Legacies of Christian Languaging and Literacies in American Education: Perspectives on English Language Arts Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning

Because spiritual life and religious participation are widespread human and cultural phenomena, these experiences unsurprisingly find their way into English language arts curriculum, learning, teaching, and teacher education work. Yet many public school literacy teachers and secondary teacher educators feel unsure how to engage religious and spiritual topics and responses in their classrooms. This volume responds to this challenge with an in-depth exploration of diverse experiences and perspectives on Christianity within American education. Authors not only examine how Christianity – the historically dominant religion in American society – shapes languaging and literacies in schooling and other educational spaces, but they also imagine how these relations might be reconfigured. From curricula to classroom practice, from narratives of teacher education to youth coming-to-faith, chapters vivify how spiritual lives, beliefs, practices, communities, and religious traditions interact with linguistic and literate practices and pedagogies. In relating legacies of Christian languaging and literacies to urgent issues including White supremacy, sexism and homophobia, and the politics of exclusion, the volume enacts and invites inclusive relational configurations within and across the myriad American Christian sub-cultures coming to bear on English language arts curriculum, teaching, and learning. This courageous collection contributes to an emerging scholarly literature at the intersection of language and literacy teaching and learning, religious literacy, curriculum studies, teacher education, and youth studies. It will speak to teacher educators, scholars, secondary school teachers, and graduate and postgraduate students, among others.

Table of Contents:
01 Contributor Bio 02 Acknowledgements 03 Foreword 04 Introduction: Legacies of Christian Languaging and Literacies in American Education Mary M. Juzwik, Kevin J. Burke, Jennifer C. Stone, and Denise Dávila 1.0 Section 1 Babel: Conversation, Conflict, and Contested Terrains of Schooling Jennifer C. Stone, Editor 1.1, Chapter 1, "Real Religion": The Roles of Knowledge, Dialogue, and Sense-Making in Coming to a Faith Allison Skerrett 1.2, Chapter 2, Recognizing Religion with Preservice Teachers Heidi Hadley and Will Fassbender 1.3, Chapter 3, Institutional Rituals as Interpersonal Verbal Rituals as Interactional Resources in Classroom Talk Robert LeBlanc 2.0 Section 2 Purity: Making Present the Stranger Kevin J. Burke, Editor 2.1, Chapter 4, Myth and Christian Reading Practice in English Teaching Scott Jarvie 2.2, Chapter 5, "Racism is a God-damned thing": The Implications of Historical and Contemporary Catholic Racism for ELA Classrooms Mary L. Neville 2.3, Chapter 6, Regulating Language: Language Policies of Early American Christian Missions in Alaska Jennifer C. Stone, Samantha Mack, Jacob D. Holley-Kline, and Mitchell Hoback 2.4, Chapter 7, A Dream Come True: Young Evangelical Womens’ Negotiations of Dreams, Reality, and Ideologies on Pinterest Bree Straayer-Gannon 3.0 Section 3 Wisdom: Loving God, Loving our Neighbors, and Engaging Religious Pluralism through Literary Response Mary M. Juzwik, Editor 3.1, Chapter 8, Entering into Literary Communion: Nourishing the Soul and Reclaiming Mystery through Reading Kati Macaluso 3.2, Chapter 9, "Love your Neighbor": LGBTQ Social Justice and the Youth Canon of WWII Literature Denise Dávila and Elouise E. Epstein 3.3., Chapter 10, Disrupting Protestant Dominion: Middle School Affirmations of Diverse Religious Images in Community Spaces Denise Dávila and Allison Volz 4.0 Section 4 Resurrection Denise Davila, Editor 4.1, Chapter 11, Ambivalence in Two Parts: Legacies of Catholic Languaging Adam J. Greteman 4.2, Chapter 12, Multilingual, Multimodal, and Cosmopolitan Dimensions of Two Young Cuban-American Women’s Religious Literacies Natasha Perez 4.3, Chapter 13, I had to die to live again: A racial storytelling of a Black Male English Educator’s Spiritual Literacies and Practices Lamar L. Johnson 4.4, Chapter 14, (Re)Mystifying Literary Pedagogy Mary M. Juzwik Afterword