May 15, 2022 • 45 mins
This installment of ReligionWise considers the place of teaching about religion and religious diversity in public secondary education. Our conversation features Greg Soden, who has taught courses on world religions in various high school contexts. Together, we think about the benefits and challenges of a religious studies curriculum in a public context.
Show Notes:
- The Classical Ideas Podcast (https://classicalideaspodcast.libsyn.com/)
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Episode Transcript
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Chip Gruen (00:09):
Welcome to ReligionWise, the podcast that
features educators, researchers,and other professionals
discussing their work and theplace of religion in the public
conversation. I'm your host,Chip Gruen, Director of the
Institute for Religious andCultural Understanding at
Muhlenberg College.
When we think about teaching ourchildren, that there are things
(00:33):
that our children need to know,how to read, how to write, how
to do math, science, socialstudies, the public school
system is where we instantiatethose values, where we put into
the curriculum, the things thatit is important for our children
to know. Unfortunately, I thinkthat there has been a
(00:54):
misunderstanding about what, howone studies religion and why one
studies religion, so that thestudy of religion does not
happen very often in publiceducation. This is despite the
fact that the United StatesSupreme Court has continually re
cognized the line betweenreligious education, i.e.
(01:18):
teaching someone to bereligious, and a religious and
cultural education that isteaching people about the human
experience and about thecontent, the beliefs and
practices of religion from anoutside perspective. In fact, in
the United States Supreme Courtcase, Abington vs. Schempp.
(01:38):
Justice Tom C. Clark said, "Itmight well be said that one's
education is not completewithout a study of comparative
religion, or the history ofreligion, and its relationship
to the advancement ofcivilization." We might put that
a little bit differently in the21st century, but I think that
(01:58):
the point remains the same, andmore importantly, the legal
precedent remains the same -that understanding religion is a
part of understanding humanstory, is a part of social
studies curriculum, or at leastshould be. Combining with that
the contemporary controversiesaround school curricula, around
(02:19):
books being banned, either fromcurricula by some state
legislatures, limiting the typesof things that can be talked
about, whether it be religiousand cultural difference, and I
am afraid that there will beeven more of a chilling effect
on how social studies is taught.
Well, today we have a guest whocan speak directly to these
(02:42):
concerns. His name is GregSoden. He is a secondary
educator who has experiencedteaching a world religions
curriculum both in abrick-and-mortar classroom in
Missouri, and also in anasynchronous online environment.
I really wanted to take theopportunity to sit down with
(03:02):
Greg and think a little bitabout the context of that class,
how it was received in the localcommunity, how students thought
about it, and a myriad of otherconcerns about how the study of
religion manifests itself insidea high school curriculum.
Welcome, Greg, thanks forappearing on ReligionWise.
Greg Soden (03:24):
Thank you so much for having me.
Chip Gruen (03:25):
I guess I'll just start by asking you, where did
this idea come from? I mean,when did you first decide that
thinking about religiousliteracy for high school
students was something that youfelt called to do or you felt
necessary to do?
Greg Soden (03:40):
Well, I think that my interest in the content stems
from a world religions coursethat I took as an undergrad at
the University of Missouri. AndI really enjoyed that
experience. And I pursued itthrough several courses in my
undergrad. But then, when I wentout into the world, I found
(04:02):
myself teaching in England, Igot a teaching job in like a
public high school in the UK.
And a huge percentage of mystudents were religiously devout
in some way. And I realized thatI was like, just really
fascinated and curious abouttheir lives. And they would
write about it a lot in a lot oftheir in-class writing. So that
(04:24):
was kind of a way that Irealized that religion could be
super important to young peoplethat were in my classes. So it
kind of started off just as away of like wanting to get to
know my students a littlebetter. And I really enjoyed
that aspect of it. But then,when I went back to Missouri, I
(04:46):
was working on a Ph.D. in SocialStudies Education, and I came
across some research in socialstudies education where religion
was brought up in like historystandards and state standards
and things like that. So thatwas kind of an area of
fascination. So I was kind ofgoing in that direction a tiny,
(05:06):
tiny little bit within a Ph.D.
program. But then I got an offerto teach English and social
studies at a brand new publichigh school. So I actually wound
up dropping out of my Ph.D.
program to pursue this otheropportunity. And while I was in
that school, the guidancedepartment got enough
(05:30):
enrollments for a course calledClassical Ideas and World
Religions, which was in thecourse catalog. And the school
was brand new, but enoughstudents in the school signed up
for it for where it made asection. And I was offered the
chance to teach it, which wasone of the most important
turning points in my life. Andso I was introduced to the
(05:52):
teacher at the high schoolacross town who had been
teaching that same course verysuccessfully since the 1980s,
and he helped me to found thecourse at a new school. So he
helped me- we basically becamelike a miniature PLC, where we
were planning things together,we were doing events together,
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we were planning like littlefield trips together, we were
planning guest speakerstogether- and we kind of just
became like a little unit. Andhe became sort of like a mentor,
like a fatherly figure to me.
And the podcast that I do isactually dedicated entirely to
him, because he passed away acouple years ago. But like I do
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all of this, because of this oneguy basically, named George
Frissell. And so that wasbasically kind of where it all
came in, because I'm certainthat without George, it would
have become just a reallytypical social studies class,
that probably would have beenfar more boring and less
(07:00):
interesting to the students hadI not had the opportunity to
have some amazing mentorship.
But with George's assistance,students got to go to Hindu
temples, synagogues, they got tomeet 20 guest speakers per year
in the classroom. And so itbecame a really interactive
experience focused almost onlike the hyper local and the
(07:21):
extreme global. So we were likelooking at stuff from all over
the world, but then we wouldlike meet somebody in the
community. So that's where itall comes from, is George, and
the opportunity that I was givencompletely at random, which I
saw as an amazing opportunityright away, and was smart enough
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to latch on to it and go for it.
But yeah, that's kind of whereit all comes from. There's just
a couple of good opportunities,a little bit of personal
curiosity and an amazing mentor.
Chip Gruen (07:55):
Oh, that's great. So I want to follow up on a couple
of things that you mentionedthere. One is, we will not be
afraid to plug your podcast. Soit's the Classical Ideas
podcast, which has severalhundred episodes at this point,
it looks like.
Greg Soden (08:08):
Yeah, I'm closing in on 250. And my thought on
podcasting is that we all dobetter when we all do better,
you know what I mean? Sowhenever all podcasters, like, I
don't see us as any of us beingin competition with each other,
I see us as being just acommunity of kind of niche,
oddball people that enjoytalking about stuff and putting
(08:31):
it on record. So I just thinkthat that's like a really cool
way of looking at it. But yeah,I, I've been doing it for five
and a half years at this point.
So it's been quite a journey.
Chip Gruen (08:39):
Oh, that's great.
And the other thing I want tofollow up on, and one of the
things that we are interestedin, because we do have some
outreach at the Institute tohigh school and middle school
students, so we've had theopportunity to look at this a
little bit, and I've looked atit at Pennsylvania state
standards, and I wonder if youcould help me a little bit by
(09:00):
comparing to your Missouri statestandards as well, is that I was
shocked at the number of placesin the state standards where
social studies curriculumsmention religion explicitly as
an important part ofunderstanding the human story.
Have you run into that as well?
Greg Soden (09:17):
Yeah, I've noticed that it pops up more than you
would think. And a lot of it istied to the very big names that
people would recognize, likeChristianity and Islam and
Judaism and Buddhism. So I'venoticed that it does pop up more
often than you would think instandards, which does shock
people who don't know a lot ofthe things about the legalities
(09:39):
of teaching about religion inschool, which you mentioned
earlier, but it is definitely inthere. I don't have the
standards in front of me, butthose things are easily
discoverable on any State'sDepartment of Education website,
and if anybody's looking to doit, I mean, you can download the
PDFs and just do Command F andtype in the name of religion and
see where it pops up in thatstate standards, because it's
(10:01):
most likely in there.
Chip Gruen (10:03):
Yeah, I'll tell you, I mean, from my experience
looking into this, it looks tome that most public school
systems, well I don't have thedata to say most, maybe I'll say
many public school systems, arejust allergic to the idea of
thinking about religion in anysustained way because they have
a hard time teasing out thedifference between learning
(10:23):
about religion versus teachingreligion, teaching theology, or
teaching how to practice aparticular religion.
Greg Soden (10:31):
Yeah, and, you know there, in some of the schools, I
would imagine that it might bereally appealing to let somebody
who has like a really, a reallyspecific training in specific
things, like I know that therehave been teachers that I've met
in the past who have seminarytraining or some theological
(10:51):
training. And that might seemlike a really obvious candidate
for teaching about religion inschools, but I feel like that
could also backfire a whole lot.
Because for me, the beauty is inthe totality, and not like the
singular. So I just see it likethis massive collage of things
that I can expose students to,because you never know who's
(11:14):
going to be inspired by oneparticular thing. And if they're
never exposed to it with an openmind, like a very open mind,
then maybe it would be presentedto them in a way that would make
them look negatively uponsomething that they're only
being exposed to for the firsttime. So I think that who you
have doing that kind of work isextraordinarily important as
(11:35):
well.
Chip Gruen (11:37):
Yeah, absolutely.
I've always been particularlyproud of my alma mater, the
University of Pennsylvania, nothaving a religious affiliation
haunting its background because,you know, people question your
motives. You know, even here, Imean, Muhlenberg College, where
the Institute is located, havinga, historically a Lutheran
identity, you know can causesome problems, people
(11:59):
misunderstand who we are andwhat we're about when, in fact,
what we're interested in isthis, you know, as you describe
a more holistic, comparative,cross-cultural understanding of
the phenomenon of religion.
Greg Soden (12:13):
I just love it. And it's been truly one of the most
rewarding experiences of myentire life to be able to do
this kind of work. And, youknow, both in person, online,
through podcasting, I mean, theopportunities are just
limitless, almost. Like thefarther you take it, the more
doors seem to open.
Chip Gruen (12:30):
Yeah, absolutely.
And speaking of open doors, yourmethods seem to be very similar
to some of the things that we'vedone here at the Institute as
well. The local informants, butthen situating those local
informants inside the context ofthe larger tradition. So can you
talk a little bit about, I mean,it sounds like you had a great
deal of a leg up with this withyour mentor, but can you talk a
(12:51):
little bit about reaching out tothose local communities and how
your students react to thosepeople who necessarily live
lives that, you know, or atleast most of them will be very
different from the lives yourstudents are leading?
Greg Soden (13:07):
Absolutely. So I was extremely lucky to have George
Frissell's guidance whenever Ibegan the course, because he
essentially held my hand anddelivered to me these amazing
people in the local community,who had many years of visiting
classrooms at that point,because they would visit George
(13:27):
year after year. And so theyknew things about like, what was
like the line ofconstitutionality within the
public classroom and things likethat. So they were very, very,
experienced in being extremelyrespectful of boundaries. But
then, over the course of theyears that I taught the class, I
(13:49):
began finding my own guests,like I found a local meditation
center who, their teachers wereextremely interested to come in,
and they did an amazing job. Iformed some new relationships
with the Church of Jesus Christof Latter Day Saints in town,
and their, one of their staffmembers was extremely
knowledgeable and very good inhis appearances in the
(14:10):
classroom. And you know, I justbuilt those relationships over
time. And when you invitepeople, you never know who's
gonna say, yes. So if I heardthat somebody was really, really
cool, and I would send them aninvitation, you know, one out of
four times, the answer would beno, or maybe one out of four
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times the answer would be yes.
But you never know who's goingto say yes, when you send out an
invitation. And for me, one ofthe most crucial things is
making sure that my guestspeakers didn't have to prepare
anything. I never asked them togive a lecture. I never asked
him to prepare slides. I toldthem if they had any
photographs, they would like toshow or anything, they could
(14:51):
email them to me and I wouldproject them on the screen for
them. But like one of the bestthings about my class that I
loved the most was when we werestudying a religion for maybe
three or four classes leading upto a guest, anytime a student
would say, Oh, what about this?
and they would ask a really goodquestion, most of the time, I
wouldn't know the answer,because it would be specific for
(15:13):
a practitioner or somebody inthat tradition. And oftentimes,
they would depend what you dowithin the tradition to what
your answer would be. So I wouldsay, I don't know, add that to
the questions. And we had a liveGoogle Doc that every student in
the classroom could access withthe, an iPad that they had in
the room. And then they wouldtype it into the questions, I
(15:36):
would compile all the questions,sort them thematically, and then
I would print them all out sothat every student on the day a
guest would come would have allof the questions that we had
written as a class, and I wouldbasically have the guests come
in, and I would have themintroduce themselves for just a
moment. And then I would havethe students just interview that
(15:57):
person with questions for 75straight minutes. And the fact
that the students had done somuch pre-work, they had an
endless amount of topics todiscuss, and the fact that the
guest just got to talk abouttheir life, it made for some
remarkably magical moments. Sothat's kind of how I would
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facilitate the actualappearances in classes, that
students would do all thepre-work, and then they would
just basically interview theperson who came into the room.
But keeping in touch with gueststhroughout the year even after
they have visited the classroomis really important to me,
because anybody who would takefour hours out of their day once
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a year to come and talk to highschool seniors, there needs to
be a little bit of arelationship there that's
ongoing besides when you needthem. So like the people who
would come to my class, theywould be my friends. And I would
befriend them and be like, Hey,you want to get coffee? Like
it'd be like, they would come tovisit the class in October and
it would be like, in April, andI'd be like, Hey, do you wanna
go get coffee? and then we'dmeet up and just hang out and
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talk about life. So I reallymade a point of having
friendships with all the people,instead of just like, being
like, Hey, I need you to comeand visit me so I can fill two
hours on a lesson plan. So Ireally sought to go beyond just
the "Appear in my classroom oncea year" thing to make sure that
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there was an actual relationshipthere, because when you actually
make friendships with people andyou actually go out of your way
to have a relationship, theappearances in the classroom are
so much more meaningful, becausewhen the students see me and my
friend, who is guest speaking inthe classroom, instead of just
this random person from thisrandom religious institution,
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they can tell that I haverapport with them. And like the
whole mood just lightens in theroom, and it relaxes so much,
because talking to people aboutreligion is tough. And when they
see that their teacher and theguest have rapport, it really
just opens up a lot ofpossibilities in the room.
Chip Gruen (17:57):
Yeah, and one of the things I always say about our
programming, where we're doinginterviews like this is that
really two things are going on,one thing is the literacy
itself, the content that isdeveloped, that is talked about.
The other is modeling a goodrelationship with somebody who's
different from yourself,modeling a conversation about
(18:19):
topics that can be a little bitdifficult. So it sounds like
you're right on the same pagewith that.
Greg Soden (18:25):
Yeah, I try to. And like one of the best things is,
whenever I have a question inthe moment, in like a time when
a guest is in our classroom,I'm, my hand's in the air, just
like the students. And so it'sone of those things to where I'm
"in charge," but it's like, Idon't really see it that way.
Because I kind of see us alljust having an awesome time
(18:47):
together instead of being like,Okay, being Mr. Rigid Rule
Enforcer, Mr. In Charge. So Ikind of just see myself as a
learner alongside them, I justhappen to be 20 years older than
the students.
Chip Gruen (19:00):
So I want to talk a little bit about the context of
where you are. One couldcertainly imagine, I think one
of the most important things wethink of as educators is, who
are our students? Where are theycoming from? How are they going
to, you know, what are theygoing to bring to these
conversations? How is that goingto affect what they take from
it? So can you talk a little bitabout the context of the school?
(19:23):
Who are your students? You know,what kind of an atmosphere are
you working in, and how do youthink that affects the way that
they received this class?
Greg Soden (19:32):
Well, so the experiences that I've been
overwhelmingly describing werein my in-person classroom from
2013 to 2018. And that was inColumbia, Missouri. And since
then, from 2018, until now, I'vebeen working full time in an
(19:54):
online, a fully asynchronoushigh school. So I was able, I
was given the opportunity towrite this course that I love so
much for a fully online globalstudent body. So it looks a lot
different now than when I was inMissouri. But like for example,
(20:14):
like right now, I have a lot ofstudents in Vietnam, and one of
my assignments is to report onnews of the world, in relation
to religion, and they report itvia podcast. So they do a
podcast series in my course,which I turned into an
assessment. And a lot of mystudents right now who are in
(20:36):
Vietnam are reporting on thedeath of the Zen monk ThÃch Nhất
Hạnh, which is reallyfascinating because they are
bringing in the local of what ishappening in their home into
their curriculum, which issomething that I hugely endorse.
And I tell that to all mystudents here, and some of my
(20:57):
students in the States, whatthey do now is they look for
religious institutions in theirown town when they do their
podcast episodes, to talk aboutwhat's going on in their city
with relation to religion. Sosomething that I'm noticing is
that in my students choice oftopics, in their assessments
that they do in my onlinecourse, they could be reporting
(21:18):
on events in Vietnam, or inKansas City, or in Denver, or
in, you know, Honduras, butthey're finding stuff that is
important to their local town,which is so fascinating. So
that's kind of an interestingthru line, that students do care
about the local, and that theywant to know more about what's
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going on around them to see howreligion affects their lives,
even if they don't tend to pickup on those things right away.
So that's something that I'mnoticing in the online class. My
students in Missouri were, youknow, in a city of 120,000, in
the middle of what can, youknow, be described as a
(22:03):
conservative state, and most ofthe students come from Christian
backgrounds of some kind. Andit's very, it was very rare to
have students that identifiedwith other religious traditions
in my courses, but there weresome. And so getting to know
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everybody in the room and likegauging their comfort level was
always an interesting experiencein the beginning of the year. So
that's just something that everyteacher has to deal with, and
everybody knows those challengespretty well, is getting to know
where students are and allowingthem to come out of their shells
at their own speed, wheneveryou're talking about stuff that
(22:45):
could be very, veryextraordinarily personal to
them. So that's just kind of my,my thoughts on that.
Chip Gruen (22:49):
Yeah. And how did you go about thinking about with
that with students? Because Ithink that, I mean, depending on
your pedagogy, differentinstructors, different teachers
think the place of the personal,you know, the place of the
personsl is different fromcourse to course, from subject
to subject. You know, I alwaysjoke that, you know, when
(23:12):
students take a class with me, Idon't ask them to raise their
hands, how many Christians inthe room, how many Jews in the
room, how many Muslims in theroom? Right, because to some
extent, the academic project issort of contingent on that not
being maybe as relevant as theidea that we're all humans in
the room wanting to understandother humans. So I mean, with a
(23:35):
sort of a more, I mean, notmonolithic, but more similarity
between your students, I mean,how did you negotiate that? What
did students feel like theywanted to bring? And what did
you think was appropriate forthem to bring to the classroom?
Greg Soden (23:49):
Yeah, something that was really fascinating, is you
would see right away whatstudents really wanted to self
identify right off the bat.
Like, they would oftentimes doit in class early in the year,
and there were some students whowent through the entire year,
and I don't know anything abouttheir personal convictions, or
of any kind, and I never reallyasked, but the ones who want to
(24:12):
be more personal and open I feelwill be if the environment
facilitates it, which I think Idid. But it was, it's definitely
an interesting experience beingin the moment with students and
talking about things likereligious freedom, news events
(24:37):
in the country, and seeing whatkinds of religious freedom news
events they react to. And thentying stuff like that, like we
would talk about religiousobservance of Muslim women's
head coverings and things likethat and the choices around
(24:57):
that, and we would look atexamples like in France, where a
lot of those things were, havebeen controlled for a number of
years in various ways, and thenhearing students pipe in with
who they agreed with or whateverwas always really fascinating to
me. But I would just try to showthem ways that religious
expression is encouraged ordiscouraged around the world,
(25:20):
and then trying to get them tothink about, Well, why am I for
this version and against thisversion? And, you know, it's
definitely something that Istill will be working on if I
get back in the classroom and dothis work in person again, for
sure. Because I don't reallyhave all the answers. It's a
very sensitive thing in themoment. And I have a lot of room
(25:43):
to grow as far as my ownpractice goes in that area.
Chip Gruen (25:49):
So either initially, right, there is some self
selection here, right, becauseas you said you were sort of
beholden to students signing upfor this class, right. So
there's some self selection thatstudents are fundamentally
interested in these ideas ifthey choose to take this class,
it's not mandated by thecurriculum from what you said.
(26:10):
But I wonder, do you think thestudy of religion in this way
seemed normal to your students,either at the beginning or at
the end of the class? I thinkthat we run into this, even at
the collegiate level, where thisis not something that, I mean,
people know what English is,people know what history is,
(26:32):
people know what chemistry is,people know these other topics;
you know did students feel likethey were doing something a
little different? Did they feellike this was something that was
special? I mean, how did theyreact, the class, either at the
beginning or at the end?
Greg Soden (26:50):
They definitely knew it was special. And one of the,
by the time the students got tomy class when they were seniors,
most of them already knewexactly what it was because they
had friends that were older thanthem who had taken it. And one
of the things I always did is Ialways did t-shirts for the
class. And so the students wouldlike get these t-shirts and wear
(27:13):
them to school, and people wouldbe like, Whoa, where'd you get
that cool shirt? And then thestudents would like kind of say,
Oh, my world religions teachergot these for the class. And
they were like, Oh, my gosh. SoI had these ways of like getting
people to know about it. Andanytime we would have a guest
speaker at school, I would putthat in the student, the school
announcements. So everybodywould hear 25 times a year, Oh,
(27:35):
Mr. Soden's World Religionsclass would like to welcome
so-and-so. And it was like,there was a lot of stuff that
went into getting students to beaware that the class existed.
And they did know that it wasspecial, because nowhere else in
the school did you have theopportunity to meet a Tibetan
(27:55):
Buddhist monk who studied withthe Dalai Lama, and my class was
the only place that you couldhave experiences like that. So
there was a lot that went intoit to get students to talk about
it outside of class time. And Itook a lot of pride and effort
into that and put a lot of workinto it so that students would
(28:18):
have a joyful experience,looking at things that, maybe
they had no idea what they werereading, maybe they had really
no idea what was happening someof the time, but we always
tried, and we always had areally positive attitude about
it. So, you know, I did take alot of care and effort into
trying to get them to thinkabout that stuff and talk about
(28:40):
it outside of class, that theywould tell their friends, to
have it have an aura,essentially, that it was a
special, unique experience thatpeople wanted to do. So I
absolutely loved it. And I put alot of time and effort into
that.
Chip Gruen (28:56):
Yeah, that cultivating of the buzz around a
class I think is superimportant. Sounds like you got
that one down. So, yeah, sothat's the students. And the
students are excited, thestudents hear about the class
from their older peers, etc.
What about parents? If this isa, as you've described it, a
relatively conservative area,maybe not small town, exactly,
(29:16):
but a smaller city in, inMissouri. Did you get any
pushback from parents? What wasthe, what was the reaction in
the community sort of beyondthose students who you have more
opportunities to interact with?
Greg Soden (29:35):
It was overwhelmingly very cool,
because a lot of the studentswho have parents that would not
want their students to take aclass like that, I think
probably prevented them fromever signing up in the first
place. Or once that enrollmentform came back, and the parents
(29:56):
had a chance to look at it likeover the summer, I'd had some a
lot of withdrawals that wouldhappen over the summer, and then
new students would be added whowere waitlisted. So I would
imagine that a lot of thosethings filtered themselves out
throughout the year. And one ofthe things that I was very, very
put a lot of work into wasbuilding relationships with
(30:19):
parents, too. I invited parentsopenly to every guest speaker
appearance, and I would alwayshave like a row of like 10 extra
chairs in the back of theclassroom, for any parent that
did come. And they would have tolike, let me know in advance
that they were coming so that wecould get them signed in and get
them a badge and everything forthe school, but I invited
parents to come to see what wasgoing on in the class. And, you
(30:43):
know, not many did, I think thatin the six or so years I was
doing that I maybe got like 15that came in. But the invitation
stood every time, which I thinkhelped parents see that, Oh, he
doesn't have anything to hide.
He's not trying to indoctrinateour students. He's not trying to
change anybody's mind. He's justtrying to offer these
(31:04):
experiences. And he's offeringthese experiences to me. So I
think that that was extremelyhelpful. Another thing that I
did was creating the podcastbecause the first 20 or so
episodes on my podcast areinterviews with my guest
speakers. So what I would do isI would interview the people who
(31:26):
were coming to visit the schooland I would put those on our
class podcast. And I would sayto the parents, This is the
person who your kid is going tomeet in my class, you can listen
to my podcast, your student canmeet the person in the room, you
can talk about it over dinner,you can, they can have the
(31:47):
students send me a summary ofwhat the conversation was like
via email, and I'll give thestudent extra credit. So I tried
to encourage parents to engagewith the material themselves and
to visit the classroom and alsoto talk to their student about
what the student was doing atschool. So I really went as far
(32:07):
as I could, I feel, to get theparent to engage with the
material and talk to theirstudent about what they had
experienced in class just sothat they could see that there
was a lot to learn and that theycould have a an enriching
experience alongside theirstudent as well, and that the
(32:30):
student could get some, youknow, grade benefits out of it
and all that great stuff. So Idid very, I did try to encourage
parent engagement. But Ioverwhelmingly had a really cool
experience with parents. Acouple of them blatantly asked
me, Are you like, you knowreligious yourself? Are you
trying to like persuade anyparticular views? And I would
(32:52):
always just say, I'm not tryingto persuade any particular views
whatsoever. I'm just here,because I think that the stories
and experiences and traditionsthat we're going to talk about
in class are really interestingand that religion is everywhere
around us whether we payattention to it or not. So I
would like to have everybodyhave the tools and the mindset
(33:13):
and the abilities to payattention to it, should they
choose to do so. So that waskind of my approach to it.
Chip Gruen (33:22):
Yeah, I think I saw you describe this on another
interview you did. And I reallyliked this, and I'll get you to
comment on it, that you thinkthat the importance of religious
literacy has to do with peoplewalking down the street. And if
they see some manifestation ofreligion around them, they may
not know exactly what's goingon, but they certainly have the
tools through which they canlearn more about it.
Greg Soden (33:45):
Absolutely. And like, even if you see something
that you can recognize isreligious in some way, if you
don't choose to pursue it aslike, to learn more about it,
that, that, it's not the end ofthe world. But you have the
ability to recognize that, Oh,there's something new that I
could learn something new about.
And I think that that's reallycool, because maybe you're
(34:07):
rushing around and you seesomething really neat, like you
see, like a Khanda on the backof a semi truck driving across
the United States, you know whatI mean? And I've seen that many
times, I'm like, Oh, look. And Ilove stuff like that, where you
can see religion in actionaround you and you can be like,
Oh, I feel like I recognizethat. And then it might set off
(34:29):
your curiosity to go and learnsomething new that day, because
we all can learn something newevery single day, especially in
this topic. So I think thatgiving students the ability to
recognize when something ishappening near them, then they
can choose if they're going todive more deeply into it or not.
Chip Gruen (34:49):
I've started talking about this with my students
actually a little bit, that youknow, one of the things that
people love about video gameculture is easter eggs. The
thing things that are hidden,that if you know what it is you
recognize it, you understand it,you feel like a little bit of
the "in" crowd. I always thinkthat religious literacy is a
little bit like that as well,that you're walking around,
(35:11):
there are easter eggs all aroundus if you just know how to read
them, just know how to interpretthem.
Greg Soden (35:16):
I completely agree I see it exactly the same way. So
we're definitely on the samepage there.
Chip Gruen (35:21):
So I want to talk about, a little bit more about,
this self selection. Because onthe one hand, you know it
obviously saves some problemsfor you, right, the idea that
the students who, you know,exclude themselves, or their
families exclude them from thisopportunity, would have been the
ones that would have been, onesthat would be more challenging,
(35:44):
but on the other hand, may bethe ones who need this kind of
education, need to have thissort of expanded worldview the
most, so I think that'sunfortunate. And on the other
hand, I want to ask about yourguests, because one of the
things that I'm also interestedin is, What are the types of
traditions that are interestedin participating in a project
(36:08):
like this? So for example, youmentioned, you know, the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter DaySaints. It is always the case
that you will be able to findsomeone from that community who
wants to talk to you, becausethey're so interested in
community outreach. Yet thereare other traditions where it
will be less so. Have you runinto that, where you think,
(36:30):
Well, the groups that are comingto talk to me have a certain
perspective on proselytization,for example, or ways of
interacting with the world?
Greg Soden (36:39):
Yeah, so I had overwhelmingly fantastic
experiences. And whenever I didreach out to the LDS community,
the guy who responded to me wasso fantastic. He's like, I've
been doing this work a longtime, I understand very clearly
that there are proselyzationlines that I cannot cross in the
(37:00):
classroom, I know exactly wherethat line is, I promise you that
it will not be an issue. He'slike, I just want to talk to
people about what my life islike so that when they hear
about my community on the newsthey have met somebody from that
community so that they can likebegin to question ingrained
(37:21):
assumptions. Because when youmeet somebody from a community
and then you hear something thatcontradicts your direct
experience, that's wherelearning comes in. And that's
where relationships come in. Sothat was one of the best things
about these experiences in theclassroom. But I didn't have
many issues finding people tocome in who were interested. And
(37:45):
one of my favorite experienceswas, there was a Muslim Students
Association at the University ofMissouri who were committed to
community outreach. So my Muslimstudent guest speakers were all
like 22-23 years old. And sothey were pretty close in age to
(38:09):
the students in the classroom.
And they were like, we just wanthigh school students to meet
Muslim people in Columbia,Missouri, who are young and
living very similar lives tothem. So you know, that was
really cool finding groups. Andthere was an Indian Students
Association as well where I metmy Jain guest speaker. And it
(38:32):
was really, really awesome tofind people that were kind of
close in age to my students,because like they were talking
so much on like the same levelof you know conversation styles.
And that was one of the thingsthat I really enjoyed whenever I
started branching out fromGeorge's original guest
(38:53):
speakers, was finding my ownpeople who were such a great fit
and so dynamic and awesome andsmart and thoughtful and had
life experiences from a youngperson in the 2010s' perspective
as opposed to somebody who wasmy students' age in like the
1970s. So I started to veer moretowards the younger end of the
(39:17):
spectrum as far as my guestspeakers go. And that really,
really worked out well for mystudents, because they just like
immediately felt a connectioninstead of this massive
generational age gap wherecommunication styles can be so
different. So that was one ofthe things that I really picked
up on, is the young guestspeakers were extraordinarily
(39:37):
successful for me.
Chip Gruen (39:41):
So one of the things you mentioned there, and I think
that this is one of those habitsof mind that I'm always getting
my students to think about, isthe idea of comparison, looking
for similarity and looking fordifference. Because I found that
there are some speakers who willcome to talk to a group, and
their primary motivation is toconvince you that they're really
(40:03):
not that different from you.
That, I always sort of jokeabout this when I'm talking
about ancient Christianapologists, that they say, We
pay taxes and our kids playsoccer with your kids, that
there's this idea that, youknow, don't treat us
differently, because really, inthe end, as far as you're
concerned, we live a life that'svery similar to yours. On the
other hand, of course thesedifferent religious communities
(40:25):
would not exist if people didn'tfundamentally see the world
differently, didn't actdifferently, didn't have
different beliefs and practices.
How do you find that balance? Orhas there been sort of a through
line from your speakers abouthow they deal with that issue of
similarity and difference?
Greg Soden (40:42):
Yeah, you know, one of the things that I love the
most is, I haven't run into thata whole heck of a lot, but what
I have found that I have reallyenjoyed are guest speakers who
are willing to be openlycritical of the history within
their own tradition. Like a lotof people have come into my
(41:04):
classroom and talked about a lotof the horrible historical
events that are within theirtradition that, you know,
created things like oppressionand slavery and persecution and
genocide. And so people who comeand talk and are able to be
(41:25):
critical of the history of thething that they do, those were
some of the most inspiring andhonest and amazing conversations
that ever took place in theroom. So I didn't have a whole
lot of people who were coming intrying to say, Look how similar
we are, but I did have someamazing experiences where people
(41:48):
would come in and be like, Yeah,and then there's this really
unfortunate history that youguys have studied, and all of
those things happened, and thisis something that our community
is still reckoning with to thisday, and here's how I think
about it, and here's what I seekto do to like sort of like be a
part of a better future for mytradition. And that was
(42:08):
something that that really jumpsout to me about your question
is, like people who were tryingto be a part of creating a
better future for theircommunity, so that we can have
reconciliation, healing frompast trauma that our species is
so well known for.
Chip Gruen (42:25):
Yeah, absolutely. So on the podcast, we always end up
with a version of the followingquestion, What can our listeners
do, to become more literate, toparticipate in a more
sophisticated conversation aboutreligion, to enhance the way
(42:47):
that they understand it in theworld? So not everybody has the
benefit of being a student,either in one of your classes or
in a religious studiesdepartment, What do you think,
sort of the average person outthere can do to enhance their
understanding of this topic?
Greg Soden (43:03):
One of my easiest suggestions that I think that
anybody can do is when you arereading the news, to find
stories that have religion as anevent in the world news. So if
you do, go to any search engineand you go to a news search
(43:26):
filter and then you type in thename of any religion, all of the
current events in the world thathave some kind of religion going
through it will pop up. So oneof the things that I would
encourage anybody to do is tostart seeing how news and
religion are mingling around theworld. Read stories about events
(43:52):
in the world, that have religionas a main aspect of those
stories, because religion ishappening all over the place.
And you know we can ignore it,but it happens regardless. So I
think that part of being a goodcitizen is seeing how religion
continues to be relevant allover the world, and emphasizing
(44:19):
your own dedication to learningthose things is super important.
So I think that consuming newsregularly where you find news
that has religion as relevance,and going that path, I think
that that will help anybody,because you can look at stuff
that's here and now in front ofour very eyes, that you don't
(44:40):
have to think about as happening1000s of years ago, because
religion is everywhere.
Chip Gruen (44:46):
Well, Greg, I want to thank you very much for
sitting down to talk with me. Ireally appreciate it. It sounds
like this work, I mean,obviously, you know, this work
is so important, so vital for usunderstanding one another, so
thank you very much for doing itand thanks for appearing on
ReligionWise.
Greg Soden (45:03):
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a
pleasure.
Chip Gruen (45:07):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
Muhlenberg College. For moreinformation and additional
programming, please visit ourwebsite at
religionandculture.com There,you'll find our contact
information, links to otherprogramming, and have the
opportunity to support the workof the Institute. ReligionWise
(45:31):
is produced by the staff of theInstitute for Religious and
Cultural Understanding ofMuhlenberg College, including
Christine Flicker, and CarrieDuncan. Please subscribe to
ReligionWise wherever you getyour podcasts. We look forward
to seeing you next time.
Welcome to ReligionWise, the podcast that
features educators, researchers,and other professionals
discussing their work and theplace of religion in the public
conversation. I'm your host,Chip Gruen, Director of the
Institute for Religious andCultural Understanding at
Muhlenberg College.
When we think about teaching ourchildren, that there are things
(00:33):
that our children need to know,how to read, how to write, how
to do math, science, socialstudies, the public school
system is where we instantiatethose values, where we put into
the curriculum, the things thatit is important for our children
to know. Unfortunately, I thinkthat there has been a
(00:54):
misunderstanding about what, howone studies religion and why one
studies religion, so that thestudy of religion does not
happen very often in publiceducation. This is despite the
fact that the United StatesSupreme Court has continually re
cognized the line betweenreligious education, i.e.
(01:18):
teaching someone to bereligious, and a religious and
cultural education that isteaching people about the human
experience and about thecontent, the beliefs and
practices of religion from anoutside perspective. In fact, in
the United States Supreme Courtcase, Abington vs. Schempp.
(01:38):
Justice Tom C. Clark said, "Itmight well be said that one's
education is not completewithout a study of comparative
religion, or the history ofreligion, and its relationship
to the advancement ofcivilization." We might put that
a little bit differently in the21st century, but I think that
(01:58):
the point remains the same, andmore importantly, the legal
precedent remains the same -that understanding religion is a
part of understanding humanstory, is a part of social
studies curriculum, or at leastshould be. Combining with that
the contemporary controversiesaround school curricula, around
(02:19):
books being banned, either fromcurricula by some state
legislatures, limiting the typesof things that can be talked
about, whether it be religiousand cultural difference, and I
am afraid that there will beeven more of a chilling effect
on how social studies is taught.
Well, today we have a guest whocan speak directly to these
(02:42):
concerns. His name is GregSoden. He is a secondary
educator who has experiencedteaching a world religions
curriculum both in abrick-and-mortar classroom in
Missouri, and also in anasynchronous online environment.
I really wanted to take theopportunity to sit down with
(03:02):
Greg and think a little bitabout the context of that class,
how it was received in the localcommunity, how students thought
about it, and a myriad of otherconcerns about how the study of
religion manifests itself insidea high school curriculum.
Welcome, Greg, thanks forappearing on ReligionWise.
Greg Soden (03:24):
Thank you so much for having me.
Chip Gruen (03:25):
I guess I'll just start by asking you, where did
this idea come from? I mean,when did you first decide that
thinking about religiousliteracy for high school
students was something that youfelt called to do or you felt
necessary to do?
Greg Soden (03:40):
Well, I think that my interest in the content stems
from a world religions coursethat I took as an undergrad at
the University of Missouri. AndI really enjoyed that
experience. And I pursued itthrough several courses in my
undergrad. But then, when I wentout into the world, I found
(04:02):
myself teaching in England, Igot a teaching job in like a
public high school in the UK.
And a huge percentage of mystudents were religiously devout
in some way. And I realized thatI was like, just really
fascinated and curious abouttheir lives. And they would
write about it a lot in a lot oftheir in-class writing. So that
(04:24):
was kind of a way that Irealized that religion could be
super important to young peoplethat were in my classes. So it
kind of started off just as away of like wanting to get to
know my students a littlebetter. And I really enjoyed
that aspect of it. But then,when I went back to Missouri, I
(04:46):
was working on a Ph.D. in SocialStudies Education, and I came
across some research in socialstudies education where religion
was brought up in like historystandards and state standards
and things like that. So thatwas kind of an area of
fascination. So I was kind ofgoing in that direction a tiny,
(05:06):
tiny little bit within a Ph.D.
program. But then I got an offerto teach English and social
studies at a brand new publichigh school. So I actually wound
up dropping out of my Ph.D.
program to pursue this otheropportunity. And while I was in
that school, the guidancedepartment got enough
(05:30):
enrollments for a course calledClassical Ideas and World
Religions, which was in thecourse catalog. And the school
was brand new, but enoughstudents in the school signed up
for it for where it made asection. And I was offered the
chance to teach it, which wasone of the most important
turning points in my life. Andso I was introduced to the
(05:52):
teacher at the high schoolacross town who had been
teaching that same course verysuccessfully since the 1980s,
and he helped me to found thecourse at a new school. So he
helped me- we basically becamelike a miniature PLC, where we
were planning things together,we were doing events together,
(06:15):
we were planning like littlefield trips together, we were
planning guest speakerstogether- and we kind of just
became like a little unit. Andhe became sort of like a mentor,
like a fatherly figure to me.
And the podcast that I do isactually dedicated entirely to
him, because he passed away acouple years ago. But like I do
(06:36):
all of this, because of this oneguy basically, named George
Frissell. And so that wasbasically kind of where it all
came in, because I'm certainthat without George, it would
have become just a reallytypical social studies class,
that probably would have beenfar more boring and less
(07:00):
interesting to the students hadI not had the opportunity to
have some amazing mentorship.
But with George's assistance,students got to go to Hindu
temples, synagogues, they got tomeet 20 guest speakers per year
in the classroom. And so itbecame a really interactive
experience focused almost onlike the hyper local and the
(07:21):
extreme global. So we were likelooking at stuff from all over
the world, but then we wouldlike meet somebody in the
community. So that's where itall comes from, is George, and
the opportunity that I was givencompletely at random, which I
saw as an amazing opportunityright away, and was smart enough
(07:41):
to latch on to it and go for it.
But yeah, that's kind of whereit all comes from. There's just
a couple of good opportunities,a little bit of personal
curiosity and an amazing mentor.
Chip Gruen (07:55):
Oh, that's great. So I want to follow up on a couple
of things that you mentionedthere. One is, we will not be
afraid to plug your podcast. Soit's the Classical Ideas
podcast, which has severalhundred episodes at this point,
it looks like.
Greg Soden (08:08):
Yeah, I'm closing in on 250. And my thought on
podcasting is that we all dobetter when we all do better,
you know what I mean? Sowhenever all podcasters, like, I
don't see us as any of us beingin competition with each other,
I see us as being just acommunity of kind of niche,
oddball people that enjoytalking about stuff and putting
(08:31):
it on record. So I just thinkthat that's like a really cool
way of looking at it. But yeah,I, I've been doing it for five
and a half years at this point.
So it's been quite a journey.
Chip Gruen (08:39):
Oh, that's great.
And the other thing I want tofollow up on, and one of the
things that we are interestedin, because we do have some
outreach at the Institute tohigh school and middle school
students, so we've had theopportunity to look at this a
little bit, and I've looked atit at Pennsylvania state
standards, and I wonder if youcould help me a little bit by
(09:00):
comparing to your Missouri statestandards as well, is that I was
shocked at the number of placesin the state standards where
social studies curriculumsmention religion explicitly as
an important part ofunderstanding the human story.
Have you run into that as well?
Greg Soden (09:17):
Yeah, I've noticed that it pops up more than you
would think. And a lot of it istied to the very big names that
people would recognize, likeChristianity and Islam and
Judaism and Buddhism. So I'venoticed that it does pop up more
often than you would think instandards, which does shock
people who don't know a lot ofthe things about the legalities
(09:39):
of teaching about religion inschool, which you mentioned
earlier, but it is definitely inthere. I don't have the
standards in front of me, butthose things are easily
discoverable on any State'sDepartment of Education website,
and if anybody's looking to doit, I mean, you can download the
PDFs and just do Command F andtype in the name of religion and
see where it pops up in thatstate standards, because it's
(10:01):
most likely in there.
Chip Gruen (10:03):
Yeah, I'll tell you, I mean, from my experience
looking into this, it looks tome that most public school
systems, well I don't have thedata to say most, maybe I'll say
many public school systems, arejust allergic to the idea of
thinking about religion in anysustained way because they have
a hard time teasing out thedifference between learning
(10:23):
about religion versus teachingreligion, teaching theology, or
teaching how to practice aparticular religion.
Greg Soden (10:31):
Yeah, and, you know there, in some of the schools, I
would imagine that it might bereally appealing to let somebody
who has like a really, a reallyspecific training in specific
things, like I know that therehave been teachers that I've met
in the past who have seminarytraining or some theological
(10:51):
training. And that might seemlike a really obvious candidate
for teaching about religion inschools, but I feel like that
could also backfire a whole lot.
Because for me, the beauty is inthe totality, and not like the
singular. So I just see it likethis massive collage of things
that I can expose students to,because you never know who's
(11:14):
going to be inspired by oneparticular thing. And if they're
never exposed to it with an openmind, like a very open mind,
then maybe it would be presentedto them in a way that would make
them look negatively uponsomething that they're only
being exposed to for the firsttime. So I think that who you
have doing that kind of work isextraordinarily important as
(11:35):
well.
Chip Gruen (11:37):
Yeah, absolutely.
I've always been particularlyproud of my alma mater, the
University of Pennsylvania, nothaving a religious affiliation
haunting its background because,you know, people question your
motives. You know, even here, Imean, Muhlenberg College, where
the Institute is located, havinga, historically a Lutheran
identity, you know can causesome problems, people
(11:59):
misunderstand who we are andwhat we're about when, in fact,
what we're interested in isthis, you know, as you describe
a more holistic, comparative,cross-cultural understanding of
the phenomenon of religion.
Greg Soden (12:13):
I just love it. And it's been truly one of the most
rewarding experiences of myentire life to be able to do
this kind of work. And, youknow, both in person, online,
through podcasting, I mean, theopportunities are just
limitless, almost. Like thefarther you take it, the more
doors seem to open.
Chip Gruen (12:30):
Yeah, absolutely.
And speaking of open doors, yourmethods seem to be very similar
to some of the things that we'vedone here at the Institute as
well. The local informants, butthen situating those local
informants inside the context ofthe larger tradition. So can you
talk a little bit about, I mean,it sounds like you had a great
deal of a leg up with this withyour mentor, but can you talk a
(12:51):
little bit about reaching out tothose local communities and how
your students react to thosepeople who necessarily live
lives that, you know, or atleast most of them will be very
different from the lives yourstudents are leading?
Greg Soden (13:07):
Absolutely. So I was extremely lucky to have George
Frissell's guidance whenever Ibegan the course, because he
essentially held my hand anddelivered to me these amazing
people in the local community,who had many years of visiting
classrooms at that point,because they would visit George
(13:27):
year after year. And so theyknew things about like, what was
like the line ofconstitutionality within the
public classroom and things likethat. So they were very, very,
experienced in being extremelyrespectful of boundaries. But
then, over the course of theyears that I taught the class, I
(13:49):
began finding my own guests,like I found a local meditation
center who, their teachers wereextremely interested to come in,
and they did an amazing job. Iformed some new relationships
with the Church of Jesus Christof Latter Day Saints in town,
and their, one of their staffmembers was extremely
knowledgeable and very good inhis appearances in the
(14:10):
classroom. And you know, I justbuilt those relationships over
time. And when you invitepeople, you never know who's
gonna say, yes. So if I heardthat somebody was really, really
cool, and I would send them aninvitation, you know, one out of
four times, the answer would beno, or maybe one out of four
(14:31):
times the answer would be yes.
But you never know who's goingto say yes, when you send out an
invitation. And for me, one ofthe most crucial things is
making sure that my guestspeakers didn't have to prepare
anything. I never asked them togive a lecture. I never asked
him to prepare slides. I toldthem if they had any
photographs, they would like toshow or anything, they could
(14:51):
email them to me and I wouldproject them on the screen for
them. But like one of the bestthings about my class that I
loved the most was when we werestudying a religion for maybe
three or four classes leading upto a guest, anytime a student
would say, Oh, what about this?
and they would ask a really goodquestion, most of the time, I
wouldn't know the answer,because it would be specific for
(15:13):
a practitioner or somebody inthat tradition. And oftentimes,
they would depend what you dowithin the tradition to what
your answer would be. So I wouldsay, I don't know, add that to
the questions. And we had a liveGoogle Doc that every student in
the classroom could access withthe, an iPad that they had in
the room. And then they wouldtype it into the questions, I
(15:36):
would compile all the questions,sort them thematically, and then
I would print them all out sothat every student on the day a
guest would come would have allof the questions that we had
written as a class, and I wouldbasically have the guests come
in, and I would have themintroduce themselves for just a
moment. And then I would havethe students just interview that
(15:57):
person with questions for 75straight minutes. And the fact
that the students had done somuch pre-work, they had an
endless amount of topics todiscuss, and the fact that the
guest just got to talk abouttheir life, it made for some
remarkably magical moments. Sothat's kind of how I would
(16:17):
facilitate the actualappearances in classes, that
students would do all thepre-work, and then they would
just basically interview theperson who came into the room.
But keeping in touch with gueststhroughout the year even after
they have visited the classroomis really important to me,
because anybody who would takefour hours out of their day once
(16:39):
a year to come and talk to highschool seniors, there needs to
be a little bit of arelationship there that's
ongoing besides when you needthem. So like the people who
would come to my class, theywould be my friends. And I would
befriend them and be like, Hey,you want to get coffee? Like
it'd be like, they would come tovisit the class in October and
it would be like, in April, andI'd be like, Hey, do you wanna
go get coffee? and then we'dmeet up and just hang out and
(17:00):
talk about life. So I reallymade a point of having
friendships with all the people,instead of just like, being
like, Hey, I need you to comeand visit me so I can fill two
hours on a lesson plan. So Ireally sought to go beyond just
the "Appear in my classroom oncea year" thing to make sure that
(17:20):
there was an actual relationshipthere, because when you actually
make friendships with people andyou actually go out of your way
to have a relationship, theappearances in the classroom are
so much more meaningful, becausewhen the students see me and my
friend, who is guest speaking inthe classroom, instead of just
this random person from thisrandom religious institution,
(17:42):
they can tell that I haverapport with them. And like the
whole mood just lightens in theroom, and it relaxes so much,
because talking to people aboutreligion is tough. And when they
see that their teacher and theguest have rapport, it really
just opens up a lot ofpossibilities in the room.
Chip Gruen (17:57):
Yeah, and one of the things I always say about our
programming, where we're doinginterviews like this is that
really two things are going on,one thing is the literacy
itself, the content that isdeveloped, that is talked about.
The other is modeling a goodrelationship with somebody who's
different from yourself,modeling a conversation about
(18:19):
topics that can be a little bitdifficult. So it sounds like
you're right on the same pagewith that.
Greg Soden (18:25):
Yeah, I try to. And like one of the best things is,
whenever I have a question inthe moment, in like a time when
a guest is in our classroom,I'm, my hand's in the air, just
like the students. And so it'sone of those things to where I'm
"in charge," but it's like, Idon't really see it that way.
Because I kind of see us alljust having an awesome time
(18:47):
together instead of being like,Okay, being Mr. Rigid Rule
Enforcer, Mr. In Charge. So Ikind of just see myself as a
learner alongside them, I justhappen to be 20 years older than
the students.
Chip Gruen (19:00):
So I want to talk a little bit about the context of
where you are. One couldcertainly imagine, I think one
of the most important things wethink of as educators is, who
are our students? Where are theycoming from? How are they going
to, you know, what are theygoing to bring to these
conversations? How is that goingto affect what they take from
it? So can you talk a little bitabout the context of the school?
(19:23):
Who are your students? You know,what kind of an atmosphere are
you working in, and how do youthink that affects the way that
they received this class?
Greg Soden (19:32):
Well, so the experiences that I've been
overwhelmingly describing werein my in-person classroom from
2013 to 2018. And that was inColumbia, Missouri. And since
then, from 2018, until now, I'vebeen working full time in an
(19:54):
online, a fully asynchronoushigh school. So I was able, I
was given the opportunity towrite this course that I love so
much for a fully online globalstudent body. So it looks a lot
different now than when I was inMissouri. But like for example,
(20:14):
like right now, I have a lot ofstudents in Vietnam, and one of
my assignments is to report onnews of the world, in relation
to religion, and they report itvia podcast. So they do a
podcast series in my course,which I turned into an
assessment. And a lot of mystudents right now who are in
(20:36):
Vietnam are reporting on thedeath of the Zen monk ThÃch Nhất
Hạnh, which is reallyfascinating because they are
bringing in the local of what ishappening in their home into
their curriculum, which issomething that I hugely endorse.
And I tell that to all mystudents here, and some of my
(20:57):
students in the States, whatthey do now is they look for
religious institutions in theirown town when they do their
podcast episodes, to talk aboutwhat's going on in their city
with relation to religion. Sosomething that I'm noticing is
that in my students choice oftopics, in their assessments
that they do in my onlinecourse, they could be reporting
(21:18):
on events in Vietnam, or inKansas City, or in Denver, or
in, you know, Honduras, butthey're finding stuff that is
important to their local town,which is so fascinating. So
that's kind of an interestingthru line, that students do care
about the local, and that theywant to know more about what's
(21:40):
going on around them to see howreligion affects their lives,
even if they don't tend to pickup on those things right away.
So that's something that I'mnoticing in the online class. My
students in Missouri were, youknow, in a city of 120,000, in
the middle of what can, youknow, be described as a
(22:03):
conservative state, and most ofthe students come from Christian
backgrounds of some kind. Andit's very, it was very rare to
have students that identifiedwith other religious traditions
in my courses, but there weresome. And so getting to know
(22:23):
everybody in the room and likegauging their comfort level was
always an interesting experiencein the beginning of the year. So
that's just something that everyteacher has to deal with, and
everybody knows those challengespretty well, is getting to know
where students are and allowingthem to come out of their shells
at their own speed, wheneveryou're talking about stuff that
(22:45):
could be very, veryextraordinarily personal to
them. So that's just kind of my,my thoughts on that.
Chip Gruen (22:49):
Yeah. And how did you go about thinking about with
that with students? Because Ithink that, I mean, depending on
your pedagogy, differentinstructors, different teachers
think the place of the personal,you know, the place of the
personsl is different fromcourse to course, from subject
to subject. You know, I alwaysjoke that, you know, when
(23:12):
students take a class with me, Idon't ask them to raise their
hands, how many Christians inthe room, how many Jews in the
room, how many Muslims in theroom? Right, because to some
extent, the academic project issort of contingent on that not
being maybe as relevant as theidea that we're all humans in
the room wanting to understandother humans. So I mean, with a
(23:35):
sort of a more, I mean, notmonolithic, but more similarity
between your students, I mean,how did you negotiate that? What
did students feel like theywanted to bring? And what did
you think was appropriate forthem to bring to the classroom?
Greg Soden (23:49):
Yeah, something that was really fascinating, is you
would see right away whatstudents really wanted to self
identify right off the bat.
Like, they would oftentimes doit in class early in the year,
and there were some students whowent through the entire year,
and I don't know anything abouttheir personal convictions, or
of any kind, and I never reallyasked, but the ones who want to
(24:12):
be more personal and open I feelwill be if the environment
facilitates it, which I think Idid. But it was, it's definitely
an interesting experience beingin the moment with students and
talking about things likereligious freedom, news events
(24:37):
in the country, and seeing whatkinds of religious freedom news
events they react to. And thentying stuff like that, like we
would talk about religiousobservance of Muslim women's
head coverings and things likethat and the choices around
(24:57):
that, and we would look atexamples like in France, where a
lot of those things were, havebeen controlled for a number of
years in various ways, and thenhearing students pipe in with
who they agreed with or whateverwas always really fascinating to
me. But I would just try to showthem ways that religious
expression is encouraged ordiscouraged around the world,
(25:20):
and then trying to get them tothink about, Well, why am I for
this version and against thisversion? And, you know, it's
definitely something that Istill will be working on if I
get back in the classroom and dothis work in person again, for
sure. Because I don't reallyhave all the answers. It's a
very sensitive thing in themoment. And I have a lot of room
(25:43):
to grow as far as my ownpractice goes in that area.
Chip Gruen (25:49):
So either initially, right, there is some self
selection here, right, becauseas you said you were sort of
beholden to students signing upfor this class, right. So
there's some self selection thatstudents are fundamentally
interested in these ideas ifthey choose to take this class,
it's not mandated by thecurriculum from what you said.
(26:10):
But I wonder, do you think thestudy of religion in this way
seemed normal to your students,either at the beginning or at
the end of the class? I thinkthat we run into this, even at
the collegiate level, where thisis not something that, I mean,
people know what English is,people know what history is,
(26:32):
people know what chemistry is,people know these other topics;
you know did students feel likethey were doing something a
little different? Did they feellike this was something that was
special? I mean, how did theyreact, the class, either at the
beginning or at the end?
Greg Soden (26:50):
They definitely knew it was special. And one of the,
by the time the students got tomy class when they were seniors,
most of them already knewexactly what it was because they
had friends that were older thanthem who had taken it. And one
of the things I always did is Ialways did t-shirts for the
class. And so the students wouldlike get these t-shirts and wear
(27:13):
them to school, and people wouldbe like, Whoa, where'd you get
that cool shirt? And then thestudents would like kind of say,
Oh, my world religions teachergot these for the class. And
they were like, Oh, my gosh. SoI had these ways of like getting
people to know about it. Andanytime we would have a guest
speaker at school, I would putthat in the student, the school
announcements. So everybodywould hear 25 times a year, Oh,
(27:35):
Mr. Soden's World Religionsclass would like to welcome
so-and-so. And it was like,there was a lot of stuff that
went into getting students to beaware that the class existed.
And they did know that it wasspecial, because nowhere else in
the school did you have theopportunity to meet a Tibetan
(27:55):
Buddhist monk who studied withthe Dalai Lama, and my class was
the only place that you couldhave experiences like that. So
there was a lot that went intoit to get students to talk about
it outside of class time. And Itook a lot of pride and effort
into that and put a lot of workinto it so that students would
(28:18):
have a joyful experience,looking at things that, maybe
they had no idea what they werereading, maybe they had really
no idea what was happening someof the time, but we always
tried, and we always had areally positive attitude about
it. So, you know, I did take alot of care and effort into
trying to get them to thinkabout that stuff and talk about
(28:40):
it outside of class, that theywould tell their friends, to
have it have an aura,essentially, that it was a
special, unique experience thatpeople wanted to do. So I
absolutely loved it. And I put alot of time and effort into
that.
Chip Gruen (28:56):
Yeah, that cultivating of the buzz around a
class I think is superimportant. Sounds like you got
that one down. So, yeah, sothat's the students. And the
students are excited, thestudents hear about the class
from their older peers, etc.
What about parents? If this isa, as you've described it, a
relatively conservative area,maybe not small town, exactly,
(29:16):
but a smaller city in, inMissouri. Did you get any
pushback from parents? What wasthe, what was the reaction in
the community sort of beyondthose students who you have more
opportunities to interact with?
Greg Soden (29:35):
It was overwhelmingly very cool,
because a lot of the studentswho have parents that would not
want their students to take aclass like that, I think
probably prevented them fromever signing up in the first
place. Or once that enrollmentform came back, and the parents
(29:56):
had a chance to look at it likeover the summer, I'd had some a
lot of withdrawals that wouldhappen over the summer, and then
new students would be added whowere waitlisted. So I would
imagine that a lot of thosethings filtered themselves out
throughout the year. And one ofthe things that I was very, very
put a lot of work into wasbuilding relationships with
(30:19):
parents, too. I invited parentsopenly to every guest speaker
appearance, and I would alwayshave like a row of like 10 extra
chairs in the back of theclassroom, for any parent that
did come. And they would have tolike, let me know in advance
that they were coming so that wecould get them signed in and get
them a badge and everything forthe school, but I invited
parents to come to see what wasgoing on in the class. And, you
(30:43):
know, not many did, I think thatin the six or so years I was
doing that I maybe got like 15that came in. But the invitation
stood every time, which I thinkhelped parents see that, Oh, he
doesn't have anything to hide.
He's not trying to indoctrinateour students. He's not trying to
change anybody's mind. He's justtrying to offer these
(31:04):
experiences. And he's offeringthese experiences to me. So I
think that that was extremelyhelpful. Another thing that I
did was creating the podcastbecause the first 20 or so
episodes on my podcast areinterviews with my guest
speakers. So what I would do isI would interview the people who
(31:26):
were coming to visit the schooland I would put those on our
class podcast. And I would sayto the parents, This is the
person who your kid is going tomeet in my class, you can listen
to my podcast, your student canmeet the person in the room, you
can talk about it over dinner,you can, they can have the
(31:47):
students send me a summary ofwhat the conversation was like
via email, and I'll give thestudent extra credit. So I tried
to encourage parents to engagewith the material themselves and
to visit the classroom and alsoto talk to their student about
what the student was doing atschool. So I really went as far
(32:07):
as I could, I feel, to get theparent to engage with the
material and talk to theirstudent about what they had
experienced in class just sothat they could see that there
was a lot to learn and that theycould have a an enriching
experience alongside theirstudent as well, and that the
(32:30):
student could get some, youknow, grade benefits out of it
and all that great stuff. So Idid very, I did try to encourage
parent engagement. But Ioverwhelmingly had a really cool
experience with parents. Acouple of them blatantly asked
me, Are you like, you knowreligious yourself? Are you
trying to like persuade anyparticular views? And I would
(32:52):
always just say, I'm not tryingto persuade any particular views
whatsoever. I'm just here,because I think that the stories
and experiences and traditionsthat we're going to talk about
in class are really interestingand that religion is everywhere
around us whether we payattention to it or not. So I
would like to have everybodyhave the tools and the mindset
(33:13):
and the abilities to payattention to it, should they
choose to do so. So that waskind of my approach to it.
Chip Gruen (33:22):
Yeah, I think I saw you describe this on another
interview you did. And I reallyliked this, and I'll get you to
comment on it, that you thinkthat the importance of religious
literacy has to do with peoplewalking down the street. And if
they see some manifestation ofreligion around them, they may
not know exactly what's goingon, but they certainly have the
tools through which they canlearn more about it.
Greg Soden (33:45):
Absolutely. And like, even if you see something
that you can recognize isreligious in some way, if you
don't choose to pursue it aslike, to learn more about it,
that, that, it's not the end ofthe world. But you have the
ability to recognize that, Oh,there's something new that I
could learn something new about.
And I think that that's reallycool, because maybe you're
(34:07):
rushing around and you seesomething really neat, like you
see, like a Khanda on the backof a semi truck driving across
the United States, you know whatI mean? And I've seen that many
times, I'm like, Oh, look. And Ilove stuff like that, where you
can see religion in actionaround you and you can be like,
Oh, I feel like I recognizethat. And then it might set off
(34:29):
your curiosity to go and learnsomething new that day, because
we all can learn something newevery single day, especially in
this topic. So I think thatgiving students the ability to
recognize when something ishappening near them, then they
can choose if they're going todive more deeply into it or not.
Chip Gruen (34:49):
I've started talking about this with my students
actually a little bit, that youknow, one of the things that
people love about video gameculture is easter eggs. The
thing things that are hidden,that if you know what it is you
recognize it, you understand it,you feel like a little bit of
the "in" crowd. I always thinkthat religious literacy is a
little bit like that as well,that you're walking around,
(35:11):
there are easter eggs all aroundus if you just know how to read
them, just know how to interpretthem.
Greg Soden (35:16):
I completely agree I see it exactly the same way. So
we're definitely on the samepage there.
Chip Gruen (35:21):
So I want to talk about, a little bit more about,
this self selection. Because onthe one hand, you know it
obviously saves some problemsfor you, right, the idea that
the students who, you know,exclude themselves, or their
families exclude them from thisopportunity, would have been the
ones that would have been, onesthat would be more challenging,
(35:44):
but on the other hand, may bethe ones who need this kind of
education, need to have thissort of expanded worldview the
most, so I think that'sunfortunate. And on the other
hand, I want to ask about yourguests, because one of the
things that I'm also interestedin is, What are the types of
traditions that are interestedin participating in a project
(36:08):
like this? So for example, youmentioned, you know, the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter DaySaints. It is always the case
that you will be able to findsomeone from that community who
wants to talk to you, becausethey're so interested in
community outreach. Yet thereare other traditions where it
will be less so. Have you runinto that, where you think,
(36:30):
Well, the groups that are comingto talk to me have a certain
perspective on proselytization,for example, or ways of
interacting with the world?
Greg Soden (36:39):
Yeah, so I had overwhelmingly fantastic
experiences. And whenever I didreach out to the LDS community,
the guy who responded to me wasso fantastic. He's like, I've
been doing this work a longtime, I understand very clearly
that there are proselyzationlines that I cannot cross in the
(37:00):
classroom, I know exactly wherethat line is, I promise you that
it will not be an issue. He'slike, I just want to talk to
people about what my life islike so that when they hear
about my community on the newsthey have met somebody from that
community so that they can likebegin to question ingrained
(37:21):
assumptions. Because when youmeet somebody from a community
and then you hear something thatcontradicts your direct
experience, that's wherelearning comes in. And that's
where relationships come in. Sothat was one of the best things
about these experiences in theclassroom. But I didn't have
many issues finding people tocome in who were interested. And
(37:45):
one of my favorite experienceswas, there was a Muslim Students
Association at the University ofMissouri who were committed to
community outreach. So my Muslimstudent guest speakers were all
like 22-23 years old. And sothey were pretty close in age to
(38:09):
the students in the classroom.
And they were like, we just wanthigh school students to meet
Muslim people in Columbia,Missouri, who are young and
living very similar lives tothem. So you know, that was
really cool finding groups. Andthere was an Indian Students
Association as well where I metmy Jain guest speaker. And it
(38:32):
was really, really awesome tofind people that were kind of
close in age to my students,because like they were talking
so much on like the same levelof you know conversation styles.
And that was one of the thingsthat I really enjoyed whenever I
started branching out fromGeorge's original guest
(38:53):
speakers, was finding my ownpeople who were such a great fit
and so dynamic and awesome andsmart and thoughtful and had
life experiences from a youngperson in the 2010s' perspective
as opposed to somebody who wasmy students' age in like the
1970s. So I started to veer moretowards the younger end of the
(39:17):
spectrum as far as my guestspeakers go. And that really,
really worked out well for mystudents, because they just like
immediately felt a connectioninstead of this massive
generational age gap wherecommunication styles can be so
different. So that was one ofthe things that I really picked
up on, is the young guestspeakers were extraordinarily
(39:37):
successful for me.
Chip Gruen (39:41):
So one of the things you mentioned there, and I think
that this is one of those habitsof mind that I'm always getting
my students to think about, isthe idea of comparison, looking
for similarity and looking fordifference. Because I found that
there are some speakers who willcome to talk to a group, and
their primary motivation is toconvince you that they're really
(40:03):
not that different from you.
That, I always sort of jokeabout this when I'm talking
about ancient Christianapologists, that they say, We
pay taxes and our kids playsoccer with your kids, that
there's this idea that, youknow, don't treat us
differently, because really, inthe end, as far as you're
concerned, we live a life that'svery similar to yours. On the
other hand, of course thesedifferent religious communities
(40:25):
would not exist if people didn'tfundamentally see the world
differently, didn't actdifferently, didn't have
different beliefs and practices.
How do you find that balance? Orhas there been sort of a through
line from your speakers abouthow they deal with that issue of
similarity and difference?
Greg Soden (40:42):
Yeah, you know, one of the things that I love the
most is, I haven't run into thata whole heck of a lot, but what
I have found that I have reallyenjoyed are guest speakers who
are willing to be openlycritical of the history within
their own tradition. Like a lotof people have come into my
(41:04):
classroom and talked about a lotof the horrible historical
events that are within theirtradition that, you know,
created things like oppressionand slavery and persecution and
genocide. And so people who comeand talk and are able to be
(41:25):
critical of the history of thething that they do, those were
some of the most inspiring andhonest and amazing conversations
that ever took place in theroom. So I didn't have a whole
lot of people who were coming intrying to say, Look how similar
we are, but I did have someamazing experiences where people
(41:48):
would come in and be like, Yeah,and then there's this really
unfortunate history that youguys have studied, and all of
those things happened, and thisis something that our community
is still reckoning with to thisday, and here's how I think
about it, and here's what I seekto do to like sort of like be a
part of a better future for mytradition. And that was
(42:08):
something that that really jumpsout to me about your question
is, like people who were tryingto be a part of creating a
better future for theircommunity, so that we can have
reconciliation, healing frompast trauma that our species is
so well known for.
Chip Gruen (42:25):
Yeah, absolutely. So on the podcast, we always end up
with a version of the followingquestion, What can our listeners
do, to become more literate, toparticipate in a more
sophisticated conversation aboutreligion, to enhance the way
(42:47):
that they understand it in theworld? So not everybody has the
benefit of being a student,either in one of your classes or
in a religious studiesdepartment, What do you think,
sort of the average person outthere can do to enhance their
understanding of this topic?
Greg Soden (43:03):
One of my easiest suggestions that I think that
anybody can do is when you arereading the news, to find
stories that have religion as anevent in the world news. So if
you do, go to any search engineand you go to a news search
(43:26):
filter and then you type in thename of any religion, all of the
current events in the world thathave some kind of religion going
through it will pop up. So oneof the things that I would
encourage anybody to do is tostart seeing how news and
religion are mingling around theworld. Read stories about events
(43:52):
in the world, that have religionas a main aspect of those
stories, because religion ishappening all over the place.
And you know we can ignore it,but it happens regardless. So I
think that part of being a goodcitizen is seeing how religion
continues to be relevant allover the world, and emphasizing
(44:19):
your own dedication to learningthose things is super important.
So I think that consuming newsregularly where you find news
that has religion as relevance,and going that path, I think
that that will help anybody,because you can look at stuff
that's here and now in front ofour very eyes, that you don't
(44:40):
have to think about as happening1000s of years ago, because
religion is everywhere.
Chip Gruen (44:46):
Well, Greg, I want to thank you very much for
sitting down to talk with me. Ireally appreciate it. It sounds
like this work, I mean,obviously, you know, this work
is so important, so vital for usunderstanding one another, so
thank you very much for doing itand thanks for appearing on
ReligionWise.
Greg Soden (45:03):
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a
pleasure.
Chip Gruen (45:07):
This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced
by the Institute for Religiousand Cultural Understanding of
Muhlenberg College. For moreinformation and additional
programming, please visit ourwebsite at
religionandculture.com There,you'll find our contact
information, links to otherprogramming, and have the
opportunity to support the workof the Institute. ReligionWise
(45:31):
is produced by the staff of theInstitute for Religious and
Cultural Understanding ofMuhlenberg College, including
Christine Flicker, and CarrieDuncan. Please subscribe to
ReligionWise wherever you getyour podcasts. We look forward
to seeing you next time.
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