Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: There’s No Crisis of Faith on Campus, by Ryan Burge (Baptist Pastor; Author, Twenty Myths About Religion and Politics in America (2022); and Assistant Professor of Political Science, Eastern Illinois University):
Many religious parents worry that higher education will weaken their children’s belief, but evidence shows the result is often just the opposite.
As a pastor who is also a professor of social science, I am often asked by parents of teenagers who were raised in a religious environment how their son or daughter can maintain their faith when they go off to some large state university or private liberal-arts college. Many parents seem to believe that as soon as their child walks into a freshman class, they will throw out their Bibles and pick up Nietzsche.
They haven’t plucked this idea out of thin air. It was the premise of the 2014 film God’s Not Dead, which became very popular in Christian circles and spawned two sequels. In the movie, an evangelical student enrolls in a philosophy class led by an atheist professor. To pass the course, every student has to sign a declaration that “God is dead.” The main character refuses, leading to a series of debates in the class about the existence of God. In the end, most of the class sides with the student, and the professor leaves in defeat.
With reinforcement such as this, the assumption that going to college undermines faith has put down deep roots in the psyche of many conservative Christians. … But is it true that going to college makes students less religious? Are people with higher levels of education more likely to say that they have no religious affiliation than those who have completed only high school?
Using data from 12 years of Harvard University’s Cooperative Election Study, an annual survey of more than 50,000 Americans, I calculated the share who identified as atheist, agnostic and nothing in particular at six education levels, ranging from those with no high school diploma to those with graduate degrees. The results are clear: People with the least education are the most likely to indicate that they have no religious affiliation. In 2008, 26% of those without a high school diploma identified as an atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. Only 19% of those with a graduate degree did. And that 7-point gap stayed fairly consistent over the following 12 years. … Other scholars have come to similar conclusions. …
It pains me to say that I don’t have much influence over the students in my courses. But that doesn’t mean college doesn’t change them. Looked at in its entirety, the college experience may actually make students more sure of their religious beliefs after they graduate. This is the idea known to psychologists as the “inoculation effect”: When someone is confronted with weak attacks on their beliefs, they become more prepared to defend those beliefs when they come under serious attacks. This is essentially how a vaccine works: It gives an individual a weakened version of the virus, so that when the immune system encounters the real thing, it can easily fight off the villain. Similarly, challenging a young person to defend their beliefs in a supportive, open environment like college may leave them better prepared to hold firm to their convictions later in life. …
As a parent myself, I completely understand the tendency to shelter our children. But college comes at an ideal time in the life-cycle for young people to venture out and engage with people who don’t share their beliefs. Exposing teenagers to new ideas and new cultures is one of the most powerful things we can do for the next generation.
New York Times op-eds by Ryan Burge:
