2 great student moments (1 of 2): Fundamentalist Mormons.

The kids in my one class I'm teaching are great.  Of the 17, like 4-6 are pretty stellar and keep me on my toes.

This is one of my favorite moments -

When I was going over source tendencies in new religious movements - e.g. people in the movement may try to deny/minimized abuses -  I had students think whether ex-members also had biases that needed to be looked out for.

Right away, one student brought up that in the chapter we had read from "God's Brothel" (a collection of essays from former polygamist wives), the author had said she was in a lawsuit with the group over disputed property, and she might try to vilify them to aid her case.

That was a great point, but not what I was thinking of, so after a pause, I drew their attention to book's entire title, holding up the book and gesturing to the cover and reading the title out loud:

"God's Brothel: The Extortion of Sex for Salvation in Contemporary Mormon and Christian Fundamentalist Polygamy and the Stories of 18 Women Who Escaped".

"How about that?", I was like, and went and wrote the word "TITILLATION" on the board.

At that, some students kind of narrowed their eyes and you could see gears whirring, and one of them, this (slightly husky) (redheaded) (early 20s) (female) with black glasses and a short haircut and a warm, generous nature, raised her hand tentatively.

"Yes?", I was like.

"'Escaped'," she said.  "They didn't just leave, they escaped."

"Exactly!", I was like.