Living inside the Bible (Belt):

teaching, preaching, and practice

In her article “Living Inside the Bible (Belt)” Dr. Shannon Carter candidly as-
sesses her own limits of tolerance for “traditional conservatism through which
evangelical Christianity resonates seems to embrace familiarity above all else,
representing difference not as a benefit to embrace and learn from but as a threat
to overcome” (572). While other academicians have argued to incorporate stu-
dents’ faith into the rhetorical situation and offset it by creating and using tension
as a means to critically analyze the way their faith can connects with other dis-
courses, Carter suggests using rhetorical dexterity, “an approach that trains writ-
ers to effectively read, understand, manipulate, and negotiate the cultural and lin-
guistic codes of a new community of practice (Lave and Wenger) based on a rela-
tively accurate assessment of another, more familiar one” (574). Although the
academy can be hostile to persons
of faith and per- sons of faith can
be hostile to the academy, Carter
argues that rhe-
Dr. Shannon Carter’s torical dexterity
may reconcile article “Living Inside the one with the
other instead of requiring stu-
dents to replace the Bible (Belt)” iden- their faith with
the ideology of tifies the “disconnect the academy and
thus avoid the pitfall of a “defen-
sive rather than between the acad- reflective” dis-
course. Practi- cally speaking,
Carter not only
emy and religious argues for this in
her article but faith” and offers a practices rhetorical
dexterity by ex- ample in her
pedagogy as practical response to evidenced in
her students’ bridge that gap; writings. Car-
ter’s students are clearly com-
fortable with ex- rhetorical dexterity pressing and
critically analyz- ing their faith.
By providing
. (573)
these stu-
dents this kind of non-
combative and non-hostile en-
vironment, they can engage more readily in the discourse and avoid such nega-
tive situations as Carter articulates from one of her student’s experiences in an-
other classroom:
“Once I turned in a paper in which I used Biblical passages as an argument. I
failed. After meeting with the teacher, I got the feeling that the reason I failed came
directly from my choice to quote the Bible. I did nothing but remove the quotes
and my paper received an “A.” Even in a personal opinion paper, I was not allowed
to use evidence that appealed to me. I am outraged by this incident to this day.”
This is quite a different situation to the rhetorically dexterous one that Carter
fosters:
 Living inside the Bible (Belt):
teaching, preaching, and practice
“One-Page Analysis: Up until now, I have conducted eight interviews and acquired
more than six sets of fieldnotes, all from CSO meetings and Bible studies, or field-
notes on the interviews. I have one last interview scheduled for Monday, Novem-
ber 30, 2009. With the culmination of this interview, I think I will have enough in-
formation to draw some striking conclusions. Some recurring themes that I have
already picked out include the misconceptions about the Catholic faith from a
non-Catholic and Catholic point of view. The source of faulty information seems to
come from uneducated Catholics. Catholics are the ones presenting the faith to
other denominations. If Catholics are uneducated and present their faith incor-
rectly, they are giving false impressions to other people that judge our religion.
People may not want to become a part of Catholicism because they have seen how Catholics act and don’t want to be a
part of that activity, when in fact, that isn’t what Catholicism
is about at all. huge theme that I see over and over again
is the need for entertainment. This stems mostly from non-
Catholic people, but even one Catholic I interviewed found
the mass boring.... Interviewing these people was very
“I believe rhetorical dexterity fun because for thirty minutes to two hours I got to get in
may be of more immediately their world and mindset. Diversity is everywhere, and I
think my project shows a wide range of religious diversity. I
practical value to students as interviewed Father George, and that was very interesting.
it explicitly asks them to think The parish of St. Joe’s is old and the origin fascinated me.
It started when a railroad came through Commerce, then
of literacy in terms more con- known as Cowhill. Once the population started to develop,
one of the families that came here for the railroad decided
ducive to maintaining both the town needed to have mass, and so the mother opened
their faith-based and their her home for masses. A priest would come in from other
towns, and a small community of people would gather in
academic literacies without this home. The masses would grow and then subside, de-
being required to substitute pending on what was going on with the town. In 1955, a
building was set up on Cooper and Monroe as the Catholic
one for the other” . (574) church. It became a parish with a full-time pastor in 1979,
and new renovations have just been completed for the
new circular structure. I thought this history was interest-
ing. From a small home to a church, and still growing.
Next, I need to interview Dr. Joe Webber, campus minister
for St. Joe’s. I have this interview set up for Monday, November 30. I think he will give me the final insights I need to draw
strong conclusions. He is studying to become a deacon, so he is very wise in knowledge of the church. I am excited for
the results of this interview. I also need to code my entire research portfolio one last time before I sit down to make a first
draft. This will freshen my memory of all the information I have collected and help me to put my thoughts into words. Af-
ter the interview, I will begin to draw conclusions and find a way to present those in an orderly fashion for my final pro-
ject.”
 Living inside the Bible (Belt):
teaching, preaching, and practice
Moreover, within this framework students can more readily identify the appropriateness of their faith-based opinions
and ideas within the rhetorical construct. “Because we are concerned with practices that replicate the community, as
well as with the community as a whole, it is useful to examine evangelical Christianity as both a community and an activ-
ity system. According to this theoretical framework...using the Bible as evidence for a personal opinion paper (as Alex
has) may be understood as unacceptable when evaluated by the communities of practice associated with the academy,
but as completely acceptable and even mandatory when evaluated by those associated with their faith” (581). Carter
also addresses the problems that arise
when students posit arguments from an
evangelical perspec- tive within the acad-
emy. “While I accept a more liberal worldview
as ultimately more conducive to values
like pluralism and equality, it is important
to examine the ways in which a more conser-
vative, faith-based worldview may, in fact,
coexist with the end- stages of cognitive
development as articu- lated via William
Perry’s model: relativism and commitment” (583). By acknowledging appropriateness and literacies based upon the
situation, social or rhetorical, we can deter potential conflicts from escalating and inhibiting the affective filter in the
classroom. Additionally, as Carter states, “By treating academic literacies as a dynamic sign system and academic dis-
course as an experience in overlapping communities of practice, I might have taught James to develop the flexibility and
awareness he needed to negotiate
the increasingly complex literacy
contexts he might encounter
throughout his “Understanding literacy as college career,
without sacrific-
social rather than alphabetic, ing that “primary
sense of self- hood” he derived
from his Bible” situated rather than universal, (588). Teaching
students to thor- oughly explore
context and
and multiple rather than singular evaluate their
own ethnocentric requires writers to consider themselves backgrounds can
help them to ar- ticulate their
viewpoint to the to be simultaneously literate and illiterate reader who may
or may not have in a number of different contexts” the same literacy
history. Finally, through the prac-
tice of negotiat- (578). ing “the multiple,
rapidly changing literacies” stu-
dents develop “a deeper understand-
ing of the way literacy lives in a particular context—among the people who reproduce themselves through a particular
set of literate practices (time-based, situation-based, agent-based)” (592). By moving into the written and communica-
tive practice of rhetorical dexterity students are able to approach different literacy practices from a position that neither
judges those practices nor engages in them but rather observes and seeks to understand those practices for what they
are and may prepare them for other studies, perhaps even a study in ethnography.