Reading the Signs of Sustainability in Christian Higher Education: Symbolic Value Claims or Substantive Organizational Change?

Abstract

In this chapter, I examine campus sustainability and climate activism in U.S. religious higher education. I use social movement perspectives from sociology to assess its organizational boundaries and cultural foundations in a case study featuring the Consortium of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). Signals of campus sustainability among them are weak from institutionalized higher education data reporting sources. Stronger signals of sustainability come from direct campus surveys by student-led religious environmental movement organizations. Growing campus climate activism and leadership by students, faculty, and administrators also appears on these conservative Christian colleges and universities. Their discourse about the meaning of sustainability, strategies for implementing it, and its rationale differs significantly from secular advocates of sustainability in higher education. Little mention of climate change appears in it. Furthermore, their justification for campus sustainability is framed almost exclusively within religious terms. Overall, I find in this exploratory analysis that the prevalence of campus sustainability initiatives among CCCU schools is underreported, but still minimal. Some barriers to expanding it reflect the particular subculture of U.S. conservative Protestants. Others are shared with challenges secular campuses face when implementing organizational change for sustainability. Opportunity for building bridges to overcome them begins in better understanding these conservative Christian campuses' religious framing of sustainability values and their organizational cultures. Given the larger societal and political context of climate change in the U.S., however, this requires greater engagement of secular advocates of sustainability in higher education and climate activists. The value this holds for addressing climate change's possible impacts and reducing its human contributions comes from how this sector of higher education educates many future leaders of this influential conservative religious segment of U.S. society.