Why are so many college students rejecting their faith?
Why are so many college students rejecting their faith? Research has revealed over the past few years this: anywhere from 52 all the way up to 63% of freshmen who identify as a born-again believer after 4 years of college will completely reject their faith. This is staggering and alarming! What is going on? Why is this happening? We can look at various reasons, but I believe the biggest one is this. They are not prepared for the opposition to their faith they will encounter on the college campus.
Professor Richard Rrorty, who worked at Princeton, University of Virginia, and Stanford had this to say,
“When we American college teachers encounter Christians we do our best to convince these students of the benefit of secularization. Rather, I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent teaching of people like me and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.”
Notice the word there, "convince." They are intentional about trying to convert young people from their Christian beliefs over to the religion or the idea of a secular worldview or humanism. And it goes on to say that parents who would bring up their children with a Christian worldview are frightening, vicious, and dangerous! Now this is just one of many voices or teachers that would have this perspective and this agenda on a college campus. So when people like this professor in leadership positions of higher education purposefully try to tear down a student's faith it is no wonder why so many young people are rejecting their faith at college.
David Kinnaman, who is the president of the Barna Group, in one of their recent books evaluating and looking at why some young people kept the faith and why others rejected it had this to say,
"We believe many parents, educators, pastors, and other leaders are trying to prepare young Christians for Jerusalem. To keep them safe and well protected for a world they no longer live in.”
So the idea is they are protecting them or preparing them to live in Jerusalem, when in fact they live in the culture of Babylon. And so they're unprepared once they step outside of that Christian bubble to counteract or to deal with what they are experiencing in Babylon.
So what are you and I as Christians going to do to counteract this? We must work intentionally to prepare young adults for the opposition they will encounter on the college campus! A professor at Yale conducted research years ago trying to test the theory of why people come to embrace the ideas they find compelling. So he tested six strategies on how they would resist opposition to those ideas so they can hold on to them. Out of the six, the least effective strategy is that of only giving a person the truth and repeating that truth over and over again. It was less effective than a person not being prepared for the opposition at all. Think of that!
So the most effective strategy was this:
- Teach them the truth.
- Expose them to the lies that people will use to deceive them.
- Equip them to refute those lies.
- Prepare them with the thinking skills necessary to continue resisting the lies.
So just to teach them the truth is not enough! When you have people in higher education giving students ten reasons why not to believe and you and I are supplying only one reason to believe it is no wonder that this many young people are rejecting their faith in college. The good news is there is a solution! But you and I as Christians and the church must get busy equipping and preparing young people for the culture that they live in.
What is a stake? It is the hearts and minds of our children and therefore the future of the church and our country!
