Securing Faith in College: “Getting Plugged In” and Ontological Security Among White Evangelicals

This article explores how White evangelical church leaders help secondary school students navigate the college selection process and undergraduate experience in a polarized climate. Discourse analysis of 25 semi-structured interviews conducted in North Carolina and Virginia revealed that participants used strategies and approaches collectively referred to as “getting students plugged in” to evangelicalism. They warned students early about college, leveraged technology to ground them in the “home church,” and gave advice ranging from authoritative to authoritarian. I explain these results using ontological security theory, suggesting that as evangelical Protestantism loses its position as a dominant cultural norm—due in part to rapid religious disaffiliation—some leaders experience insecurity around their ostensibly diminished role in public life.