Religious Beliefs and the English Language Teaching Profession: Metaphors of Teachers' Self-Understandings

The relation between English language teaching and religion has not been given sufficient attention. Most of the existing explorations of this relationship have tended to reify Western-biased outlooks of this phenomenon, which rightly highlight serious moral dilemmas derived from a focus on Christian evangelization, neo-imperialist dynamics attached to the spread of English, and valid questions about the quality of teaching while proselytizing (e.g. Edge, 2003; Pennycook & Coutand-Marin, 2003). This body of work, however, fails to consider other possible and multiple ways in which religious values come to bear in ELT considering, for instance, non-Western, less globalized, and less diverse contexts such as rural locales in a South American country. This paper presents an alternative outlook, drawing on a narrative study of the current state of ELT in rural Colombia. The analysis uncovers religion-informed metaphors that illuminate how the spiritual values of eight teachers intersect with their professional identities. It suggests that spirituality plays a central role in helping teachers navigate the complex sociocultural conditions of teaching English in rural areas, influencing their roles beyond language instruction.