Assignment 2 of 3

Course 2, Assignment 2 of 3

Explain It to a Friend

What You Are About To Do

This is the middle assignment in Course 2. You have already done one thing. In the first assignment you picked one of three worked scenarios, performed the sorting move on a claim you had inherited about Christianity, and wrote about what became visible when you named what was faith, what was packaging, and what was residue. You did that as a student working through an analytical exercise. The instructor read what you wrote. The instructor asked you challenge questions. You responded.

In this assignment the register changes. You are no longer writing to demonstrate that you performed a move. You are writing as someone who has learned something and is telling another person what you have learned. The other person is not your instructor. The other person is a friend who heard you have been studying at Saint Luke's and asked you what the course is about.

You have fifteen minutes of your friend's attention. You are going to use them.

If you completed Course 1, you have done a version of this assignment once before. Course 1 Assignment 2 asked you to explain the close-read in friend-register. Course 2 Assignment 2 asks you to explain the sorting move in friend-register. The form is the same. The substance is different. You can draw on what you learned about voice in Course 1 Assignment 2, and this sheet will not repeat everything that one already taught you. If you did not complete Course 1, or if Course 1 Assignment 2 has faded, read the guidance below carefully. The voice is harder than it looks.

What You Are Becoming

Before this sheet tells you what you are going to do, it has to tell you what you are about to become. It is not a profession. It is not a title. It is a kind of Christian who is rarer than they should be and more useful than they get credit for.

A believer who can talk about Christianity without arguing about Christianity.

Modern Christianity has many people who can argue. Fewer who can talk. Almost none who can talk about the faith in a way that makes the faith clearer rather than more confusing to whoever is listening. The last category is what this diploma is forming you for. You are not being trained into apologetics. You are not being trained into evangelism. Those are their own roles and they have their own formation. You are being formed into something simpler and older: a Christian who knows what they carry, can tell the difference between what is essential and what is particular, and can explain this to a person who was not raised to ask the question.

This is what you are about to practice. The conversation with the friend is the form. The substance is what the book has taught you about the faith, the packaging, and the residue, and what you performed on the page in Assignment 1 of this course. The test is whether you can put the substance into the form without breaking either one.

You will not feel ready. This is the first time you are doing this particular version of this move. The voice you are refining here is a voice you will use for the rest of your Christian life, and sharpen further in the Master of Christian Catechesis if you continue. What matters at this stage is that you do it with awareness of what you are doing.

What Friend-Register Is

The voice you are about to write in is not a stylistic choice. It is not about making your writing warmer or simpler or more casual. It is about who you are oriented toward while you are writing.

An academic paper is oriented toward showing the reader you understand the material. A sermon is oriented toward moving the hearer toward a decision. A catechism is oriented toward forming the catechumen in doctrine. An argument with a skeptic is oriented toward defending a position. A conversation with a friend is none of these things. A conversation with a friend is oriented toward the other person's curiosity. They asked you something. You are answering them. They are allowed to interrupt. They are allowed to not be impressed. They are allowed to disagree. The success of the conversation is not measured by what you said. It is measured by whether they wanted to keep talking.

This means several things in practice.

It means you use the words you would actually use in a conversation. If a word would not leave your mouth when you were talking to your friend on a bench outside a coffee shop, it should not leave your pen here. The book uses words like "packaging" and "residue" and "structural." Some of these words will land naturally in a friend conversation. Some will not. You have to decide, based on your friend and your voice, which words carry and which ones you need to replace. If you keep a technical word, make sure you explain it the first time in words your friend would use.

It means you tell them something that interested you, and you tell them why it interested you. Not because interest is the highest virtue, but because the friend asked what you are studying, and the honest answer is the part of the course that actually got your attention, not the summary of the table of contents.

It means you stop when they would stop you. If you can feel, while you are writing, that your friend would at this point raise an eyebrow and say "wait, what does that mean?", answer them right there. Do not keep going and hope they figure it out.

It means you do not try to win them. The friend is not an opponent. The friend is not a prospect. The friend is a person who asked a question and wants to know what you have been doing. If at any point your writing starts to sound like you are arguing with them, back up. The arguing voice is not friend-register. It is debate-register, and it will land differently than you think it will.

The goal is not to make your friend agree with everything you say. The goal is to make your friend understand what you have been doing, in a way that leaves them more curious than they were before.

The Particular Trap of This Course

Course 2 has a failure mode that Course 1 did not have, and you need to watch for it.

Course 1 was about a reading move. The close-read is a technique. You performed it on a passage. Your friend could follow along easily, because they could see the passage and see the move.

Course 2 is about an inherited frame, and the sorting of that frame into faith, packaging, and residue. This material is structurally different. It is slipperier. It is easier to get abstract because the objects you are sorting are not passages on a page but ideas, traditions, inheritances. It is also more tempting to sound like you are critiquing your friend's Christianity, or somebody's Christianity, when what you are actually doing is describing a move you made on your own frame.

Resist this. Two failure modes specifically.

The first failure mode is abstraction. You start talking about "traditions" and "packaging" and "residue" and "the Christian faith" in the abstract, and your friend stops being able to picture what you are talking about. The antidote is specificity. Your tradition, the one you grew up in or encountered first, is concrete. The particular claim you worked on in Assignment 1 is concrete. The specific thing you were told about it, and the specific thing you came to see instead, is concrete. Ground the whole conversation in what you yourself actually did.

The second failure mode is criticism of others. The sorting move, done carelessly, can slide into "here is what my tradition got wrong" or "here is what Christians generally believe that is actually wrong." That voice will land on your friend as complaint, not conversation. It will make them uncomfortable. It will make them defensive on behalf of people they have never met. The antidote is to keep the voice personal. You are talking about your own inheritance, your own work, your own seeing. Not everyone's. Not theirs. Not even your family's, unless you have permission from your family to discuss them in these terms. You are describing the move you made on the thing that was handed to you.

The Friend You Are Imagining

To write this paper well, you need a specific picture of the person on the other side of it. The same guidance applies as in Course 1 Assignment 2.

The person is not a fellow believer in formation. If they were a catechumen, you would be writing catechetical voice, and the Master of Christian Catechesis students are the ones who do that.

The person is not a hostile atheist looking to dismantle your faith. If they were hostile, you would be writing apologetics, which is not this assignment.

The person is a friend. Pick a real one, in your head, while you write. A sibling. A roommate. A coworker. A neighbor. Someone who knows you, who respects you enough to ask you a real question, who is not trying to convert you or be converted, and who will actually listen for fifteen minutes if the conversation is worth listening to.

What does this friend know about Christianity already? They know what the culture has given them. They have probably heard of the Bible. They have probably seen a verse somewhere. They have probably been to a wedding or a funeral in a church. They have heard people argue about religion and have formed a vague opinion that the arguments are tedious. They are not ignorant and they are not hostile. They are ordinarily curious about what you have been doing with your time, and they asked because they actually wanted to know, and now the answer is your problem.

If you used a specific friend for Course 1 Assignment 2, you may use the same friend again. They will remember that conversation. You do not need to start over. You can pick up with them. "Remember last time we talked about that verse? I've been doing something else now." If you are using a different friend, or if the friend you are picturing is generic, give them a face. The conversation is more honest when the person on the other side is specific.

That is your audience.

What You Are Going To Do

Write, in approximately one thousand to twelve hundred words, how you would explain what you have been studying to that friend.

The structure of the paper is yours to find. There is no required three-part division. There is no template. What you include, and in what order, is for you to decide based on what would actually serve the person on the other side of the conversation.

You may draw on anything you have read in the book. You may draw on what you performed in Assignment 1 of this course. You may tell them about the specific claim you sorted and what you found when you sorted it. You may tell them about a chapter of the book that caught your attention. You may tell them about the whole move the book is teaching, at a high level, with one concrete example that shows what the move looks like. Any of these can work. What will not work is a recitation of the book's table of contents, because a recitation of the table of contents is what someone who has read a book says. It is not what someone who has absorbed a book says.

The most honest version of this paper is the version that leans heavily on your Assignment 1 work. You did specific work on a specific claim. That work has a story. The story has a beginning (what you were told), a middle (what you saw when you sorted), and an end (what is different for you now). Your friend does not want a summary of the book. Your friend wants to know what you did and what you found. Tell them.

The Paper

Approximately one thousand to twelve hundred words. Structure is yours. Voice is the friend-register described above. Substance draws on the book and on your work in Assignment 1.

The Video

A recorded video of ten minutes, plus or minus two. You present the substance of your paper on camera, in your own voice, looking into the camera. You may use brief notes. You may not read from a script.

The video is not a summary of the paper. It is you having the actual conversation, out loud, with the imagined friend, while the camera watches. If the video and the paper sound like the same person, the voice is yours. If they sound like two different people, one of them is written and the other one is you, and the instructor can tell the difference.

Your face must be visible throughout. The recording quality does not need to be professional but must be clear enough that your instructor can see you and hear you. Phone, webcam, tablet, all are acceptable.

The Challenge Response

After your instructor has reviewed your paper and your video, you will receive three challenge questions. The instructor is no longer playing the role of a teacher checking your work. The instructor is playing the role of your friend. The three questions will be questions the friend might actually ask after hearing your explanation. Follow-ups. Clarifications. The "wait, what about..." questions that a thoughtful listener would offer when something in your explanation almost made sense but did not quite land. They will not be hostile. They will be the questions a real friend would have.

You respond on camera, in friend-register, the way you would respond to a real friend asking a real follow-up. Three to six minutes total for all three responses. Same format as the first video: on camera, notes permitted, no script.

Quality Checks While You Write

If you find yourself wanting a starting point because the freedom feels paralyzing, here are some questions to ask yourself while you write. They are not a structure. They are quality checks. Use them while writing the first draft and again while reading what you have written.

Am I writing as if I am talking to my friend, or as if I am writing a paper? If I am writing as if I am writing a paper, the voice is off. Picture the friend. Picture them sitting across from me. Picture them asking what I have been studying. Write the answer to them, not the answer to my instructor.

Are the words I am using the words I would actually use in a conversation? If I am using a word I picked up from the textbook and have not yet made my own, either replace it with a word I would use, or take a moment in the writing to give my friend the word by explaining what it carries.

If my friend stops me at any point in this paper and says "wait, what does that mean," can I answer them in the next sentence, or have I used a term I cannot unpack? If I cannot unpack it, I should not use it. If I can unpack it, I should unpack it before my friend has to ask.

Am I grounding this in concrete specifics (my tradition, the specific claim I worked on, what I was actually told) or have I drifted into abstract talk about "Christianity" and "traditions"? If I have drifted, bring it back down. My friend cannot picture abstractions. They can picture the specific thing I grew up being told and the specific thing I came to see instead.

Am I telling my friend what I did, or am I critiquing someone's Christianity? Critiquing someone's Christianity will make my friend uncomfortable and will not teach them anything. Telling them what I did will.

Am I helping my friend see what I have come to see, or am I demonstrating to my instructor that I have come to see it? The first is the assignment. The second is performance. They sound similar on the page until you read your own writing carefully, and then they sound very different.

Have I left my friend more curious than they were when the conversation started, or have I left them tired? The good version of this paper leaves the friend wanting to know more. The tedious version leaves the friend glad the conversation is over.

How This Will Be Evaluated

This assignment is graded pass / does not yet pass. The evaluation looks at the paper, the video, and the challenge response together, as a single body of work, against five dimensions.

Dimension 1: Evidence you read the book. Specific references to material from The Scope that show you engaged the text rather than skimmed it. Generic references to "the book" or "what I learned" without concrete content is the failure mode.

Dimension 2: You drew on what you performed in Assignment 1 of this course. The sort you performed on your chosen scenario in the first assignment is part of the substance this paper should use. You are not required to make it the center. You are required to use it. A paper that shows no evidence of having performed Assignment 1 is a paper that skipped a step.

Dimension 3: Honest disclosure of your own formation. A friend-register conversation about Christianity is not a performance of mastery. It is one person who has been doing some reading telling another person what they found. Honesty about where you started, what you thought before, and what changed for you does not have to be in a labeled section, but it does have to be present. A voice that pretends to have always known what it now knows is a voice your friend will not trust.

Dimension 4: The voice is yours. The video verifies this. The writing and the speaking sound like the same person, and that person sounds like they actually own the reasoning they are walking through. Scripted delivery is the failure mode on camera. Written-paper voice is the failure mode on the page.

Dimension 5: The voice lands. This is the make-or-break dimension and it is what the assignment is ultimately for. The writing sounds like a person explaining something to another person, not like a student stitching together a summary. Your friend would want to keep listening. Your friend would not feel preached at, lectured at, or converted at. They would feel talked with. If the voice does not land, the other four dimensions do not save the paper.

A student passes when the body of work passes on all five dimensions. Dimension 5 carries particular weight, because it is the dimension that names what this assignment is for. A student who does not yet pass receives written feedback identifying which dimensions need strengthening, and is invited to resubmit. The College's interest is in your formation, not in gatekeeping. There is no limit on the number of resubmissions. A student who arrives at the voice after three attempts has passed, and the number of attempts is not recorded in the evaluation.

A Closing Word

You are about to do something for the second time. The first was in Course 1. That practice paid. The voice you began to develop there is ready to carry more weight now, because the substance you are carrying is heavier. A frame is bigger than a passage. A sort is more structural than a close-read. The conversation with your friend this time will need to do more work in the same fifteen minutes.

You will not feel ready. That is still the right feeling. The voice will sharpen across the rest of the diploma and beyond. What matters is that you practice it now, with honest substance, on a friend you can actually picture.

Begin.