RELIGION ON CAMPUS

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. (Sept. 10)