Return to Journal of Christian Teaching Practice (in Communication Studies), Vol. 13, 2026
Christian Pedagogy: Formation vs. Indoctrination*
Rick Olsen and Julie Morgan
Abstract: The authors call on faculty to teach Christian things, integrate a Christian point of view when teaching non-Christian things, and to be humble and humorous as an expression of “salt and light” (Matt. 5:13–16) in the Academy. Each of these distinctives should be carried out within a larger attitude of formation rather than indoctrination. This posture of ongoing formation should be modeled by the faculty member as well. These imperatives must also be carried out in ways that demonstrate excellence in both pedagogy and curriculum design.
I (Rick) needed to facilitate a hard conversation with two students who were claiming they had been emotionally and mentally harmed by the other. My colleague, David, also attended the meeting. I wanted to say, “you are both being petty, say ‘I’m sorry’ and let’s get back to the point of college!” What took place instead was a circuitous dialogue that eventually resulted in disclosures by both students about diagnosed depressions, childhood trauma, and other issues that informed their interaction patterns. One student eventually said, “You are not in this alone.” It took patience to find the moment of transformation.
David and I made room for this meeting because we had a mutual hope that we could get to a place of mutual positive regard. It was exhausting. I felt a bit like the biblical figure Jonah who desired the quick wrath of God only to realize he was called to love others into a right relationship with God. A heart for God is easy, having the heart of God for others is hard.
So it is with teaching. Many of us would prefer a quick, direct, methodical approach to subject mastery. But students are more than just students, and teachers are more than just teachers. We meet as communities of learners and journey together for a while. To what end? We argue that a faculty member of faith should ask “What actions or responses by me will most likely foster formation in my students?”
The contributions in this volume speak to the importance of Christian thinking and faith-informed scholarship. We are often told that research informs teaching. But that is not automatic, and neither is faith-informed teaching. In this essay, we briefly contrast teaching and scholarship, identify some common ground, and connect insights from our own and others’ experiences to the ground-level challenges of the college classroom. We call on faculty to teach Christian things, integrate a Christian point of view when teaching non-Christian things, and to be humble and humorous as an expression of “salt and light” (Matt. 5:13–16) in the Academy.
Differences and Commonalities in Pedagogy and Scholarship
Much of scholarship involves the joys and challenges of writing to fellow experts. It is ideally somewhat linear and cumulative. Scholarship builds on itself, and the literature review reveals our new starting line. We make transparent use of endorsed methods to arrive at our best current thinking about a problem of interest.
Teaching is a bit more cyclical. We are brain farmers with a new crop each semester. The students and the popular culture that informs their worldviews changes rapidly; spiritual orientations, biblical and cultural literacy are always in flux. Our role as instructors becomes one of adapting to the conditions in the field each season and embracing the pattern of the seasons. There are shared characteristics. In both scholarship and teaching, we are engaged in sensemaking and formation. We lead our students through a process of discovery—even if the discovery that is new to them is known to us. There is still a hope that they have grown through navigating the challenges of our curriculum and now, they too, have new starting lines for their thinking and doing.
There are numerous perspectives on how to think like a Christian. What might it mean to teach like a Christian? We can adapt George Marsden’s agenda: “Why do I teach, who am I trying to serve? What good am I trying to bring about?”[1] Our faith, peppered by humility and humor, can foster unique classroom cultures and interaction choices that help us “teach better” than others, but that is not guaranteed. One of us teaches at a large public institution (Rick) while the other teaches at a small, private religiously affiliated institution (Julie).
Over the past 30 years, we wrestled with these questions as we constructed our syllabi, managed our classrooms, and engaged with our students (in addition to how we approach our research and service). These questions guided our conversations with the student who “forgot” that there was a final exam, the student who confessed they had not been sober in any of our classes, or the student who could not seem to stay awake in our morning class because they also worked from 10:00 pm to 6:00 am. We responded thoughtfully, not because we wanted to be good teachers (which was true), but because we wanted to figure out how our faith can make a tangible difference in these moments. What does God call us to do to foster the student’s ongoing formation? And, as it turned out, processing these questions helped us to refine our thinking and our faith. We are in an ongoing formation journey as well.
The sentiment for a Christian distinctive is not sufficient. There is also a need to do great teaching by the standards of the Academy, using the basic concepts, principles, and tools of the trade to foster excellent curriculum design and pedagogy.
As we considered our own experience as educators, we identified three teaching opportunities or perhaps mandates. Each is complicated by the growing lack of biblical literacy and more broadly, the diverse worldviews of students, parents, cultural Christians including Christian nationalists, the broad array of cultural influencers and other factors such as delayed maturation due to COVID-19 and other factors beyond our control. We must address such complications with curiosity and compassion, not judgement or frustration.
Teach Christian Things
Our first admonition is for Christian academics to teach Christian things. That is, to integrate explicitly Christian concepts when they are relevant to the outcomes of the course or the informal teachable moment. This might mean very broad concepts such as love and sacrifice or more specific concepts such as the symbolism of communion. Faculty of faith should seek out opportunities to integrate faith as a normal variable and topic of discussion and critique. In Rick’s research methods class, he has quotations from Proverbs in his syllabus that directly deal with the learning outcomes of the course and during an early lecture. He reminds his students of faith that “we are called to think on whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely (Phil. 4:8–9). But let us emphasize that the first descriptor is that it must be true! And that is why research, critical thinking, wisdom, and discernment are so important.”[2]
Many scholars of faith find it difficult to integrate both identities (scholar and Christian) with their peers in each community. The classroom is a strange blend of neither and both of those spaces. It is a learning community in which we have a unique place of leadership and influence. But it is important to remember that it is not just the secular culture that has made it difficult to bring Christianity into the classroom. Many scholars wrestle with the fundamental truths of the faith. American Christianity is full of dysfunction and excess. The challenge of integrating various identities is complicated by the challenges of responding to faulty orthopraxis as well as faithfully conforming to orthodoxy. As teachers, we find the challenge is less around correcting the beliefs or practices of our students and colleagues and more around navigating the negative perceptions from others, if and when we explicitly identify as “Christian.” In the classroom, Rick will usually say “I’m a member of a faith community” or other labels that seem more invitational and carry less semantic baggage than “Christian.”[3]
The work of bringing faith into the classroom should generally be aligned with the learning goals of the course and demonstrate the integration of critical thinking and faith. Such integration is likely more effective if we can do so with humor, humility, and “a bit of levity.”[4]
Teach Non-Christian Things from a Christian Point of View
Our second admonition for Christian academics is to teach non-Christian things from a Christian point of view or at least integrate a distinctly Christian perspective with the various perspectives to be covered. I (Rick) will note in my research methods class that “even if we are looking at issues of faith such as ‘Does prayer lead to faster healing?’ we need to focus on measurable material evidence and good research practices.” And then I move on. As Marsden notes: “We Christians use the same types of reason, evidence, and questioning that other scholars might employ—although our underlying assumptions and questions might be different and our conclusions different because of our own, faith-shaped examination of the issues and disagreements addressed.”[5]
I (Julie) teach at a private, faith-based university. I can round out secular theories of interpersonal communication by raising the idea of interpersonal communication within the context of a Judeo-Christian assumption of a fallen and broken world. For example, I use the lens of faith to examine the popular communication theory called Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM).[6] This broad theory centers on the idea that each person has a truth or a story of lived experiences that inform interaction patterns with themselves and others. And, listening to each other’s truth with respect and curiosity opens the door for true dialogue. Julie extends this theory into the possibilities for co-created spiritual experiences. In the semester after George Floyd was murdered, a white male student shared that he wanted to be a police officer while one of her black male students shared how his dad had been stopped many times by the police without clear cause. In the practice of CMM, they were able to lean into a taboo topic and listen to one another. Students were changed by the experience and modeling of what it looked like to truly listen and lean into difficult conversations. It was evidence of spiritual formation and love for one another that integrated CMM and Ephesians 6:12 that speaks to broken systems and powers all around us.
Teachers as Salt and Light
Our third admonition for Christian academics is to be well known as teachers who are “salt and light” (Matt. 5:13–16) in the lives of our students. This means we strive to teach with joy and be as interruptible as Jesus was with children and others that were culturally invisible or unimportant. This approach calls for discernment. When will it foster formation to extend grace? When will it foster formation to express a hard truth in love and emphasize accountability?
Both of us fondly remember Dr. Ray Penn, a Christian professor who met with a Christian student who had over-extended themselves and did not finish an independent study research project. This student was notoriously hard on themselves. Ray said “I’m going to give you an A that you do not deserve, so that you better understand grace and can extend it to yourself and others. Remember this.” There were tears and hugs and this former student went on to become a professor. This story also reminds us that we should not assume that the Christian students will naturally be better students. They are on their formation journeys, too.
Conclusion
We urge faculty to embrace humor and humility and approach their role as guiding students (and themselves) through the ongoing challenge of formation. These efforts would ideally show up by teaching Christian things as normal and natural, offering relevant Christian perspectives on non-Christian content, and being “salt and light” (Matt. 5:13–16) in our daily conduct and interactions.
Communication professor and author Greg Spencer suggests the “need to reassert the roles of wisdom and character in the intellectual enterprise.”[7] He further notes that a “full-bodied Christian view of learning promotes wisdom, and it promotes thoughtful communication in the community.”[8] We agree. Wisdom is the synthesis of critical thinking and humility. We submit to the larger mystery even as we discern what to do next. A key barrier to sharing faith in the classroom is the arrogance of certainty. Humility, including intellectual humility, is exhibiting salt and light to our students. Showing them that a central goal of the educational enterprise is about empowering them to navigate ambiguity for the rest of their lives leaves much room for God and faith to be part of the conversation and their journey of formation.
*This article originally appeared in From the Outrageous to the Scandalous: Re-imagining Christian Thinking in the Age of Tribalism and Ideological Resentment, eds. Robert H. Woods Jr. and Mark Allan Steiner (Pasco, WA: Integratio Press, 2025).
Authors
Rick Olsen (PhD, Regent University) is a Professor and Department Chair at The University of North Carolina Wilmington. He has enjoyed finding ways that his faith could inform his teaching, research, service and leadership. His scholarship often focuses on the intersection of rhetoric and popular culture as well as communication and leadership. He has also found that playing music and basketball have provided great points of connection with students and faculty across campus.
Julie Morgan (EdD, Nova Southeastern University) is a full-time professor and Department Chair for Communication at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, and can be often found at school with her emotional therapy dog Duke at her side. She is a seasoned communication training and education specialist with over 25 years of experience and has collaborated with CEOs to enhance their communication and leadership skills, fostering more cohesive and productive teams. As a published author and tenured professor, Dr. Morgan is dedicated to improving the quality of relationships through better communication. She is mom to her son Will, a support to her students, a committed Orangetheory Fitness member, and a loving Aunt to many.
Notes
[1] George M. Marsden, “Mere Christian Scholarship,” in From the Outrageous to the Scandalous: Re-imagining Christian Thinking and Scholarship in an Age of Tribalism and Ideological Resentment, eds. Robert H. Woods Jr. and Mark Allan Steiner (Integratio Press, 2025), 15-18.
[2] John Piper offers several apologetics for the integration of critical thinking in the Protestant and Evangelical expressions of faith including the following: John Piper, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011).
[3] One of the most seductive barriers to ongoing formation is certainty. As people of faith, we are often called to “know that we know, that we know,” yet we are also called to walk by faith, not by sight (see 2 Cor 5:7). Peter Enns offers a wonderful exploration of this paradox. See Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our “Correct” Beliefs (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2017).
[4] Terry Lindvall, “The Humor and Humility of the Christian Mind,” in From the Outrageous to the Scandalous: Re-imagining Christian Thinking and Scholarship in an Age of Tribalism and Ideological Resentment, eds. Robert H. Woods Jr. and Mark Allan Steiner (Integratio Press, 2025), 53-58.
[5] Marsden, “Mere Christian Scholarship,” 16.
[6] Coordinated Management of Meaning is a theory that offers rich application to counselors and other practitioners of intentional communication and personal growth. To learn more consider: W. Barnett Pearce and Vernon E. Cronen, Communication, Action, and Meaning: The Creation of Social Realities (New York: Praeger, 1980).
[7] Greg Spencer, “An Outrageous Scandal: Three Rs for the Future of Christian Education,” in From the Outrageous to the Scandalous: Re-imagining Christian Thinking and Scholarship in an Age of Tribalism and Ideological Resentment, eds. Robert H. Woods Jr. and Mark Allan Steiner (Integratio Press, 2025), 45-52.
[8] Spencer, “An Outrageous Scandal,” 52.