Students arrive on campus with various boxes of belongings to unpack, some heavy, some tidy, some more valuable, some more private. For many students, two of these boxes could be labeled ‘My Faith’ and ‘My Sexuality’–and these two can be among the most cumbersome to handle. How to balance them without having to set one down? How to hold them both closely, but still move forward to settle in with new friends in a new environment? How to keep from dropping one or the other, spilling its embarrassing contents for all to see?
This is what we say in our Preface about what we hope the reader will take away from this book:
We hope that readers will listen to the range of voices and experiences of these students. They are not all saying one thing, and so we have to listen carefully. We hope that Christians will also be more intentional as they engage the people represented in this project. We hope that Christian institutions will support a comprehensive and more nuanced view of personhood, including our sexuality and sexual identity, and that our hopes to build one another up will be reflected in the quality of our programming and in our interpersonal relationships.
This book presents findings from the first two years of a longitudinal study of sexual minority students at Christian colleges and universities. We provide information on their experience of sexual identity development, campus climate, psychological distress, emotional well-being, and religiosity.
The book is now available for order from InterVarsity Press.
Mark Yarhouse 