Cara Burnidge

Why I teach:
Growing up in rural southeast Kansas, I never had anyone explain religion to me. Religion just seemed to be around, unexplained, all the time. Neighbors, friends, and family members said it shaped their daily lives and weekly activities, it determined their political allegiances, and it was the glue that held their family together.

Religion was powerful and pervasive, but it was not until I was in college that I got to study what 'it' was. Since then, I have not stopped. I understand 'religion' to be a flexible word that means different things to different people in different times and places. I see 'religion' as a collection of ideas that needed constant attention to definition and interpretation. Since religion so often goes unexplained and assumed (we know 'it' when we see 'it'), my classroom is a place where we can step back, look at the world around us, ask questions about 'it,' and think about 'it' from a variety of perspectives.