On the Decline: How religion is fading from campus

By the time Kaur had completed her shift and filled out the required duty logs recording all the night’s incidents, it was around 5 a.m. She soon found herself wondering if she should stay up and pray, or sleep. If she slept, she knew she would be taking a risk. The morning was already only four hours away, and she might not have enough time to pray then.

After deliberating, Kaur chose to pray. She showered and returned to her room to pray, going to sleep around 7:30 a.m. Soon after, she woke up to attend her 10 a.m. resident adviser staff meeting.

As a practicing Sikh, Kaur is required to pray five times daily. Sikhism, the world’s fifth largest religion, is a monotheistic faith established in northern India in the 1400s. Like many religions, practicing Sikhism requires time and effort. And like many religious students, she has to make decisions on how to balance the obligations of her faith with the demands and rigors of a modern university.

Kaur is part of a group on campus that has been declining in recent years. The CIRP Freshman Survey, administered by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, given to all incoming students at orientation, shows that in 2012, 27.2 percent of incoming freshmen self-identified themselves as having no religion.

The latest results are consistent with a long-running trend. In 1998, only 19.7 percent of incoming freshmen identified as non-religious.

Broadening the definition

Although insightful, surveys fail to capture depth and complexity of religious beliefs on campus. Because of the noted decline in religious students, student groups are broadening their required levels of devotion to keep membership high.

The main focus of the Sikh Students’ Association is to unite the Sikh community on campus. Two to three times each semester, the organization hosts faith-based events and community service events. The group has 50 active members, and despite the campus trend, membership in the group has remained steady.

Kaur explained how the Sikh Students’ Association is inclusive to students who practice varying levels of Sikhism.

“A big facet of Sikhism is that religion is a journey,” Kaur said, “so we accept where everyone is on that path.”

Even organizations with a larger student population on campus have made similar efforts to recruit more students.

According to LSA junior Nour Soubani, president of the Muslim Students’ Association, 300 students attend Friday prayer services every week. The organization has active student committees that range from community service and outreach to lectures around religious topics.

Soubani discussed how the Muslim Students’ Association has to be mindful about being inclusive of different kinds of Muslim practices.

“We are realizing that we are a big (organization), so we are trying to figure out how to maintain our values but also keep expanding and doing new things,” Soubani said.

Within the broader faith community, many religious organizations have made efforts to forge connections in order to maintain a stronger presence on campus. The Muslim Coalition is a new initiative started in part by the Muslim Students’ Association to unite all of the various Muslim groups across campus. According to the Muslim Students’ Association’s website, the Muslim Coalition was created to prevent the “harmful fragmentation” that can occur in a community when there are too many leaders and a lack of communication.

In part to keep membership numbers high, the Muslim Students’ Association actively does outreach and publicizes events to recruit. They even have a high school recruitment program. Twice a year, the group hosts a Muslim Students’ Association campus weekend, which brings high school students interested in the University to campus. Soubani said this is a critical way to make a connection before freshman even arrive. The group’s membership levels have also stayed steady in recent years.

However, not all religious groups on campus feel the pressure to actively pursue more student involvement.

The Baha’i Club is a smaller campus organization that practices the faith Baha’i, a religion that traces its roots to a 19th-century Persian religious authority, Bahá’u’lláh. The Baha’i Club has no formal recruitment process. While membership levels have remained steady, club activity has increased.

“The idea is that through living your life in the way that Bahá’u’lláh taught, naturally people will be attracted to you and learn where you gained all of these spiritual principles,” said Rackham student Daniel Gifford, president of the Baha’i Club.

Guidance, ground, direction

Gifford was raised as a Baha’i. His parents became Baha’i in college after finding the faith and realizing that its set of core beliefs aligned with their own. Gifford said that he would have trouble navigating his undergraduate experience without his Baha’i faith.

“Religion is a way to help guide you in one direction,” Gifford said. “On college campuses, I have no doubt that being associated with a religious or spiritual group is helpful because college is such a confusing time.”

Kaur echoed Gifford’s beliefs, adding that her faith has been a steadfast part of her college experience.

“Religion has been something that has helped ground me as I’ve gone through undergrad, it has been consistent,” she said. “I know if I have a rough day that in the morning I have this hour to myself to center myself and do prayers.”

A sense of community

At such a large university, it can be difficult to find one’s own community. For some students, the existing 106 student religious groups provide a sense of belonging.

“I haven’t felt isolated as a religious student,” Soubani said, “It gives you a community where there are so many types of people.”

Despite the existing sense of community, others feel that religion could be a larger part Michigan culture.

As a freshman from Rochester, Mich., living in Helen Newberry, LSA Junior Laura Fleming was overwhelmed by college life. She had expected to make friends easily with the girls on her hall, but found herself lonely.

Fleming was raised as a Lutheran, and had planned to find a church at college. She tried out New Life, and immediately found a place she felt at home.

“I was blown away by the community,” Fleming said, “I’ve searched my whole life to feel like I fit in and am truly loved and cared for and the people at New Life have done that for me.”

The ‘invisible divide’

Despite a strong sense of solidarity within one’s belief group, students remain conscientious of the boundaries between religious communities and the rest of campus. LSA senior Mary Hemmeter, secretary of the Secular Student Alliance, explained that being secular limits her access to other communities.

“Being secular, it can be difficult to speak to non-secular people,” Hemmeter said, “you feel like you always have to self-center.”

Hemmeter speaks to an invisible divide that many students on this campus may experience. Like many religious students, she is constantly aware of her identity.

“(I) rarely tell people I’m on the board of (the Secular Student Alliance),” she said. “It’s not something that comes up often in conversation and I don’t feel the need to bring it up a lot.”

Meanwhile, joining such a tight-knit community has also left students isolated from others. As part of her religion, Fleming does not drink alcohol or swear, and will not have sex until she is married. She said that these values are in stark contrast with the popular culture on campus.

“There have been a lot of people who are like, ‘Why don’t you do that,’ or don’t understand,” Fleming said.

Kaur has felt similar alienation within the broader University community.

“Something I really struggled with my freshman year is that we don’t drink or do any intoxicants once you are initiated into the faith, so that is something I have had to grapple with and determine where I stand on that,” Kaur said, “This could be isolating, I do have other friends, but finding that group and other people who relate on those grounds can be a challenge.”

Soubani added that students on campus often refer to stereotypes and have misconceptions about Muslims. She said she wishes students were more mindful of what they say, especially in academic settings that are supposed to be safe spaces.

Student priorities

Nate Ardle has been the Michigan campus director of Cru, the largest interdominational evangelical Christian organization in the country, since 1999. Cru is the modern incarnation of the Campus Crusade for Christ, an influential movement that gained attention for its activism in the ‘60s and ‘70s. When Ardle first came to the University, he said he expected the students to be highly intellectual and philosophical. Instead, he said he found that students have less time to be involved because of the rigorous academics.

However, Ardle noted that this is to be expected. “Students here are not different from students everywhere,” he said.

Other challenges include trying to fit religion into a busy schedule.

Fleming has to balance her religious commitments with academic and social ones. As a pre-health student, Fleming feels the pressure to volunteer and be in clubs to build her resume before applying to graduate school.

“Part of me feels like someone who is in an organization where they’re sending money to kids in Africa, that might be looked at more highly than being really involved in a church,” Fleming said.

After all, many college students, according to Chabad House Rabbi Alter Goldstein, are here primarily to get an education.

“The main obstacle is that spirituality may not be a priority, academics is the number one thing,” Goldstein said.

Some students deal better with the balance of academics, religion, and extracurriculars because they overlap.

LSA sophomore Ali Meisel revitalized the defunct Jewish Greek Council after Hillel Director Tilly Shames reached out to her with the opportunity. Meisel said she has found it easier to balance her school and social life with her religious commitments because the two generally intertwine.

“It’s not hard to balance,” Meisel said, “because most of the extracurriculars I’m involved with — Hillel, Jewish Greek Council, my sorority — are Jewish.”

A spiritual landscape

As religious identification declines, it seems students have turned increasingly to the concept of ‘spirituality.’

LSA senior Farid Dimag, a practicing Baha’i, views religion as “rules of enforcing stuff,” and spirituality as a “wholesome purifying experience.”

Gifford echoed the ways in which religion and spirituality contrast.

“The modern day connotation of religion is changing,” he said. “Spirituality is like an independent investigation of something.”

Meanwhile, Goldstein emphasized that spirituality and religion are inexorably tied.

“When someone is seeking a higher spiritual level, they must also understand God,” Goldstein said. “Good values and spirituality are synonymous.”

Gifford believes in using religion as an influence in making ethical decisions.

“Science cannot tell us how to use those tools that we develop,” Gifford said. “Once you know how an atom works, how are you going to use it? That is up to the morality of the human race.”

The trend of modernity

Sitting in the secluded quiet of the Chabad House in the early morning, Goldstein explained the pattern of society’s movement, “The world is a heartbeat, and everything comes in trends,” he said.

According to Goldstein, the trend of modernity is one of informational access. Today’s students utilize the Internet, and as a result, have instant access to information — including immediate access to religious resources.

“We used to have at our front entrance a huge display of all kinds of information,” Goldstein said. ”Today, it is there with a click of a button — the website has a wealth of information.”

The trend of modernity has led to a change in student attitude and background, according to Ardle.

“Students are less ‘churched’ than they have in the past,” Ardle explains, “It’s become prevalent for students to not have gone to church growing up.”

Ardle believes this decline in “churched students” impacts the level of student involvement on campus.

“In the late 90s and early 2000s, students would come in and say ‘I should get involved (in religion)’, and some wouldn’t, but many would because they thought they should,” Ardle said, “And now that sense of thinking you should is gone.”

A (non-religious) ‘coming out’

The trend to modernity has, indeed, left fewer religious students on campus. Meanwhile, secularism — the belief in the separation of church and state — has a solid, while small, following.

Just as religious students may feel that they have to defend their religion and values to others, secular students can have a hard time “coming out” as atheist. Students who come from religious families face losing support from their loved ones if they reveal this part of themselves.

The Secular Student Alliance meets every Thursday night. Meetings include discussions, such as reviewing recent court cases that have to do with separation of church and state. The group is involved in community service, and in the past has held book and blood drives. Over the summer, board members traveled to Skepticon, the largest secular conference in the Midwest.

Hemmeter said regular members include secular and atheist students, as well as two practicing Christians, and, sometimes, the Hare Krishnas.

Hemmeter said Student Secular Alliance has racial and ethnic demographics consistent with that of the University, but also has strong representation from many members of the LGBTQ community. She added that Skepticon also had many LGBTQ activists and feminist activists.

“I think there are a lot of students who identify as secular or atheist or agnostic who do not feel the need to be involved in a secular group,” Hemmeter said.

Taking ownership

College is a time in everyone’s life where students are actively trying to figure out who they are. As a result, religion — or lack of religion — can be a shaping factor in this stage of student life, Gifford said.

Within the religious community at the University, some students are religious due to familial background. However, students stress college as a time where one can seize and shape one’s own religious ideology. Soubani was raised Muslim.

“You’re raised something and you do that because your family does,” Soubani said, “but once you’re in college you have opportunity to take ownership of your own beliefs.”

Kaur’s expression of her religion has shifted significantly while in college. As a freshman, she was less involved in the Sikh Students’ Association and did not wear a turban. Kaur felt very affected by the August 2012 shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that killed six people, and following the incident, made the decision to start wearing a turban.

“I wasn’t sure how to talk about it with my roommates,” Kaur said, “People may look at me differently and think that I’m coming from a different place than them.”

Regardless of the social challenges, Kaur holds steadfast to her religion. “I’m sticking to my identity and my beliefs,” she said.