Embracing Resistance: Teaching Rhetorical Genre Theory in a Christian College

Abstract

After completing my graduate work at a large urban, state university in the Northwest, I experienced culture shock when I took a job teaching writing at Cedarville University, a small, private, conservative, Christian university in the Midwest.1 Although I am an Evangelical Protestant myself, and grew up in a conservative church, I had never taught students who were outwardly religious and displayed and discussed that in class. Religious identity was surely important to many of my students at the public university, but it was not openly discussed. At Cedarville, however, religious discussions are not just encouraged, but mandatory. Professors are required to integrate faith and learning in all of their classes: the students’ course evaluations assess them on their ability to do so, and they are required to write a formal research paper on their integration practices. When I began teaching at Cedarville, I was surprised that the theories that my pedagogical practice was based on—theories that were readily accepted, at least outwardly, by my students at the public university—were challenged by my Christian students. Although, as most composition teachers have experienced, “to teach composition is to encounter resistance on multiple levels, arising in response to a multiplicity of variables” as Karen Kopelson notes (116), the particular kind of resistance I felt from students at the Christian university was new to me. In this article, I add my voice to the ongoing conversation about resistance in composition, and discuss my experience moving from a secular institution to teaching at a conservative, evangelical Christian university and the resistance students exhibited in my composition classes. I will then discuss how I attempted to work with rather, than against this resistance, by integrating Christian faith