Students are leaving organized religion in flocks at Cal State Long Beach to embrace a lifestyle where their spirituality is strong but their belief in a higher power is optional.
Collecting data from over 14,000 students attending 136 colleges, UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute found that students are likely to be religious during their freshman year but end up changing their religious identity to a more spiritual one — not defined by a deity — by their junior or senior year.
Students interested in focusing on their spirituality depend on an ethical, secular way of living completed by disciplines of mind — but no belief in a God is necessary, according to the study.
Jon R. Stone, Ph.D, professor for the department of Religious Studies at Cal State Long Beach, surveyed students taking his courses at CSULB.
According to results gathered from 2014, Stone found that 33 percent of students in his class who identified as religious and attended religious services frequently, either two times or more each week, were mostly freshman. Another 34 percent of students who identified as non-religious and never attended religious services was comprised of junior- and senior-year students.
The other 33 percent was a blend of students who rarely attended religious services and those who did not necessarily identify as religious or nonreligious — possibly focusing on a more spiritual aspect, as reported by Stone.
These results mirror the UCLA study that many college students either seem to leave organized religion or embrace a new form of spirituality by the end of their college experience.
Professor Gabriel S. Estrada, who holds a doctorate in comparative cultural and literary studies, does not believe students are becoming less religious. Instead, they are beginning to have less of a need for an institution to tell them what to believe.
Additionally, Estrada correlates believing in organized religion to one’s economic situation.
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“Where people tend to have more material wealth and comfort they also tend to have less religious beliefs.” Estrada said. “So there may be a correlation to surviving on very little and feeling the need to be a part of a church to explain things like poverty or to explain some of the difficulties of living. The poorest countries are often the most religious.”
But apart from the economic situation affecting a student’s belief in a deity, there is also the scientific argument. Scientific fact may not always agree with what is written in certain holy books.
Estrada also believes that science is one of the reasons as to why students may become detached from religion.
However, Stone believes that organized religion should not be deemed irrelevant as a result of science, because religion answers different questions than the kind that science does.
“The questions that the Greeks asked, that the ancient Sumerians asked, the people in ancient India asked are still the same questions we ask today,” Stone said. “We ask questions like ‘Why am I here? What is this world all about? Is there meaning in life? What happens after this life is done?’ and religion is uniquely poised to answer these questions in meaningful ways. Science isn’t in the position to answer those questions.”
While science can contribute to a student’s detachment from religion, it may not necessarily fill the void left from removing religion. Students becoming more spiritually focused may choose to answer these “life” questions with their own personal answers or believe in a “higher power” that fits their criteria.
“The claim of God’s existence is not empirically verifiable,” Daniel Diaz, outreach coordinator for the Muslim Student Association said. “However, this doesn’t seem to affect the religious communities that believe in revealed knowledge in addition to humanly acquired knowledge.”
Diaz agrees that secularization is growing on college campuses but said it is mainly affecting Christian students and not other religious groups.
“Hindus, Jews, and Muslims in the United States are among the religious groups with the largest percentage of retention of adherents in comparison to the rest of the religious population,” Diaz said. “While almost all branches of Christianity have experienced a decline in religious affiliation, non-Christian religions have experienced a small growth.”
According to a December 2015 Pew Research study, Islam is on the rise. By 2070, it will be the world’s largest religion, surpassing Christianity. In order to be a Muslim, it is a requirement to believe in the God of Islam, but among Hindu or Jewish people, a belief in a deity is not necessary.
Rabbi Drew Kaplan, the rabbi for the on-campus organization Beach Hillel, said his parents were non-observant Jews, and college was an opportunity for him to embrace his Jewish heritage. Although he embraced Jewish customs and traditions, he didn’t necessarily become involved with Judaism because of God.
“I don’t think that Judaism is a religion like Islam or Christianity; in my perspective Judaism is more about the ways of the Jewish people rather than it is a distinct religion that is just a religion.” Rabbi Kaplan said. “There are a large amount of Jews who are atheist or agnostic. They don’t believe in God but they still want to be a part of the people and they still connect with different Jewish activities.”
Many college students are picking up their own spiritual philosophy and are either fully or partially leaving the organized religion they once deemed appropriate for them.
Many interesting points. Thank you Mr. Paniagua.