Evangelical students cannot tolerate diversity of opinion and resist secular critiques of their views. My job is no longer the joy it once was

I'm a senior academic in a religion department at a Russell Group university. Before you ask, no, we're not training would-be vicars. And no, we're not in the business of promoting particular faiths.

In fact, I'm an atheist (always have been), and my motivating "belief" as an academic is that the secular study of religions is a crucial activity in any university.

You don't need to be a disciple of Richard Dawkins (and I'm certainly not) to realise religion continues to play a major role in contemporary societies and cultures, whether we like it or not. But those interested in religion need to be able to engage with it by deploying an intellectual and critical rigour that reading Dawkins' God Delusion simply cannot offer.

When I first started teaching in my current institution, a decade or so ago, I was impressed by the diversity of students in lectures. Lots were believers of one sort or another, but many others would describe themselves as atheists and agnostics.

Whatever they thought about religion, they shared an intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness that made teaching the best part of my job: they enjoyed being challenged in their assumptions, and they loved exploring the ways religions have shaped and been shaped by cultural, social and political shifts.

Most noticeable of all, students rarely expressed a need to proclaim or defend their own faith perspectives in lectures.

But things are so different now. The prioritisation of the student experience has rightfully empowered students to take a greater responsibility for their learning, which means that student unions and their societies enjoy a far greater influence in universities than ever before.

But this includes religious societies. And at my institution, the fee-paying culture has given rise to a predominantly white, economically-privileged, middle class student body, in which any diversity of religious or non-religious students has been overpowered by a particularly influential form of evangelical Christianity. It is a belief system that is uncomfortable with the academic study of religion, and which will often explicitly resist it.

Students' membership of this society is flattening the dynamics of lectures. Buying into the current claim that Christians suffer persecution in the UK, many appear compelled to resist the academic critique of the traditions and texts they hold dear. Recently, a group of students in a lecture refused to undertake the work set because they didn't want to apply postmodern perspectives to what for them was a sacred text.

A female colleague was accused of being "stupid" and "lacking authority" by those who believe a woman has no right to teach others about religious texts.

Other colleagues have been marked out as heretics in lectures. Of the students who remain outside this group – identifying as atheist, agnostic, Catholic or Jewish – a number have confided they feel intimidated or silenced by the louder, assertively evangelical students in the class.

Academic rigour, research-inspired teaching and independent, critical thinking are the hallmarks of today's university culture. And yet many of us have found ourselves diluting or softening the topics of our modules, and the intellectual and critical content of our lectures, for fear of poor student feedback (which is carefully monitored by the university). And to take account of the personal preferences of our evangelical students.

I used to think I had the best job in the world: to be able to discuss and debate the normalities and oddities of religion, a privilege I wanted to pass on to students. But now I feel increasingly unable to do so.

I've witnessed an increasing disjuncture in academic objectives and student expectations.

University common rooms up and down the country are populated with increasingly disaffected, unhappy academics, worried about the impact of the student experience on our teaching.

Most of us agree that universities' prioritisation of students' learning is a good thing: gone are the days when lectures were simply an opportunity for stuffy old codgers to turn in a performance of outrageous and impenetrable intellectual snobbery, with little thought for their baffled undergraduates.

For colleagues in other departments, an emphasis on the student experience might amount to little more than a slimming-down of reading lists in favour of podcasts, YouTube clips and blogposts. But in my subject area, the changes are much more profound.

Would you like to write for academics anonymous? Do you have an idea for a blog post about the trials, tribulations and frustrations of university life? Get in touch: claire.shaw@theguardian.com.

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