LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY lullabypit)

This is a comment on a 5th_estate post by sirpaulsbuddy (thread here). I thought there might be some value in pulling my comment out and posting it here.
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At Wake Forest, all students were required, as part of their divisional requirements, to take a religion course. However, unlike the requisites for most departments, there were scads of courses that fulfilled the requirement. The most popular choice by far seemed to be World Religions.

I took Old Testament. I arrived at Wake a fairly devout Southern Baptist, although I was beginning to have some issues with certain of the Southern Baptist Convention's doctrines. The OT course stands as one of the most important 15 weeks of my life, because it was here that I first learned the history of the OT, which turned out to be somewhat of a departure from the dogma of the OT (especially as taught by literalist-minded Sunday School teachers).

'Twas a story steeped in irony, I suppose. Southern Baptist kid, Southern Baptist school, Old Testament course taught by Dr. Hamrick, a senior prof who was also, on the weekends, a Sunday School teacher at Wake Forest Baptist Church on campus. And the upshot was that I came away far more educated, far more capable and willing to think critically about religious issues, far more annoyed by the fictions that my denomination had taught me, and far more able to understand the complex relationship between fact and truth.

It was a significant moment in my migration away from Christianity, as it turned out...