Dear fellow attendees and presenters at last week’s Western States Literacy and Rhetoric conference,

Thanks for an intellectually stimulating weekend. I enjoyed many (but not all!) of the sessions I attended and I’m glad for your feedback on my own paper.

I’ve been thinking, though, about the awkwardness that followed my answer to your questions about my employment, or lack thereof. After I explained that “I have 3 young children and chose not to try for a tenure-track position or full-time teaching right now,” you responded with blank eyes, puzzled looks, and silence. Mentioning motherhood in a circle of ambitious academics, it seems, is a sure conversation killer.

I think that what I would have liked to add to my explanation would have not only killed the conversation but might have killed it more violently or buried it deep deep down. I would have liked to add that I have chosen to place motherhood before career, yes, for personal reasons, but also for religious reasons: I believe God has asked me to do so. And I believe He will remember me all the more for doing so. I feel deeply that He will not forget me when the time comes—assuming it does—to don the professor’s clothes more fully.

I honestly can’t imagine your response to my layering an explanation based on spiritual knowledge on top of an explanation based on my personal experiences with mothering. Today, society in general and academics in particular tend to see religion as far worse than other forces that mold people’s minds. I wish I could change that. Would it help at all if I explained that religious people rely on the discernment of God’s will for moral knowledge (a process that isn’t any less rational than secular forms of moral reasoning). And that when we believe we have discerned God’s will, to act differently publicly or privately would be treating our religion as a fad, a hobby, as arbitrary or trivial? Stephen Carter put it well in his book The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion when he said, “In our sensible zeal to keep religion from dominating our politics, we have created a political and legal culture that presses the religiously faithful to be other than themselves, to act publicly, and sometimes privately as well, as though their faith does not matter to them” (3).

My faith does matter to me. And because it does, I do rely on it for knowledge about how to live my life, privately and professionally. When I’m honest with myself and can put my pride aside, I feel a deep peace with living in accordance with how I feel and what I know. I hope that at the next conference, I hope that peace is evident as I field employment questions and navigate the awkwardness that surrounds them.

Sincerely,
Catherine Matthews Pavia

Have you had successful experiences in the public spheres in which you move with explaining your life choices or religious beliefs? How about with countering others’ beliefs that something is wrong with people who take their religion seriously and let it affect their public actions? How do you respond to similar questions about personal choices motivated by religious beliefs—with pride, apology, both, or something different altogether?

Related posts:

1. Carried by Faith
2. On Questions
3. I Hope They Call Me on a Digital Mission