discussion of Epic of Gilgamesh above) and felt that her ACU experience was challenging her faith.  We talked for about an hour, more thoroughly discussing the concept of myth, ways to read an ancient text, my own first encounter with such an interpretation when I was in college, etc.  I assured her that no ACU professor wanted to attack her faith, undermine her belief in God’s Word, or in any way lead her astray.  Rather, by teaching students to think critically and giving them knowledge of broader viewpoints, contexts, and other resources, we hope to deepen their faith and make them better equipped to deal with challenges to it.   At the end of the conversation, I prayed with her.  The student thanked me, and remained an attentive and contributing member of the class for the rest of the semester.  Her note to me, which she wrote in her final exam, is included here:  1_Student Notes on Tests_Elliott.  I was really glad that I had this experience in my first semester of teaching, because it brought home to me the gravity of what I’m doing by exposing students from certain backgrounds to these texts that they’ve never read before.  It was important for me to understand the range of possible student responses so that I could measure my words with even greater care in future discussions.

In another section of Civ I, I had a student who initially seemed hostile or ready to challenge my knowledge of the subject matter.  His perspective on the class seemed to shift once he recognized the level of nuance and openness I was trying to achieve, and he began to ask curious questions, rather than challenging ones.  He frequently remained afterwards to ask for me detail, and indicated at the end of the semester that the course had influenced his thinking and his faith significantly.  His note is also included here:  4_Student Notes on Tests_Elliott.

Marxism Discussion in Core 210

In Core 210, my co-teacher Lauren Lemley and I have tried to adopt of policy of combining rigorous, contextualized discussion of primary sources with relevant, fun application of significant ideas to students’ lives, career trajectories, and the communities in which they participate.  We think it’s important to work through important texts and thinkers whose ideas have significantly shaped global understandings of human nature and communities and to place those ideas in their appropriate historical milieu, but we also know that the primary sources will go in one ear and out the other unless we show the students why these ideas should matter to them.  Our best teaching moments happen when we can not only achieve both–primary source in context and application–but also help the students to consider these ideas in light of Christ’s upside-down kingdom.  I think we do this really well when we discuss Marx and Marxist ideas.

During Marx week, I start us off with a 30- or 40-minute lecture that overviews Karl Marx’s life as a nineteenth-century thinker, the political, industrial, and social revolutions he lived through, and introduces Hegelian dialectic, historical materialism, and the Marxist view of history.  This discussion is bracketed by a BBC video on why Marx is relevant today and by Q and A among the students themselves:  who is Marx?  What did he believe?  Are his ideas still important?  What would a Christian perspective on Marxism look like?

On the second day of the Marx week, the students come to class having read Marx’s essay “On the Alienation of Labour.”  They take a quiz over it, and then I walk them through it, first making sure they get the ideas, and then asking questions about relevancy and application (for example–does our ability to labor make us human?  Have you ever had a job that made you feel less than human?  Why did it make you feel that way?).  One of the things Marx says in the essay is that every person falls into one of two categories:  those who own nothing but do all of the producing, or those who own everything but make nothing.  Once we’ve got those ideas down, we pull back and start asking bigger questions:  if there are haves and have-nots in society, who are we?  What if we look at this question from a global economic perspective?  As Americans going to college, are we the haves or the have-nots?

On the last day, the students work in groups to research the consequences of global economic inequality in the clothing industry and in food (especially chocolate, much of which is harvested by unpaid child laborers).  At their tables, they explore this excellent Guardian interactive on the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza shirt factory in Bangladesh that killed hundreds of low-wage garment workers:  The Shirt on Your Back.  And then we ask questions about how Marx and Jesus would view this incident and the systemic injustices that are represented by what the students have seen that day.  We finish up with interactive discussion about what we as individuals can do to stop participating in or even to actively fight against these global economic inequalities.

I’m really proud of the Marx week in 210, because I feel like it has academic teeth but it also powerfully and personally connects to the students, their daily life choices, and the way faith informs those choices.

Historiography Capstone Assignment

In our capstone class for History BA students, seniors spend a semester reading scholarly examples of all of the major approaches to history and discussing their relative merits; they research and write a historiographical essay on a topic of their choice and produce a podcast that reflects on the process of historical narrative creation: and they complete a Vocation Project.  This assignment requires these students on the cusp of finishing their college careers to reflect back over their coursework, internships and work experiences, and their spiritual lives at ACU and explain how these things have shaped who they are, how they view the world, and their sense of calling as Christians who love history.

When I taught this course in the Spring of 2014, we had four history BA students about to graduate.  Before the semester began, I would not have called any of these four the best and brightest of our department, and I even wondered if one student would pass the class.  One of them was deviled by personal insecurities and chronic lateness; another had made constant right-wing political and anti-feminist remarks in my previous classes; another had been suspended from school after being arrested.  I did not expect great things.  But sometimes when you really invest in people, they exceed all of your expectations, and that’s what happened with this class.  The five of us got to know each other so well over our 8:00am discussions that by the end of the term, we were like family.

This closeness made our final discussion of their vocation essays very authentic.  To me, at least, it felt like these students were being more honest with me and with each other than they normally would in a school setting.  And so I got to hear some perspectives that I found very significant:  that few of them felt like they’d had many spiritual experiences in the ACU context at all, with the exception of the freshman candlelight service, but that their introduction to new philosophical ideas in courses like Core and Methods had really opened their minds to some of the questions they really wanted to ask about history and about God.  That experiences of engaging in hands-on history-making like working with Dr. Williams to organize a reunion of WWII veterans, or getting to open up a box of artifacts that had been tied shut for fifty years, became major pivot points in the direction of these students’ lives and careers.  That some of them didn’t quite believe in God, but they did still believe in the church.  I wasn’t happy about everything the students told me–I was especially concerned by how anemic and ineffective ACU’s efforts to create meaningful spiritual life seemed to be for these particular students–but the fact remained that they were willing to talk to me and to each other about these things.

Part of teaching from faith, then, is providing students with appropriate contexts in which to discuss faith with me and with each other, and building the trust and mutual respect that make those kinds of conversations and relationships possible.

Relationship, Approachability, and Influence

Last spring, Jeremy and I bought a wonderful painting from an ACU art major.  She was in one of Jeremy’s classes at the time, and was close friends with several other folks who had taken classes with one or the other Elliott.  (We recently learned that a lot of students refer to us as Kelliott and Jelliott for the sake of clarity.  This delights me.)  So when it came time for her to get the painting to us and receive payment for it, we just invited her and her group of friends over for dinner.  While we were eating, one of the students who’s had both of us put down his spoon and said, “Do you mind if I ask you both to explain to me why you believe in God?  I’m trying to figure out what I believe, and I feel like you’re both smart people.”

So we talked about why we believe in God.  I don’t know how much influence what we said had on this student, but I mention this conversation because of what it illustrates.  Because we both knew this student well and already had a relationship of mutual esteem with him, and because we had invited him into our home, he felt comfortable asking us this question, and valued our thoughtfulness and authenticity enough to expect that we would give him a genuine response.  He also clearly already knew that both of us did believe in God, even though neither of us uses the classroom as a forum for evangelization.  So simply being approachable and hospitable, modeling open-mindedness, and demonstrating respect for students can create enormous opportunities to have conversations like these.  And I think that’s all the more important when I reflect on what my Historiography students told me about their spiritual lives at ACU.  It seems to me that most of our students don’t find connection to God or seek out spiritual discipline or discover Christian community in the context of chapel or formal devotionals or even church services.  What is meaningful and impactful for them is relationship, honesty, and authentic conversation about who God is, what the church should be, and what a good life might look like.

> Next section:  Reflections on Teaching:  Pedagogical Innovations and Adjustments in Specific Courses