Tips for Teaching: Getting Students Out of the Classroom and into the Pew
Issue: Vol 44 No. 2 (2015)
Journal: Bulletin for the Study of Religion
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Buddhist Studies Islamic Studies Biblical Studies
Abstract:
For one assignment, students in my Religion and Politics course attend a religious service of their choosing and write about the experience, comparing their time in the church (or synagogue or mosque) with the scholarly literature on the impact of churches on politics and the presence of politics within houses of worship. This experience represents a wonderful learning opportunity, particularly for Millennials, many of whom are religiously unaffiliated. Their reflective essays also form the basis for a dynamic, rich class discussion.
Author: Melissa Deckman
References :
Bean, Lydia. 2014. The Politics of Evangelical Identity: Local Churches and Partisan Divides in the United States and Canada. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Putnam, Robert, and David Campbell. 2010. American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Wald, Kenneth, Dennis Owen, and Samuel Hill, 1988. “Churches as Political Communities,” American Political Science Review 82: 531–48. http://dx.doi. org/10.2307/1957399.