Go to college and lose your faith? Less likely now than in years past.
Sociologist Christian Smith of Notre Dame relays this encouraging information from his book Souls in Transition: the Religious & Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults:
“Among recently surveyed college students, 2.7 times more report that their religious beliefs have strengthened during their college experience than say their beliefs weakened.”
Dr. Smith traces this “clearly perceptible” change to the 1990’s. He credits it in part to an increase in committed Christian professors—both evangelical and Catholic—at secular universities in the U.S. These professors are open about their own faith and serve as an encouragement to students who are also believers.
He also notes that we are now in a post-secular era, in which religious topics are no longer automatically dismissed as “anti-scientific”:
“American culture and perhaps Western culture seems to have shifted from a secular to a post-secular era in which secularist assumptions are no longer simply taken for granted but are rather on the table for questioning and religion is increasingly considered a legitimate topic of discussion.”
At Faculty Commons, we are seeing a shift toward an interest in spiritual issues among professors, too.Since 1980, we’ve been equipping Christian professors to respectfully and appropriately share their personal faith stories with their colleagues and students.
It’s great to hear that we’re making progress!