Law and government professor conducts workshop on integrating faith with academics

Serving as a reminder of what it means to be an educator at Liberty University, Helms School of Government associate professor Dr. Edna Udobong closed out this academic year’s Faith Learning Integration Workshop series on Monday by explaining how professors can use their faith to influence the way they teach, regardless of the department or lecture topic.

Each year, Liberty’s Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) invites faculty members to share what faith learning integration looks like in their classroom or to present on a focused topic of faith in their respective academic field. These workshops have continued for 10 years with the purpose of fostering an interdisciplinary discussion of philosophies and practices related to the integration of faith, which CTE director Dr. Shawn Bielicki described as “a critical component of an excellent, well-rounded education from a Biblical Worldview.”

Udobong teaches government and School of Law courses while also serving as Liberty’s Fulbright Program advisor. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria. In 1995, she received the Harvard Law School Reginald Lewis Human Rights award. Her areas of interest include international law, international human rights, immigration law, adoption law, and lawyering skills.

She began Monday’s session by stating that she knows God has called her to teach at Liberty.

“I know that I’m here, just like we all are, not by accident but because God wants us to be here,” Udobong said. “I’m so privileged to be here at this institution where I can share my love for the One I love, the One who first loved me, and I can take it into the classroom. The reason I want to see my students is not because I have a textbook written by someone else. It’s because I have the Bible and I’m allowed to preach it and teach it to them.”

As a Christian leading a classroom of students who are almost all fellow believers, Udobong said that she strives to put her faith into action by leading lectures with the Bible as the main source. She uses the Bible’s God-spoken wisdom to inform how she teaches the principles of law and government.

“If we declare it with our mouth and believe it in our heart that Jesus is Lord, as Romans 10 says, we will be saved,” she said. “Faith is acting out our beliefs and sharing it, and we cannot share what we don’t believe in. Faith without action is void. You have to act on it.”

Udobong added that if you know something with your head but not your heart, it is like reading something out of a textbook. But linking it with the Bible brings the knowledge to heart.

“If we know the Bible, it is in our heart and we can share it everywhere,” she said. “Every discipline is in the Bible, and so if we have a knowledge of the ultimate book, the Scripture, we can share it as we read every other book. God gives us knowledge, and so if we have faith, we need to teach what we believe.”

Those outside of the Christian faith might know the contents of a textbook, Udobong said, but the knowledge from God found in the Bible ought to guide how Christians take in and retain information as both a teacher and student.

“There are people out (in the world) who know the textbook better, they can write about it better, but they don’t know the Holy Bible and what it says, and that’s where we can shine and display a light on top of what textbooks say. That is where we make a difference,” Udobong said. “(Our teaching) has to be personal, in the heart, and we need to know the Word to do that.”

She explained that all students need direction, encouragement, discipline, character building, and more, and she explained that God is the ultimate source of it all.

“If we start imparting the Word into their lives, they’ll take it with them,” Udobong said. “We integrate faith into teaching to give students biblical truths that will help them survive, and it will help them withstand the many wars of our culture today. That integration will yield fruit, and that fruit is the people we send out into the world.”