NO LONGER CHRISTIAN FAITH TRAJECTORIES
CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS
The focus of this study was to identify factors relating to diminished
confidence in core Christian doctrines among public college students. A mixed methods research study was conducted to explore the relationship between belief diminishment and factors relating to such belief through an exploratory sequential design. The Short Christian Orthodoxy (SCO) scale was used to quantify core Christian belief of
participants attending public colleges or university who identified as either college seniors or recent college graduates. Survey questionnaires were administered to participants online while interviews for the qualitative portion of this study were conducted by phone. Responses of participants were assessed using a paired samples (dependent) t-test to analyzed orthodox Christian faith trajectory, and a regression model equation was used to predict factors relating to diminished confidence in core Christian doctrine. Qualitative data was used for illustrative purposes.
This chapter considers the findings from the research and presents the conclusions according to the statistical analysis with special consideration to the implications surfaced in the precedent literature review. The research purpose is recapitulated considering the stated research questions followed by a discourse of the implications of the research. A presentation of the applications for the research findings is made and a discussion of the research limitations ensues. Finally, the chapter concludes by giving attention to potential areas for further research.
Research Purpose
This explanatory sequential mixed methods study explored the relationship between belief and the collegiate experience among public college students. The purpose of this study was to determine areas where students attending public colleges or
universities find themselves least equipped to defend core Christian doctrines. The goal was to provide churches and parents with recommendations to strengthen areas where young adults find themselves the least equipped to defend their Christian beliefs stemming from core Christian doctrines.1
The perceived effect of college on student religiosity varies in the literature.
While studies repeatedly show that students become less religious on traditional indicators of religious practice over the course of their collegiate careers, the extent to which this is an effect individual student belief or diminished confidence in said belief remains unclear. As presented in the review of literature, there has been a revival of interest in the topic of spirituality among college students. However, that review showed that there has been little in-depth study of the actual magnitude of the impact of public college affiliation on the religiosity of the college student.
Research “fairly consistently reports statistically significant declines in
religious attitudes, values, and behaviors during the college years.”2 While much research can be found regarding the negative change of student religiosity among college
1 Kenda Dean notes that American teenagers may engage in substantial amounts of youth ministry and Christian education, but they do not seem to be spending much time in communities where a language of faith is spoken, or where historically orthodox Christian doctrines and practices are talked about or taught. Kenda C. Dean, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the
American Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 28. Similarly, to get youth more involved in and serious about their faith Smith and Denton offer the following suggestions: involve parents, teach rigorously, articulate effectively, embrace individualism and challenge conventionality, distinguish pluralism, and perform religious practices. Christian Smith and Patricia Snell, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (New York: Oxford, 2009), 267-68.
students,3some studies have shown that college does not necessarily lead to decreased religious participation or commitment.4 These differences in the research has prompted the need to explore, not religiosity or simply change in belief, but rather the factors related to such belief among public college students.
In general, the literature has consistently reported a decline in religious values, attitudes, and behaviors during the college years. Critical to this study, colleges have been shown to influence the change in the student religious orientation and commitment with secular institutions (i.e., public colleges and universities) exerting the strongest, most consistent negative influences as measured by reduction in religiosity. While there has been increased scholarly interest in religion on campus in recent years, the amount of research remains low relative to the degree of belief of Christian orthodoxy. This research study sought to explore such belief trajectories among today’s public college students.
There remains a need in the research and literature base to study the factors relating to such change in belief among students in public colleges. Through
3 For research studies addressing change in belief, change in behaviors, and change in religious affiliations among adolescents, see the 2006 Barna Research Group Study, “Most Twentysomethings Put Christianity on the Shelf Following Spiritually Active Teen Years,” September 16, 2006.
https://www.barna.com/research/most-twentysomethings-put-christianity-on-the-shelf-following-
spiritually-active-teen-years/, the 2007 LifeWay Research project, “LifeWay Research Uncovers Reasons 18 to 22 Year Olds Drop Out of Church,” LifeWay Christian Resources, http://www.lifeway.com/Article/
LifeWay-Research-finds-reasons-18-to-22-year-olds-drop-out-of-church; and the multi-year longitudinal research results from the National Study of Youth and Religion (https://youthandreligion.nd.edu/research- findings/reports/).
4 While college has long been thought to undermine religious belief and practice, Uecker and colleagues have challenged this view, demonstrating that college is not the “faith-killer” it was once thought to be, and that college may sustain students’ religious commitments. First Uecker, et. al., “Losing My Religion: The Social Sources of Religious Decline in Early Adulthood,” Social Forces 85, no. 4 (2007): 1667-92. Likewise, Jenny Lee presented a paper entitled Changing Religious Beliefs Among College Students at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in 2000 claiming her research results “showed that while students tend to experience changes in religious beliefs, the direction of change is towards a strengthening of convictions.” Jenny Lee, “Changing Religious Beliefs among College Students” (paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Battle Creek, Kellogg Foundation, 2000).
understanding and determining the impact of one’s public collegiate tenure in the
trajectory of their belief, a holistic perspective can be drawn to develop programs and that will enhance the spiritual formation of adolescents, allowing students to enter public college more prepared and able to sustain belief in core Christian doctrines. Moreover, this study bridged the gap in literature, which lacked the exploration of factors relating to the change of belief in Christian orthodoxy of public college students.
Research Questions
This research was guided by three research questions to study the relationship between the public college experience and one’s belief in core Christian doctrines. The questions were assessed using the Short Christian Orthodoxy (SCO) scale and follow-up interview questions. What follows are the questions that served to focus this research:
1. Among students in public colleges and universities, what key factors relate to a diminished confidence in core Christian doctrines?
2. Among students in public colleges and universities, what core Christian doctrines are most difficult to defend and maintain while in college?
3. Among students in public colleges and universities, what personal doctrines are most likely to change during college?
Research Implications
This section provides a discussion of the examination of research findings to connect the results of this study to precedent literature. The research findings were presented based on the results of the statistical analysis and the qualitative analysis. The results were related to existing literature to provide insights, such as similarities and differences of findings with literature. The research implications also determine whether existing literature could be expanded or negated through the results of empirical data.
The three research questions considered in this study guided the discussion in this section. Moreover, this study also considered the relationship of the public college
results of the dependent (or paired samples) t-test, a highly significant p-value (probability less than 5 percent chance) for each question pair shows that the mean difference or drop in confidence was meaningful. That is, belief confidence changed—in this case, statistically diminished over time—for students who attended public schools.
These findings follow similar patterns found in research conducted over the past seventy- five years. In 1943, William Sewell in a review of Theodore Newcomb’s Personality and Social Change discussed changes in attitudes, perceptions, and values that occur during the college years.5 Pascarella and Terenzini, in their 1991 work, How College Affects Students: Findings and Insights from Twenty Years of Research, critiqued and
synthesized more than 2,600 research studies on the impact of college on students and summarized their findings as follows:
A reasonably consistent set of cognitive, attitudinal, value, and psychosocial changes have occurred among college students over the last four or five decades.
Students learn to think in more abstract, critical, complex, and reflective ways; there is a general liberalization of values and attitudes combined with an increase in cultural and artistic interests and activities; progress is made toward the
development of personal identities and more positive self-concepts; and there is an expansion and extension of interpersonal horizons, intellectual interests, individual autonomy, and general psychosocial maturity and well-being.6
They go on to state:
Perhaps the clearest generalization to be made… is that on nearly all the dimensions on which we find freshman-to-senior change, a statistically significant part of that change is attributable to college attendance, not to rival explanations…. These effects cannot be explained away by maturation or differences between those who attend and those who do not attend college in intelligence, academic ability, or other precollege characteristics.7
Our synthesis of the evidence suggests that college has a rather broad range of enduring or long-term impacts. These include not only the more obvious impacts on occupation and earnings but also influences on cognitive, moral, and psychosocial characteristics, as well as on values and attitudes and various quality of life indexes (for example, family, marriage, consumer behavior). Moreover, it would also appear
5 William H. Sewell, review of Personality and Social Change by Theodore M. Newcomb, American Sociological Review 8, no. 5 (1943): 620-21.
6 Pascarella and Terenzini. How College Affects Students, 563-64.
7 Ibid., 567.
that the impacts extend beyond the individuals who attend college to the kinds of lives their sons and daughters can expect.8
Factors Relating to Diminished Confidence
The first question of the research examined the key factors relating to diminished confidence in core Christian doctrines among public college seniors and recent graduates. Based on the results of the dependent (or paired samples) t-test, a significant diminishment of confidence was found in all six faith-based statements in the online survey. I used four demographic considerations to determine significance factors relating to a diminished confidence in core Christian doctrines. These demographics consisted of (1) identifying as Christian, (2) college senior versus recent college graduate, (3) church attendance, and (4) geographical location of the institution.
Three of the four considerations were found to be significant predictors of the composite score over time that related to a diminished confidence of core Christian doctrines among students attending public colleges and universities. The three significant factors included (1) identifying as a Christian, (2) college senior versus recent college graduate, and (3) church attendance. The geographical location of the college was a not significant predictors of diminished confidence among college students.
Public college students identifying as a Christian was highly significant and positive toward predicting changes in confidence (β = 1.26, SE = 0.17, t-value = 7.54, p <
0.001). The confidence levels of students identifying as Christian diminished more than students identifying as non-Christian. The reason for this is not surprising. Students who identified as non-Christian reportedly have low, if any, confidence in core Christian doctrines upon entering college. Therefore, their confidence levels had little to no change upon graduation. The exception to this would be the student who began to believe the Christian faith while in college, yielding a higher confidence in Christian doctrines upon
graduation. Over 70% of the 401 survey respondents identified themselves as being Christian upon entering public college. These students self-reportedly had a higher level of confidence than students identifying as non-Christian. This means a greater possibility for decreased confidence in core Christian doctrines is likely for Christian students throughout their collegiate tenure.
These findings offer support to the claims of Pascarella and Terenzini who found that college graduates possessed more secular attitudes than those young adults who had “some” or “no” college experience. This change toward secularization they described as “a function of both normal maturation and college influence,” noting that maturation alone could not explain the effects.9 Likewise, other literature reports that for many students, the time spent at a public university significantly impacts their worldview and their faith.10
Also, in this study, a student’s academic level proved to be significant. Senior versus recent graduate was highly significant toward predicting changes in confidence (β
= 2.24, SE = 0.91, t-value = 2.45, p = 0.01). The confidence levels of recent college graduates who participated in this research diminished more than current public college seniors. This could be due to several factors—type of institution, attendance, time, post collegiate environment, academic pursuits—therefore, determining cause from this research methodology is not possible. This correlation does, however, support and add to the aforementioned claims of Pascarella and Terenzini who found that college graduates possessed more secular attitudes than those young adults who had “some” or “no” college
9 Pascarella and Terezini, How College Affects Students, 293.
10 Astin finds a drop in church attendance and the practice of prayer. Alexander Astin, What Matters in College? Four Critical Years Revisited (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010). Bowen finds that students are less favorable toward the church, less convinced of the realities of God, less favorable toward the observance of the Sabbath, less fundamental, and less conservative. Howard Bowen, Investment in Learning: The Individual and Social Value of American Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1997).
experience.11 Pascarella and Terenzini also found that “significantly greater than expected decreases in conventional religious affiliation and in religiousness” when examining selected colleges/universities, and concluded “institutional characteristics probably do play a role in the degree to which religious preferences, attitudes, values, and behaviors change during college.”12
For many, college can become a period where students “find themselves.”
They mature, meet new people, learn new things—all assisting the transition of the adolescent into emerging adulthood and aiding in the development of one’s faith journey.
James Fowler describes this stage of faith as “Individuative-Reflective.” According to Fowler, this stage often takes place in young adulthood when people begin to critically examine their beliefs on their own and often become disillusioned with their former faith.13 Scott Peck offered a simplified version of Fowler’s stages a few years later and described a person in this stage of faith as a “Skeptic-Individual,” or one who begins to seriously question things on their own. Much of the time, as Peck notes, this stage ends up being very non-religious and can be permanent for some people.14 The stage of life and faith in which many public college students find themselves, can be akin to the stages described by Fowler and Peck. This stage of faith development may extend beyond the college experience into young adulthood, allowing for the possibility of further
diminishment in core Christian doctrines among recent college graduates as found in this research. While public college may be associated with diminished confidence in one’s Christian belief, this research cannot definitively state the public college experience as
11 Pascarella and Terezini, How College Affects Students, 293.
12 Ibid., 303.
13 James W. Fowler, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning (New York: HarperOne, 1995), 174-83.
cause.
A third predictor in the research was church attendance. Church attendance was highly significant toward predicting changes in confidence (β = -3.25, SE = 0.46, t = -7.07, p < 0.001). Students who frequently attended church services had less change in confidence from the time they entered college until the time they graduated compared to students who less frequently attended church services. It should be noted that persons with stronger belief who attend church more often is a mere correlation, not cause. While church attendance does not necessarily translate to increased belief, this research does suggest frequent church attendance and higher levels of confidence in core Christian doctrines are associated.15
These research findings add to the precedent literature that associates the college experience to declining religiosity. This study explored confidence of orthodox Christian belief, not simply religious practice as described in much of the prior research outlined in chapter two of this study (e.g., habits of prayer, church attendance, etc.).
Additionally, this research found lower mean levels of confidence among its respondents regarding the faith-based questions derived from the Short Christian Orthodox scale than those surveyed by the scale’s developers, Timothy Fullerton and Bruce Hunsberger.
While this was not a comparative study, I did note the mean scores of the faith-based survey questions yielded M=3.933, as compared to M=5.450 on the original SCO scale and M=5.048 on the original CO scale.16 These findings add support of the identification
15 To illustrate the point that increased church attendance does not necessarily cause increased faith, I will share a saying from a former pastor. Dr. Lonnie Skinner, former pastor of Etha Baptist Church in Eva, AL, often used the adage “sitting in a church service makes you no more a Christian than standing in your garage makes you a car.” As the apostle Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast”
(Eph 2:8-9 ESV). It is worth noting that the lack of church attendance does not necessarily cause decreased faith—although these factors are also associated within the research.
16 Timothy Fullerton and Bruce Hunsberger, “A Unidimensional Measure of Christian Orthodoxy,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 21 (1982): 317-26; Bruce Hunsberger, “A Short Version of the Christian Orthodoxy Scale,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 28, no. 3 (1989):
360-65.
of today’s teenagers as moralistic therapeutic deist, by Christian Smith and Melinda Denton, in that many students entering college do not exhibit confidence in what they identify to believe and find it difficult to articulate belief.17
Implications. Identifying as a Christian, graduating from a public college or university, and attending church or religious activities all proved to be significant factors in predicting diminishment of confidence in core Christian doctrines. These findings offer important insights for the church in its formation and discipleship efforts.
According to the US Department of Education, approximately 80% of students attending college will attend a public college or university (i.e., 4 out of 5 youth group students attending college after high school will likely attend a public post-secondary institution). Most students who identify as Christian, graduate high school, and leave youth groups across the United States will enroll in public colleges or universities. This research suggests there is an association of diminished confidence in core Christian doctrines and public college students. However, questions of belief formation and preparation remain unanswered.
Research findings by Smith and Denton claim that many teenagers cannot clearly articulate their faith.18 The authors boldly point toward the lack of intentional effort by the religious organizations to facilitate and educate teenagers to this ability and understanding. Smith and Denton write,
We were astounded by the realization that for very many teens we interviewed, it seemed as if our interview was the first time any adult had ever asked them what they believed. By contrast, the same teens could be remarkably articulate about other subjects about which they had been drilled, such as drinking, drugs, STD’s, and safe sex. . . . Our observation is that religious education in the United States is currently failing with youth when it comes to the articulation of faith.19
17 Christian Smith and Melinda Linquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford, 2005), 118-71