Cultural Incongruity and Social Status Ambiguity: The Experiences of Evangelical Christian Student Leaders at Two Midwestern Public Universities

This phenomenological investigation highlights the experiences of evangelical Christian student leaders at two Midwestern public universities. These students perceived their public university environments not only as incongruent with, but also as antagonistic and oppressive toward, their values, beliefs, and behaviors. Besides detailing how these students navigated their culturally incongruent environments, the authors introduce the concept of "social status ambiguity" to describe how differing perceptions of the religious identity of these students may result in the concurrent existence of the privileged and oppressed social statuses in that identity domain.