Religion in the Classroom: A Confessional Narrative

David S. Olsen
Associate Professor
California State University, Los Angeles
Email: dolsen@calstatela.edu

In spring 1998, I taught a course with performance artist Tim Miller entitled "Freedom of Speech: Censorship and the Arts" at California State University, Los Angeles. Cross-listed between Communication Studies and Theater Arts and Dance, the course was an experimental merging of disciplines, departments, students and faculty.[Note 1] Tim, the University's 1997-98 guest artist, taught courses in performance, dance movement and history. As a professor of rhetoric, my research areas concerned the intersection of rhetoric and aesthetics, performance, and religion. The course we constructed centered on numerous "free speech" controversies that had occurred in the 1990s. The syllabus read, in part: "... the struggle between curtailment and expansion is more than just a struggle over particular expressions, rather it is reflective of broad tensions within contemporary American society between the private and public, the individual and community, the church and state, and the sacred and the secular." It is these last two couplets, the church/state and the sacred/secular that would provide one of the most provocative sites of the course. After briefly reviewing the work of Stephen L. Carter and bell hooks, I will analyze a class dedicated to the "tensions" mentioned above, tensions reflected during the class period, in student journals and most fundamentally, in myself.

Diversity and Narratives: A Way of Teaching

From the beginning of the quarter, Tim and I recognized that religion's intersection with freedom of expression would be an evocative site of examination. How does one teach, even generally, about religion in a state university, in a class that is not a Religion class? More specific to our class, how does one explore a site that has been intimately involved with freedom of expression controversies, both as a subject of numerous "expressions" and as a participant in ensuing controversies? To help us answer these questions, in our pre-class preparation, Tim and I took as our starting point Stephen L. Carter's epistemic challenge in The Culture of Disbelief and bell hooks' methodological challenge in Teaching to Transgress. Carter argues that "in the public square, religion is too often trivialized, treated as an unimportant facet of human personality, one easily discarded, and one with which public-spirited citizens would not bother" (xv). Rather than silence religious peoples, Carter suggests "Epistemic diversity, like diversity of other kinds should be cherished, not ignored, and certainly not abolished. What is needed, then, is a willingness to listen, not because the speaker has the right voice but because the speaker has the right to speak" (230). Conflicts involving religions, including conflicts over freedom of expression, should be welcomed as a "sign of political and spiritual health" (274). Tim and I believed that this should apply in the classroom as well.

With Carter providing the epistemological justification, we looked to bell hooks for a methodological rationale. Although hooks does not talk about religion per se, from the position of a critical pedagogue, she assiduously argues for the participation of both student and faculty in the process of pedagogy: "Engaged pedagogy necessarily values student expression. ... [It] does not seek simply to empower students. Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process" (20, 21). To enact this empowerment, she writes, "In my classrooms, I do not expect students to take any risks that I would not take, to share in any way that I would not share" (21). For hooks, a major way of taking these "risks" is through confessional narratives, on both the part of the student and the teacher: "Professors who expect students to share confessional narratives but who are unwilling to share are exercising power in a manner that could be coercive" (21). We hoped that "confessional narratives," both from the professors, and from the class, would be a way to explore religious epistemic diversity.

Although we were nervous about mixing "freedom of expression," and "religion" into "confessional narratives," out of fear that students would pontificate, evangelize, or "send others to hell," we hoped that the mix would prove challenging and stimulating for students and for us. Propelling us through the mix would be Stephen Hilferty's Stop the Church, a documentary about ACT UP's disruption of a mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. While Stop the Church, a bracing documentary, was supposed to be the primary subject matter of this class period, the religious confessional narratives section of this class, the focus of this study, proved to be more animating.

Narratives: A Way of Being Taught

Personal religious belief had remained on the periphery and "in the closet" for most of the quarter. By week 6 of a 10 week session, we knew class members' genders, ethnic identities, and sexual orientations, but we knew little about each other's religious identities--an especially strange occurrence given religion's intimate involvement with freedom of expression cases. Ever conscious of the separation between church and state on the campus of a publicly funded university, Tim and I sensed that talk of religion was more dangerous than talk of "sex" or "sexual orientation." For anyone to proclaim "I was a Jehovah's Witness" seemed more difficult than to "simulate orgasm while walking on broken glass," a performance exercise we did earlier in the quarter. For my part, to acknowledge "I am gay," a part of an earlier discussion about Robert Mapplethorpe, proved easier to admit than "I am a Christian."

Throughout the quarter we read of religious responses to censorship, but all of these seemed distant, as if the class itself was devoid of religious belief. A few performances and journal entries had alluded to religion's involvement in freedom of expression cases, in highly critical tones. ("Religion, church is another big censor. If not the biggest." [Teresa, journal entry]). But this would all change in one night's class as religions' relationship to freedom of expression would be brought to the foreground and we would seemingly catapult over the church/state wall. Careening through this trajectory, I would most profoundly discover my own uneasiness with the intermingling of the sacred and the secular.

Undergirded by Carter and hooks, Tim and I chose to start class by sharing religious autobiographies--telling our own tales and inviting students to tell theirs. We hoped this would provide us with a sense of "position" before we discussed the documentary. We made it clear that we defined "religion" broadly--and that a story might be one of belief or non-belief. Underscoring our own discomfort with potentially propelling students over the church/state wall, we also made it clear that silence was an option--an option we had not explicitly given them in any other class exercise or performance, even those that were about other "difficult" subjects. In most academic settings (and even many non-academic ones) we knew that discussions of personal religious belief were unusual, unlikely, and somewhat perilous.

Tim: "Tonight we are going to discuss the documentary 'Stop the Church.' We'd like to begin class by sharing religious autobiographies, and relate them to issues surrounding freedom of expression. We thought it would be best to know where people 'stood' before we discuss the doc. After each narrative, we'd like to open it up to questions from the class--so 'confessors' can elaborate, clarify, and extend what they said. Our goal is to create an atmosphere of respect for diversity so we can begin to understand religion's relationship to freedom of expression. Who'd like to go first?"

The response to our invitation? Complete silence. How interesting that most students felt no hesitation performing the hypothetical "simulate orgasm" story, but no one felt free to share an actual religious story. It seemed that religious "confessionals" would be more difficult to engender than sexual ones.

In order to start the dialogue, and to provide a kind of professorial "paradigm" to follow ("not too personal," I told myself, arguing with hooks in my head, "I'm still the professor"), I decided to begin the conversation. Most simply, I was a former born-again Christian who was now just a Christian. But to relate the rather tortured path of my religious sojourn in 5 or 10 minutes to 12 nervous students and Tim seemed a daunting task, especially given the "self-consciousness" I brought to the table. Perhaps others felt the same fear and this explained their discomforting stares and silences.

Throughout my professional teaching life I had resisted the notion that religion was a subject too delicate to be discussed in class--at least by my students. I also resisted the private/public dichotomy of much discourse about religion; private faith and belief could and should shape positions expressed in class--at least by my students. Finally, I resisted the unstated assumption in some liberal circles that religion was often "unsophisticated"--students should be free to share as they wanted. But even with these resistances I had never risked much in the telling of my circuitous journey through faith and non-faith; I had never really expressed how my belief system might affect my views on any subject matter. Even in a rhetoric and religion course that I taught a few years before, I withheld my story until the last day of class--and even that was severely edited. Students should fee free to share their religious autobiographies, I told myself. But I did not.

On a philosophical level I wanted to avoid the appearance of proselytizing--especially at a state university: "If Dr. Olsen believes it, he must want us to believe it." ("Will this be on the exam?" I could hear them asking.) On a political level I wanted to uphold the afore-mentioned separation between "church and state." But most poignantly, on a personal level, I was embarrassed by how much of my belief system I had not yet worked out. I did not want to answer questions about a place that was supposed to provide comfort and healing and yet had provided me with some of the deepest scars of my life; partially out of respect for students who might come from that background, partially knowing this was not a religion or psychology course, and partially (but mostly) because I was afraid of being vulnerable and admitting what and how much I didn't know.

Even given my belief in critical pedagogy, I was the professor, and was supposed to have "most" of the answers. How could I ever ("respectfully") discuss a place that had, at the least, labeled my sexual orientation "immoral," "abnormal," an "aberration," a "sin" and, at the most, had damned me to hell for my sexual practices? Even more perplexing was how could I explain to the class that I still "believed," when that "belief" had exacted such a huge emotional toll on me in the past? Marooned between religion and sexuality for much of my life, yet still "faithful," I did not know how to be as honest as I wanted students to be. My fears almost silenced me -- but I forced myself to begin-- with great hesitation and trepidation, struggling throughout with how personal to be, hooks' and Carter's words both challenging and comforting me.

To negotiate my nervousness and deflect attention away from a more personal telling of my tale, I resorted to the more extreme fundamentalist stories from my past, a past with little freedom of expression, as these stories were well-rehearsed (at least with friends), somewhat distant and surreal, and thus easier to share: No popular music (my mother tried to give away my one secretly bought Carpenter's album and I used to hide in the car to listen to top 40 radio on Sunday afternoons); No "gee" ("It sounds too much like 'Jesus'"), "gosh" ("God") or "golly" (who knows?); No cards, dancing, alcohol, or movies. To say the least, I had never heard of Robert Mapplethorpe, a notable topic of discussion in class. The typical "gee-whiz, can you believe this" tone I took protected me from the more painful aspects of these constraints of freedom. The result of years of practice with friends, I was even able to share stories of my fundamentalist college: Rules that included: demerits for listening to inappropriate music or "blacklisted" television programs, suspension for attending movies, expulsion for drinking alcohol, and most painfully, primarily silent codes that precluded any mention of homosexuality, except in the most derogatory of terms. In numerous cases, students and even an administrator (the Assistant Christian Service Director, no less) were one day there, the next day gone--with rumors swirling about "homosexual conduct." Needless to say, ACT UP, the focus of Stop the Church did not have an active branch on my campus. In fact, one could say I was entrenched in the Church part of the title. In sum, rather than explain "this is how my faith affected me," I resorted to a list of this is what the "family," "church" and "school" would/wouldn't let me do. It was easier to talk about institutions than about my current belief system --an admittedly complicated mix of progressivism and orthodoxy.

Upon concluding, I asked the class if there were any questions, but few were asked beyond, "Really, you couldn't listen to pop music?" They did register surprise that I was a former fundamentalist, still considered myself a person of faith, and still attended church regularly, but no specific questions about my faith were asked. Perhaps they were concerned they would be faced with the same questions. Or perhaps as Irene had been embarrassed to see Tim nude in Skins and Shirts, his autobiography that she read outside of class, students did not want to see me with a kind of spiritual nakedness. For my part, a kind of "don't ask, don't tell" policy was in place. Although I was sharing more than I ever had in a class, both students and myself seemed to want to shore up the church/state wall, although for different reasons.

Even though I had not been as "vulnerable" as I hoped students would be, I had shared at least an edited "confessional narrative" as hooks had extolled. Even though I had not been as forthright as I desired students to be, I had exercised (at least partially) my "right to speak" as a "sign of political and spiritual health" as Carter had suggested. What would happen next was anyone's guess. At first, the class was silent, squirming in their seats. It was unclear whether they were embarrassed about what I said, or nervous about going next. But after a few moments of awkward silence, the class seemed to breath a collective sigh of relief, even given (or perhaps because of) my own internal anxiety and external elisions, and students started to share, seemingly unencumbered by many of my concerns.

Perhaps my narrative, although edited, provided a "cushion," for, at the least, the class had the outline of one story on the table. Or perhaps students' concern about the separation between church and state was less than I had imagined. Or perhaps, as seemed to be the case for many, they relished the "permission" to talk of faith or the lack thereof. In any case, most students spoke for 10 or more minutes, sharing narratives about the liberation of belief, the censoring of belief or belief that censored. Tim, as well, offered his religious autobiography, one that was layered and nuanced as he traced his involvement in and responses to religious traditions. All were compelling in their intensity and conflictedness. Irene shared a story of being censored by a high school teacher because of her Jehovah's Witnesses' faith. Paula, raised as a Buddhist and Christian, was torn by the different freedoms and constraints offered by each tradition. The vast difference between Pat and Kimberly's stories, both rooted in the Pentecostal tradition, provided a means to see the complexity of religious faith: Pat, an out lesbian, felt "shut down" and "out" by her church; Kimberly felt liberated. Neither tried to prove that the other was "wrong," but rather admitted that both religious experiences were possible.

In all of these tales, students seemed at ease, unfettered by most of the fears I experienced. As Irene wrote later in her journal: "My initial hesitancies are silenced, as the class seems driven to understand faith and its relationship to censorship, rather than to attack individuals. Different ideas and viewpoints seem tolerated and in some ways celebrated." In many ways, students pushed beyond what I did, and were open about their beliefs and how that affected their view of freedom of expression. Furthermore, while my narrative had provoked a kind of embarrassed silence, student narratives catalyzed both questions and discussion. Unsurprisingly, no one dared broach how her/his religion impinged on others' belief systems. It was probably too dangerous to tell a peer you thought s/he was going to hell.

With the conflictedness of our religious journeys as a background, we viewed Stop the Church and the video of a panel PBS had assembled to discuss the documentary after its showing. Perhaps influenced by our "respectful" sharing of narratives, most students found the documentary "objectionable" -- but a few argued that ACT UP's actions were justified, as was the political agenda of Hilferty, the documentarian. However, more germane to the class, after watching the documentary, all agreed that PBS was correct to broadcast it, especially coupled with the post-film discussion.

Conclusion

One problem with the public school curriculum--a problem, happily, that has lately had much attention--is that the concern to avoid even a hint of forbidden endorsement of religion has led to a climate in which teachers are loath to mention religion. (Carter 206)

In our class we tried to move past "loathing" and even "mentioning" to embrace what we could learn about the intersection of religion and "freedom of expression." Gingerly stepping (or perhaps stumbling, in my case) into a potential morass, our goal was to empower all of us, both professors and students, to begin articulating links between disbelief/belief and the controversies over censorship, utilizing our own lives as starting points.

As evidenced in this class, both professors and students benefit from using the "method" of confessional narratives to discuss course subjects, even those as sensitive as religion. These confessional narratives help disrupt hierarchies as they problematize who "owns" what in the classroom and what "counts" as "knowledge." Professors are no longer "all-knowing, silent interrogators," and students are no longer seen as empty, passive recipients. But rather both are asked to be "wholly present in mind, body and spirit" (hooks 21). In other words, both teachers and students are asked to give up "constraints" and "controls" that may keep them comfortable, safe and inert, and replace them with a vulnerability that can be discomforting and immensely rewarding.

Clearly, there are dangers in giving up "control" and using confessional narratives to discuss religion in the classroom. Not only is it perilous for the reasons mentioned above-- the need to avoid the implied professor mandate of "believe as I believe" and the need to negotiate the "church/state wall"--but it can be a volatile prospect, especially if students (and perhaps in some situations faculty) use the opportunity to proselytize their fellow students. This could be mitigated by highlighting the confessional quality of the narratives, to acknowledge belief or faith in, and highlight ground rules of "respect" and "decorum." A second danger concerns the danger of reifying "religion" over "non-religion." Although we encouraged narratives of either belief or non-belief, and provided a space for silence, there could be a tacit requirement both to participate and to emphasize belief. A third danger involves reifying the hegemony of any one religion, a problem we did not encounter in this class. CSLA is known for its diversity--with many immigrant populations from many backgrounds. This diversity worked in our favor, as students were as uninformed about and interested in Roman Catholicism, as they were in Buddhism, as intrigued by Seventh-Day Adventism, as they were by Pentecostalism. If most of the students were from one dominant religion, then those external to that religion could easily feel marginalized, and perhaps even silenced, in a discussion such as ours.

Even given these dangers, I would still encourage professors and students to explore religious issues in the classroom, even in classes that are not defined as "Religion" courses. In both content and tone, Kimberly, writing in her journal, reflects the enthusiasm and the support for this exhortation and exploration:

The discussion on religion was very interesting and I enjoyed it very much. I don't understand why people have a problem discussing religion because I find it so fascinating. I have a great love for my beliefs but I also have a great respect for the beliefs of others because I find many similarities between them all. ... Religion is not something so apart from my life that I could just describe it as an observer, but religion is so much a part of my existence that it is difficult to remember exactly what and how I believe. It is so much a part of me that I am barely even aware how it is so much of an influence on how I think.

By making this "part" public through confessional narratives, we can challenge professors and students, alike, to not only be "wholly present," but also to understand the influence that religion and faith hold, both in our own lives and in the public sphere.

Notes

[Note 1] I would like to thank Tim Miller, Michael DeCarbo, Kurt Farschman, Kimberly Gomez, Irene Grau, Pat Hendricks, Rocki Hernandez, Virna Jones, Paula Miyashiro, Rosalvo Ochoa, Edgar Ovando, and Teresa Uscanga for their help in creating this class. I would also like to thank Irene Grau who was involved in an earlier version of this paper presented at the Popular Education and Social Change Conference, NYC, June 1999. Lastly, I would like to thank California State University, Los Angeles, and Judith Hamera, former Chair of Communication Studies, and Susan Mason, former Acting Chair of Theater Arts and Dance for supporting us in this class and project.

Works Cited

Carter, Stephen L.

The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion. New York: Anchor Books, 1994.

 

Hooks, Bell.

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994.

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