Reflection on Magolda & Gross (2009)

It’s All About Jesus: Faith as an Oppositional Collegiate Subculture / Magolda & Gross (2009)

Magolda and Gross, non-evangelicals wrote this book through two years’ ethnographic study of a collegiate evangelical student organization on public university because there were few and old research to understand the experiences of evangelical students in public higher education.  Their methodological approach and personal reflections is based on thick description that offed details of dailies.  They tried to integrate three topics (religion, faith/spiritual life, and higher education) by examine “how students’ participation in a homogeneous evangelical student organization enhances their satisfaction with their collegiate experience and helps them develop important life lessons and skills” in their research study (p. 14).  Through their study, they emphasized student engagement and enhanced the role of religion in the (co)curriculum on higher education.

They used rituals (performative act, symbolic mechanisms, and symbolic performances) as their interpretive framework to categorize the values and behaviors of the Student Serving Christ (SSC).  They detailed and thoughtfully examined SSC and its members to assess the role of religious and secular organizations on campus in the moral development of students.  In chapter two and three, the outcome of this qualitative research exemplified a good ethnography method by the following procedures: 1) gaining access; 2) collecting data by observations, interviews, and physical artifacts, and 3) analyzing data with face validity, content validity, and catalytic validity including data triangulation (investigator triangulation, theory triangulation, and methodological triangulation).

They recounted their confessional tale and focused on SSC’s ritual recruitment, teaching and learning, outreach, and the construction of leadership.  Then, they focused their analysis on how the lesson learned from their field study and discuss some important points related to student success.  For example, they found that evangelical student involvement in the co-curriculum and peer education inside and outside classroom were powerful to foster their learning experiences as well as campus fellowships with their sense of safety.  They also found that “religion, spirituality, and the pursuit of meaning in life are topic of interest” for these SSC believer in their study (p. 67).

Firstly, the role of peers in the rituals of SSC was important to create a supportive community and increase student success.  As a SSC’S pedagogy and effective student involvements, they presented “four qualitatively different levels of involvement”; entry-level worship programs, second level of Bible study, third level of the Servant Leadership Team (SLT), and fourth level of the Evangelism Team and the Discipleship Team (p. 273).  Through these levels of involvements, students had opportunities for development of intrapersonal belief, morals and ethical behaviors, interpersonal skills, and leadership abilities. Consequentially, SSC’S cocurriculum encouraged students to mobilize to achieve a greater good. 

Secondly, they added an importance role of SCC for “building a sense of community among student–a sense of belonging at the institution” by observing that SSC leadership team recognized the importance of Christian students’ need for belonging to a community where they could openly express their Christian beliefs (p. 87).  For example, from the Matthew’s preaching during a Friday worship service, researchers found that “SSC’s cocurriculum interconnected students learning with the organization’s core values: faith, fellowship, and fun” that fostered build a supportive community in students’ educational settings (p. 277).  Thus they challenged educators to dedicate to bridging the gap between curricular and co-curricular aspects of students’ lives with their research analysis.

Lastly, Magolda and Gross as ethnographers found that SSC strived to transform the university culture and offer new ways of interpreting the world with the goal of producing Christian life.  As Astin (2004) observed that spiritual involvement helped college students develop their emotional maturity, moral development, and self-understanding, they also found that rituals (or spiritual activities) of SSC were “essential to students’ identity development and essential to living out American higher education standards” (300).  For example, as students explore aspects of “,” they wrestled with the their self-identity and “questions of significance and meaning” about “what matters to them and to what they are willing to devote their lives” (p. 241).  Therefore, religious aspect of campus climate should be considered as “creating new ways of interpreting the world though mixing religion with their college education” (p. 103)