This article expands a project begun as a participant in the first American Academy of Religion and Lilly Endowment Teaching Workshop on Religion. The original project examined feminist teaching methodologies and how a male theology professor could use these methodologies in a general undergraduate theology classroom. This work describes the processes of feminist and personalist teaching methodologies and analyzes their impact on undergraduate theology classrooms.
While these approaches help students come to a greater sense of participation in and ownership of their knowledge, there has also been the attending risk that such pedagogies seemingly involve the student too intensely, too personally, and the course becomes a form of therapy. This study examines how this therapeutic turn appears to develop. It concludes with a discussion about the need for clearly articulated teaching methodologies and how their use where appropriate helps us anticipate and respond to therapeutic classroom dynamics.