Writing about faith and religion in the composition classroom is implicitly and explicitly frowned upon. Instructors' resistance to faith-based arguments is understandable if they continually receive  research essays whose claims are backed by faith rather than reason. However, many students identify strongly with the teachings of their religion and it is in the context of their religious values that they develop much of their social identity. In some regions of the United States, one's status as an outsider of the dominant religion creates an equally strong context for social identity. Since many of us in composition argue that we should value our students' knowledges and experiences, and contextualize our study of writing within the various discourse communities that students inhabit, I propose that including the subjects of faith and religion in our curricula offers many students, both religious and non-religious, powerful rhetorical and affective grounds from which to write.

By introducing these subjects and foregrounding the difference between writing about religion expressively as opposed to using faith as a form of evidence, we give ourselves the opportunity to help students distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate uses of faith based writing in some academic contexts, and we invite students to exploit their areas of expertise. Writing about these subjects allows us the opportunity to recontextualize knowledge about religion and faith, and to emphasize the ways in which belief is socially constructed. At the same time, because of the demands of the writing assignment, students are engaged in textual analysis that demonstrates critical thinking.

In order to provide a recontextualized examination of faith, I ask students to look at expressions of faith in mainstream music. In the context of popular music,  most traditional students and non-traditional students have access to a medium with which they are familiar. Listening to that music for its representations of faith, however, recontextualizes both popular music and faith. In other words, students look to popular music for entertainment rather than for expressions of faith; finding expressions of faith in popular music gives them the opportunity to re-evaluate both their views of music and of religious representations of faith. They have the opportunity to articulate disparate ways of knowing.

The essay is separated into three sections: Religion, Music, and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The site contains the PowerPoint file that I use to present to the assignment to a basic writing class. The PowerPoint file contains links to samples of the music and to excerpts from a film version of one of the songs ("The Origin of Love") and a televised version of another ("God Give Me Strength"). In addition, I have included a conference presentation version of the essay in Real Player format.