When Students Use the Classroom for Spiritual Formation: How to Maintain Academic Rigor and Honor Student Concerns

This Teaching Tactics lightning presentation offers three classroom-tested tactics for teaching in a space where many students, especially nonreligious students, use the course as a catalyst for their own spiritual formation, often because they lack other supportive contexts. The tactics are designed to support student meaning-making while maintaining academic norms and ensuring equitable participation for students who are and are not engaging in formation. First, methodological agnosticism establishes a shared classroom covenant: the course evaluates interpretation, evidence, concepts, and methods without affirming or denying students’ truth-claims. Second, the theory of co-production reframes “religion” and “nonreligion” as relationally produced categories, turning personal testimony into analyzable data without requiring disclosure or belief. Third, an A + (B or C) assignment architecture requires a common academic foundation (Part A) and offers two equally valued pathways: Option B (additional analysis) or Option C (grounded reflection). Together these tactics operationalize rigorous, ethically defensible pedagogy for formation-adjacent classrooms.