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Spiritual Autobiography, Constitutive Rhetoric, and Religious Identity in the Composition Classroom

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Spiritual Autobiography, Constitutive Rhetoric, and Religious Identity in the Composition Classroom ABSTRACT Coming to Terms: Spiritual Autobiography, Constitutive Rhetoric, and Religious Identity in the Composition Classroom Sara A. Kelm, M.A. Mentor: Michael-John DePalma, Ph.D. Building on current scholarship indicating the need for students’ spiritual identities to be welcomed in the academy, this argument proposes using the reading and writing of spiritual autobiography to prompt students’ exploration of their spiritual commitments in the composition classroom. The emerging adult college student tends to be wary of religious labels, but through the constitutive function of spiritual autobiography, students can develop authorial ethos and construct religious language through the articulation of their spiritual experiences. The constitutive strategies of Kathleen Norris’s “necessary other” authorial self in The Cloister Walk and Anne Lamott’s language of generality in Traveling Mercies can provide students with writing strategies for their own compositions. A first-year writing course such as the one presented in this argument—Spiritual Journeys: Faith, Community, and Spiritual Autobiography—assist students in coming to terms with their spiritual experiences and the language used to articulate those experiences to a broader community. Coming to Terms: Spiritual Autobiography, Constitutive Rhetoric, and Religious Identity in the Composition Classroom by Sara A. Kelm, B.A. A Thesis Approved by the Department of English Dianna Vitanza, Ph.D., Chairperson Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Baylor University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Approved by the Thesis Committee Michael-John DePalma, Ph.D., Chairperson Kara Poe Alexander, Ph.D. Beth Allison Barr, Ph.D. Accepted by the Graduate School August 2015 J. Larry Lyon, Ph.D., Dean Page bearing signatures is kept on file in the Graduate School. Copyright © 2015 by Sara A. Kelm All rights reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. vi CHAPTER ONE Talking about Religion in the Composition Classroom: An Introduction........................................................................................................... 1 The Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults..................................................................................5 Emerging Adults and Religious Language ............................................................................22 Defining Myself and Moving Forward..................................................................................25 CHAPTER TWO A Common Language and a Common Story: The Constitutive Power of Women’s Spiritual Autobiography ................................ 28 Constituting an Audience.......................................................................................................32 The Power of Spiritual Narrative...........................................................................................39 Women as Spiritual Autobiographers....................................................................................41 Finding a Role........................................................................................................................43 CHAPTER THREE Necessary Others: Kathleen Norris’s The Cloister Walk................ 47 Constituting Ethos..................................................................................................................49 Norris as Necessary Other .....................................................................................................52 Norris as Writer .....................................................................................................................67 CHAPTER FOUR Cursing Christians: Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies .................... 71 Constituting Language...........................................................................................................74 Lamott’s Language of Generality..........................................................................................77 A New Religious Language...................................................................................................89 iv CHAPTER FIVE Teaching About Lily Pads: Religious Rhetoric and Spiritual Autobiography in First-Year Writing ...................................................................... 92 Putting It Into Practice ...........................................................................................................93 Considerations .......................................................................................................................95 Benefits ..................................................................................................................................98 Spiritual Journeys: Faith, Community, and Spiritual Autobiography .................................100 Further Study .......................................................................................................................109 APPENDIX A................................................................................................................. 114 APPENDIX B ................................................................................................................. 115 APPENDIX C ................................................................................................................. 117 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 122 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the loving and gently prodding support of many individuals and communities. First, thank you to my professors and friends at George Fox University—especially Dr. Melanie Mock—in whose classes these ideas were planted. Thank you to my professors and colleagues at Baylor University, where these sprouting ideas were watered and pruned. A special thank you to Dr. Michael-John DePalma, whose enthusiasm and guidance brought these ideas to fruition. My community spans coast to coast, and I am grateful for the support given me via text message, email, social media, Skype, and face-to-face conversation. It is a gift to find friends who believe in your work before it is realized. Thank you for the food, the drinks, the prayers, the kindness, and the love. Additional thanks to Dichotomy peach blossom white tea, Torchy’s Tacos queso, Lula Janes’s blueberry pie, and the crew of the starship Enterprise for assisting me in the completion of this thesis. This work is especially dedicated to my family, spread wide but always present. Thank you to my siblings, who continually teach me the joy of laughter and the importance of steady faith. Endless thanks to my parents who have shown me the value of an integrated life—mind, heart, and spirit—by their words and deeds. Thank you all for supporting me as I continue to constitute my faith. Lastly, to the God I have found in lake baptisms and church camps, story and song, prairies and evergreen forests, Quaker open worship and Episcopal liturgy, sacraments and silence. Glory be to thee, O Lord. vi To my parents, who taught me a joyful life integrates the passions of the mind, the heart, and the soul. vii CHAPTER ONE Talking about Religion in the Composition Classroom: An Introduction In 2013, former mega-church pastor Rob Bell published a book called What We Talk About When We Talk About God. Already a controversial figure, his latest offering even caught the eye of America’s favorite bookworm, Oprah, who selected it for her book club. The title of Bell’s book begs many questions, especially for those who work in rhetorical studies: how do individuals talk about God? Do different generations talk about God differently? How does the academy talk about God? Is this different from how students talk about God? Do professors affect how students talk about God, and should they? The answers to these questions involve how the conversation is constructed. Bell’s book, which is not a scholarly discussion but rather a mass-market Christian spirituality text, acknowledges the complexities and frustrations inherent in religious discourse: I realize that when I use the word God, there's a good chance I'm stepping on all kinds of land mines. Is there a more volatile word loaded down with more history, assumptions and expectations than that tired, old, relevant, electrically charged, provocative, fresh, antiquated yet ubiquitous as ever, familiar/unfamiliar word God? (Bell 1) Bell goes on to say the problem with the term God is “not just a problem of definition – what is it we're talking about when we talk about God? – and it's not just the increasing likelihood that two people discussing God are in fact talking about two extraordinarily different realities while using the exact same word” (2). The problem is bigger than that. Bell recognizes the impossibility of defining the ineffable, an impossibility which includes the difficulty of defining the practices and beliefs surrounding the ineffable. 1 The charge levied against most religiously committed individuals is that they rarely consider the language they use, often falling into cliché or divisive language. This can be especially problematic in the composition classroom, as discussed by researchers Chris Anderson, Shannon Carter, Elizabeth Vander Lei, and others. Equally problematic is a classroom devoid of religious commitments. Higher education and religion can often be at odds, with the academy tending to treat religion
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