Saturday, November 15, 2003
College students getting religion in the classroom
Religion has become one of the hottest areas of study in campuses across the country. Since the late '90s, members of Generation Y have been taking classes to help explain the world as well as find themselves a religion, often by mixing and matching beliefs. Universities are responding by offering more religion classes, from an overview of the world's faiths to concentrated looks at them.
Nathan Katz, chairman of FIU's Department of Religious Studies, sees the increased enrollment as a sign of the resurgence of spirituality in the last decade.
''We are the most technically advanced in the world and we are also the most religious, by many measures,'' he says.
Gen Y'ers -- who at about 70 million number almost as many as their Boomer parents -- also seek religion classes out of curiosity and a need to understand current events.
In just three years, from the school year 1996-1997 to 1999-2000, the number of students taking a religion class increased 15 percent across the United States and the number of religion majors jumped 25 percent, according to a national survey of 1,156 colleges by the American Academy of Religion.
A Gallup Poll survey of teens' worship attendance showed slightly more were going to services in 1998 -- 49 percent -- than the 47 percent a generation ago in 1977.
''There's a different attitude: It's more acceptable, not as contentious'' to be religious, says Christian Smith, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina who is directing the National Study of Youth and Religion. ``Today's youth are less suspicious, less hostile than Baby Boomers would have been in the '60s and '70s.''
Many students are also on a pilgrimage to learn about their family faith -- the rituals, customs and traditions their Boomer parents may have abandoned.
''People are interested in their own roots, in their own traditions, in learning about them,'' adds FIU's Oren Stier, who is an assistant professor of religious studies.
Sometimes, though, students may feel threatened by how religion classes look objectively at religions -- even challenging what students think as infallible beliefs, says Daniel Alvarez, an FIU religion instructor.
Many evangelical Christians, for example, are stunned when professors teach that the Bible is open to interpretation and contradicts itself, he says. Or they may have been taught that Christianity is the best religion -- and are now being told that other faiths are equally valid.
''The more traditional have a sense of anxiety,'' Alvarez says. ``They're exposed to historical criticism that they simply aren't familiar with or sympathetic to.''
Alvarez tries to be gentle. ``My job, I say to them, is to make each of the religions come alive.''
Stier says students come to him for pastoral counseling and he has to tell them he is an academic, not a member of the clergy, and steer them elsewhere.
Many students, though, aren't taking religious studies for personal reasons but rather to understand the times better.
Says FIU's Katz, ``There are people who are blowing themselves up for religion, our foreign policy is influenced by religion and they want to understand why.''
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