Abstract

This chapter returns to the earlier chapters in this volume to analyze the implicit and explicit learning goals that inform these various discussions of the pedagogies of civic engagement. A central tension in the academic study of religion as it has been incorporated in the humanities over the last century has contrasted teaching about religion with teaching religion—that is, developing students’ religiosity. To what extent do the goals and activities of civic engagement pedagogies in religious studies foster an expectation that excellent achievement in this particular undergraduate classroom requires the development of theological commitments and actions—more commonly associated with theological education than the modern academic study of religion in the humanities? Various chapters in this book are reviewed to construe a range in “degree of normativity”—a heuristic construction that helps elucidate what is at stake when the academic study of religion adopts pedagogies of civic engagement.