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.