Teachers, Religious Values of

What is Religious Identity?

To define religious identity requires a broader concept than religious beliefs or religious values. To define it as “being religious” excludes those who are undecided, ambivalent, passively nonreligious, or actively antireligious. To qualify it simply as belief or a set of values reduces it to an internal phenomenon of the intellect, emotion, or spirit. If religion were solely a matter of belief and thought, it would be only marginally relevant to teachers as it could be easily contained within the individual and not have to affect anyone else.

Religion, however, also entails an important dimension of behavior and action, the external manifestation of what a person does that defines and gives shape to his or her religious identity. What one does testifies to one's devotion to a standpoint on religion as much as (or more than) what one says or thinks.

Likewise, affiliation and community are fundamental parts of defining religious identity, both at present and in the context of history. Religious identity has a social dimension and shared body of experience that frames a person's life-space long before any conscious choice of belief can be made. Identity can also be ascribed to a person by others, often with stereotypes attached, even if the person does not claim it, believe it, or act on it.

In describing a person's religious identity, the direction and magnitude of each of these factors—belief, behavior, and belonging—are relevant and important in understanding how their religious identity affects them. For teachers, this provides a more nuanced framework for understanding what teachers do and why, as well as the different ways their religious identity could come into play.

Religion versus Profession

The connection of religious identity to a teacher's professional self can be described in several ways. For many, the connection is incidental; religion and profession are compartmentalized in different parts of the teacher's life-space and have little to do with each other. At the other end of the spectrum are those who perceive that one's religious beliefs cannot be separated from their daily life and work. They are unable or unwilling to separate teaching from their religious identity, whether in the content of classroom work (where explicit connections are drawn and reinforced between religion-related ideas and ideals and content area topics in all school subjects, from math to science [Page 798]to history to language) or teaching style and method, or even how the room is decorated.

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