Drawing from surveys and interviews with Christian students at a large public university, this essay articulates how understanding these students' perspectives can help instructors identify strategies for responding to religious discourses in the classroom and equip them to help students capitalize on the rhetorical possibilities of these discourses.

This article presents data collected from forty writing instructors in order to explore the ways in which Christian students’ discourses seem to violate certain academic norms and to argue for the intentional engagement of these discourses. Such engagement encourages a move away from entrenched “us vs. them” narratives and toward productive mediation of competing discourses. The article concludes by offering specific pedagogical strategies that instructors might use to address academic norms with devout students.

Approaching definitions (and the act of defining) as inherently political and ideological, this article argues that there is a lack of definitional precision surrounding critical pedagogy and its core terms (e.g., student empowerment ). This lack of precision can impede the successful and ethical implementation of critical pedagogy in the composition classroom. This article calls for a deeper articulation of what critical pedagogy is and does, and for sharing definitional power with students by enlisting their help in this articulation. Inviting students to participate in such definitional work may mitigate resistance by offering students a greater say, and a greater stake, in their own education. Defining these terms more precisely may also help instructors to enact and communicate critical pedagogy in a more open and purposeful way.