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Students

Keeping faith

Religious students find that holding on to traditions is both a struggle and a blessing

by James Militzer

April 15, 2008

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It's common for incoming U-M freshmen to feel nervous, but Andrew Davignon had a special reason to worry. His parents had given him a traditional Catholic upbringing and sent him to a Catholic high school, and he'd heard stories about what can happen to religious students on a secular campus like Michigan's. "People say that everyone loses their faith here," he says. "I thought [the university would] be antagonistic to just being Christian."

Davignon's concerns aren't unusual. Many religious Americans see schools like U-M as a cross between Daniel's lion den and Sodom and Gomorrah. Between atheist professors and the temptations of campus nightlife, many fear that religious students will be lucky to graduate with their faith intact.

But is this perception accurate? In a 2007 report called "Losing my Religion," researchers from the University of Texas at Austin cite studies showing that 86% of students say their religious convictions remain stable or strengthen during college. In fact, the young adults most likely to abandon their beliefs are those who do not attend college at all. And here at Michigan, students of faith describe a campus environment that bears little resemblance to its foreboding stereotype.

86% of students say their religious convictions remain stable or strengthen during college. How about you? Click here to describe keeping — or not — your own faith while at U-M

"I thought people would look down on you if you said you were Christian, but most people don't care," says Davignon, who finished his Masters in business last summer. "There are tons of Christians here, and they're just as outgoing as anyone else. I'm sure you can find examples of people who will try to bring up a Christian perspective in class and get it knocked down. But who cares? That's the way the university works: everyone's got opposing beliefs, and you have as much freedom to express your beliefs as anybody else."

According to Davignon, the pressures of college life tested his faith far more than any opposition from professors or peers. "I think the biggest challenge is just getting too busy," he says. "It starts the first Sunday you're here: will you go to church or not? Right from the get-go, I had to decide what was going to be the lord of my life: school or my faith. Was I really going to be a solid Christian full-time, or would it be something I set aside, because my life was going to be consumed with getting ahead?"

In spite of these challenges—or perhaps because of them—Davignon found that his experience at Michigan strengthened his belief. "Because there are so many opposing views, you have to make a choice, day after day, to follow your faith," he says. "So it's no longer the faith of your parents, but your faith. But you need support in order to do it. I know plenty of people who decided they were going to go off and evangelize the frat boys, and three weeks later, they were frat boys."

To avoid that fate, many religious students seek support from their peers. Michigan is home to over 30 religious groups serving students of most of the major faiths. Iman Sedige, a sophomore, joined the Muslim Student Association right after she arrived on campus. She says the group helps observant students overcome some of the prime temptations of college life: sex, drugs and alcohol. "The Muslim Student Association has social events, where everybody goes out and goes bowling together, or plays pool, or goes ice skating," she says. "It not only gives Muslims an alternative activity, but an alternative community, where nobody drinks and everyone practices the same sort of lifestyle."

Religious groups and organizations help students deepen their faith in a variety of ways. Kurt Heinold is a U-M alumnus and a staff member at Campus Crusade for Christ. "We have a Bible discussion group and outreach in every major dorm and in the Greek system. On Friday nights we have a mass meeting in the Modern Language Building with a couple hundred people. We do mentorship of student groups in our ministry, we bring in Christian speakers, have social events, house parties..."

And U-M Hillel, for instance, offers Jewish students everything from kosher meal plans to trips to Israel, and even advocates for them if school interferes with their practice. "There might be the occasional inconvenience, like the scheduling of tests on Jewish holidays and the Sabbath," says Lizzy Lovinger, a sophomore in LSA and Hillel's Religious Life Chair. "But if a student feels they are being treated unfairly when it comes to religious observance, one quick call to Hillel and things will pretty much be resolved. It's a pretty comfortable campus for religiously observant Jews."

But some feel the university's efforts to accommodate students of diverse faiths can go too far. Last summer, U-M found itself at the center of a clash of ideals when the Dearborn campus announced plans to install footbaths on campus. The footbaths were intended primarily to serve a growing population of Muslim students, whose practice involves washing their feet before daily prayers. The university cited cleanliness and safety concerns in justifying the installations, since students had been using regular bathroom sinks for the ritual. It emphasized that the basins would be available to any student who wanted to use them for any reason, like the inclusive "reflection rooms" it had designated for prayer and relaxation on campus. Even so, the announcement sparked controversy, with Christian activists accusing the university of offering Muslims preferential treatment, and church/state separatists decrying the use of school funds for an installation with predominantly religious purposes.

In the eyes of secular critics, the episode showed an excessive deference to religion that's becoming the norm on campus. "The general climate here is that you're not supposed to talk about religious beliefs," says Patrick Julius, president and founder of the U-M chapter of the Secular Student Alliance. "It's viewed as rude to question or challenge them, and that's problematic for me. If I thought someone was wrong about a math problem, I would say so. But if I think they're wrong about the ultimate metaphysics of the universe, the most important questions ever, I'm not allowed to say anything."

According to Julius, that reticence sometimes extends to the classroom. "I'm in a seminar where we're discussing the evolution of human cognition, and the professor said early in the course that we're not going to explore whether Darwinism is actually true." He shakes his head. "That seems like a waste of the university to me. I think one of the roles of the university is to spread knowledge by confronting different views and creating a bit of discomfort. Then each side can state their arguments and we can have a discussion about it. That's a lot more productive than just pushing it to one side and not dealing with it."

In his four decades at Michigan, English professor Ralph Williams has watched the university struggle to find a balance between its secular principles and respect toward religious faith. "The fact is, both faculty members and students feel uneasy about what they can and can't say," he says. But he puts the tension in the broader context of a society in transition. "There was a time in the 1890's when something like 92% of students at the University of Michigan identified themselves as Protestant Christian. The university has become massively more complex since then, as the demography of our society has changed. In my years here I've known the first woman, the first or second Jew, and what I think was the first African American to achieve tenure in the English department."

Though this convergence of backgrounds and beliefs can cause conflict, Williams counsels patience. "The history of the world would be different if uniform conclusions could be reached on religious matters in the course of a 50 minute discussion," he says with a smile. "But our project, as a society and as a university, is an extraordinarily complex and important one. The university is a sort of laboratory of democracy, in which we need to learn how to speak with one another about these things, without going to war over our differences. These are very profound questions around which we, as a society, are feeling our way. And I hope we make it."

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James Militzer is a freelance writer and copy editor based in Ann Arbor