Here are the trends that tell me campus chaplains have to seize a public stage soon or wither completely away:
- religious chaplaincies have over the last fifty years gradually been moved away from the central consciousness of campus life to the periphery;
- in the course of which, religious chaplaincies have come to emphasize pastoral care, that is, ministry in the private sphere;
- faculty in higher education seem less sure than ever about the college’s stake in students’ personal development;
- and administrators making budget decisions today find that meeting the now widely diversified religious needs of students are expensive and ineffective to them;
- finally, the steeply declining religion department enrolments mean that a gap has opened in the means available to raise religious literacy on campus.
Hence, chaplains, it’s time to go public with your culture work.