Religion and Society: Advances in Research 3 (2012): 203–208 © Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/arrs.2012.030112 V TEACHING Religion Matters Reflections from an AAA Teaching Workshop James S. Bielo Good teaching is a crat. I t requires constant honing. While perfection eludes most of us most of the time, our best days are intellectually generative, meaningful, and oten quite fun. I intend this essay as a gesture in that same spirit. At the 2011 American Anthropological Association (AAA) meetings, I had the distinct pleas- ure of being a panelist on a workshop: teaching anthropology of religion courses to under- graduates. 1 he workshop goal was to explore strategies, questions, and resources for creatively and efectively building courses in the anthropology of religion. he stated hope was to host a dialogue that would ofer equal beneit to all. hose designing a course for the irst time could play with diferent approaches. he veteran and conident could discover a few possibilities for those pesky portions in need of tweaking. And the frustrated could begin reimagining a course. Based on the attendance and enthusiastic participation at this early morning session, I would wager we were more successful than not. In this essay, I relect on some questions that have occupied my thinking since the workshop and will no doubt ind their way into my next version of the course. I hope the following will serve as a practical guide for as many readers as possible: a little musing, a lot of question raising, some advice, and absolutely no checklists, directives, or formulas. 2 his essay concentrates on two questions that emerged from the workshop, which I am considering most thoroughly, and a coda emphasizing the need to be ethnographers in, of, and for courses in the anthropology of religion. How Can We Integrate ‘Classics’ of the Field and Deinitive heoretical Debates? he basic dilemma here is one that I suspect will sound familiar to many readers: while we ind the intellectual dogights and bellwethers utterly fascinating and vital, our students ind them diicult to appreciate, tedious, or, at worst, irrelevant to their anthropological training and a world rife with social problems. Short of awaiting their awakening or calling it cough syrup (‘dif- icult to swallow, but very good for you’), how can we combat this predicament? We might begin by stressing elements of continuity. In short, we can assert in good faith and much accuracy that ‘classic’ does not mean outmoded, dusty, stale, or only useful as intellectual