BOONE—Teaching religion at a southern university can mean interesting challenges, says Dr. Sandie Gravett, a professor of philosophy and religion at Appalachian State University.

Religion is such an important part of Southern culture that it’s not uncommon for students to come to the classroom thinking they already have mastered the topic.

“When Christianity or the Bible is the topic of a religion class, you have students who think they already know the subject because they have learned it in Sunday school,” Gravett said. “There can be a real resistance to a critical or an academic approach to the topic, because very often the students think it will conflict with their faith-based approach.”

Talking with colleagues at other large southern universities, Gravett found they have had similar experiences.

Gravett, Carolyn Medine from the University of Georgia and Mark Hulsether from the University of Tennessee have received a $15,000 grant from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion to find ways to improve teaching about Christianity in large southern public institutions.

Their project is called “Rethinking the Christian studies classroom: Mapping the hidden and not so hidden dynamics of teaching religion in large public southern universities.”

“One of the things we keep talking about is how Christianity and particularly evangelical Christianity is such a powerful force in our classrooms, whether or not we are teaching Christianity,” Gravett said.

Over the next two years, three professors from each institution will read and discuss the essay collection “Religion and Public Life in the South” and develop specific teaching strategies to meet their classroom needs.

“We hope to make this a critically reflective exercise in how to deal with some of the things that all of us as instructors know exist, but struggle to deal with effectively. At the end, we will hopefully offer other instructors some tools for how to handle similar issues,” she said.

Gravett has a doctoral degree in religion from Duke University and a master of divinity degree in languages from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She also taught in a divinity school and seminary before coming to Appalachian.

She illustrates the problem by describing how one class consistently resisted any academic approaches to the Bible.

“I had a group of students in one new testament literature class who continually tried to derail the class with their own private interpretations of the Bible,” Gravett said. “I had to ask, ‘Where is this coming from, what are the resources that you are using?’ I had never heard anything like what they were reading.”

Being able to quickly pinpoint the various dynamics in a religious studies classroom, and determine local and larger trends that might impact classroom instruction, is important for the religion teacher, Gravett explained. “No matter what you’re teaching, the students come in informed in different ways. You have to figure it out in order to handle it in class,” she said.

Gravett said today’s students are different from those when she was in college. “I have been stunned by the religiosity of our students,” she said. “In my generation, it was more traditional for you to eschew everything your parents taught you and rebel from it and maybe wander back into religion when you got married and had children. That’s not this generation at all.”

Gravett said today’s students tend to maintain their faith and connections with their local church while in college. “There is also a lot of private Bible study that goes on. And it definitely shapes the classroom,” she said. “Christianity shapes their world view and determines how they see every religion we study. In our work with this grant, we want to find better ways to help our students be open to academic approaches as well as to understand more accurately what they bring to the classroom.”

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