Course Work

As those of you who have read the book or this blog probably know, The Mainline was shaped by my time in the classroom.  For the first time since the book came out, I was able to teach with it in an American Religious History course.  While of course I'm biased, and hold out hope that nice things will be said on the student evaluations, I thought that it went quite well.  But rather than dwell on student reaction to having to read a book by their professor, I'd much rather talk about the work my students did in the course.

There were 11 students enrolled in the course (which was sponsored by the Honor's program at Butler University).  And I must say, they did some really exceptional work and provided their professor with, if not always new insights, then at least a reminder of why I thought writing the book in the first place was a good idea.  In short, the vibrancy of the field of American Religious History remains quite bright, and I'm as convinced as much as I ever way that there is still much more to study and learn from this field.

My students had three mini-research projects to complete in the areas of colonial religious history (they were assigned one of England's New World colonies and had to investigate the role religion played in its founding), the use of multimedia outlets to convey religious messages (looking at websites, television programs, movies, or listening to the radio), and modern worship (attending a worship service -- either new to them or regular).  Their findings were insightful:  In the colonial project, several of them noted how the Puritans created a "moral establishment of religion" in their colonies.  One student also pointed out, in what I found to be quite telling considering recent discussion of religious liberty, the degree to which political control of a colony's government seemed to dictate the degree of religious freedom colonists enjoyed.  For the multimedia project one thing that I took away (and seems to have changed somewhat since the last time I taught the course) was the degree to which these various media outlets are melded and blended together by both ministries and listeners/viewers.  And when it came to modern worship, what was evident in virtually all of the presentations was the vibrancy and variety of religious expression that is alive and well in America today.

We, as a class, were also fortunate enough to have four guest speakers over the course of the semester.  Two of the leaders of Butler's chapter of Cru (formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ) came and spoke about the challenges and blessings of their campus ministry.  The directer of the Hillel Center on campus also came in and spoke about the Jewish American experience (both historically and on campus).  The president of the Muslim Student Association also spoke (and was kind enough to do so at the request of her former professor), giving students yet another (and in this case at the peer level) angle on American religious experience writ large -- and at the campus level.   Our fourth guest speaker, via Skype, was an old friend, Prof. Jason VanHorn of Calvin College.  Who talked about using GIS to study the Geography of Religion, including helping congregations in Grand Rapids, Michigan better understand their neighborhoods and what outreach services they might be best suited to bringing to their local communities.  All of these presentations were well received and sparked good discussion both during and after class.

But for me, perhaps the highlight of the semester was the final papers and the presentations (even if we had to rush through some of them).  My students had to research over the course of the semester a topic that interested them about American Religious History.  Four papers dealt with politics and religion (particularly the Founders and disestablishment), four dealt with various facets of the Catholic experience in the United states (three on immigrant Catholicism and one on Catholic schools), and three covered various angles within the topic of Religion and American Culture (two of which built upon their previous course work).

It was a great semester and bodes well, I think, not only for the use of The Mainline in the classroom, but further study of American Religious History.