Fall 2005

The Separation of Church and Slate

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Mary Bader and Mark Graham

» The Separation of Church and Slate

They arrived on campus three years ago with all the energy and trepidation that junior faculty bring to their jobs. Unique to Mary Bader and Mark Graham’s situations, though, are the challenges of teaching religious studies to students who range from agnostics to deeply committed Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Add the work of advising Independent Study projects, which may involve helping a student to balance religious beliefs with academic inquiry, and Bader and Graham knew they could use guidance themselves.

They turned to the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. Based at Wabash College and funded by the Lilly Endowment, the center sponsors workshops and fellowships to enhance the teaching of religion at colleges and universities.

“Religion courses are so emotionally laden,” says Lucinda Huffaker, Wabash Center director. “An undergraduate religion course may be the very first time that a student self examines his or her beliefs, and that can be an unsettling experience.”

It’s a coup for The College of Wooster that Bader and Graham each won a Wabash grant in 2004. “It speaks very highly of them that we chose two people from the same institution in the same year — we rarely do that,” Huffaker says.

The one-year grant is structured as a “yearlong, sustained conversation” among fifteen pre-tenured faculty and four senior faculty. Bader, who came to Wooster from the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, looked at how to help students move from faith-based to academic studies of the Bible. Graham, who came from Indiana University, looked at the challenge of mentoring I.S. students who have questions about religious and artistic vocation.

At the end of the workshop last spring, the center offered a second grant, essentially a summer research fellowship allowing faculty to finish a manuscript. Bader and Graham each won a second grant.

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