January 2016 – Every grace that brings you nigh

A couple of weeks ago in a Northern Virginia suburb, I saw a car festooned with four bumper stickers, From top to bottom, they read “got diversity?” “Ben Carson President 2016,” “Ted Cruz 2016,” and “Carly [Fiorina] 2016.” I’m guessing that the driver’s decision to decorate the car with these stickers, including the diversity question, was a proud exclamation that the GOP’s presidential field has, at least through tomorrow’s Iowa caucuses, one African American, one (actually two) Cuban American, and one woman. Indeed, the Republican field has more ethnic diversity than the Democratic slate of contenders.

But my mind went back to an in-class exercise we did in my “Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in America” course last fall. At that point, there were still 17 Republicans in the race, and 5 Democrats. We checked online sources to determine each candidate’s public religious preference. That informal study revealed, like most studies do, that you can split the data a number of ways. If you rely solely on various denominations of Christianity, the Republican field in November 2015 won hands down in the religious diversity race. But if you use a different metric–how many non-Christians are in the race–the Democrats prevailed.

Here’s a quick sketch of our findings:

Democrats

Hillary Clinton Methodist

Bernie Sanders Secular Jew

Lincoln Chafee Episcopalian

Martin O’Malley Roman Catholic

Jim Webb Protestant(?)

Republicans

Donald Trump Presbyterian

Scott Walker Non-denominational Christian

Rick Perry Non-denominational Christian

Carly Fiorina Episcopalian

Rick Santorum Roman Catholic

Ben Carson Seventh-day Adventist

Marco Rubio Roman Catholic

Ted Cruz Southern Baptist

Bobby Jindal Roman Catholic

George Pataki Roman Catholic

Chris Christie Roman Catholic

Jeb Bush Roman Catholic

Lindsey Graham Southern Baptist

Jim Gilmore Methodist

Mike Huckabee Southern Baptist

Rand Paul Presbyterian

John Kasich Anglican

So what does all of this tell us? In many ways, candidates of both parties reflect the traditional hegemony of Christianity in American politics. All but one–Sanders–identify themselves with some form of Christianity, with Bobby Jindal’s unusual conversion from Hindu to Catholic as a missed opportunity for more religious diversity in Republican, or even, American politics. Reading a little further into their faith biographies, you’ll find that while some have maintained the religion of their childhood (Clinton, Pataki, Huckabee, and O’Malley, for instance), others have engaged in a very “American” spiritual wandering (Rubio especially stands out here). Ben Carson is the only Protestant in the bunch who does not worship at what used to be called “mainline churches.”

Moreover, the field of all contenders for the 2016 White House do not reflect the religious character of the country as measured in a 2015 Pew study. In their findings, Pew researchers noted that “mainline” Protestants were only 14% of the American population, while Roman Catholics had dropped to 20%. Out of 22 candidates listed above, 7 are Roman Catholic–closer to 30% of the field. And 9 of the candidates are mainline Protestants–just over 40% of the total 22. The Pew study also found a rise in non-Christian faiths, but that is not reflected in the religions of the candidates. No Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists are running, and even Bernie Sanders distances himself from being an observant Jew.

Religious diversity has not yet arrived in the presidential field of either party. Does anyone want to bet that will change in 2020? Given the recent virulent Islamophobia in campaign ads and speeches, I sincerely doubt it will.

As the winter break draws to a close, I’m revising and editing my syllabi for the upcoming semester. Actually, I’ve already finished them, but as I was working on them this week, I pondered what this exercise means in the 21st century. With “outcomes goals” and various other statements added to syllabi, the question I’m considering is for whom am I writing these? The answer should be for my students. But increasingly, I wonder if I’m the only one who thinks that.

I’m old school–I remember a time when the only copy of the syllabus you got was the one the professor handed you on day one of the course. Lose it, and you had to depend on the kindness of your classmates to figure out what you had to do and when. In those days–which I’m certainly not calling the “good old days”–syllabi were lean, rarely stretching beyond two pages. The top of the syllabus had the course number, title, professor’s name and office hours, and this information was followed by a list of books and dates for assignments. Rounding it all out was the date for the final exam and the professor’s weighting of the grades.

I largely adhere to that format, but I, like most of my colleagues, have expanded on the basics. I include a statement about what the course will cover in general. I add information about what should be in a research or reaction paper. I clearly state my policy on extensions (rarely granted) and my loyalty to the institution’s Honor Code.

And I’ve gladly added some information at the behest of various administrative offices, most notably the information pertaining to accommodations for students who require them. Our Office of Disability Resources helpfully supplies faculty with a draft paragraph, and I’ve edited it to reflect my style.

But now that we’ve entered the age of assessment, I find that school, state, and regional accreditation bodies require me to add sections to my syllabus to describe how my course will satisfy a set of goals determined by a committee overseeing the type of course I’m offering. For example, my RELG 278 course, Religion in America After the Civil War, is designated as a Writing Intensive course, a General Education Course (in the Human Experience and Society category), and, oh right, a Religion course. Each of these designations means that I must add a paragraph (even just a brief one) explaining how my course will satisfy each designation. Then I must save my course in a pdf with a particular citation style and send a copy to our office manager, who then compiles all of the department’s offerings and sends them off to the dean and the assistant provost for institutional effectiveness and assessment.

So writing paragraphs isn’t the most onerous task I have ever faced as an academic, but the inclusion of this material in a document I primarily view as a road map for my students makes me begin to understand why there’s now a cottage industry of memes devoted to lamenting how students don’t read the syllabus.

Or is it because you’ve had too many beers?

Yes, Ryan Gosling, you can see my syllabus. But please don’t refer to me as a “girl.”

I try to find better ways to make sure my students read the syllabus, including making it the home page of the course’s Canvas site. But as I inserted the assessment paragraphs this time around, I realized that at least a part of the problem is that if I put the “course outcomes” on the first page, the stuff the students care about–where do I find the reading? when is the next paper due?–gets pushed back, further and further into the document. I’m not saying that students need to be able to read the entire document–oh wait, I am–but it doesn’t make sense to bury the critical information for the primary consumers of that information.

So with the last syllabus I drafted for the semester, I engaged in just a tiny bit of subversion. I moved the outcomes statement to the end. For my RELG 250 class, African American Religions–an Honors course, a General Education course, and, oh right, a Religion course–the statement follows the schedule, the grading policy, the information on research paper options, and the contact information for the Office of Disability Resources.

So now two things remain to be seen. One, does it help the students? And two, will the administration notice and/or care? I’m betting the answers are 1) yes and 2) no.

Month: January 2016

Got (religious) diversity?

Who’s this syllabus for anyway?