By Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service
Though college students’ attendance at worship services declines, their interest in spiritual matters grows during their time on campus, a new UCLA study shows.
UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute compared the views of students who were freshmen in the fall of 2004 with the same students’ thoughts in the spring of 2007, when they were juniors.
The survey of more than 14,000 students found that more than 50 percent of students considered “integrating spirituality into my life” very important or essential in 2007, an increase of almost 10 percentage points from 2004.
Likewise more students thought “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” was essential or very important.
While their spiritual interests increased, their worship attendance did not.
Slightly more than half the students said they attended services in college at about the same rate as they attended them in high school.
Almost 40 percent, however, said they worshipped less frequently. Seven percent said they worshipped more.
Researchers also concluded that an increasing percentage of students had an “ecumenical worldview.” In 2004, 42 percent said they endorsed “improving my understanding of other countries and cultures;” 55 percent said the same in 2007.
Students showed increasing agreement over time with the idea that nonreligious people can lead lives as moral as those of religious believers, with 90 percent approving the statement this year.
“The data suggest that college is influencing students in positive ways that will better prepare them for leadership roles in our global society,” said UCLA emeritus professor Alexander W. Astin, co-principal investigator for the research.
The research included 14,527 students attending 136 U.S. colleges and universities. Its margin of error is between 1 and 2 percentage points.
The project, which is in its fifth year, is funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Copyright 2007 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
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posted December 20, 2007 at 5:15 pm
This is good news in several ways. College is the best chance a lot of people have to think about the big questions (at least till retirement); it’s good many are doing so. And it’s good several are finding approaches that don’t involve organized religion. There are a lot of alternatives.
And I really like that our younger educated people, at least, recognize religion and morality are independent.
This must drive some on the radical religious right nuts.
posted December 20, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I’m glad to see and hear the youth of our country taking interest in GOD and religion in general. I find it slightly disturbing though that the same people don’t feel it necesarry to spend time in mass. I personally believe that you must have devotion too prayer, and mass to have a real relationship with GOD. If you just go through the motions with GOD, there cannot much of a spiritual reward involved. GOD is power absolute and Prayer is absolute power. With Prayer you have evrything and without Prayer you have absolutely nothing.
posted December 20, 2007 at 6:53 pm
“With Prayer you have evrything and without Prayer you have absolutely nothing.”
fos&a, when was the last time you were “without prayer” to know what you’d have without prayer? My guess is, not since you were a toddler, and you are repeating hearsay with as little basis as your claim about having everything.
If you are so high on prayer, please explain to me why, back on 9/11, with hundreds of millions or billions of people watching those towers burn with those people still in them, and no doubt the majority of the people watching believed prayer has some power, and a LOT of them surely prayed for those in the towers to get out alive, please explain to me why they did not. Prayer failed its biggest test ever that day. People were praying earnestly and any god with any power to speak of could have held back those flames till people got out but they burned and the buildings collapsed on 3,000 people.
Oh, and if prayer is of any use why do we spend billions of dollars a year on health and on defense? Why don’t we just fund some preachers to pray for our good health and protection from our enemies and save a bundle? But even you, I suspect, go to a doctor and happily pay your taxes for the army, etc. If “With Prayer you have everything” why don’t nations save all that money and use it? Could it be everyone has noticed prayer is of no use in those situations?
So please explain just what the “evrything” is we have when we have prayer. I’m guessing that with “evrything” and 95 cents you can get a cup of coffee some places.
posted December 20, 2007 at 9:56 pm
“Students showed increasing agreement over time with the idea that non religious people can lead lives as moral as those of religious believers.” It seems we have some very intellegent children (young adults) in college these days. They don’t think “church going” makes a person “moral”. They have found that out early in life…good.
It is also interesting to find that 40% worshipped less frequently and only 7% more. Even as their spiritual interests increased their formal worship didn’t.
College is a time when young adults can explore their world and learn new things without the parents looking over their shoulders. They have to make their own decisions now on everything, when to eat, what classes to take, to drink or not to drink, to go to a church or not to go to church (even if they attended before they came to University). It seems that organized religion isn’t important to the current group of students. To me, this is excellent.
Yes, nnmns, this certainly must make some of the RR folks want to, to, PRAAAAAY ? for the unbelievers!
posted December 20, 2007 at 10:05 pm
fos&a: Perhaps these young folks don’t find attending Mass (not everyone is Catholic in this world) or any church, is necessary to live a moral life or that there is even a need to believe in a god, to lead a moral life. For you, prayer seems to be your answer to everything. For others, it isn’t necessary. Not everyone is a believer in a divine being.
posted December 21, 2007 at 12:42 am
Older High School & College students are often among the most spiritual age group. They identify with the importance of rituals and will often work to create their own. They will either find a group to join or even initiate a group. For this reason they are easily recruited and manipulated. The more honest groups ill allow them to take the lead and find their place. It seems to be part of the Western young adults developmental tasks. It is very cool to watch, or better to be part of.
posted December 21, 2007 at 11:27 am
The best of times is when people are seeking God, as these young students are doing. They are living in the best of times to discern the actions of religious parents, neighbors, strangers, and see where they are off the track, and where the track appears to be working. Good for them, they have much to learn and watch.
As for prayer, prayer is a conversation with God. People make it a plea, sometimes, but that’s not the point. If you acknowledge a person’s or Spirit’s Being you talk with them and communicate with them. When this relationship is sincere you receive feelings from them, whether this is here on earth, or in the spirit world.
posted December 21, 2007 at 11:44 am
I can’t say this study comes as a big surprise. The youth of today want to know the reasons for everything, and the answers parents and religious leaders offer for why they must attend church, why they must pray facing in just such a direction several times a day or why any other other ritual must be performed are proving unsatisfactory (“Just because” doesn’t hold as much weight as it once did).
This lack of sufficient answers clearly is not diminishing their belief in the supernatural, but it is leading them to carve out their own paths and find their own answers. We may not always agree with their choices, but at least they are thinking for themselves!
posted December 21, 2007 at 12:52 pm
“It is also interesting to find that 40% worshipped less frequently and only 7% more. Even as their spiritual interests increased their formal worship didn’t.”
Actually ps its very biblical, it’s a Bible prophecy.
posted December 21, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Gosh cknuck, I expect anything can be a Bible prophecy; you just have to find what you want to fit it to in the Bible and interpret them the right way. What’s your point?
posted December 21, 2007 at 2:19 pm
cknuck, according to you and others who believe as you do, the Bible has a prediction or a story or an idea for anything and everything, probably including what pair of shoes to wear to next week’s New Year’s party! Look it up, the shoes are probably in Matthew, chapter 3, verse 44! In all seriousness, the Bible can be interpreted to prove anything one wants. Convenient!
posted December 22, 2007 at 1:45 pm
There is a Catholic Church in the town in New England I come from and they attempted to be “revolutionary” and not mandate dress codes. I used to see people going to the church meeting dressed like they were going on a camping trip in shorts, sneaks, etc.
“Walk right in, sit right down” I guess?
Myself, I thought the Sunday go to Meeting concept was when everybody took a bath in water from the well and dressed up nice as they could for the Sunday morning get-together.
I think college-age is the time that students explore their physicality in mandatory Phys Ed exercise classes, tai chi, self defense classes for women in which defense maneuvers to shove off potential rapists are taught since hopefully the teenagers will become self-functioning adults???
The better they are at observing and describing the enemy, the rapist, and the smarter the student is, the more able he will be to hurl out a verbal insult at his attacker.
O no! What if its in a foreign country and he does not know any verbal insult words? He go to church! He join Hasty Pudding Club, He join a Backstabbers Society in which students write nd try to practice calling in rough drafts of complaints on the service, poor or good they have received from various people in different capacities, but I don’t think college age students go to church. It’s for children!
Oh, “college age students are usually “teeragers” and not “children”" — Love, the humans
posted December 22, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Arlene: “There is a Catholic Church in the town in New England I come from and they attemted to be “revolutionary” and not mandate dress codes.” And it is better to have the folks NOT show up at all for church? Does “God” care what you wear? Is he into fashion and dress codes?
And what is wrong with women taking self-defence courses? My daughter has a Black Belt in Tae Quan Do. Verbal threats don’t make a rapist leave…a kick (and having the confidence to do so) in the right place can.
posted December 22, 2007 at 7:06 pm
ps, a kick might do it, but a little girl in Montana, (read in online news) did one better when two illegal immigrants started to break into her home, (she was alone). She ran upstairs and grabbed a gun, I’ll spare you the details, she shot each of them as they came through the door. Incidently she didn’t know they were illegal anything, just men who could rape and kill her. They had just killed another man in another home somewhere else. Quick thinking girl. This is on a forward now, but I read it in the news. Probably should check it out with Snopes.