u
WEDNESDAY
JANUARY 2D, 2016
NEWS
College a breeding ground for religious transitions
Students’faith affiliations evolve over the course of time in college
CnO/ STUDENTS SAID THEY ATTENDED RELIGIDUS
U£ /O SERVICES FREQUENTLY IN HIGH SCHDOL
tindsey Lanquist and
^stin Biegel
|nior Reporter and Reporter
lindseylanquist and @JtJStin Biegel
The car ride wasn’t uncomfort
able. Instead of being filled with
silence punctuated by occasional
small talk, conversation flowed
freely. College students Cole Hy-
^an and Steven Ebert discussed
everything from mutual friends
to schoolwork on their brief drive
to a local Mexican restaurant.
Hyman was only a few months
into his freshman year at Elon
University. In high school, his life
had resembled a hackneyed mov
ie — he played quarterback for
the school football team, dated
a|cheerleader and spent much of
his time wondering how he could
be cooler, better. Mis transition to
college seemed effortless. He went
out drinking three nights a week
and managed to keep his grades
up, despite not studying or spend
ing much time on classwork.
[Ebert, a senior, had reached
out to Hyman at the beginning
of the school year. He knew the
leader of Hyman’s high school
Christian ministry group, a
group Hyman joined to please
his religious mother! Hyman had
been reluctant to take Ebert up on
his offer, but after growing tired
of his shallow, party lifestyle, he
figured he might as well and at
the least get a free meal.
Their conversation at that
I small Mexican restaurant was the
start of a genuine connection be
tween the two. Talking to Ebert,
Hyman saw through the shallow
conversations about girls, sports
J and parties that filled his days,
. i to something he was "longing for
without realizing it”: religion.
I His shift in beliefs reflects a
common journey students expe
rience when transitioning into
college. Able to consider what
j they believe independently of
their families for the first time,
students often find new mean
ing in religion, leading them to
embrace it, like Hyman, or let it
move to the back burner of their
’ busy college lives.
Religious transitions: An ongo
ing process
I If nothing else, the begin-
ning of the college experience is
marked by novelty and difference.
, For 82 percent of Elon students it
means living in a new state and
for 6 percent, living in a new
country. It means living on-cam
pus, surrounded by students and
away from family, for 62 percent,
and it likely means living alone or
with peers for the 38 percent who
j reside off-campus.
. (Coming to college also brings
. with it an exposure to a massive
and generally diverse student
body that — even at a smaller
school like Elon, with an enroll
ment of 5,782 undergraduate stu
dents — is more than seven times
. the size of the average public high
' school.
.‘Adapting to these changes and
accepting the distance from home
can be difficult for students, caus
ing freshman year to be a time
characterized by homesickness
and struggle for some. For Hy
man, this meant breaking down
in tears and calling his mother
one night in November.
“It looked like I was doing
great, but... I just called my mom
and I just started crying,” Hyman
said. “As humiliating as it is to say
that T hate this place. I don’t like
this anymore. This isn’t the place
for me.’ — I just got to this place
where it didn’t feel right any
more.”
“My mom was like, ‘You need
to stick it out, Cole. I’m praying
for you.’ At that point, I was like,
‘Come on, mom. Are you serious?
I don’t care.’ Honestly, that’s what
I was thinking. But she was saying
I had to stick it out.”
A few days later, Hyman de
cided to take Ebert up on his of
fer to hang out — something that
dramatically changed the course
of Hyman’s college career. Instead
of maintaining the same lifestyle
he’d established over those first
few months, Hyman began spend
ing his time doing things he found
more fulfilling, like building deep
er friendships and mentoring stu
dents at local high schools;
University Chaplain Jan Fuller
said Hyman’s journey is not at all
uncommon on Elon’s campus, or
on college campuses as a whole.
These moments, she said, are de
velopmental and are entrenched
in the factors surrounding the
college years: separation from
parents, ’emphasis on critical
thinking, challenging coursework
and emotional struggles.
"IT LOOKED LIKE
I WAS DOING
GREAT, BUT... I
JUST CALLED MY
MOMANDIJUST
STARTED CRYING."
COLE HYMAN
JUNIOR
“[This is when] people are be
ginning to think for themselves.
Young men and women are be
ginning to kind of consider, Ts
this mine? Or is this my mother’s
or my father’s?”’ Fuller said. “It’s a
normal and very natural develop
mental moment. You leave home.
Nobody forces you to do any
thing. Now you get to think about
this for yourself.”
Fuller acknowledged the pro
cess of questioning and . coming
to terms with religion can be a
threatening one — challenging
everyone from the student ex
periencing the transition to that
student’s family and friends to
religious institutional leaders in
that student’s life.
Though Fuller has seen some
students become so overwhelmed
by the dauntingness of religious
questions that they resign be
fore resolving their struggles, she
29%
13%
THIRD-YEAR CDLLEGE STUDENTS SAID THEY
STILL ATTENDED THESE SERVICES
STUDENTS AT FDUR-YEAR INSTITUTIONS
RENOUNCED ALL RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION
said she’s also seen the process be
helpful for those who are willing
to stick through it.
“We [in this country] haven’t
taught our children to think about
their religion critically. What
we’ve done is we’ve said, ‘Take
it,’and we haven’t asked them to
think about that very hard,” Fuller
said. “Students get to college, and
they have never thought about
it ... So rather than — for some
people, they dive in, but that’s a
small minority — most of us then
say, ‘I’ll think about something
else for a while, because I don’t
know how to think about that.’”
'Losing'religion
Though Hyman grew up sur
rounded by religion, he never felt
particularly invested in the Chris
tian belief system. He went through
the motions of “being a Chris
tian” — attending church every
week and participating in Young
Life Christian ministry — but
something just didn’t dick for him.
Now able to reflect on the per
son he once was, Hyman said he
attributes this lack of religious
investment to consumption in
himself and his ex-girlfriend —
someone he said “wasn’t a great
influence on [his] life.” Add to
that the fact that the strongest ex
ample of a Christian in Hyman’s
life, his friend’s dad, was diag
nosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease,
and Hyman hit what he called the
“tipping point.”
“It was just hard for me to un
derstand why a guy that claimed
to believe in God and all that
stuff—why God would let that
happen to him,” Hyman said. “So
that was the point when I said, ‘I
don’t know if this is what I’m go
ing for anymore.’”
Senior Kendall Bair had a very
different experience. Bair’s parents
converted to Christianity when
she was in second grade, and their
family made a collective commit
ment to live a Christian lifestyle.
That meaiit praying before meals,
attending church every Sunday,
participating in youth group,
listening to “more wholesome”
music and making an effort to
invest in their faith. And when
it came time for Bair to select a
college, she opted for a Christian
school — Geneva College.
Being surrounded by Chris
tianity all the time drained Bair
and Weakened her faith. Her reli
gion became more of a chore than
a choice, and she lost herself in a
sea of religious complacency.
“I really enjoyed what I was
learning, but there’s a certain el
ement of ‘you get really bored
when you’re forced to do it,”’ Bair
said. “It’s no longer like, ‘I’m excit
ed about this, because I am choos
ing to do it.’ It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh,
I have to do this every semester.’”
“I have to wake up every day and
decide what I believe, rather than just
going through the motions because
that’s what everyone else is doing.
And obviously there are times that
I question what. I believe, but there
wasn’t space for that at a Christian
college. There was no space to ask the
hard questions ... when you’re in an
environment where everyone’s like,
‘I’m perfect, and I just believe every
thing blindly?”
’For both Hyman and Bair, a
specific set of circumstances led
them to stray from their faiths.
But for many, “losing” religion is
a matter of exercising indepen
dence or prioritizing other things.
Sophomore Grace lekel
stopped attending mass when she
went to college despite her 13-
year Catholic school career, be
cause she “wanted to see what
[she] wanted to do on a Sunday
[instead of] dedicating an hour of
[her] life worshiping something
that may not even be there.”
Fuller said she “took a break”
from going to church or par
ticipating in religious activities
during her first two years of col
lege, simply because that was
something she felt she needed to
do. She also acknowledged that
it may be hard for students to fit
religion in at a school like Elon
where “everyone has 50 priorities
instead of four,” but she insisted
that those who think it’s import
ant will find ways to fit religious
practices into their schedules.
Finding or strengthening faith
through community
For Bair, renewing her faith
meant escaping the complacency
by which she felt trapped at Geneva
by transferring to Elon her junior
year. A new environment gave her
opportunities to critically explore
her faith and deliberately practice
it, which she wasn’t able to do
within the Geneva community.
“I’ve gotten to [ask the hard
questions] here, and actually I’ve
come right back around to believ-
GRAPHIC COURTESY OF LINDSEY LANQUIST
SOURCES; ABCNEWS, HUFFINGTON POST
ing what I believe,” Bair said.
She now spends much of her
time participating in InterVarsi-
ty Christian Fellowship, “being
poured into” by the other mem
bers of the fellowship and “pour
ing into others” by mentoring
younger students.
Community played a signifi
cant role in others’ faiths as well.
For lekel, maintaining her Cath
olic beliefs became much harder
after leaving her Catholic school.
And Fuller said having friends
in the Christian community en
couraged her to go to church
again and recommit herself to her
faith after her two-year break.
For senior Julia David, commu
nity made the difference between
feeling too awkward to engage in
religious conversations and feel
ing comfortable being herself on
a daily basis. David grew up in
a Presbyterian household in the
middle of “Agnostic Town” — Sil
icon Valley, California.
“I grew up in an area where
atheism was kind of the norm.
Whenever I would discuss any
thing I would immediately get
shot down. It is kind of hard to
come up against,” David said. “I
came here, and I had this really
cool RA who was very involved
in InterVarsity and she was like,
‘Well Julia, you’re going to come
with me.’ ... Something just kind
of clicked and that’s kind of when
everything changed.”
Now, David participates
in InterVarsity regularly and
appreciates the opportunities
she has to connect with people
who have grown up in different
religious environments. People
who once “seemed very sheltered”
to her are now people she
regularly interacts with.
“It gave me the opportunity to
really understand where they were
coming from and to challenge a lot
of what they were saying,” she said.
And, of course, for Hyman, this
sense of commiinity was the prod-'
uct of a conversation in a Mexican
restaurant. All it took was one
meal for him to realize there were
people who genuinely cared how
his day was, guys who had fun
without drinking and a group of
students who invested their time
in their faith and in each other.
Ebert paid for that meal and
every other meal the two got to
gether for the rest of the year, say
ing, “Promise me that you will do
this for someone too one day.”