My students are so smart! - Evangelicalism.

In my evangelicalism unit, I was drawing my students' attention to how there's a huge range of loosely-associated institutions (churches, publishing houses, universities, radio stations, etc.), and I was going to make the point that since they're all independent, people have to know by word-of-mouth which ones are 'kosher' or not.

So, I told a story from the field trip that past Sunday to a local fundamentalist church, about how a visitor asked if the seminary associated with the church founder was still "solid", and the tour guide said that it was sadly not, and that not only was the theology not good, but that when he visited, students there couldn't even tell him where the church founder's house was, even though they were 50 feet away from it.

"Now what was that about?", I was like.  "I'm being serious here, it's a really important point."

My one redheaded student raised her hand, and I called on her.

"Money," she was like.

That kind of threw me, so I asked her to expand on her thoughts.

"If people give money, they won't give it there, but to the places where the guy approves of."

"Exactly," I was like, and then expounded my original point about how evangelical gossip plays the same role as the CDF cracking down on the liberal nun ethicist, because they don't have direct control with which to "dick around" someone (my words; I love being able to swear in class).