On the Place of Religion in Courses in Rhetoric and Writing

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Unpredictable Encounters: Religious Discourse, Sexuality, and the Free Exercise of Rhetoric
T J Geiger II College English, Volume 75, Number 3, January 2013

Within composition scholarship that advances a broadly defined multicultural agenda, there has been, until recently, a lacuna regarding religion. In his 2005 informal survey of multicultural readers, Bronwyn Williams notes an absence of those that speak to religion: “Even as multiculturalism has become a well-accepted part of Rhetoric and Composition, [. . .] it has often avoided any direct engagement with matters of faith” (105). This lack of readings that arise from explicitly religious standpoints could stem from multiple sources: not knowing how to select, frame, or teach such pieces. Or, perhaps, that category of experience simply still fails to register for many instructors as a legitimate or recognizable area for student inquiry.

Two decades ago, in “Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing,” Maxine Hairston observed, “It’s worth noting here that religion plays an important role in the lives of many of our students—and many of us, I’m sure—but it’s a dimension almost never mentioned by those who talk about cultural diversity and difference” (191). Critical of the antagonisms that explicitly political curricula might provoke from students and inexperienced teachers, she probably did not have in mind the pedagogical stance I promote when she bemoaned the fact that religion is often neglected in discussions of diversity. I make common cause with Hairston when she claims that “a teacher who believes in diversity must pay attention to and respect students with deep religious convictions, not force them [. . .] into silence” (191). Hairston is an enduring (but also, to my mind, a complicated) figure in discussions about religion in writing classrooms.7 She legitimately challenges those teachers who neglect religion while they confront issues of multiculturalism and power. Yet my unease with Hairston, and indeed with much composition scholarship that advocates religion as a topic or as an argumentative warrant, stems from the assumption of the personal as a necessary starting point of initial student authority.

In the years since Hairston’s indictment, many writing specialists have explored ways to make composition classes hospitable places for religion. Scholars often frame this work as a means of welcoming a wider array of students’ personal experiences into the classroom, and of helping students understand how religion might provide resources for critical analysis and reflection (Perkins; Stenberg). Writing classrooms might be spaces that recognize their “full lives”—the full range of their lived experiences (Montesano and Roen 95). In his 2011 article, “Re-envisioning Religious Discourses as Rhetorical Resources in Composition Teaching,” Michael-John DePalma echoes Hairston: “Religious belief is a powerful force in the lives of many students and in the world at large. Thus we cannot simply ignore it or ask students to do so” (228). He offers, indeed, a very pragmatic and productive suggestion that teachers understand “religious discourses as rhetorical resources” (226). While he mentions that Thomas, a Christian student in a course he taught, produced an analysis essay with primary research, a persuasive essay, and a personal essay that all focused on Christianity, DePalma provides detailed analysis of the personal essay. Apparently, in the other essays,

Thomas maintained the kind of critical distance from his subject that is highly valued in academic contexts. His personal essay, however, broke from this stance. Unlike his analysis and persuasive essays, Thomas’s personal essay wholeheartedly affirms his religious beliefs—a move that enables much of the meaningful work that Thomas’s essay, “In Search of Identity,” is doing. (229) 

DePalma’s attention to that “meaningful work” illustrates what religious discourse can accomplish. At the same time, I wonder what work those apocryphal texts of the disciple Thomas performed and what a research-based essay fully informed by his religious beliefs—what Jacqueline Royster might call Thomas’s “passionate attachment” to Christianity—might achieve (Traces 280)...

The essay goes on from there to survey work on teaching about rhetoric and religion -- or the ill fit, the exploratory, uncertain position, of religion in rhetoric and writing classes...