{"id":50903,"date":"2025-08-14T03:02:58","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T09:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=50903"},"modified":"2025-08-11T10:59:49","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T16:59:49","slug":"prayer-at-the-beginning-of-class-my-experience-at-a-non-lds-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2025\/08\/prayer-at-the-beginning-of-class-my-experience-at-a-non-lds-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayer at the Beginning of Class: My Experience at a Non-LDS University"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Religiously speaking I have a weird CV. I may be one of the few people who has taught a class at all three of the major religious plus universities: BYU, Catholic University of America, and Baylor University (although you could include Yeshiva University in this list, and while I’ve done research with a Yeshiva U professor I haven’t taught a class there). I\u2019ve been at conferences when people have badmouthed Baptists only to see my Baylor affiliation, putting me in the strange position of feeling defensive and offended for a religion I don\u2019t subscribe to, and I have done so much Catholic-related research that you would be forgiven for mistakenly thinking that I am in fact Catholic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve had the opportunity to see the different ways that devoutly religious universities do the religion thing. (Of course there are other major religiously affiliated universities, but there\u2019s a gradation for how intentionally they try to incorporate their religious mission into the curriculum and behavior of the faculty\/students, and the four I mentioned seem to take that the most seriously of all the major research universities.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So when I occasionally teach at Catholic U I try to be a good citizen and carve out some time for discussing a Catholic perspective on whatever we\u2019re talking about, and I\u2019ll occasionally assign materials from Catholic teachings (I still remember, at the end of a sexuality class my prepared final lecture on <\/span>Humanae Vitae<\/span><\/i> strangely veered into \u201csoaking,\u201d as evidently a lot of my students had been watching a little too much anti-Mormon Tick Tock and got really interested in my take on the subject).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the traditions that BYU sometimes has that others don\u2019t is beginning class with a prayer, so again in the spirit of being a good citizen vis-a-vis their religious mission I have sometimes have classes that I routinely start with a prayer. I\u2019ve done it now for three courses. A few points:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n