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With the help of the more sophisticated understanding of the ways one’s teaching may informed by one’s Christian identity discussed in chapters 2 through 4, we can now investigate the most controversial question of this book: How can a faculty member teach from a Christian perspective while honoring the integrity of the secular academy? In postmodern culture, teachers are expected to integrate their various identities into their teaching (e.g., feminist, environmentalist, Marxist). Therefore, this chapter explores how a professor could teach from a Christian perspective while working in the context of the pluralistic academy. It sets forth some general views about how teachers should address this matter, then focuses on how Christian teachers should determine when and how to draw upon their nonprofessional identities in their professional practice. Fundamentally, this chapter addresses the heart of what it means to foster a rich tournament of identities and narratives, which is the ultimate essence of liberal education.

There are thousands of Christian professors, many of whom claim “Christian” as their primary identity and teaching as their primary responsibility. Much of the current literature about the integration of faith and learning focuses on the differences between Christian scholarship and Christian teaching. As a result, few books explore how Christian identity, or a particular Christian identity (e.g., Baptist, Anglican), shapes teaching. In addition, few works examine what identity-influenced teaching outside of one’s professional identity looks like in the contemporary university. One distinguishing feature of this book is that it addresses both those subjects by exploring responses of Christian professors to questions about how them. By drawing upon a mixed-methods survey of over 2,300 Christian professors, this book reveals the wide range of wisdom that contemporary professors offer about how they practice faith-informed teaching. The second unique quality of this book is that it situates the findings of this study within the wider scholarly conversation about the role of identity-informed teaching. It describes the tensions within this conversation between those who advocate for restraining the influence of one’s extraprofessional identities and those who, in the name of authenticity, promote the full integration of one’s primary identities into the classroom. It then sets forth an original position that draws from empirical research to provide a nuanced approach to this issue. Overall, the book charts new ground regarding how professors think about Christian teaching in particular, as well as how professors should approach identity-informed teaching in general.