9/11 changed things: The (post- traumatic) religious studies classroom

Abstract

The events of September 11, 2001 brought issues of religious difference and similarity, of violence and healing, and of societal cohesion and divisiveness into sharp focus in the American religious studies classroom. This essay explores how a teacher might responsibly engage students in scholarly exploration that allows them to move across the fragile landscape between what scholars think of when they juxtapose “religious studies” and “theology," especially in an era when more and more people are moving away from strict affiliation with a particular, institutionally inflected religious identity. A teacher must take care lest the framework of “theology," as an exploratory lens, lead to a sense of alienation and exclusion, especially at a point when many students are in a liminal space regarding their own identity formation.