Despite the bulk of research investigating the role of motivation in language learning, not much attention has been directed toward the question of how teachers' motivational and emotional dynamics may figure into everyday teaching practices. Hence, this study seeks to problematise English teachers' initiatives to incorporate religious discourse into ELT practice in an Indonesian university, by attempting to illuminate teachers' underlying motivation for such incorporation. It also examines how teachers navigate the religious discourse as it was being subjectively experienced and articulated through everyday practice that requires subtle emotional investment. Based on three classroom observations and stimulated-recall interviews, our analysis revealed that the embodied emotions, as reflected in the lecturers' structures of feeling (Williams, 1977), are disparate, that it is hard to generalise the lecturers' motivational orientation. Another lecturer evinced a negative feeling about the incorporation, defying the widely held belief that religious discourses inclusion usually resonates with positive emotive feelings. The teachers' open vulnerability also questions the presumption of religious-affiliated institutions as a hospitable space. Thus, the study has bidirectional pedagogical values in the sense that religiously-inspired ELT materials hold a considerable significance for teachers' motivation-emotion, which in turn contributes to the shaping of their everyday teaching practice.