Does college undermine religiosity?
When it comes to religion, higher education has a bad reputation among some people.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, recently repeated the trope that higher education is causing students to stray from religion.
The idea that college can weaken students’ religious faith has a long history, said Daniel Cox, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute.
The reasoning: Professors are liberal and non-religious and have a large impact on students, Cox said.
That’s just not the case, Cox said.
“Most folks are talking about administrators or college professors” influencing students to stray from religion, he said. “It’s basically the fear that when young people move out of their community ... they’re put in a different context where they can fall prey to different authority figures.”
The impact that college has on students’ religious faith “is much more subtle and indirect,” Cox said.
His research points to students’ lives before college as having more of an impact on their religiosity than their college experiences do.
Almost 80 percent of religiously unaffiliated young adults say they shed their affiliation before turning 18, Cox said. Only 38 percent of senior citizens say they stopped believing before 18.
For Brian Groenke, a student at Ohio State University and treasurer of the Secular Student Alliance, skepticism about religion started long before he attended the university.
Growing up Methodist, Groenke wanted to believe, but he found himself questioning the religion early in high school. “My attempts felt forced,” he said.
Groenke said of Trump Jr.’s comments about college undermining the religiosity of students: “That’s a kind of charade that’s put up by a lot of people, especially religious extremists.”
Groenke said Ohio State has more Christian groups than he can count, and just one for secular students.
Marc Bragin, director of spiritual and religious life at Kenyon College in Gambier and its Jewish chaplain, said college encourages students to appreciate different perspectives.
“For a lot of people, religion is that different perspective,” he said.
“College is the perfect time for students to explore lots of different things, both academically and in student affairs,” Bragin said. “So if we can incorporate religious life into both of those ... it will enhance ( students’) lives even after they leave campus.”
Other students are much more likely to influence their peers than professors are, Cox said. Students are greatly affected by their social environment and those they hang out with, he said. If their friends don’t prioritize religion or attend religious services, the students probably won’t, either.
“This is all new,” Cox said. Previous generations weren’t ambivalent about religion, as millennials are, he said.
Today, 24 percent of all Americans are religiously unaffiliated, including 38 percent of people ages 18 to 29, 26 percent of people ages 30 to 49, 18 percent of people 50 to 64 and 12 percent of people 65 or older, according to a study by PRRI.
Cox said that is “in part because of changing ideas about culture.” When it comes to religion, children in the United States are brought up much differently than earlier generations were, Cox said. There’s less pressure to conform to “normative” religious ideas than when baby boomers were growing up and raising children, Cox said.
“Millennials were raised in a really different religious environment,” Cox said. “They’re less exposed to religious ideas and formal religious practices. They haven’t built up as solid of a foundation of religious identity ( as previous generations). It’s more likely to just fade away.”