Reexamining the Relationships of Religious Communities and the Public University: A Call-Back to Two Previous Scholars’ Responses With New Lenses

Higher education in the 2020s remains deeply divided on the role of religion, or what the Council on the Advancement of Standards (CAS) in 2023 describes as "religious, secular, and spiritual identities." In two previous articles in this Journal, one 2010 article by the late Peter Magolda and one in 2014 by Perry Glanzer, detail the ways in which students and the student groups themselves should be considered in relationship with their institutions. However, ten years after those arguments, questions of how religious leadership should relate to and interact with the institution still remain. The ways in which institutions are utilizing critical religious pluralism theory are at the forefront of three relationship-minded considerations the authors wish to highlight. Initially, understanding the relationships requires reexamination of the ways interpretations of the First Amendment affect public and the private university settings for religious life. This article explores the relevance of professionalizing the relationship between religious leaders and the institution, the ways in which such a relationship can support stability of the religious communities themselves, and the importance of progressive Christian groups as a part of a more religiously diverse campus's pluralistic religious and spiritual ethos. The gaps in Magolda and Glanzer's arguments, plus the emergence of critical religious pluralism theory, offers new opportunities to consider higher education policies and practices related to "religious, secular, and spiritual" identities.