Students in the Margin: The Creation of Evangelical Ministries on College Campuses

My research focuses on how evangelical ministries help students create their identity as individuals and members of a social group through rituals and language. I use videos and promotional materials from the SALT Company Ministry to understand how students and the organization understand performing their role as evangelicals. Using this information, I found that identity creation of SALT ministries and members can come into tension with perceived hegemonic campus culture, such as disagreements about liberal social values and party culture. Members of evangelical denominations have framed themselves as the minority, but empirically they make a large portion of our campus. My research is to understand what happens when a majority of students create their identity by being in conflict with the larger campus and what this means for students who are not evangelicals that represent the campus culture the SALT Company denounces