Speaking of Religion: Facilitating
Difficult Dialogues
By Vanessa Bing, associate professor of psychology,
and Rosemary Talmadge, special assistant for organizational
development—both at LaGuardia Community College
“I don’t believe I am familiar enough with
other religions to do justice to any such discussion...
I am afraid that I would be less skillful at successfully
facilitating these discussions.”
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Difficult Dialogues participants discuss their
faith traditions and spiritual beliefs at an Interfaith
Dialogue breakfast. (Photo by Randy Fader-Smith) |
As comments like this suggest, faculty at many public
colleges and universities tend to avoid the subject
of religion. Instead of creating safe spaces for the
free speech and religious expression necessary to conversations
about faith and spirituality, the academy has created
an “invisible barrier” that thwarts opportunities
for dialogue. By breaching that barrier, we educators
deepen our understanding of our students’ lives,
clarify misconceptions about faith and religion, and
expand our own knowledge of the interdependent world
in which we live.
At LaGuardia Community College, where students come
from 160 countries and speak more than one hundred languages,
our faculty and staff have always celebrated and embraced
the diversity of our student body. But like most colleges,
LaGuardia had never tackled the daunting subject of
religion in the classroom on an institutional scale.
The Difficult Dialogues Project provided us with an
opportunity to change this. Through a yearlong faculty
pedagogy seminar funded as part of the Ford Foundation’s
Difficult Dialogues initiative, the college sought to
address the challenges that faculty members face when
assuming the role of “neutral facilitator”
on a topic that is anything but neutral. By providing
faculty members with a safe space to examine the challenges
of bringing religion into academia, the seminar expanded
the faculty’s ability to explore difficult topics
not only in the classroom, but also in the surrounding
community.
Preparing Faculty for Difficult Dialogues
| Faculty Development Exercises
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| Research
Projects: Faculty members examined the history
of religious freedom and oppression in America.
Religious Encounter: Faculty teams met with
members of religious communities with which they
were not familiar and read texts that represented
views of those faiths.
Classroom Project: Faculty members
examined courses they currently teach and considered
how they might incorporate discussions of religion.
Personal Exploration: Faculty members
participated in clarification groups to examine
how their personal relationship to religion shapes
the way they respond to religious issues in the
classroom.
Developing Facilitation Skills/Technique:
Faculty members acted out potential classroom
conflicts and practiced techniques for creating
an open climate for diverse and divergent viewpoints.
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| Techniques for Facilitating Dialogue in the Classroom |
| Set the
environment: Establish ground rules, model
appropriate sharing, be sensitive to timing, and
make room for all voices.
Avoid attempting to come to an agreement:
Difficult dialogues require critical examination,
not consensus.
Manage the discussion: Encourage active
listening, ask open-ended questions or questions
for clarification, and refocus the topic when
the conversation wanders.
Avoid taking sides, but take steps
so students who are presenting their positions
alone aren't scapegoated.
Be aware of psychological dynamics:
Students may experience internal conflict surrounding
religion.
-Vanessa Bing and Rosemary Talmadge
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The pedagogy seminar included fifteen faculty members
from various disciplines, including math, science, history,
psychology, art history, English, and English as a Second
Language (both credit and non-credit programs). These
faculty members shared a common fear of bringing religion
into the classroom. They acknowledged that speaking
about religion and faith requires knowledge, sensitivity,
and an ability to finesse extremely uncomfortable moments—preparation
that they felt they did not have. For faculty members
in some disciplines, religion arose naturally in class
discussions (in relation to theories of the origin of
the universe in a science course, or in a discussion
of the Reformation in a Western civilization class).
Others found that when religion was not an explicit
part of the curriculum, it entered the classroom in
other ways, and they questioned how they might respond
when topics related to faith and spirituality arose
without warning.
Participants genuinely wanted to learn how to handle
discussions of religion, but they were deeply apprehensive
about discussing religion in the classroom. Faculty
members felt generally unprepared to facilitate dialogue
about religion, and they were often unfamiliar with
the different religions represented at the college.
They felt that they lacked expertise in managing conflict
and feared losing control of the classroom. They wanted
to present a “balanced” discourse that would
respect the views of religious as well as “nonreligious”
or “questioning” students while preserving
their students’ privacy and the academic freedom
of all involved. Faculty members also worried that by
inviting religious discourse, they would have to reveal
their own personal views—and they feared the possible
impact on the student-teacher relationship. These and
other concerns formed the barriers we hoped to address
through the Difficult Dialogues project.
The pedagogy seminar used a multilayered approach to
help faculty consider questions of faith. Seminar elements
provided a starting point for faculty to examine their
relationships with religion, to learn about the religions
practiced by the LaGuardia student body, to develop
skills for facilitating difficult dialogues in the classroom,
and to develop resources for the larger community.
Taking Difficult Dialogues into the Community
In a companion piece to the faculty seminar, LaGuardia
initiated a series of dialogues on religion in the community
of Queens. Arguably the most diverse place on the planet,
Queens is home to hundreds of faith communities housed
in a range of settings, from living rooms to store fronts
to cathedrals. College leaders envisioned dialogue sessions
as a way to learn more about the students and community,
while providing a neutral space in which participants
might safely explore religious differences and academic
freedom.
Trained faculty and staff volunteers from the campus
spoke about the project at more than 50 churches, synagogues,
temples and mosques. Campus representatives and community
faith leaders held interfaith dialogue breakfasts, as
well as a series of conversation circles on campus and
at diverse community locations such as a Mormon temple,
a Catholic church, and an Islamic school. Facilitators
invited participants to share their personal religious
and spiritual journeys, their perspectives, and their
visions of the future, and guided them in developing
ideas for further action.
More than 300 faculty, staff, students, and community
members took part in these “difficult dialogues.”
Many participants said it was the first time they had
met or discussed religion with people of particular
beliefs and nonbeliefs. They found they had more in
common than they expected, including a shared desire
for Queens to be a place where all people are respected
and can safely practice their religion and express their
personal beliefs. Many participants made plans to continue
their conversations and visit each other’s houses
of worship. They voiced strong support for the College’s
role as a neutral convener in this project.
While our work is hardly complete, we hope that our
efforts will have lasting effects. We do not assume
that we are now “experts” in handling religion
in the classroom and community, but trust that by creating
opportunities for inquiry, exchange, and self reflection,
we are laying the foundation for transforming our academic
spaces—creating institutions where academic freedom
and religious expression can stand side by side.
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