College Kills Religion Santorum Says
Nigel Barber ("Huffington Post," March 4, 2012)
USA - That is what Rick Santorum claimed in a This Week interview with
George Stephanopoulos that aired on February 26. Santorum cited research for
his conclusion. Or rather, a hazily recalled impression that some study had
found that 60 percent of students lose their religious affiliation during
the college years.
Intrigued by the Santorum claim, I did a little fact checking. According to
religious sociologists Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker (1), "64 percent of
those currently enrolled in a traditional four-year institution have
curbed their [church] attendance habits." This may be the research evidence
that
Santorum remembered.
This is a substantial majority and might appear to bolster the view that
students are heavily influenced by free-thinking college professors who
challenge religious views by encouraging rational skepticism, or even promoting
atheism.
Yet, there is one ugly fact that destroys Santorum's theory. When one looks
at young people who did not attend college, the decline in church
attendance is even greater with 76 percent saying that their religious
attendance
had fallen.
(Incidentally the numbers actually losing their religious affiliation are
much smaller with 13 percent of four-year college students renouncing their
religious affiliation compared to 20 percent of those who did not pursue
college).
Taken at face value, the data might appear to suggest that going to college
promotes religion. This is unlikely however, despite the proselytizing
efforts of some religions on American campuses. All that we can reasonably say
is that the sort of people who go to college are different from those who
do not to begin with.
Either way, Americans who attend college resemble other young people in
going to church less often. For many, particularly those who marry, or raise a
family, church attendance subsequently picks up, implying that loss of
attendance during the college years has little to do with loss of religious
belief or affiliation.
While it may seem surprising that exposure to liberal college professors
has no discernible effect on religion, it may be that many students have
formed stable religious identities by the time they complete high school.
In an earlier post, I argued that the real reason for the decline in
religion in modern life is not indoctrination by liberal professors, or
atheists,
but an improved standard of living.
When nations become highly developed, and when individuals feel secure in
the sense of having a reliable income, high life expectancy, little fear of
violence, and so forth, they lose interest in supernatural solutions to
their problems, focusing instead on practical improvements to the quality of
life.
This view of secularization has long been controversial in academic circles
but has recently survived rigorous scientific tests. The precise role of
education in the loss of religious belief remains unclear but college
education, as such, cannot be a large factor.
Despite current uncertainty over whether education kills religion, there
are many tantalizing clues. We know that more intelligent people, and more
educated people, are more likely to be atheists. Moreover, countries enjoying
a high general level of education are much less religious.
Atheism is probably not learned in school -- or in college. Instead, it is
the improved quality of life prevailing in highly-educated countries that
turns people off religion. Try explaining that to Rick Santorum!
____________________________________
Another factor :
The major a student chooses may well have strong correlation to religious
faith.
It certainly made a major difference to me as a philosophy major in
college.
Every philosopher we studied, maybe with a couple of exceptions,
questioned
religious faith, sometimes with full force of many ideas. This is not what
one gets
in most Liberal Arts survey courses and surely makes a profound difference.
Billy
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
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