Dropping Out (of the Faith) in College

One question I’m often asked is, “Do you have any advice about a good college?” They’re especially interested (both parents and high school seniors) in finding a school where their faith will be strengthened rather than undermined.

According to a recent study, it doesn’t really matter. College students drop out of the church at astonishing rates at religiously-affiliated as well as secular institutions.

The way I usually answer the question is to change the subject from college to church. In my experience, it’s far more important to find a good church than to expect a college to buttress one’s faith. Of course, it’s important to find a good church when you’re raising kids in the first place. Churches and families that fail to immerse young people in the covenant of grace place an awful burden on a college—even a solid Christian one—or a good church in a college town. Nevertheless, I’ve seen terrific examples of faithful churches that evangelize, teach, and incorporate even shaky believers into the body of Christ while there in college. The college doesn’t matter. It could be Harvard, Biola, or Cal State, or wherever.

My own experience at a Christian college has something to do with my thinking on the subject. There were a lot of rules, daily (mandatory) chapel, spiritual life conference, and on and on. University meets summer camp. It was hard to find a parking space on Sunday morning, because who needed church? The college was a kind of surrogate church. Tough questions that you’d be asked on a secular campus weren’t pressed here. Everybody sort of nodded to the right answers, though not always sure why. Spiritually, it was pretty dull, routine, and mindless. Yet everyone got into it when the praise band did its thing in chapel and a great motivational speaker talked about how to surrender more of our lives to Christ.

A lot of those friends today are unchurched. Some are bitter—the last person they want to talk to is a conservative Christian, much less an evangelical. I don’t blame the college, but the whole religious sub-culture that shaped these young people and then provided a few extra years of moralistic, therapeutic deism.

This article by Marybeth Hicks at Townhall.com is well worth the read. I hope the statistics will jar us out of the false assumption that our young people “get it.” They don’t—unless our homes and churches give them grace.

“College Students Need to Keep Their Faith” by Marybeth Hicks