ERIC Number: EJ1466875
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1071-4413
EISSN: EISSN-1556-3022
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Navigating Challenges in American Higher Education: Korean International Christian Students' Use of Spiritual Capital in Response to White Christian Nationalism
Jinhee Choi; Chi Nguyen; Anke Li
Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, v47 n1 p72-94 2025
Despite extensive scholarly debates on Christian privilege and Secular privilege in American higher education, the voices of international students have often been absent from this discourse. This article is a response to a recent call for diverse perspectives to advance current discussions on white Christian nationalism in American higher education. Borrowing Bradford Verter's (2003) spiritual capital, we explore Korean international Christian students' experience of white Christian nationalism and its counter-movements in a college town near a public land-grant university in the Northeast. Through life history interviews with 16 participants, our study reveals the complex, problematic, and nuanced relationship between Korean international Christian students and white Christian nationalism. On the one hand, our participants acknowledged that the dominance of whiteness in Christianity led their professors and classmates to overlook the possibility that Asians could also be Christian, resulting in feelings of isolation and marginalization in class. On the other hand, they encountered the perception of Christianity as outdated, broken, and unintellectual among American professors and colleagues, which silenced their voices. In navigating these challenges, participants drew on their spiritual capital to construct their meanings, identities, and belongings in the social, academic, and religious realms.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Christianity, Nationalism, Higher Education, Whites, College Faculty, Foreign Students, Student Attitudes, Teacher Student Relationship, Asians, Educational Experience, Land Grant Universities, Religious Factors, Social Isolation, Disadvantaged, Self Concept, Spiritual Development
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A