Wall Road Journal Op-Ed: There’s No Disaster of Religion on Campus, by Ryan Burge (Baptist Pastor; Creator, Twenty Myths About Faith and Politics in America (2022); and Assistant Professor of Political Science, Jap Illinois College):
Many spiritual mother and father fear that increased training will weaken their kids’s perception, however proof exhibits the result’s usually simply the other.
As a pastor who can be a professor of social science, I’m usually requested by mother and father of youngsters who had been raised in a spiritual surroundings how their son or daughter can keep their religion after they go off to some giant state college or personal liberal-arts faculty. Many mother and father appear to imagine that as quickly as their little one walks right into a freshman class, they’ll throw out their Bibles and choose up Nietzsche.
They haven’t plucked this concept out of skinny air. It was the premise of the 2014 movie God’s Not Useless, which turned extremely popular in Christian circles and spawned two sequels. Within the film, an evangelical pupil enrolls in a philosophy class led by an atheist professor. To move the course, each pupil has to signal a declaration that “God is useless.” The primary character refuses, resulting in a sequence of debates within the class in regards to the existence of God. Ultimately, a lot of the class sides with the coed, and the professor leaves in defeat.
With reinforcement akin to this, the belief that going to school undermines religion has put down deep roots within the psyche of many conservative Christians. … However is it true that going to school makes college students much less non secular? Are individuals with increased ranges of training extra more likely to say that they haven’t any non secular affiliation than those that have accomplished solely highschool?
Utilizing knowledge from 12 years of Harvard College’s Cooperative Election Examine, an annual survey of greater than 50,000 People, I calculated the share who recognized as atheist, agnostic and nothing specifically at six training ranges, starting from these with no highschool diploma to these with graduate levels. The outcomes are clear: Individuals with the least training are the most certainly to point that they haven’t any non secular affiliation. In 2008, 26% of these with out a highschool diploma recognized as an atheist, agnostic or nothing specifically. Solely 19% of these with a graduate diploma did. And that 7-point hole stayed pretty constant over the next 12 years. … Different students have come to related conclusions. …
It pains me to say that I don’t have a lot affect over the scholars in my programs. However that doesn’t imply faculty doesn’t change them. Checked out in its entirety, the faculty expertise may very well make college students extra certain of their non secular beliefs after they graduate. That is the concept identified to psychologists because the “inoculation impact”: When somebody is confronted with weak assaults on their beliefs, they change into extra ready to defend these beliefs after they come beneath severe assaults. That is basically how a vaccine works: It offers a person a weakened model of the virus, in order that when the immune system encounters the actual factor, it may well simply combat off the villain. Equally, difficult an adolescent to defend their beliefs in a supportive, open surroundings like faculty could go away them higher ready to carry agency to their convictions later in life. …
As a mum or dad myself, I fully perceive the tendency to shelter our kids. However faculty comes at an excellent time within the life-cycle for younger individuals to enterprise out and interact with individuals who don’t share their beliefs. Exposing youngsters to new concepts and new cultures is likely one of the strongest issues we are able to do for the following era.
New York Instances op-eds by Ryan Burge:
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2022/04/wsj-op-ed-theres-no-crisis-of-faith-on-campus.html
