When Faith Comes Up, Students Avert Their Eyes
In college classrooms, where almost anything is up for discussion, religious ideas are met with awkward silence.
I had hardly finished my lecture when the student came bounding down the auditorium’s stairs.
“You’re just like all the others,” he said, fuming. “You don’t really take religion seriously.”
This happened a few years ago, when I was teaching a college course on virtue and vice. I had just finished talking about the Catholic thinker Thomas Aquinas. My sin? According to my student, I had “intellectualized” Saint Thomas. I had described his philosophical sources and his historical context, but had said little about the philosopher’s fundamental project—one that had everything to do with the salvation of our souls.
My student’s name, fittingly, was Tom. He was a believer at a secular liberal-arts school, and he was sick of being
