Once I Believed: Evangelical Sexuality, Critical Thinking, and the Process of Change questions the boundaries of literacy studies scholarship on home discourse communities, using religious students as a case study for groups that may or may not sit outside the boundaries of inclusive pedagogical strategies. With the current political climate, there is a widening gap of understanding between Evangelical students and teachers in the writing classroom, particularly around the concept of critical thinking. With Literacy Studies describing learning as embodied, political, and culturally situated, this dissertation looks outside the classroom at how individuals learn in their daily lives when it goes beyond performative and has lifelong and communal ramifications. Drawing on Gender Studies and Religious Studies, this project specifically looks at one of the dominant and embodied markers of adherence to Evangelicalism and its teachings: sexuality. It asks the question: how do Evangelical people experience a shift in their perspective toward sexuality, particularly when coming from such a powerful religious discourse community? Using auto-ethnographic informed qualitative inquiry, this project is based on interviews with individuals who grew up in Evangelicalism and later in life made a public shift in their sexual beliefs and practices. By looking at this high cost and public manifestation of perspective shifting and change, we are able to see how people learn even when the stakes are very high. Understanding the stakes of those situations as students experience them is an essential move toward imaging more inclusive pedagogies.
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