ABSTRACT
Religion is one of the most powerful social forces shaping US society. Its effect in the classroom is potent and, at the same time, so diffuse that it is difficult to isolate and dissect in our pedagogies. Mythologies of the Christian founding of the United States are so deeply infused in the national narrative that students are unaware of the ways the historically-false equation of Protestantism with American democracy normalizes an exclusionary white, northern European, English-speaking, male, heteronormative, religiously-narrow nationalism, obscuring the very real pluralism that has been embedded in the social and political institutions of the United States from the colonial period onward. Teaching in the Religious Studies classroom requires instructors to be creative, flexible, and strategic about providing students information about their personal religious background, experience, and commitments. In truth, neither of these perspectives is helpful when approaching religion in the classroom.
