A Civic Revival at Princeton: The Citizen-Shaping Capacities of Chaplains in the Office of Religious Life

Abstract

Using interviews with campus chaplains in the Princeton Office of Religious Life (ORL) and connecting to findings at other colleges, I show that campus chaplains can teach students civic mindedness through communal reflection on their relationship to others and facilitation of relationships across difference. In the first section of this paper, I use rhetoric and reports from the federal government to situate the purpose of higher education as decidedly democratic. I argue that the current era of higher education is marked by promise and policy of developing students as citizens who engage in their communities with an ethic of civic mindedness. By recognizing the civic orientation of student development models, I show that increased spending and hiring of student support professionals is justified by the psychosocial needs of an emerging adult population with the responsibility of caring for and collaborating within a pluralistic society. Then, using the democratic dimensions of student development, I turn to the role of religion in higher education and particularly campus chaplains as members of this support staff. I posit that beyond their previously observed contributions to campus life religious leaders can be active partners in teaching and modeling a civic ethos on campus. I then turn to findings from my interviews with chaplains hosted by the Princeton University Office of Religious Life (the ORL) to outline examples of this work, finding that the civic potential of religious involvement on campus resides in shifting one’s moral frame through reflection in conversation and participating in dialogue across difference. Finally, I use the barriers observed by chaplains to suggest academic policy changes at Princeton and point to potential partnerships for educational leaders and policymakers across the nation to discover and replicate the social capital of religious campus groups.