Bombarding Beliefs

"Religion is very powerful," said Lynda Coon, director of the religious studies department of the University of Arkansas. "And teaching religion at a state university brings 'special kinds of challenges.'"

Department faculty shared some of those challenges in a panel discussion earlier this month. "They'll talk about what they are confronted with directly in the classroom," Coon finished her introduction of the panel. "They'll talk about the religious perspective from the classroom."

Christianity

JoAnn D'Alisera, a member of the UA anthropology faculty, also teaches classes in religious studies (the history of Christianity) and African studies. She spoke as the moderator of the panel.

"People don't leave their comfort zone," she said of her own classroom experience. "They think Jesus is stable in history."

D'Alisera pointed out several images of Jesus in artwork, the earliest being a Syrian image that shows a crucifix on a bloodstone. "But is it Christian? Probably not," she asked and answered. She showed a slide of various portraits of Jesus and noted "waxing and waning" images of the Christ.

Her challenge, D'Alisera said, is teaching "multiple Jesuses" as depicted in the Scripture of the late Roman Empire, from the fourth and fifth centuries -- the New Testament Jesus from child to sage to man of heaven.

Add to that, the transformation of the body before the Resurrection. According to the gospel of Luke 22:44, Jesus' eyes "bled through his tears," she said. "His own body knew he was going to be crucified and acted it out.

"It took detective work with the gospels over how they were put together over a 40-year period," she noted.

"This nation thinks there's a war on Jesus," D'Alisera continued. "Some resist history; some modern practice."

And she pointed out the various practices of religion from material -- a shrine, dirt, architecture, texts, color and books -- to virtual -- on the Internet.

"But there are special charms and advantages of teaching religion at the university," D'Alisera said. "My experience has been working with the best students ever. We've had enrollments from every college major."

She noted future Southern Baptist ministers. "They start the term with their arms crossed and stare at me. They never missed (class), and they knew Scripture -- frighteningly so. We had the best debates ever." And by the end of the semester, they opened up.

She also noted international students from China, who were in the College of Engineering. "They enrolled in the course because they 'were going to find out just who this Jesus person is.'"

Voodoo

Scenes of blood sacrifices, spirit possession and Satan flashed for milliseconds each on a screen as Timothy Landry shared his perspective on voodoo. Landry is a visiting assistant professor of religious studies, specializing in religious studies and African studies.

"How do they make you feel? Do you believe there are good spirits in Santeria?" he asked. He noted these 20 years of images used by the media to portray Santeria are the images his students bring to class. "Students struggle, but they do a great job," he said.

"Voodoo is the only non-Abrahamic, African religion you've ever heard of," Landry said. "Most people think they know what it is, and they are wrong.

"Voodoo is not a religion, but it has become one," he continued. "Maybe we need to deconstruct what religion actually is."

To the Fon people of Africa, voodoo simply means spirit. "It's just a word. And religion is a word -- a verb, not a noun, meaning, 'Who do you worship?'"

For example, Landry stayed with a family in West Africa in which the mother was an evangelical Christian and the daughter was a "voodoo princess." When the mother's proselytizing became overbearing, the daughter told him to ignore it. "That's just her voodoo," the daughter said.

In voodoo, each person's individual belief is different. There is no doctrine or dogma, Landry said.

Yes, some who practice voodoo do participate in animal sacrifice and black magic, he shared. "But voodoo is more about family healing, supporting the family, taking care of the family."

Landry said voodoo has been stigmatized by racism and stereotypes. "They're not not true, but they are incomplete," he said.

"When you tell only one side of the story to people over and over, it becomes the only story," he continued. "We must add depth to the story -- like we've done with Christianity. My primary goal is to rewrite the story when teaching religion in the classroom."

Evolution

Lucas Delezene is an anthropologist, a visiting assistant professor at the university in the department of anthropology. During graduate school, he worked with the team who found Lucy, a nearly complete skeleton of a hominid, about 3.18 million years old.

In his fourth year at the university, Delezene teaches an introduction to the physical biology of anthropology. "It's really introduction into human evolution through biology," he said. "It's a lab science for freshmen."

Delezene's professional work deals with dental evolution of primates to humans. He studies fossils and dental models.

"I'm just a dirt bag," he introduced himself. "I spend my time outside climbing in caves. My mom said, 'You study teeth. What do you have to say about evolution?'

"In the anthropology department, teaching the subject seems to have little to do with religion," Delezene said. "But the pedagogue rapidly became very concentric.

"The common perception is that evolution and faith are in conflict, that they're not really connected," Delezene continued. "It's become a relationship of science versus faith, facts versus values."

Both scientists and faithful develop hypothesis about how the world works, he explained. Science provides explanations that are observable phenomenon, Delezene said. "The knowledge is ever-growing. Evolutionary biologists make predictions every day. Creation scientists debunk myths and reveal incorrect hypothesis, now explainable.

"The faith explanation is fixed, based how it 'should' look," Delezene continued. And because other faiths also tell creation stories, the creation stories are varied, and some explanations are based on alternative explanations for God.

In Arkansas, Delezene's students are mostly Christians, who hold a literal interpretation of the Bible. "How you study faith and your social environment has an impact on how you learn about evolution," he said.

"But the Grand Canyon is totally incompatible with the idea of a one-day creation," he countered.

Delezene said he teaches ideas -- some based on even pre-Christian ideas. "Is the age of the earth really 4 billion years old, or is it more ancient? And, by the way, Darwin was wrong on his theory of inheritance.

"That's how ideas evolve," he said.

For example, scientists looking at human migration from Africa to the New World would study artifacts, Delezene explained. And many cling to the long oral traditions of the stories of these crossings, but science does not agree, he said.

"We observe things in nature and try to explain them. We're not ignoring your tradition," Delezene said. "Evolutionary biology is not against Christianity or in conflict with a lot of different world views."

Only a few students have challenged Delezene's information, and some of them return to apologize, he said. One student told him, "I don't believe it, but I'm going to learn it anyway to pass this class."

"I'm not there to win hearts and minds," Delezene concluded, "but to teach how evolution works."

Buddhism

Sidney Burris, an English professor and head of the honors program of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, also teaches classes about Buddhism -- alongside Geshe Thupten Dorjee, a Tibetan monk from Drepung Loseling Monastery in South India.

One of Burris' challenges is the cultural translation -- or what Dorjee's traditional message has to say to the American students, he said. "That and trying to pin down exactly where the spiritual movement known as Buddhism is going," he added.

"American Buddhism is changing literally day by day," Burris said. "The Dalai Lama has been very conscious of this and has become a great ambassador for people and the Buddhist way of living."

Buddhism in the Western culture evolved from what today is considered traditional "Asian Buddhism," Burris said. "It's been rearranged in America." Buddhists here have engaged with Christianity and incorporated virtues of both Asian Buddhism and Christianity.

Modern Buddhism also accepts modern science. If science proves a core tenant of Buddhism is false, it's abandoned, Burris said.

"In America, that leads to socially engaged Buddhists," he said. "They talk about environment, ecology, the health of the planet. And that leads directly to Buddhist political action, which flies in face of traditional Buddhist teachings."

In fact, the Dalai Lama was criticized in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster for limited offerings of aid. "But at the heart of that are very traditional, monastic Buddhist teachings," Burris said. "That's part of the physical word, which includes decay and suffering. But that's part of the worldly life and impermanent, so it's no big deal. And they can't end the suffering of the world, but they take care of their own instead."

Buddhism in the United States took root in the 1950s and 1960s, Burris continued, and became romanticized, connected with the New Age movement and controversial.

Buddhist graduates became full-time writers, pointing out problems with the American dream. They protest the American government and consumerism, he said.

"The Dalai Lama said the best thing about Buddhism happened in the last 100 years: It took hold in the U.S. and is rising even to the heartland," Delezene said.

"In class, I must straddle the bridge of what Geshe represents and what the Dalai Lama represents," Burris concluded.

Judaism

Jennifer Hoyer came to religion in a round-about way. The UA associate professor of German literature grew up without it, she said.

"I never thought I'd teach Judaism as religion," she told the panel. "I'm not a theologian. I'm not a rabbi or a priest.

"I'm a literary scholar. I like books. I like books very much -- I brought five to share. I love languages."

But in class, Hoyer and her students consider literature written by German Jews about Judaism. Without knowing about Judaism, her students couldn't pick up subtleties from the text and prayer shawls and mezuzahs. "It was hard to fill them in, and it made me nervous," she admitted.

Yet Hoyer started talking to them about Judaism and Jewish life, the Holocaust, Isaac, Abraham.

"I immerse myself in the job, immerse myself in the students," Hoyer said. "There are more things out there with Judaism to teach students. There's so much to know, so much to talk about. But I would never teach what I didn't know" -- for example, if a student asks about a Jewish ritual. She also announced an introduction to Judaism that will be taught next fall by Jacob Adler, rabbi of Temple Shalom in Fayetteville.

When the literature addresses the Holocaust, Hoyer said she pushes the students beyond the aspect of religion. "We have interaction and discuss it -- it's not dead. The authors' works reveal how they lived through the experience. The class discusses how text evolves.

"Students today think (the Holocaust) does not affect them at all," she said. "But I tell them, 'You are not freed from this burden.' Nobody is free. It's better just to forgive because it does not make any sense.

"We always look at it from a textural perspective, which students can take with them," she continued. "They get a new lens -- even on text they thought they knew."