Religion on Campus
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
The first intensive, close-up investigation of the practice and teaching of religion at American colleges and universities, Religion on Campus is an indispensable resource for all who want to understand what religion really means to today's undergraduates.
To explore firsthand how college students understand, practice, and learn about religion, the authors visited four very different U.S. campuses: a Roman Catholic university in the East, a state university in the West, a historically black university in the South, and a Lutheran liberal arts college in the North. They interviewed students, faculty members, and administrators; attended classes; participated in worship services; observed prayer and Bible study groups; and surveyed the general ethos of each campus. The resulting study makes fascinating and important reading for anyone--including students, parents, teachers, administrators, clergy, and scholars--concerned with the future of young Americans.
Challenging theories of the secularization of higher education and the decline of religion on campus, this book reveals that both the practice and the study of religion are thriving, nourished by a campus culture of diversity, tolerance, and choice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Recently, numerous observers of American religion have decried the decline of religion on campus. George Marsden, for example, has argued that America's colleges and universities, once so heavily tied to their (usually Christian) roots, have embraced secularity wholesale. But who has thought to actually test these secularization theories? Working with a generous Lilly grant, religion professors Cherry, DeBerg and Porterfield went to the trenches to measure the vitality of religion on America's college campuses. At four anonymous institutions an elite Roman Catholic university in the East; a large state university in California; a small, historically African-American university in the South; and a Lutheran liberal arts college in the North they conducted in-depth, on-site investigations. Among their various conclusions, one theme emerges clearly: religion is alive and well on campus. The phenomenon that others have mistaken for secularization, the authors say, actually reveals other trends. For example, students are more private about their spirituality and less apt to associate it with organized religion, making it more difficult to track. Porterfield and Cherry emerge here as the better writers; DeBerg's chapter (which unfortunately occurs first) is a bit clunky by comparison. But all three are observant ethnographers, looking beyond the obvious places such as classroom and chapel to find religion at work in the locker room before the big game, in acts of community volunteerism or in the highly ritualized coronation of a homecoming queen. This important study confirms the vitality of religion on campus while ably challenging widely held theories of secularization.
