Kwame Anthony Appiah – Mistaken Identities

“Religion is not just a matter of belief” according to Kwame it’s a combination of the following:

• what you do – practise

• who you do it with – fellowship

• belief

Scriptural determinism – to be a believer is to believe the scriptures.

Kwame speaks about our tendency to put more focus on the belief element than the others. Which is interesting because from the outside as someone who doesn’t practise religion I perhaps was blind to the importance of the belief (most of which I believe you can refute if you look for the evidence) but I could clearly see the community or the fellowship. I suppose it might seem simplistic but it’s like love – you choose it. Is religion the same? do you choose to believe rather than need tangible evidence of its existence?
And moreover we choose what we take from religion, from scripture, from conversation?
So then is it fair to allow students to do that from the classroom, take the bits they like? the bits that resonate? the bits they see themselves in? I think to a degree yes. And I prefer to think of and approach teaching as a way of enabling learning, creating space for questioning and justification.
But of course the ‘ take what works for you’ approach only works successfully when we acknowledge and work to ensure that what we teach and what we say may be triggerring or harmful, and do the work to undo that in our teaching- both material and method.