(One) Trouble with Religious Students

Living where I do, I often have Evangelical students in my classes, who have been homeschooled or sent to schools run by Evangelicals. They've been taught to view and understand everything through a single lens, that of Eschatological Christ as they have been taught he is. 

Frequently they have also been taught that anyone trying to get them to use another lens is demonic, or an agent of Satan, or at the very least misguided. Their job is not to learn to see new ways, but to hold fast to this single way.

It can be difficult to get them to understand global literature when this is the case. They want to view, for example, The Bacchai through their specific sort of Christian lens. Since the play is about Dionysus and the foible of refusing to accept Dionysus as a god, and the vengeance visited on mortals who think they understand the gods better than the gods do, this can cause difficulties.

Why are such people in a university, if they don't want to read new things and learn new ideas? Well, they see the degree as a job qualification. That is, like many people in America today, their parents and probably they themselves see the university as a trade school. They are here to get a degree as a qualification for a job, and to avoid being educated while they do it.

Not all Evangelical students, of course. Not all Jehovah's Witnesses either, to name another religion that is popular in this area. I've had some excellent students from religious backgrounds. But those are students with enough imagination and intelligence to learn to see with different lenses despite their religion. (Pretty much never because of their religion, at least in my experience. Christianity in Arkansas does not encourage learning as a virtue, or intelligence or curiosity either.)