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To tell someone you teach a course on religion and politics is to give them a Rorschach test. Happily for a professor involved in such a venture these days, the first response is usually something like, "You couldn't be more timely." But there are other answers, from students especially.
Some very religious students take the course because they are persuaded that, as a moral matter, the links between religion and politics must always be strong. Other, more secular students take it because they challenge the very premise of the course title. Religion, they believe, should NEVER have anything to do with politics.
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The course draws an unusually civic, committed, and politically ecumenical crowd: students active on both sides of the abortion question, in opposition to the death penalty, and in a variety of religious and secular efforts to lift up the poor. Since 2004, a lot of Democratic students have taken the course simply because they want to figure out how their party could do better at the polls among voters who are religious.
All of which means that the news inevitably plays a large role in our discussions, both because the students care about it and because the news these days has much to teach us about religion's social and political role. News, of course, is an elastic term. Some news is political, but a great deal of news is cultural and religious.
A teaching tool taught to me by the incomparable Harvey Cox, when I took two of his Harvard Divinity School courses as an undergraduate, asks students to write brief comments in advance of class on the week's readings. This serves at least three functions: it encourages students to do the readings (and gives me a sense if they are, in fact, doing them); it focuses their thoughts for the class discussion; and it makes it easier for me to draw in shy students who may have a great deal to say -- and they give evidence of this in their writings -- but who are not always comfortable speaking to a group.
Technology has made the Harvey Method, as I think of it, even more useful, because students can post their comments on a class chat site in advance and even engage each other in dialogue and argument before the class begins.
One of the best discussions in my three years of teaching the course arose spontaneously because of student interest in Mel Gibson's movie THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. For a class on Jews in American politics in 2004, I had invited Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, and Nathan Diament, director of the Institute for Public Affairs of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, to address my students. Their visit coincided with the height of the controversy around Gibson's movie, and a vigorous discussion broke out in the chat room.
When I saw this, I decided I had been blessed with an exceptional opportunity for dialogue and a great teaching moment. David had been at the center of the discussion and controversy around the film, and he is both an empathetic listener and a passionate communicator. Students who loved the film explained why, and it emerged that the film's fans had seen its references to the Pharisees not as anti-Semitic but as antipharisaical. Some of the Christian students in the class were deeply moved by the suffering Christ. Jewish students in the class explained why they found aspects of the film offensive.
Nathan had not seen the film and left much of the discussion to David (though Nathan spoke with great respect for the evangelical students in the class while reminding the class of the historical damage caused by anti-Semitic tropes). David insisted on letting everyone speak before he began with the words: "If you believe that the birth of Jesus Christ is the most important event in human history, you cannot help but be moved by this film." He spoke powerfully on this theme before turning to a discussion of the film's historical and scriptural flaws and why the controversy surrounding it was both legitimate and important. His sharp critique of the film was all the more credible for his understanding of its appeal.
The "great teaching moment" I referred to earlier was far more David's than my own, but I felt I had earned my pay that day just for setting it up.
Since the 1960s, it has been easy to parody any and all teaching methods that seem to entail a search for "relevance." But beyond the fact that there is nothing inherently wrong with relevance, the fact is that students can be drawn to difficult topics and to engage in the classics when they are shown their relevance to the news.
One of the best discussions of natural law in my class was provoked when Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center argued that religious conservatives needed a basis for political argument that was accessible to citizens who did not share their religious commitments or biblical interpretations. The discussion combined a clearheaded look at the religious Right's role in the 2004 election with an extended discussion of natural law theory.
Another class focused on the debate over government help for faith-based organizations. One of the guest speakers, Stanley Carlson-Thies, formerly of the White House Office on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, was able to punctuate his comments by referring to a recently released White House report. A supporter of the Bush administration's overall effort, Carlson-Thies used the report to make a critical point: that the goal of the program should not be to expand government help to religious groups, but rather to make sure effective faith-based programs are not EXCLUDED from support.
This is a distinction with a difference. Carlson-Thies argued that it was dangerous for both government and religious groups to see faith-based organizations as constituencies to be fed. Rather, they should be viewed as government's potential partners, IF they are effective. The discussion then moved from the news (the White House report) to a philosophical debate over where the purposes of government and religious institutions overlapped and where they were quite different.
Technology has also made it easier than ever for teachers to help students see how their class work and reading relate to current controversies. E-mail can be used to supplement assigned readings with news stories, op-ed pieces, and discussions on blogs. Will Saletan, a senior writer at SLATE and the author of BEARING RIGHT: HOW CONSERVATIVES WON THE ABORTION WAR, happened to visit my class shortly after he published an op-ed article in THE NEW YORK TIMES arguing that "it's time for the abortion-rights movement to declare war on abortion." Saletan's piece engendered a broad debate, including a thoughtful and passionate exchange online with feminist writer Katha Politt. I sent my students Saletan's article and the text of the debate with Politt. Thus they were able to trace the development of Saletan's thinking from the time he wrote his book, parts of which had been assigned to them, and join the debate themselves.
I have also found that careful use of news video can enliven and sometimes deepen class discussions. PBS's "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" has regularly provided me with videotape of well-reported stories on subjects ranging from battles over Supreme Court nominees to the debate over stem cell research. The program regularly includes the voices of believers and activists as well as scholars and writers. Often, the reporters have conducted lengthy interviews with the theologians, historians, and political scientists whose writings I have assigned to my students. It is another way to bring their reading assignments to life and to show the importance of the work of scholars to urgent contemporary debates.
I have been lucky to be able to teach in Washington, which allows me to introduce my students to some of the people they read about and to those whose work they are studying. My hunch is that "teaching the news" is easier here than it might be elsewhere and that students who come to Washington may be especially inclined to take an interest in the news. (And, yes, I admit to the pro-news bias of someone who has spent a long time in journalism.)
But I also have the hunch that students, more than most of us, feel what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the fierce urgency of now." They want to be exposed to the knowledge of the ages, the great books and the classics. They also want to know that what they are learning will stand them in good stead in the world they are about to enter and that many of them want to change. The point is not for teachers to get lost in the search for relevance, but for students to discover how relevant knowledge, old and new, is to finding their own way in the world.
It's possible that I also learned this from my old friend and teacher, Harvey Cox. In a course with the wonderful title "Eschatology and Politics" that he taught in the early 1970s, Harvey introduced us to the writings of Latin America's liberation theologians. Talk about news: some of our assignments were mimeographed copies of the latest works of Gustavo Gutierrez and other pioneers in the movement that Harvey had just received.
Roughly 15 years later, when I covered the Vatican as a journalist, it turned out that this odd-sounding course was one of the most professionally "relevant" courses I had taken in college. The work of the liberation theologians came under Vatican scrutiny (and, in some cases, Vatican attack). Their work was not news to me because of what Harvey had taught me. And this experience has led me to counsel students not to worry as much as they often do about whether this or that course will be helpful to them professionally. Following their hearts and their spirits can, sometimes at least, be the most practical approach. And that, I think, is good news.
E. J. Dionne Jr. is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown University. He is a syndicated columnist with THE WASHINGTON POST and the author of WHY AMERICANS HATE POLITICS (Simon & Schuster, 1992).
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