Several of my better students have told me privately that they personally are non-religious. Since we are beginning with a discussion of Christianity, which the majority of the class has some level of personal experience with, they feel at a vast disadvantage. Yesterday as I mentioned one student raised a question about the textbook’s implied definition of “grace.” After class, I heard at second hand that D. found the entire discussion completely baffling (and hence quite frustrating), since she herself brought to the table no conception of what “grace” might mean. Other students have hinted at the same thing. I try to tell them that (1) they should pipe up with whatever questions they have, and that those questions are in fact welcome, and also — more importantly, actually — (2a) they probably know more than they think about Christianity just from picking it up from the culture at large and (2b) they bring a valuable perspective, and may even have an advantage over the others, for being able to view the tradition “from the outside” as it were. But they don’t buy it. They continue to feel anxious because their classmates have some kind of head start due to their “twelve years in Catholic school” or whatever.

What’s interesting about this is that this is a pretty consistent phenomenon and it tends to affect my better students. I suspect this is because they tend to be the ones who are willing to confront their own feelings of ignorance and be bothered by it. But how do I convince them (and the others) that the course is not really about simply acquiring factual knowledge of the respective traditions but about cultivating a particular form of critical thinking as is appropriate to an academic discipline and tradition?