Well, I'm in a funny position. I've been going to Baptist churches much longer than she's been going to church, and I'm frankly pretty orthodox in my theology and theodicy and morality, etc. I am not unsympathetic to a biblical worldview, so I want her to understand that my criticism of her work is not because I'm "of the devil's party." But this is an academic class, and part of my job is to teach critical thinking, whether theist or atheist, Christian or Buddhist in orientation.
But then we have a conversation like the one we did today. She had written in her paper a comment about the Fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden. I, innocently, wrote "& Eve?" above her sentence. After class, she comes to me asking about the Eve comment. She says (and I'm trying to repeat it as best I can from memory):
But Eve didn't sin; she was deceived. Adam is the one who sinned. The sin nature comes from Adam.I stammered out an assurance that the comment was more a moment of curiosity on my part as to why Eve wasn't mentioned, that it didn't affect the grade on the paper. I then stammered out something like, "well, if you'll look at the Genesis account, it seems that Eve makes a choice to eat of the fruit just as Adam does." I don't know who I was expecting to convince with that statement. She certainly wasn't impressed.
For added irony: in this same class is a fairly aggressive atheist/agnostic who, after we read a portion from 1 Samuel for a discussion about the foundations of monarchy, asked if "we were supposed to act like this is true, or what?"
Eight years at Carolina, and this stuff never came up even once. In my third year at this institution, situated (just ask members of the Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee!!) in a "moralistic, blinkered, intolerant, conservative" environment, I'm confronting questions about the reliability and veracity of Scripture, and its place in academic discussion, at the very same time as I'm fielding questions about whether or not Eve's encounter with the Serpent absolves her of sin, and whether a "sin nature" is carried with the "Y" chromosome. Yow.
1 comment:
Well, I am neither conservative nor in line with most of my students' religious theology, since they are mostly Protestant, so I have dealt with this same issue from the other side. Also, I I faced a situation like this about once a semester at UNC, albeit less frequently here. When it becomes really thorny for me, though, is when I teach the Puritans or Hawthorne because those writers' views of Christianity are different from most of my students' views, since most were raised having very "personal" relationships with Christ and with a firm conviction in a kind of remorse/redemption cycle that doesn't always translate well to these older texts. Yet when many of my students see "Christ" or "God," particularly those with strong beliefs, they think of their version of "Christ" or "God." It's hard because on the one hand, I sympathize with the students' desire to engage with the theology of someone like John Winthrop. Religion is clearly important to Winthrop, and if it's also important to the student, it only makes sense that s/he would want to engage in discussing it. On the other hand, the vast majority of my students don't really have the training or knowledge to compare analytically (using legitimate evidence) their beliefs with his. They rely almost exclusively on their feelings to make their case. In essence, their arguments (both orally and textually) come down to: "But this is the kind of God *I* believe in." I try to help them see, then, that almost any one could try to use that argument in an essay, but the statement won't go anywhere with a community of [unknown] readers who might have all kinds of faith associations. I always focus our discussion on audience, telling them (in a sincere way) that this may be a great argument in your Bible study in which everyone is on the same page but won't work in an essay when the reader could be Hindu or Jewish or Catholic.
I'm sure you handled all of this splendidly. But I thought I would give you my dealings with it because, unlike you, I confronted it repeatedly in grad school. It only frustrated me in the sense that I didn't want them to think I was outlawing some of their most deeply held convictions. I wanted them to understand the "rules," so to speak of academic engagement.
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