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Unclogging Bottlenecks of Christian Privilege in the Classroom

By Warren J. Blumenfeld1

Abstract

Based on Peggy McIntosh’s (1988) pioneering investigations of White and male privilege, we

can, by analogy, understand Christian privilege as constituting an unearned and often, though not

necessarily, invisible and unacknowledged array of benefits accorded to Christians, with which

they sometimes unconsciously and often consciously walk through life as if effortlessly carrying

a knapsack tossed over their shoulders. In keeping with McIntosh’s inventory outlining the

manifestations of White privilege, this chapter addresses the unique challenges that dominant

group privilege poses in addressing issues of Christian hegemonic understandings, and

pedagogic strategies to mitigate potential student resistance and enhance the process toward

critical consciousness.

A Personal Introduction

I would like to begin on a personal note in my discussion centering on unclogging

classroom bottlenecks related to Christian privilege, which I hope will underscore the reasons

why I find it so very important to raise these issues and to develop pedagogical methods to

increase critical consciousness.

When I was a young child, I sat upon my maternal grandfather Simon Mahler’s knee.

Looking down urgently but with deep affection, he said to me: “Varn,” (he pronounced my name

“Varn” through his distinctive Polish accent), “you are named after my father, Wolf Mahler.” I

1 Blumenfeld, W. J. (2012). Unclogging bottlenecks of Christian privilege in the classroom. In P. C.

Gorski, N. Osei-Kofi, J. Sapp, K. Zenkov. (Eds.). Overcoming social justice bottlenecks: Strategies for

teaching critical and difficult concepts in teacher education. New York: Teacher’s College Press.

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asked where Wolf was, and Simon told me that Wolf, along with my great-grandmother Basha

and most of my grandfather Simon’s thirteen brothers and sisters were killed by people called

“Nazis.” In shock, I asked why the Nazis killed them, and he responded, “Because they were

Jews.” Those words have reverberated in my mind, haunting me ever since.

I later learned that the Nazis shot many of my Polish relatives and dumped them in a

mass grave in Krosno and eventually shipped others to Auschwitz and Belzec concentration

camps where they murdered them. Hitler rationalized his methods in resolving the “Jewish

question” by fabricating “racial” arguments in his claims that Jews derived from inferior “racial”

stock, and therefore, they must be exterminated en mass to prevent genetic and social

contamination to so-called “Aryans.”

A crucial point that cannot be forgotten, however, is that Nazi philosophy and

justification for murdering Jews rested on a foundation of Christian religious claims against the

Jewish people. For example, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (1925): “Today I believe that I am

acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew,

I am fighting for the work of the Lord” (Vol. I, p. 60 ).

Nazi racialization of Jews and Judaism rested upon Christian religious texts, for

example, references to Paul and others leaders in the Christian Bible that Jews had killed Jesus

and that Jews descended from the Devil.

For example, in 1 Thessalonians 12:15-16, according to Paul:

[T]he Jews, who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out, the Jews

who are heedless of God’s will and enemies of their fellow man….All this time

they have been making up the full measure of their guilt, and now retribution has

overtaken the good of all.

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Hitler also harkened back to Christian biblical assertions that the Devil fathered the Jewish

people/”race”:

And Jesus said: “If God were your father, you would love me…[but] your

[Jews’] father is the devil and you choose to carry out your father’s

desires” (John 8:44).

The Jews…are Satan’s synagogue (Revelation 2:9).

I will make those of Satan’s synagogue, who claim to be Jews but are

lying frauds, come and fall down at your feet (Revelation 3:9).

Paul concluded in Titus 1:14-16: “Do not give heed to Jewish fables and commandments of

merely human origin that turn men from the truth;…nothing is pure to the tainted minds of

disbelievers…. They [the Jews] profess to acknowledge God, but deny him by their actions.

Their detestable obstinacy disqualifies them for any good work.”

In addition to the Christian Bible, Adolf Hitler acknowledged the profound impact Martin

Luther had upon his own attitudes and actions against the Jewish people. In his 1543 treatise,

Von den Jüden und jren Lügen (On the Jews and Their Lies), Luther characterized Jews as a

“base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and

law must be accounted as filth,” and he argued:

What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews? First,

their synagogues should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be

covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or

stone of it. And this ought to be done for the honor of God and of Christianity in

order that God may see that we are Christians, and that we have not wittingly

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tolerated or approved of such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of His Son

and His Christians.

Luther continued that Jewish prayer books should be destroyed and rabbis forbidden to preach.

The homes of Jews should likewise be “smashed and destroyed” and their residents “put under

one roof or in a stable like gypsies, to teach them they are not master in our land.” These

“…poisonous envenomed worms should be drafted into forced labor. The young and strong Jews

and Jewesses should be given the flail, the ax, the hoe, the spade, the distaff, and the spindle and

let them earn their bread by the sweat of their noses.” As a last resort, they must be kicked out

“for all time.”

Though Hitler eventually surpassed even Luther’s approach to the “Jewish question,”

Christian biblical condemnations and proscriptions were preceded and “supplemented” by other

Christian theologians in addition to Martin Luther, for example, Ignatius Bishop of Antioch (1st-

2nd

century C.E.), Origen of Alexandria (2nd

– 3rd

century), John Chrysostom and St. Augustine

(4th

century C.E.), Popes Gregory IX (12th

century) and John XXII (13th

century), John Calvin

(16th

century); Father Charles E. Coughlin (20th

century), and many others too numerous to

name. The long and continuous history of Christian anti-Jewish ideology and measures over the

past two millennia thus set the foundation and justification for the Nazis refashioning the

Christian cross into the Nazi swastika. History teaches us that European Christian leaders and

congregants during the rise and reign of the Nazi regime widely either accepted or rarely

challenged Hitler’s uses and abuses of Christian doctrine.

While social realities between Nazi Germany and contemporary U.S.-America clearly

differ, some parallels exist in the symbiotic relationship between Christian privilege and

religious oppression: oppression toward non-Christians gives rise to Christian privilege in

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majority Christian communities and nations, and Christian privilege maintains oppression toward

non-Christian individuals and faith communities.

Based on Peggy McIntosh’s (1988) pioneering investigations of White and male

privilege, we can, by analogy, understand Christian privilege as constituting a seemingly

invisible, unearned, and largely unacknowledged array of benefits accorded to Christians, with

which they often unconsciously walk through life as if effortlessly carrying a knapsack tossed

over their shoulders. This system of benefits confers dominance on Christians while

subordinating members of other faith communities as well as non-believers. These systemic

inequities are pervasive throughout the society. They are encoded into the individual’s

consciousness and woven into the very fabric of our social institutions, resulting in a stratified

social order privileging dominant (“agent”) groups while restricting and disempowering

subordinate (“target”) groups (Bell, 1997; Miller, 1976).

In keeping with McIntosh’s inventory outlining the manifestations of White privilege,

authors have developed parallel lists summarizing overarching examples of Christian privilege

(see e.g., Clark et al 2002; Schlosser, 2003). As Clark et al (2002) assert: “[T]he fact remains that

all Christians benefit from Christian privilege regardless of the way they express themselves as

Christians in the same way that all White people benefit from White privilege” (p. 12 of

manuscript version).

As there is a spectrum of Christian denominations and traditions, so too is there a

hierarchy or continuum of Christian privilege based on 1) historical factors, 2) numbers of

practitioners, and 3) degrees of social power (Blumenfeld, 2006). In this regard, in a United

States context, though the gap in privilege between Christian denominations is apparently

shrinking, White, mainline Protestant denominations may still have some greater degrees of

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Christian privilege, relative to some minority Christian denominations: African American,

Latino/a, Asian American churches, Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Seventh-Day Adventists,

Jehovah's Witnesses, Eastern and Greek Orthodox, adherents to Christian Science and to the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and still in some quarters, to Catholics.

I have defined Christian privilege (2006) as:

…the overarching system of advantages bestowed on Christians. It is the

institutionalization of a Christian norm or standard, which establishes and

perpetuates the notion that all people are or should be Christian thereby

privileging Christians and Christianity, and excluding the needs, concerns,

ethnoreligious cultural practices, and life experiences of people who are not

Christian. Often overt, though at times subtle, Christian hegemony is oppression

by intent and design, but also it comes in the form of neglect, omission, erasure,

and distortion (p. 196).

The concept of oppression, then, constitutes more than the cruel and repressive actions of

individuals upon others. It often involves an overarching system of differentials of social power

and privilege by dominant groups over subordinated groups based on ascribed social identities or

social group status. And this is not merely the case in societies ruled by coercive or tyrannical

leaders, but also occurs even within the day-to-day practices of contemporary democratic

societies (Young, 1990).

The Classroom Bottleneck of Christian Privilege

In my investigations of majority group privilege, I have discovered that Christian

privilege clearly stands as a threshold concept in most Western nations, including the United

States. Christian understandings of God underpinned and justified White male oppression and

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genocide over minoritized peoples: from rationalizations for the slave trade, to colonization and

confiscation of land and resources (for example, the notion of “Manifest Destiny”), to forced

Christian conversions, to restrictive immigration laws. To fully conceptualize a critical

understanding of issues centering on White and male privilege, our students must face the

Christian antecedents and contemporary bases on which these forms of dominant group privilege

rest.

Essential questions this presents, though, for educators include: “How do we as educators

raise issues of Christian privilege while mitigating potential bottlenecks?” and “How can we

separate Christian privilege and the misuses of Christian doctrine from Christianity itself?” In

other words, how do we assure students that we are investigating Christian privilege stemming

from the actions of people, while we are not challenging or criticizing Christian religions and

doctrine—that we are not attacking Christianity?”

Until fairly recently, I have lived in relatively diverse areas of the United States in terms

of race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic class, sexual and gender identity, and other

demographic markers. I accepted a faculty position in 2004 to teach courses centering on issues

of social justice in the School of Education at Iowa State University, a large research tax

supported state land-grant institution located in Ames, Iowa. Ironically, though, I primarily teach

a course titled “Multicultural Foundations in Schools and Society” on a campus and in a state

where the overwhelming majority are White and who self-identify as “Christian” in all its many

denominations. Virtually all students registered for my courses, which are mandatory for

students in the Teacher Education program at our university, are pre-service teachers raised

primarily in homogeneous rural communities.

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I understood not very long into my work in Iowa that this position would pose a number

of challenges that seemed less overt or apparent in my other teaching experiences in the

Northeast. The writings of two undergraduate students, though in different class sections, came

virtually to the same conclusion. On a final course paper, one student wrote that while she

enjoyed the course and she felt that both I and my graduate assistant were very knowledgeable

and good professors with great senses of humor, nonetheless, she felt obliged to inform us that

we will spend eternity in Hell for being so-called “practicing homosexuals.” Another student

wrote on her course paper that homosexuality and transgenderism are sins in the same category

as stealing and murder. This student not only strongly implied that I will travel to Hell if I

continued to act on my same-sex desires, but she went further by amplifying the first student’s

proclamations by self-righteously insisting that I will not receive an invitation to enter Heaven,

regardless of my sexual identity and behavior, if I do not accept Jesus as my personal savior

since I am Jewish. Anyone who doubts this, she said, “Only death will tell!” She concluded by

asserting that the real Christian privilege is “To suffer and die for the name of Christ.”

Non-Christian Students

In a private meeting in my university office, a student expressed to me that while she

would like very much to speak in our religion in education class discussions, and specifically on

the issue of Christian privilege, she feels “unsafe” to do so because she identifies as Wiccan, and

if word got out about her religious beliefs, in all likelihood, schools would immediately

disqualify her for employment as a teacher in the state of Iowa. When she said this to me, an

expression of both anger and sadness overtook her face as tears welled up and streamed down

her cheeks. I tried to comfort her and to reassure her that she has legal protections in our state on

the basis of religion and employment, though I fully understood her fear knowing the social

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realities of not only our state or the Midwest generally, but the pervasiveness of Christian

assumptions and Christian privilege of our country.

A Jewish student expressed to me in private that since he came to our campus, he has

gone into a “religious closet.” To avoid marginalization by his peers, he tells them that he was

raised Methodist because he has often heard other students express cruel anti-Jewish sentiments

regarding Hitler and the German Holocaust as well as every-day expressions such as “Don’t Jew

me down” (translated as “Don’t cheat me like a Jew”) and “That’s so Jewish” (like “That’s so

gay”; both intense put-downs).

A Muslim student on our campus felt marginalized and silenced when he engaged in on-

line campus discussions around issues of religion.

Our campus atmosphere often stifles the discussion of such issues because of

these personal attacks. Now that my time at Iowa State is complete, I cannot help

but sympathize with the students who feel isolated for their ideas because I, too,

have felt this way (Mahayni, in Hansen, 2007).

This student discussed how he resents the numerous times Christian evangelists entered his dorm

room in their attempts to convert him to Protestant Christianity.

A small number of students in my courses over the years have publicly identified either

as “atheist” or “agnostic.” The vast majority of these students decided at some point in their lives

to abandon the Christian faith communities of their families of origin, sometimes to the rejection

of family and long-time friends and neighbors. Though they reside in a religiously conservative

area, they have arrived at a developmental position in their lives where the quest for their own

truth and epistemological meaning outweighs a need for mass acceptance and fear of rejection.

They have found a small, though tightly-knit community of non-believers on our campus where

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they share ideas by entering, for a time, a supportive atmosphere where they escape the pressure

of conformity.

My discussions with these students made it extremely clear that I needed to find ways to

discuss issues related to religion in education that empowers students to find their voice.

Conceptual Foundations

I designed the course to explore the historical, sociological, cultural, psychological,

political, philosophical, and pedagogical foundations of multicultural education as projected

through a social justice2 lens. I base the course on a number of key concepts and assumptions,

including how issues of power, privilege, and domination within the United States center around

inequitable social divisions in terms of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sex, gender identity,

sexual identity, religion, nationality, linguistic background, physical and mental ability/disability,

and age. I address how issues around social identities impact generally on life outcomes, and

specifically on educational outcomes, and how social inequities are often reproduced in schools.

I also emphasize that having a grounding in history and critical social justice theory are essential

in helping to answer some of the questions regarding how these inequities developed and have

been maintained up to the present time, as well as help us to correct and balance these inequities.

A large proportion of students attracted to our university come from small rural largely

homogenous White and Christian communities in which they have had very limited contact with

cultural diversity and diverse populations and limited experiences to engage and dialogue across

differences. Many students come from social environments that either do not address or

2 Though the concept of “social justice” has been defined a number of ways, I define it as: “The concept that local,

national, and global communities function where everyone has equal access to and equitable distribution of the

rights, benefits, privileges, and resources, and where everyone can live freely unencumbered by social constructions

of hierarchical positions of domination and subordination based on social identities.”

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emphasize a denial of power differentials between and among social identity groups, and,

therefore, many students are inexperienced and often resistant to reading and dialoguing around

vital issues of power differentials, social inequities, and how these inequities impact educational

and overall societal outcomes.

Students primarily enter the course conceptualizing “Multicultural Education” or

“Multiculturalism” as the investigation of global cultures where they study people from around

the world and subgroups within the United States. They initially take the so-called “heroes,

holidays, festivals, foods, dances, and folk songs” perspective, what is often referred to as

“cultural tourism” (Stebbins, 1996), something at odds with the actual course content. In

addition, many students come to the course expounding the “Human Relations” (also referred to

as “Liberal Multiculturalism”) approach, which emphasizes that “we are all people, and we

should just be able to get along,” and “social identities are not important,” as opposed to the

“Critical Multiculturalism” (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1998) perspective on which I center the

course.

The course poses exceptional challenges, or more importantly, opportunities to find

creative solutions to address not only potential but actual bottlenecks of student resistance to

course materials and concepts, for I touch upon some very personal and potentially triggering

issues related to identity, social inequities, and critical historical analysis that for many reasons

are not often investigated in other coursework.

I utilize Robert Kegan’s (1982) three-stage teaching model sequence. In the initial stage

of Kegan’s model, called “Confirmation,” the educator meets learners why they are, solicits

ideas, beliefs, and knowledge, listens and legitimizes, invites elaboration, and asks questions. In

this regard, the first paper I assign I call the “Multiple Identities Project” in which I ask students

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to use themselves as the “text” on which they will describe and analyze themselves from at least

four specific vantage points: 1) Body Identity (physical description); 2) Social Identities (socially

constructed identities both ascribed and achieved that they feel comfortable sharing); 3)

Moral/Ethical/Affective Identities (values and beliefs); 4) finally, I ask students to incorporate a

description of their experiences as a student in P-12 schools (discuss what school was like for

them generally), then suggest how their social identities may have affected their understanding

of cultural and individual diversity in schools. Overall, this assignment is intended to allow for

individual voices to be heard and identities to be articulated, acknowledged, and affirmed.

Dominant Group Privilege

After I have confirmed where students are at in terms of their backgrounds, experiences,

and social identities (Kegan’s first stage), a few weeks into the course, I provide students with

issues and materials that for many has the effect of contradicting (Kegan’s second stage) or

expanding prior understandings around questions related to inequities in schools and society.

I first introduce the theme of dominant group privilege (which itself is a potential

bottleneck concept) using Allan G. Johnson’s (2006) book Privilege, Power, and Difference.

Johnson provides an accessible and powerful interconnection among many forms of dominant

group privilege (White, male, heterosexual, ability, socioeconomic class) in a style that students

may consider without arousing much of the guilt and blame that can have the reverse effect of

shutting down the learning process. Along with Johnson’s book, and especially when I have

assigned Chapter 2 titled “Privilege, Oppression, Difference,” I distribute Lewis Schlosser’s list

enumerating the forms of Christian privileges

(http://convention.myacpa.org/archive/programs/Boston10/Handouts/446/ChristianPrivilegeHan

dout.pdf) since Johnson’s discussion of this form of privilege is not developed in detail.

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By presenting multiple forms of dominant group privilege simultaneously rather than

initially highlighting one particular form for investigation, and by touching upon the multiple

forms of social identities and privilege, Johnson’s approach tends to unclog some potential

tightly-packed bottlenecks from developing. For example, some of the White women in the class

at times acknowledge their discomfort when studying issues pertaining to White privilege, but

immediately understood issues of male privilege when reading about and discussing these issues

in class. In the process, these women began to connect how they are simultaneously advantaged

and societally restricted. In this way, they tend to more fully explore the multiplicity of issues

related to the socially constructed categories of identity, which grant them power as well as

constrain them.

While I raise questions on a number of forms of dominant group privilege, I have

discovered over the years that students find some forms of privilege somewhat more “triggering”

and, therefore, they exhibit more defensive behaviors than other forms. While my purpose here is

to discuss the bottlenecks in raising issues of Christian privilege in the classroom, I will give an

outline of how I raise issues of other forms of dominant group privilege as well.

I begin with a discussion of male privilege by facilitating a number of classroom

activities and reading assignments. I move next into the realm of White privilege and oppression

against minoritized peoples in the United States. We return to Johnson’s discussion in which he

enumerates a number of manifestations of White privilege many of which he gathered from

Peggy MacIntosh’s foundational work. Before we begin our discussion of White privilege at the

beginning of this unit, I distribute a handout in the form of a very clever and insightful cartoon

titled “White Lies,” which raises a number of “justifications” White people use to deny the

saliency of their privilege.

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I also assign a book that begins to contradict (Kegan’s second stage) many students’

conceptual understandings of the historical roots the United States. This history makes it

perfectly clear that White privilege and domination connects alongside and often derives from

Christian privilege and religious oppression in the United States. Therefore, issues and

discussions of Christian privilege emerge seamlessly and often spontaneously from Joel Spring’s

analysis.

Joel Spring’s (2010) Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality explores history

from multiple perspectives, and explodes some of the myths and misinformation students may

have learned throughout their educational experiences. Along with this book, I assign a “Critical

Analysis” paper that requires students not to merely summarize, but rather, to critically reflect

and analyze the information. I designate numerous pages in our course syllabus detailing

precisely what I am looking for in terms of “critical analysis.”

To continue the contradiction of students’ prior learning, stemming from our reading of

Spring’s book, I give students a two-part assignment to be completed by the following class

session in two days: the first part asks students a question for critical contemplation, the second

part includes a research exercise.

The question I pose: “Did Christopher Columbus discover what has come to be called

‘U.S.-America’? Why or why not?” I tell students that after they reflect on this question, they are

to investigate articles communicating Native American Indian perspectives of Christopher

Columbus and Columbus Day.

Entering the classroom one year on the next class session, students filled the room with

frenetic energy. I asked them to divide into their smaller reading discussion groups (of 5-7), and

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asked each group to choose a recorder who was to report themes discussed. I wrote on the board

discussion directions:

1. Discuss with group members how you had initially answered the question: “Did Christopher

Columbus discover what has come to be called ‘U.S.-America’? Why or why not?”

2. Discuss what you learned from Native American Indian perspectives of Christopher

Columbus and Columbus Day. What did you already know? What surprised you? What

insights did you gain? What, if any, emotions came up for you? What question do you still

have?

Following twenty-minutes of lively student discussion in small groups, I facilitate a large

classroom discussion. Many students expressed anger over the ways that teachers and textbooks

portrayed Christopher Columbus during their early schooling. These students felt that they

somehow “had been lied to” in the “white washing” of the history commonly taught in schools.

One student, a geology major, responded by answering a question with questions:

“How could Columbus have discovered what would later be called ‘America’ when Indians have

lived on this land for an estimated 33,000 to 35,000 years after coming over the Bering Isthmus

during a glacial age when the sea level dropped? How can one ‘discover’ people who have been

here so long? Actually, Indians discovered Columbus on their land!”

A number of students nodded their heads in silent agreement. Other students articulated

the love they have for their Christian faiths, but expressed shock and some disbelief over the

murder and forced Christian conversions perpetrated by European explorers, missionaries, and

settlers.

At this point, I asked students to interrogate (analyze) the concept of “European settlers.”

“If this was Indian land (‘first nation people’), how accurate, then, is the term “European

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settlers”? Some students showed confusion on their faces by this question. For others, their eyes

opened widely and they sported a wide grin. “Yeah,” said one student. “Say I own a house, and

someone knocks on the door, walks in, pushes me outside, and claims: ‘I like your house, and I

am now settling here. You be on your way. Good bye!’ And he slams the door in my face.”

Others pondered this student’s comments.

At the close of class that day, as students left the room, one student remained behind to

talk with me, with obvious rage on her face. “You and the geology student have disrespected my

culture,” she declared accusingly. “My culture teaches me that God created the universe

approximately 6-7,000 years ago. So, I ask you, how could Indians have lived here for thousands

and thousands of years before God created the universe? Also, since Christians are called to

bring God’s message to all the nations of the world and to spread the word of Jesus Christ, I take

offense with the claim that Europeans forcibly converted anyone!”

I thanked her for raising issues that she was certainly not alone in believing. I asked her if

I could raise her concerns, while not referring to her by name, at our next class session, and that I

would like to open it up for class discussion. She agreed.

Throughout the course, I continually reconnect the elements and processes of

multicultural education and reiterate that the course connects theory with practice by asking

students to critically engage with the material, each other, and with their professor as we all

come to a deeper understanding of the importance of multicultural education. On this day, I

referred back to pre-eminent multicultural educator, Sonia Nieto, (2002), who likens

multiculturalism to a great tapestry:

A tapestry is a hand-woven textile. When examined from the back, it may simply

appear to be a motley group of threads. But when reversed, the threads work

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together to depict a picture of structure and beauty. A tapestry also symbolizes,

through its knots, broken threads and seeming jumble of colors and patterns on

the back, the tensions, conflicts, and dilemmas that a society needs to work out (p.

270).

The spirit of both collaboration and struggle is evident in the schools. The multicultural

process, I continued, is not always comfortable, not always neat, but the multicultural classroom

provides a space for everyone to be heard, to reflect, to engage in critical dialogue, and to enter

into a space of understanding, though not always agreement of views and cultures different from

one’s own.

I raised the student’s concerns over our prior class discussion, and asked students to

discuss this in their small groups. I also asked students to write in their course journals their

thoughts and feelings around the issues raised. Students were very respectful of differing

viewpoints both in their small groups and in the larger group discussion.

Some students provided scientific evidence for the approximate age of the universe,

others discussed their religious teachings. Some discussed the theological imperative to spread

the word of Jesus, others talked about their frustration and resentment when others attempt to

convert them to Christianity in any of its denominations.

I brought up the notion of “culture clash,” in this instance the opposing beliefs, from

some perspectives, that sharing the word of Jesus is an act of bestowing a great gift on the

“unbeliever,” while for others, rather than experiencing this as a gift, some perceive this as an

imposition, an annoyance, a provocation, or worse, a form of oppression.

Coincidently, on this day in our course syllabus, I had prepared to raise with students the

concept of “cultural pluralism.” The notion of “culture clash” provided a good segue into a

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discussion of the Jewish immigrant and sociologist of Polish and Latvian heritage, Horace Kallen

(1915), who coined the term “cultural pluralism” to challenge the image of the so-called

“melting pot,” which he considered as inherently undemocratic. Kallen envisioned a United

States in the image of a great symphony orchestra, not sounding in unison (the “melting pot”),

but rather, one in which all the disparate cultures play in harmony and retain their unique and

distinctive tones and timbres.

Since this class session was coming to a close, I gave students the remaining 15 minutes

to reflect and write their responses to these questions in their journals: “Reflecting over the

history and expressions or non-expressions of religion in the United States, could you imagine us

attaining a genuine state of religious pluralism as envisioned by Horace Kellen?” If so, what

would this look like? If not, why not?” Students turned in their journal entries for me to read as

they exited the classroom.

While a slight majority of students expressed that the United States had been founded on

and had attained Kellen’s conceptualization of true religious pluralism, and some, while

acknowledging that we are not at that point yet, hoped that someday we will attain that goal. A

number of other students (approximately one-sixth of the entire class), however, asserted that we

are now and that we have always meant to have been “a Christian nation,” and that the notion of

religious pluralism runs contrary to their religious teachings. One student articulated this view

best:

[A]s a Christian I am called to not be tolerant. I am not called to be violent, but

am called to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28). When I look through all

of the information I have been given in my life…I come to the conclusion that

America was founded as a Christian nation….Separation of church and state was

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created to keep the state out of changing the church, not to keep the church out of

the state (undergraduate male pre-service teaching student).

This student referred to his interpretation of Christian scripture, which commands him to spread

the word of Jesus:

Matthew 28:16-20:

(16) Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had

told them to go. (17) When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.

(18) Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has

been given to me. (19) Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing

them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (20) and

teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with

you always, to the very end of the age” (from the King James Bible).

Students also wrote about the warnings from their pastors and national Christian leaders

regarding the dangers to their faith by attending secular educational institutions. One student

referred to Brannon Howse, president and founder of the Worldview Weekend Foundation,

which I investigated further:

Where do most Christian students get their perspective on history and sociology

or learn about the question of origins? The frightening reality is that most take in

the steady diet of Secular Humanism served up in our public schools. And in

college, it only gets worse. Worldview Weekend speaker Kerby Anderson puts it

this way: “When a student enrolls in Philosophy 101, it could just as easily be

called Atheism 101. A class in Sociology 101, should really be called

Postmodernism 101. A class on Religion 101, is really a class that should be

20

called Religious Pluralism 101. And a class in Biology 101, would more

accurately be called Evolution 101. It’s little wonder that more than three out of

four young people from Christian homes deny their faith before graduating from

college. Parents must prepare their children to counter the lies of Secular

Humanism, the New Age Movement, and bizarre forms of mysticism finding their

way into our churches” (http://www.worldviewweekend.com/worldview-

times/article.php?articleid=1518).

This website also includes quotes from David Wheaton, a Worldview Weekend Speaker and

author of the book, Surviving the University of Destruction.

…I was now living full-time in the midst of a world diametrically opposed to the

one I had grown up in—there would be no returning home to Mommy and Daddy

every night. I would soon find out that an excellent upbringing coupled with

academic and athletic success was no match for the maelstrom called college. The

waters were baited, the sharks were circling…spiritual shipwreck loomed

(http://www.christianworldviewnetwork.com/article.php?&ArticleID=29)

Students, faculty, and staff, in addition to members from the surrounding communities,

have founded and maintained quite a number of campus and community-based Christian student

organizations, some to promote their version of their faith and to help insulate students from the

so-called “secular humanist indoctrination” of public secular universities. One such organization

on our campus and many others throughout the nation include local chapters of the Christian

Educators Association International (CEAI).

Possible Strategies to Unclog the Bottlenecks

of Christian Privilege in the Classroom

21

Critical Consciousness and the Many Levels of Oppression

I value the importance of learning not only the numerous successful pedagogic strategies,

classroom activities, resources, and assignments, but I find it also instructive to discuss the

strategies that may have shown promise, but in reality, failed to produce the desired results. One

such strategy in the latter category was initially surprising to me, but following critical reflection,

became clearly apparent.

I wrote a historical article, undergirded by compelling theoretical organizers, on the

concept of Christian privilege in the United States, which I titled “Christian Privilege and the

Promotion of ‘Secular’ and Not-So ‘Secular’ Mainline Christianity in Public Schooling and in

the Larger Society” (2006). I have since received very positive feedback from students and from

educators around the country who have used it as a tool in their courses. I decided, therefore, to

incorporate the article into my courses.

From the beginning, some students I discovered had “rebelled” by refusing to read it. A

number of those who did actually at least scan it, came to the next class session manifesting a

defensive and even angry demeanor. I asked students to discuss the article in their reading

groups. While some of the feedback announced by the student recorders in each group was

relatively positive (“Before reading this article, I never really understood the historical roots of

Christian privilege and religious oppression in the United States,” “The article surely exposed the

myth of the so-called ‘holy and compassionate’ Puritans,” “I learned a lot from this article that I

wish I had learned earlier in secondary school.”), much of the feedback either denied the extent

of the problem or justified Christian proselytizing and conversion discussed in the article (“The

author only talks about the negative aspects of Christianity,” “The article clearly shows the

author’s bias against Christians,” “While this wasn’t his intention, the author actually proves that

22

this is and was meant to be a Christian nation. The missionaries’ methods were totally

justified!”). From this reading, a few students wrote on their course evaluations that they, as

stated by one student, “was sick and tired of the Christian bashing by the professor.”

What I learned from this experience was that because the issues of Christian privilege and

religious oppression are so volatile: 1. While my article presented a good historical overview that

I felt was important for students to at least contemplate, my being both the author of this piece

and their professor tainted the pedagogical efficacy of the article in my classes, and 2. From the

very beginning of any discussion on topics connected to dominant group privilege, educators

need to be clear that under critique are issues of power, control, and domination, and not the

identities themselves.

As a White man, I find that I can separate for my students issues of power from issues of

identity, for if I could not, students would accuse me of “hating White men.” When I challenge,

for example, heterosexual or Christian privilege, some students fling the accusation that I “hate

heterosexuals” or “I hate Christians,” thereby transfiguring themselves into the victims of

oppression rather than the recipients of its unearned privileges.

This is a common strategy in the psychology of dominant group denial; by labeling the

targets of oppression as the perpetrators, by using the terminology of “reverse discrimination,”

those with the real societal privileges can sit back secure with the belief that they have oppressed

no one, that all this occurred before they were born, that was then and this is now, that essentially

the United States epitomizes the truest sense of meritocracy where individuals succeed or fail

depending on their motivation, work ethic, talents, merit, and that we are all born on a level

playing field. Today, rather than assigning my article, for a good overview of issues connected to

religion and education, I have students read Charles H. Lippy chapter, “Christian Nation or

23

Pluralistic Culture: Religion in American Life” (2007), which has mitigated students’ resistance

to reading their professor’s article, and, somewhat, to exploring issues around religious

oppression and Christian privilege in the United States.

What I also learned from this experience was that many students understand issues of

power, control, and oppression, when they do understand these issues, only on the individual

level. They often fail to understand the institutional and larger societal (systemic) basis of

oppression. Therefore, over the past few years, I have begun the “contradiction” of students’

prior learning (Kegan) by dividing students into two sides for a debate in which I ask each

group—the “pro side,” and the “con” side—to argue the following question: “Is the United

States a Meritocracy?” Along with students researching this question for the debate, I assign a

five-page paper that they are to turn in at the end of the class session on the day of the debate.

The paper asks them to enumerate the points they each hope to make during the debate, followed

by a critical analysis on where they actually stand on the question.

In addition, following the debate, I assign an essay detailing the manifestations of

oppression upon its many levels: Personal/Interpersonal, Institutional, and Societal (Hardiman

and Jackson, 2007), and I return to this article throughout the semester, and especially when I

perceive the class focusing on primarily the individual/personal expressions of power, control,

and domination.

Christian Role Modeling: Social Norming

Profiling dominant group members and organizations who have advocated and worked

for social justice by exercising their societal privileges in the service of an equitable and just

society and world has both the theoretical and empirical levels has shown great successes in

unclogging the bottlenecks of dominant group privilege generally, and in particular of Christian

24

privilege. In my courses, I advance this aspect of social norming (Perkins & Berkowitz, 1986) by

employing a variety of methods, including invited guests, readings, and videos.

Inviting outside speakers into the classroom to share experiences and expertise has

proven extremely successful particularly in moving students outside their comfort zones of

understanding, and in particular on the topic of Christian privilege. I employ this strategy at

either Kegan’s second stage (“Contradiction”), or at what Kegan describes as his third stage

called “Continuity” in which educators continue the contradiction by giving constructive

feedback, providing and soliciting a variety of perspectives, continuing to afford time for student

reflection, giving praise for engaging in the process, and offering humor if and when appropriate.

I often welcome into the classroom Dr. Ellen E. Fairchild, my university colleague and

one of my coeditors for our book Investigating Christian Privilege and Religious Oppression in

the United States (2009). Ellen, like many of my students, grew up on a small Iowa farm in a

religiously and politically conservative Protestant family and community. Ellen speaks of the

critical incidents during her early years that aided in her growing understanding of how, by

surrounding herself with people who looked, believed, and thought like she did, limited her

vision of the world. As a child, she explored the local public library for books that transported

her to other lands meeting people she had never imagined. She investigated books describing

religions other than her own, and in the process, experienced a sense of enrichment and

empowerment. She talks about how she came to consciousness of her Christian and White

privileges, and the inequitable distribution of power in terms of socially constructed identity

categorizations.

Though she does not identify it in these terms, her examples of interest convergence

(Bell, ) from Critical Race Theory, articulates for students the meaning and value of

25

acknowledging, accepting, and acting to share dominant group privileges—in this instance,

Christian privilege—to level the field by distributing power, rights, and responsibilities

equitably, and that not doing so will have negative implications for members of dominant groups

while oppressing minoritized groups.3

In addition, in my courses, I provide examples of exemplary righteous Christians,

individuals and organizations, who, under extraordinary and terrifying circumstances, responded

with acts of courage and humanity. I screen a video in class focusing on Christian rescuers who,

during the German Holocaust, risked their lives to shelter Jews from ghettoization, exportation,

incarceration, and death under the Nazi regime.

Bringing It Back Home (To the Classroom)

Since the majority of my students are pre-service teachers, I anticipate the spoken and

unspoken questions students raise: “So what does this all have to do with teaching?” “Why is it

so important for me to understand the history of oppression against minoritized people in the

United States and abroad?” “Why do I have to come to critical consciousness of my social

identities, or why do I have to understand, as you term it in this course, my ‘positionality’”?

To address these questions even before students ask them, I bring all our discussions back

to the teaching profession and to the classroom by various means: course readings including

journal articles, newspaper articles addressing current events around multicultural issues in

education, guest speakers, videos, and books.

Some semesters, I require students to read You Can’t Teach What You Don’t Know:

White Teachers, Multiracial Schools, by Gary R. Howard (2006), who as a White educator

3 This is the underpinning of my edited book, Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price (1992), by bringing to light

the numerous ways in which everyone, of all sexual identities are, in fact, limited and diminished under the force of

homophobia. I make the case that it is, indeed, in everyone’s self-interest to work to dismantle homophobia.

26

provides a very personal, honest, poignant, insightful, and compelling case why all teachers, and

in particular White teachers—the primary focus of his book—need to be involved in

multicultural education. The purpose or “central theme” of his work is “to prepare a

predominantly White teaching force to work effectively with an increasingly diverse student

population” (p. 1). He calls on teacher to undertake the “inner work of personal growth” and

transformation necessary to accomplish this important task. “The second major theme of the

book, therefore, is an examination of the role White educators can and must play in

understanding, decoding, and dismantling the dynamics of White dominance” (p. 7), as well as

other forms of oppression and privilege.

These examples highlighted for students the reality that responsibility fell to parents to

request school officials to accommodate the religious practices of their children. While these

were appropriate requests, the procedures per se for accommodation highlights issues and

reinforces Christian privilege. Schools and workplaces require students and their families who do

not follow Christian practices to justify, verify, document, and in other ways “prove” to those in

authority that they, indeed, are entitled to accommodations, whether they involve the wearing of

religious symbols or garments, attending certain spaces during designated times, being absent

from classes to observe religious/spiritual events or services, and other ways. In effect, the

authorities have power to either agree to or deny these requests for accommodation based on

their limited or narrow understanding of the practices of other faith communities, as well as their

attitudes toward these communities. Another outside speaker made these points crystal clear.

I read in our town newspaper of a controversy raging at the local middle schools. The

Gideon Society had approached the principal for permission to stand outside the school to

27

distribute Christian Bibles to the students. The principal not only agreed to their request, but also

went further by making announcements over the school’s public address system days leading up

to the scheduled event as well as on the day for the distribution to occur.

The article in the paper continued by stating that the atheist parents of one of the middle

school students publicly spoke out to the principal and to the town’s school board regarding what

they considered as the school’s promotion of one form of Christianity and its violation of their

family’s constitutional rights. By bringing this issue to light, the family galvanized some other

parents and community members to lodge complaints to the principal and to the school board.

Though after the fact—for the event had already taken place—the School Board and principal

promised to disallow distribution of materials from any outside group in the future.

I invited to our class the mother of this middle school student, the principle organizer of

the activities directed at changing this apparent though unwritten policy of selective promotion

by outside groups. I had notified students earlier that a mother of a student at our town’s middle

school would be coming to our class, and I provided them the website where they could read

about the controversy. I also asked students to write an initial reflection paper on their views

after reading the accounts, and asked them to come to class with at least three critical questions

for our speaker.

Students entered the classroom with excited anticipation the day our speaker was to

arrive. She began by outlining the events as she had viewed them, and provided a detailed

account what she had told the principle and the school board members who initially had not, for

the most part, understood why any parent would be upset by allowing the Christian group access

to provide Bibles to the students. Then the parent conveyed how she had finally convinced the

parties that their actions had, in fact, constituted forms of discrimination.

28

The parent posed the following scenario to school officials: “Okay,” she began. “So you

think it is alright to allow a group to distribute religious materials to students. Well then, that

would mean that you now must open this option to other groups as well by, for example,

allowing me to stand outside school doors, and by your making numerous announcements over

the public address system, to distribute materials claiming that there is no god, that the so-called

‘Trinity’ is a myth, and that there is no ‘afterlife.’ Or better yet, someone comes to you and

claims that as rituals within their religion, they promote and practice acts of sadomasochism.

They come to you and want to distribute whips, chains, and handcuffs to your students. How

would you respond? Also, would you allow Muslim groups to distribute Qurans to your

students?”

She continued by discussing legal issues. She stated that while the First Amendment of

the U.S. Constitution, and a number of subsequent court decisions, have make it clear it is

appropriate for schools to teach about world religions, the promotion or celebration of religion is

not within legal guidelines. Prior to her coming to our class, I had gone over a number of

precedent-setting legal cases regarding religion and education: the Supreme Court has clarified

the ways in which the First Amendment relates to public schools (Abington v. Schempp, 1963;

Engel v. Vitale, 1962). The court ruled that schools may not sponsor religious practices, though

they may teach about religion as an academic topic. In addition, while not ruling directly on the

matter of religious holidays in the school, the Supreme Court let stand a lower federal court

decision (Florey v. Sioux Falls School District, 8th

Circuit, 1980) that recognition of religious

holidays may be constitutional when the purpose is to give secular instruction about religion or

religious traditions rather than to promote any specific religious doctrine or practice.

29

Following our speaker’s remarks, students asked thoughtfully constructed questions. At

the conclusion of that day’s class, I asked students to rewrite the critical analysis papers they had

written after reading the newspaper accounts, and to incorporate any new learning or insights

they had gained during our interactions with our class speaker.

While a small percentage of students “totally disagreed” with the speaker’s protests and

saw no justification for “complaining” about the distribution of Gideon Christian Bibles at the

middle school, quite a large percentage understood the objections to the actions taken by school

officials, and came to the conclusion that, as one student stated, “If any one group has the right to

distribute their materials to school-aged students, then all groups should have that right.”

Our speaker did, indeed, “contradict” prior learning and presented our students with

previously unexplored or realized ways of viewing the world. This speaker provided students

with the option of practicing the ultimate goal of empathy by walking in the shoes of another.

In addition to bringing into the classroom guest speakers providing narratives about their

experiences specifically related to topics of religion in education, I invite back former students in

my courses who serve currently as teachers in local public schools to discuss what is occurring in

their school around issues of multiculturalism. Recently a former student who now teaches social

studies in an Iowa middle school expressed a statement that encouraged me and brought a giggle

of recognition from the students in the class. He said, “Hey, when I was in this class, while I

enjoyed the readings, the class discussion, and Dr. Blumenfeld’s really awful jokes and puns, I

basically though, ‘Yeah, this all makes sense—except of course his jokes. But when I have a

classroom of my own, I’ll just teach all students equally and I won’t have any problems with

issues of oppression, or my White-Male-Heterosexual-Christian privilege.’” At this point,

30

students broke out in laughter. “Yeah, but hey, Dr. Blumenfeld was right! When I had my own

classroom, I understood what this class, your class, is all about, and let me give you an example.

“During my student teaching, I was placed at a school that had a ‘Diversity Day.’ Yeah, it

was one of those heroes, holidays, and festivals form of multiculturalism, but it was a good start

for my school. Well, the thing that most impressed me was the Mexican festival portion of the

day. As you know, Iowa is experiencing a growth in Mexican Americans living and working in

our state, and I think it was a good way to begin to educate the majority White and Protestant

students at the school about a different culture and religion—Catholicism.”

“The next year, when I was hired at another school, I went to the principal with the idea

of coordinating a Mexican festival. Sharply and angrily he barked, ‘No, I will not allow that to

happen here. Our students don’t need to see that.’”

Our invited guest discussed what this experience has taught him. “No matter how much

we might reject it, oppression, in this case racism is still alive and functioning in our state and

our country. Just imagine how the Latino/a students, all students of color, for that matter, all

students who don’t fit the mold are treated at this school: for example, gay and lesbian students;

Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or atheist students; immigrants; students with disabilities.” He then

reiterated a statement that I make numerous times during the semester when students question

why we are studying the history of oppression in our schools and in the larger society: “I never

quite understood what Dr. Blumenfeld was saying when he said that ‘we are investigating the

history of oppression in this country because that legacy walks into the classroom with each and

every one of our students—that legacy of overt and covert oppression, and the legacy that grants

some of us privilege and restricting others.’ I get it now,” he said. “I truly get it.”

31

Also bringing it all back to the classroom, I provide students with a list of topics within

the theme of religion and education from which they can choose to conduct their unit paper

assignment. Questions they may choose to address include:

Should public schools teach Intelligent Design and/or Creationism alongside theories of

Evolution? In your analysis, include discussion of whether one, two, three, none, or an

alternative should be taught.

Should students recite the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? In your

discussion, also address the question: Should students recite the Pledge of Allegiance at

all in the schools?

Should schools be able to celebrate religious holidays, for example, Christmas, Easter,

Hanukkah, St. Valentine’s Day, or Diwali even when doing so demonstrates little or no

educational value? In your discussion, investigate in depth the judicial and legislative

decisions related specifically to these issues.

Should public schools have the right to conduct prayers at school sporting events, general

student body assemblies, and at graduation ceremonies?

Should the state of California in 2011, in became the first state in the nation, have passed

a legislative bill and signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown requiring public schools to

include lessons about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people

in social studies curriculum? In your discussion, provide the history of the law, and

investigate the arguments from a number of differing perspectives on whether the bill

should have passed and the implications for its enactment and enforcement. Be sure to

include arguments from members of faith communities on this new law.

32

Should sexuality education be taught in public schools? If so, beginning at what grade

level? What should or should not be taught, and in which subject area(s)? In your

analysis, be sure to provide perspectives from various religious denominations, national

and local organizations, advocacy groups, and others.

Should public school have the right to discuss issue of family planning and distribute

birth control information and birth and disease control devices like birth control pills,

uterine devices, and condoms on public school grounds? In your discussion, give multiple

sides of the debate.

Conclusion:

Multiculturalism as a Lens of Perception

I have never forgotten one essential point my educational psychology professor related to

my class back at San José State University when I was working toward my Secondary Education

Teacher’s Certification. His point crystallized for me the intent of true and meaningful learning.

My professor explained that the term “education” is derived from two Latin roots: “e,” meaning

“out of,” and “ducere,” meaning “to lead” or “to draw.”

“Education,” he said, “is the process of drawing knowledge out of the student or leading

the student toward knowledge, rather than putting or depositing information into what some

educator’s perceive as the student’s waiting and docile mind”—what the Brazilian philosopher

and educator Paulo Reglus Neves Freire termed “the banking system of education” (1970).

I believe that for genuine learning to occur, for it to be transformational, it must be

student centered—grounded on the shared experiences of the learners—and composed of at least

two essential elements or domains: the “affective” (feelings) and the “cognitive” (informational).

I design and implement my classes on a dialogic approach within a social justice framework in

33

which students and educators cooperate in the process, whereby all are simultaneously the

teacher and the learner. Educational psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1990) referred to this process as

Obuchenie.

Education, as I have gained from Freire, is a path toward permanent liberation in which

people became aware (conscientized) of their position, and through praxis (reflection and action),

transform the world. Educators, to be truly effective, must spend many years in self-reflection

and must have a clear understanding of their motivations, strengths, limitations, “triggers,” and

fears. They must thoroughly come to terms with their positions in the world in terms of their

social identities (“positionality”): both the ways in which they are privileged as well as how they

have been the targets of systemic inequities. They are not afraid of showing vulnerability and

admitting when they are wrong or when they “don’t know.” They have a firm grasp of the

content area, and they work well with and are accessible to students and their peers.

A foundational element in critical multiculturalism is social reconstructionist or

transformational education in which the educator’s role is to help prepare future citizens to

reconstruct society to better serve the interests of all groups of people, and to transform society

toward greater equity for all.

34

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