Rhetoric Race and Religion
The last time I taught Introduction to the Study of Religion, I began the class with a question, “What comes to mind when you hear the word ‘religion’?”
The question was partly, of course, an obvious ploy on my part to generate discussion and a little “critical thinking” from the get go. But I was also genuinely interested in their responses, since I’ve found that knowing where my students are coming from makes me a more effective teacher. In a class of thirty, I was able to get about three-fourths to respond. With the exception of one, each expressed a negative view of “religion.”
I don’t teach in some secular bastion of higher education, where such responses to “religion” might be par for the course. I teach at a small, church-affiliated school located deep in the eastern quadrant of the Bible Belt, in rural North Carolina. The college is understood as a ministry of its founding church, the Original Free Will Baptists. The majority of my students, including those enrolled in my Introduction to the Study of Religion course, grew up in religious, almost invariably Christian, households. Clearly, the negative valuation of “religion” in my class can’t be chalked up to misunderstanding.
But it also can’t be chalked up to the tired apologetic that distinguishes “religion” from “real” Christianity. My students weren’t expressing the view, common among more conservative evangelical Christians, that Christianity “isn’t a religion but a relationship with Jesus Christ.” In fact, when my students criticized “religion,” they often seamlessly replaced the word “religion” with “Christianity” or “church,” which is largely consistent with the polling data that show increased dissatisfaction with religious organizations and a decline in church attendance and membership.
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