Can We Bring Spirituality Back to Campus? Higher Education’s Re-Engagement with Values and Spirituality

In recent years on college and university campuses around the country an expanding and increasingly vigorous dialogue has begun, centered on discovering a place for examining personal values, meaning and purposes, including religious and spiritual values, as part of the educational experience. Individually and collectively, the voices of campus leaders, of faculty, of student affairs personnel, and of students themselves have begun calling for an exploration of ways to better integrate students’ search for meaning and their spiritual quests with their academic preparation in the classroom and through campus activities. Until the second half of the twentieth century, higher education in the United States was inextricably intertwined with the broad influence of churches, particularly Protestant churches, in shaping the country’s social and political climate. The college years have a significant impact in shaping the direction of an individual’s life. This paper examines the major historical trends in American society and in American higher education that serve as a framework for understanding the current interest in renewing an examination of personal and spiritual values as part of the mission of higher education to address the whole person.